OUTLANDER – Geoff Zanelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A science fiction Viking epic, Outlander is a genre-bending action movie starring Jim Caviezel as Kainen, a soldier from a faraway planet who crashes his spaceship on Earth in Norway in the year 709, and is captured by the local Norsemen; however, when a deadly alien creature called the Moorwen – which had stowed away on Kainen’s ship – begins a vicious killing rampage through the Viking village, Kainen and the Vikings team up to stop the intruder.
The film is directed by Howard McCann, features an eclectic supporting cast that includes Sophia Myles, Ron Perlman and John Hurt, and has an original score by Geoff Zanelli. The score sounds pretty much like you would expect it to sound, and is built around a rousing brass main theme in the finest Zimmer power anthem tradition Read more…
UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS – Paul Haslinger
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The third film in the Underworld series, Rise of the Lycans features a new actress in the lead role (Rhona Mitra instead of Kate Beckinsale), and is effectively a prequel to the original two films, charting the events leading up to the vampire-werewolf war which dominates the first two installments. Essentially a Romeo and Juliet variation, the film tells the story of enslaved werewolf Lucian (Michael Sheen), who has been the property of vampire elder Viktor (Bill Nighy) since birth, and who falls in love with Viktor’s daughter Sonja (Rhona Mitra). Their love, Viktor’s betrayal by his daughter, Lucien’s escape from captivity, and the subsequent execution of Sonja by the vampire lords, sets in motion the centuries-long battle for supremacy between vampire and Lycans. Read more…
Academy Award Nominations 2008
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the nominations for the 81st Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2008.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- DANNY ELFMAN for Milk
- JAMES NEWTON HOWARD for Defiance
- THOMAS NEWMAN for Wall*E
- A. R. RAHMAN for Slumdog Millionaire
This is the first Oscar nomination for Rahman. It is the 2nd nomination for Desplat, the 4th nomination for Elfman, the 6th nomination for Howard, and the 10th nomination for Newman. None of the nominees have ever won an Academy Award before
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- THOMAS NEWMAN and PETER GABRIEL for “Down to Earth” from Wall*E
- A. R. RAHMAN and SAMPOORAN SINGH KALRA (GULZAR) for “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire
- A. R. RAHMAN and MATHANGI ARULPRAGASAM (M.I.A.) for “O Saya” from Slumdog Millionaire
The winners of the 81st Academy Awards will be announced on February 22, 2009.
UN HOMME ET SON CHIEN/A MAN AND HIS DOG – Philippe Rombi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s quite easy for a film music reviewer like myself to become jaded. I hear, on average, between 125 and 175 scores each calendar year, both new works and re-releases, and sometimes barely half of them warrant a second listen. Each year there are maybe 20 or 30 good scores, maybe 5 great scores, and very rarely there is one which can be considered “excellent”. It’s not very often that I listen to a new score and am instantly captured by the music I hear, but when it happens it reminds me why I listen to film music, why I still love this genre, and why this kind of music can move, elate and thrill me like no other. Un Homme Et Son Chien by Philippe Rombi is one of those rare scores. Read more…
MY BLOODY VALENTINE – Michael Wandmacher
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A nostalgic throwback to the early 80s era of the slasher film, My Bloody Valentine was the first modern horror film to fully embrace the new 3D craze, shocking its audiences with realistically realized axes and body parts shooting from the screen, as well as with all manner of grisly and gruesome special effects to bring the bloody story to life. A remake of the 1981 classic horror film of the same name, the film is directed by Patrick Lussier and stars Jensen Ackles as Tom Hanninger, a young man who returns to his Pennsylvania mining hometown on the tenth anniversary of the Valentine’s night massacre that claimed the lives of 22 people. Despite the original murderer having been apparently killed a decade a go, the murders begin again, and before long Tom finds himself being accused of the crimes. Turning to his old girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King) – who survived the massacre a decade before – Tom sets out to solve the brutal mystery and prove his innocence. Read more…
HOTEL FOR DOGS – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Hotel for Dogs is a kid’s comedy adventure based on the novel by Lois Duncan, directed by Thor Freudenthal, and which stars Emma Roberts and Jake T. Austin as orphan siblings who, despite the misgivings of their foster parents and their patient social worker (Don Cheadle), start a home for abandoned dogs in a run-down hotel – hilarity, as they say, ensues.
The score for Hotel for Dogs is by John Debney, whose choice in films since picking up his Oscar nomination for The Passion of the Christ has been surprising, to say the least. Hotel for Dogs is the latest in a long line of children’s comedies which would seem to be better suited to less talented composers than Debney Read more…
ET APRÈS/AFTERWARDS – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Afterwards is a metaphysical romantic drama directed by Gilles Bourdos and starring Romain Duris as Nathan, a brilliant New York lawyer whose personal life has become a mess since his divorce from Claire (Evangeline Lilly), his only love. However, when everything changes when Nathan meets Kay (John Malkovich), a mysterious doctor who introduces himself as a “Messenger” and tells Nathan that he is able to sense when certain people are about to die. Read more…
BAFTA Nominations 2008
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced the nominations for the 62nd British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2008.
In the Best Original Music category, which is named in memory of the film director Anthony Asquith, the nominees are:
- BENNY ANDERSSON and BJÖRN ULVAEUS for Mamma Mia!
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- THOMAS NEWMAN for Wall*E
- A. R. RAHMAN for Slumdog Millionaire
- HANS ZIMMER and JAMES NEWTON HOWARD for The Dark Knight
These are the first nominations Andersson, Howard, Rahman, and Ulvaeus. It is the second nomination for Newman, the third nomination for Desplat, and the fourth nomination for Zimmer. Newman previously won for American Beauty in 1999.
