TUCK EVERLASTING – William Ross
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
William Ross has had a busy 2002. As well as assisting John Williams in writing and adapting the score for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, he was afforded scoring duties on the sweet and sentimental Disney movie Tuck Everlasting. Adapted from the popular novel by Natalie Babbitt, and directed by Jay Russell, the film stars young Alexis Bledel as Winnie Foster, a privileged young woman in 1900’s upstate New York who, after running away from home, meets and falls in love with Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson), the youngest son of the reclusive Tuck family, headed by mother and father Mae and Angus (Sissy Spacek and William Hurt). However, the Tucks harbor a secret – one hundred years previously, they unknowingly drank from a fountain of youth and attained immortality, leaving them blessed (or cursed?) to remain at their current ages until the end of time. Read more…
WHITE OLEANDER – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’m getting rather frustrated with Thomas Newman. How many times is he going to rehash the American Beauty sound before it becomes even more tired than it already is? In many ways, Thomas Newman is becoming the James Horner of the 2000s; a supremely talented composer whose work in the full orchestral arena is as good as anything being written today (The Shawshank Redemption, Little Women, Meet Joe Black). But, and at the risk of sounding cruel, he seems to be getting lazy, and is quite prepared to rehash his old works, whether it is at his director’s behest, or because of his own current obsession with sound design over melody. To paraphrase the Old Testament of the bible, American Beauty beget Erin Brockovich, beget Pay It Forward, beget In The Bedroom, and now beget White Oleander. Read more…
SECRETARY – Angelo Badalamenti
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There are two distinct sides to Angelo Badalamenti. Firstly (and most famously), there’s the side that embraces and provides the soundscape for the dark, twisted, and occasionally horrifying cinematic visions of director David Lynch, through films such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and, most famously, Twin Peaks. And then there is the composer who has brought his not inconsiderable talent to bear on a number of surprising films, and with a great deal of versatility: Italianate pastiche for Cousins, Hollywood comedy scoring for National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and lush full-orchestra work for The Comfort of Strangers and The Beach. It is with more than a little disappointment to find that his work on Secretary is actually rather bland and inconsequential. Written primarily for a small jazz combo with piano and synthesizer, Secretary is a predominantly low-key and ambient affair, a world away from the thematic beauty of The Beach or The Straight Story (still his best work), but with just enough energetic hits to stop it being an insomnia cure. Read more…
POSSESSION – Gabriel Yared
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Occasionally, I write a highly personal soundtrack review, and I make no apologies for this review of Possession being one of them. I saw this film for the first time in November 2002, with the woman who is shortly to become my wife. It was the first movie we ever saw together, on a cold winter night in London’s Leicester Square, and for some reason both film – and music – weaved a magical spell on us. The poetic language and vivid imagery, beautiful locations and inherent passion and romance of Neil La Bute’s movie was electric, and contained a great deal of personal resonance for the two of us. As a result, Possession has become an enduring favorite of ours, with the music easily ranking as one of the best “sleeper” scores of 2002. Read more…
THE TOUCH – Basil Poledouris
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a long time to wait for Basil Poledouris to get back into the scoring saddle. A couple of TV movies, a couple of flops, and the lamentable Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles not withstanding, it’s been almost four years since his last major score, Les Misérables. His sabbatical has largely been self-imposed, choosing instead to concentrate on building up his Blowtorch Flats media organization, and supporting his daughter Zoë on her quest to enter the film music fray. With The Touch, however, it seems like the man behind epics as great as Conan the Barbarian and Starship Troopers is back with a vengeance – and, if I may say so, not before time. Read more…
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It may be a slightly early in a composer’s career to be making statements such as this, but I would be willing to bet that, within five years, Klaus Badelt is the most successful and respected Media Ventures graduate Hollywood has yet seen. This may seem like faint praise, forever lumping him in with the MV crew and making him guilty by association, but when you consider the career free-fall of composers such as Mark Mancina and Nick Glennie-Smith in recent years, the two 2002 scores by the young German promise excellent things. The second of his two scores, after The Time Machine, is K-19: The Widowmaker, a serious and somber submarine thriller starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson and directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film is set in a tense 1961, the time at which the cold war between the USA the former Soviet Union was at its worst, on board the pride of the Soviet Navy’s submarine division: warship K-19. Hoping to nullify the American threat of nuclear attack, K-19 is placed strategically off the coast of America under a new commander, Alexi Vostrikov (Ford), who replaced the ship’s popular former captain Polenin (Neeson). However, when the K-19’s nuclear reactor malfunctions, tensions begin to surface – not just because of the threat of a meltdown onboard, but because crew members still loyal to Polenin threaten to mutiny. Read more…
ROAD TO PERDITION – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One thing that cannot be taken away from Thomas Newman is the fact that (with the possible exception of Elliot Goldenthal) he is, by far, the most original voice working in film music today. Newman has, literally, created a style of writing that no-one has heard before, and through recent films like American Beauty and Erin Brockovich and In the Bedroom, given Hollywood a unique musical perspective on modern life. Imitators follow his lead, but Newman’s unique brand of quirky rhythmic techniques and innovative orchestrations remain as one of today’s truly distinctive voices. What people tend to forget, though, is that for all his marimbas and sazes and funky monkeys, Newman is equally excellent at the “big orchestral thing”. Road to Perdition, his latest work, reaffirms that. Read more…
MEN IN BLACK II – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s nice to see Danny Elfman being silly again. I don’t mean Pee-Wee Herman silly; God forbid, the music was great but if he ever scores another movie like that something very wrong will have happened to the world. It’s just that, for the last few years, Elfman seems to have become a very serious man, scoring dark and weighty films such as Proof of Life and Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. Returning to the sci-fi chaos of the Men in Black universe has allowed Elfman to metaphorically let his hair down and go a bit wacky. He’s probably at his best when he does. Read more…
MINORITY REPORT – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Is it sacrilege to say that a new John Williams score is a slight disappointment? The 70-year old composer has been at the top of his game for over 25 years now, and the list of near-legendary scores he has written is almost incomprehensible. His collaboration with director Steven Spielberg is also the stuff of fable – how can two men come up with so much brilliance and genius between them? Minority Report, as a movie, is a marvelous amalgam of science fiction and morality gone wrong. But whereas Spielberg seems to still be at the height of creative talents, Williams seems to be flagging just a tad. A.I., his last Spielberg film, was enjoyable but failed to tread any new ground. Minority Report, which covers similar thematic ground by tackling deep intellectual issues in a science fiction setting, seems to have had the a similar effect on Williams – without wanting to sound unkind, its almost as though “thinking” films don’t provide him with the same seeds of musical inspirational as the popcorn adventure flicks that seem to be more and more his forte. Read more…
WINDTALKERS – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s getting more and more difficult to review James Horner scores objectively these days – and everyone knows why. Listening to and writing about Horner’s music is a bit like having an itch you’re not supposed to scratch – you know it’ll do you no good in the long run but, by God, it irritates you so much, you just can’t help yourself – and the short term relief is worth it. I am almost at pains to say so, but on the whole Windtalkers bored me. Horner rarely does this; if nothing else, Horner’s music is usually interesting and worth taking the time to listen to. But, here, its as though he intentionally drew the majority the heart and color from his score, leaving instead a soulless musical shell that is technically sound but bereft of anything remotely resembling emotion. Read more…
THE BOURNE IDENTITY – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Film music is a funny thing. Sitting down to listen to The Bourne Identity, the latest score from British composer John Powell, I fully expected to hate it. Electronics, synthesizers, drum loops, very little in the way of an orchestral palette – all the things I generally dislike about certain types of score are in place here. But, much to my own surprise, I didn’t hate it at all – it actually entertained me for much of its running length, and left me marveling at the deftness of Powell’s MIDI programming and electronic inventiveness. Read more…
STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES – John Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Talk about pressure. Could any composer other than John Williams ever write a Star Wars score successfully? After the mixed critical reception of The Phantom Menace, it would be difficult for Attack of the Clones NOT to be a better movie; but Williams’ score was roundly praised, and to improve upon the incredible choral power of Duel of the Fates would be a task indeed. As the second installment in the trilogy, speculation was rife about how the middle Star Wars movie is always the best, dramatically and musically, adding further expectation upon Williams’s talents. Fortunately, all the doubts and worries are groundless. Attack of the Clones is a monster, surpassing The Phantom Menace on almost all counts. Read more…
UNFAITHFUL – Jan A. P. Kaczmarek
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, the least-known of the triumvirate of Polish film composers that includes Wojciech Kilar and Zbigniew Preisner, continues to make in-roads into Hollywood with his score for Unfaithful, the latest film by maverick director Adrian Lyne. Kaczmarek has had an interesting career to date, scoring mainly art house fare such as Total Eclipse and Bliss, but dabbling in the mainstream with things like Lost Souls and Washington Square without being widely recognized. I have a feeling that Unfaithful could change all that. Basically a three-way character study about the emotional effects of infidelity, Unfaithful stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane as Edward and Connie Sumner, a happily married couple living in the New York suburbs with their precocious young son Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan). One stormy autumn day, Connie makes a trip to the city, and literally bumps into handsome French book dealer Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). Cleaning her grazed knee in his apartment, Connie obviously feels an attraction to Paul, but ignores her instincts, dismissing them as mere juvenile lust. However, Connie and Paul’s feelings for each other gradually grow too strong to ignore, and eventually they embark on a stormy, passionate affair. Meanwhile, the dependable Edward begins to notice subtle changes in his wife’s behavior, and hires a detective to find out about her illicit daytime liaisons. What transpires thereafter begins to tear at the fabric of the Sumner family, culminating in anger, betrayal and murder. Read more…
ENIGMA – John Barry
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A new John Barry score is a rare thing indeed in this day and age. As one of the all-time greats of film music, with a career that stretches back to the 1950s, the quality of Barry’s work and his influence on the genre as a whole cannot be understated. However, in recent years, Barry’s musical oeuvre has become so familiar and – dare I say it – predictable, that every score sounds like the last. Playing By Heart, his last score, broke the mould somewhat by embracing a distinctive type of moody jazz, but everything else has been much of the same. Enigma is no different. Read more…
Remembering Georges Delerue, 1925-1992
Composer Georges Delerue died ten years ago today, on March 20, 1992. He had a stroke, just hours after recording the last cue for the soundtrack to his last film, Rich in Love, and died two days later. He was 67.
Georges Henri Jean-Baptiste Delerue was born in Roubaix, France, in March 1925. A clarinet and piano player as a child, Delerue attended the Turgot Institute, the Roubaix conservatory, and the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied composition with Darius Milhaud and Henri Büsser. His friends there included Maurice Jarre and Pierre Boulez, and together the three of them would make often make money on the side performing jazz in piano bars near the Paris Opera House.
He began writing stage music during the late 1940s, for the Théâtre National Populaire, the Comédie-Française, and the Théâtre Babylone, before being hired to direct the orchestra of the Club d’Essai for French National Radio and Television. His work for FRNT led directly to him scoring his first major project, television drama, Princes du Sang, in 1952. Read more…
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