The winners of the 62nd BAFTA Awards will be announced on February 8, 2009.
Angela Morley, 1924-2009
Composer, arranger, orchestrator and conductor Angela Morley died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on January 14, 2009, at the age of 84. She had suffered a heart attack while undergoing surgery following a broken hip.
One of Britain’s most accomplished arrangers, Morley’s remarkable career encompassed big bands, radio, records, film and American television. She received two Academy Award nominations, won three Emmy Awards, and contributed behind the scenes to some of the most famous film scores of the late twentieth century.
Morley was born Walter Morley Stott in Leeds, Yorkshire, on March 10, 1924, and developed an early fascination with big-band music. Largely self-taught at first, she became a professional saxophonist at 15 and by 17 was playing lead alto with Oscar Rabin’s orchestra. She joined Geraldo’s celebrated band in 1944, increasingly concentrating on arranging, and later studied composition with Mátyás Seiber and conducting with Walter Goehr. By the early 1950s she had abandoned performing to concentrate entirely on writing.
Under her former professional name, Wally Stott, Morley became enormously familiar to British radio audiences. She was musical director for Philips Records, arranged for singers including Rosemary Clooney and Mel Tormé, and provided music for The Goon Show. Most famously, she wrote the theme and incidental music for Hancock’s Half Hour, including its memorably lugubrious opening tuba motif. She also produced a series of light-orchestral compositions and arrangements that established her as one of Britain’s leading practitioners in the field. Read more…
THE UNBORN – Ramin Djawadi
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Anytime a film has a January release date, odds are pretty strong that it’s going to be a waste of time. When it’s a horror film directed by David S. Goyer, such odds are even stronger. Such was the case with “The Unborn”, a critically-reviled supernatural horror flick featuring such overqualified actors as Gary Oldman and Jane Alexander. The film tells the unusual story of a girl who is haunted by her dead twin brother. Apparently, the brother was killed as a baby during horrific Nazi experiments, and now the girl must find a way to get rid of her evil ghost twin before it does something nasty to her. The film was scored by Ramin Djawadi, another student of Hans Zimmer who continues to get plum assignments despite the lack of any discernible talent. So, has he shown any signs of improvement in his latest outing? Read more…
AFRIKA – Wataru Hokoyama
GAME ZONE REVIEW
Original Review by Joseph W. Bat
Now here is an interesting combination: a Japanese developer making a game that is entirely set in Africa, and a musical score recorded in Hollywood. Announced in 2006 for Sony’s Playstation3 as simply Afrika, game developer Rhino Studios’ game has a simple approach. You play as a photographer hired to travel to Africa and are given missions to take photographs of the various wild animals and landscapes found within Africa. While not your typical game, Afrika has been praised for its vivid detailed recreation of Africa and many gamers have been importing the game from Japan since the game is only available in Asia. Read more…
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A film by David Fincher based on the 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the tale of a man who is born old, and gets younger as his life progresses. Set in Louisiana in the late 1800s, it stars Brad Pitt as the titular Button, who is born with the physical appearance of an 80 year old man, much to the shock and embarrassment of his parents. As the years pass, Button gets younger and younger, fighting in wars, attending college, and falling in love – but backwards, and with the knowledge that, the longer time passes, the closer he is to losing everything and everyone around him. The film also stars Cate Blanchett, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Tilda Swinton, and is tipped to be a major player at the 2009 Academy Awards. Read more…
DEFIANCE – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the less well-known stories of heroism in World War 2 is that of the Bielski Partisans, a family of Jewish brothers who, following the invasion of Poland by the Nazis in 1941, managed to flee the advancing troops and make their way to the inhospitable forests of what is now western Belarus. Over the course of the next two years, the Bielski brothers rescued and sheltered more than 1,200 Polish Jews from the Nazis, often fighting in hand-to-hand skirmishes alongside Soviet forces, and survived the war, and in doing so made one of the most significant contributions to the Jewish cause in the Holocaust in terms of lives saved. Director Edward Zwick’s acclaimed film Defiance stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as the Bielski brothers, and has an emotional, powerful, Oscar-nominated score by composer James Newton Howard. Read more…
LAST CHANCE HARVEY – Dickon Hinchliffe
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A contemporary romantic comedy-drama directed by Joel Hopkins, Last Chance Harvey stars Dustin Hoffman as the eponymous Harvey Shine who, while visiting London to attend his estranged daughter’s wedding, meets and forms an unlikely relationship with Kate (Emma Thompson), a middle-aged woman with a somewhat downbeat outlook on life and romance. However, as the pair spend more time together, Harvey finds himself renewed, and vows to repair not only his relationship with his daughter, but everything else wrong with his life before it’s too late.
The music for Last Chance Harvey is by English composer Dickon Hinchliffe, a former member of the indie rock band Tindersticks, and who previously worked on films such as Keeping Mum and Married Life. Read more…
MARLEY & ME – Theodore Shapiro
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A light romantic drama based on the hugely popular best selling novel by John Grogan, Marley & Me is the story of the ups and downs in the relationship of a married couple, John and Jenny Grogan (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston), told from the point of view of their boisterous, mischievous golden retriever, Marley. The film is directed by David Frankel, and has a score by Theodore Shapiro, who scored Frankel’s previous film, The Devil Wears Prada in 2006.
As one would expect, considering the film’s subject matter, Shpiro’s score is generally light, romantic and contemporary, consisting mainly of upbeat orchestral themes augmented by electric and acoustic guitars and various urban percussion items. Read more…
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