TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE – Harry Gregson-Williams, Trey Parker, Marc Shaiman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In this post-9/11 world, where the threat of global terrorism looms overhead, where the fate of the people of Iraq hangs in the balance, and where political correctness in relation to sensitive subjects has reached fever pitch, thank God that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are around to bring everything back into perspective. The irreverent duo, who inject more intelligent humor into a single episode of South Park than most comedies can manage in a decade, have turned their satirical attention to the world of the American action movies and George W. Bush’s foreign policy with Team America: World Police. Read more…
ARSÈNE LUPIN – Debbie Wiseman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Regular readers of Movie Music UK will know that I am a big fan of the British composer Debbie Wiseman. Not only is she blazing a trail for female composers in film music at a time when they are still vastly outnumbered in the battle of the sexes, but she has written a number of staggeringly good scores since she burst on the international scene in the mid-1990s: Tom & Viv, Haunted and especially her 1997 masterpiece Wilde are amongst my personal favorite scores. Taking that into account, you will understand what massive praise I am bestowing when I say that, unequivocally, Arsène Lupin is her finest score to date. Read more…
LADDER 49 – William Ross
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For some reason, there aren’t very many movies made about fire fighters – Ron Howard’s 1991 blockbuster Backdraft being one of the few high-profile exceptions. This phenomenon is odd, as their exploits are inherently cinematic, approaching as they do raging infernos with a degree of selflessness and heroism that makes their exploits an engaging movie-going experience. Also, since many members of the New York Fire Department were killed in the aftermath of 9/11, the lives of the men and women who battle fires on a daily basis have taken on noble, almost mythic proportions in American culture – and it is this angle that director Jay Russell’s film Ladder 49 explores. Read more…
THE FORGOTTEN – James Horner
Original Review by Peter Simons
Having one of the year’s more interesting premises, The Forgotten tells the story of Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore), a mother who is told that her recently deceased son never even existed, and that she merely imagined nine years of her life with him. Unwilling to accept this shocking news and firmly believing that the truth is out there, Telly embarks on a personal quest for her lost child. Written by Gerald Di Pego, the film has a promising scenario, but critics derided it for making a few too many unwelcome plot turns, and eventually leaving the realms of the “intriguing” and becoming “ridiculous”. Nevertheless, the film performed rather well at the box office, taking over $60 million in its first six weeks. Read more…
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION – Thomas Newman
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As it is currently enjoying a limited cinematic re-release to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and has recently been released on a special 3-disc collectors DVD, I thought I would take the opportunity re-visit and re-review Thomas Newman’s score for The Shawshank Redemption. When I first saw this film back in March 1995, I thought it to be a worthy, enjoyable film, taking into account my comparative immaturity and lack of experience in things cinematic. Now, a decade later on, I consider it one of the best films I have ever seen; a warm, uplifting, moving tribute to the indomitable human spirit, the power of friendship, and the need for hopes and dreams. Read more…
Remembering Jule Styne, 1905-1994
Composer and songwriter Jule Styne died at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City ten years ago today, on September 20, 1994, at the age of 88, following a heart attack after several weeks of ill health.
One of the towering figures of the American musical theatre, Styne composed the music for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bells Are Ringing, Gypsy and Funny Girl, while his extensive Hollywood career produced songs including “It’s Magic,” “I Fall in Love Too Easily” and the Academy Award-winning “Three Coins in the Fountain.”
Julius Kerwin Stein was born in London’s East End on December 31, 1905, into a Jewish family of Ukrainian ancestry. His family emigrated to Chicago in 1912, where his exceptional talent at the piano quickly became apparent. A child prodigy, he performed with major symphony orchestras while still young, but eventually abandoned ambitions for a classical concert career and immersed himself instead in Chicago’s jazz and popular-music scene.
By the 1930s Styne was working as a pianist, bandleader and vocal coach. He eventually moved to Hollywood, where he coached performers including Shirley Temple and Alice Faye before establishing himself as a songwriter. His most important early partnership was with lyricist Sammy Cahn. Together they wrote dozens of songs for films and popular singers, including “I’ll Walk Alone,” “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” “The Things We Did Last Summer,” “Time After Time,” “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” and the seasonal standard “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Read more…
LAURAS STERN/LAURA’S STAR – Hans Zimmer, Nick Glennie-Smith
Original Review by Peter Simons
The second German animated film – the first being Back To Gaya – to get some international attention this year is Lauras Stern (Laura’s Star) from directors Piet de Rycker and Thilo Rothkirch, who previously made Der Kleine Eisbär (The Little Polar Bear). The story is that of the seven year old Laura who finds it hard to make any new friends after moving to the big city. Then one day she finds a star that has fallen from the sky. She takes it home, heals its wounds and, yes, makes friends with it. The star fills Laura’s life with magic as it makes her teddy bears come to live and allows Laura to fly. But all good things must come to an end and so, alas, Star has to go back home. Read more…
STRINGS – Jørgen Lauritsen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Strings is a Danish film directed by Anders Rønnow-Klarlund, with a cast comprising solely of wooden puppets. The story is an epic tale filled with myth, fable, Norse mythology and fanstastical sword-and-sorcery, which brings to mind such British classics as Excalibur and King Arthur. The film follows the fortunes of a young prince named Hal Tara (voiced by James McAvoy) who, following the death of his father, the King, seemingly at the hands of his sworn enemies, must venture out of the royal city to seek revenge before he can take up the throne. However, as he journeys through his kingdom-to-be and meets his subjects, Hal discovers a few shocking home truths about life in the real world – and finds true love where he least expects it in the shape of the beautiful Zita (Catherine McCormack). Read more…
SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Having recently been forced to suffer the deaths of Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein – by anyone’s estimation two of the greatest film music composers who ever lived – thoughts within the film music world have quite naturally been turning to wonder who will fill their shoes. One name which keeps re-occurring as a possible future ‘great’ is that of Edward Shearmur, the young English composer who began his career shuffling papers for Michael Kamen, and who now has carved out a solid career for himself through recent scores such as Reign of Fire, The Count of Monte Cristo and Johnny English. As talented as he has shown he can be in the past, nothing will quite prepare you for how good his latest score, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, is. Read more…
RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE – Jeff Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As the second in a projected series of movies spinning off from the classic Capcom computer game Biohazard, Resident Evil: Apocalypse has a big reputation to live up to. The original game is one of the most-played and best-loved survival horror games in history, and is credited as being the inspiration for an entire genre of similar experiences. The first Resident Evil movie made $101 million worldwide in 2002, and was the highest-grossing movie of the year for the Sony subsidiary Screen Gems. Apocalypse, which is once again is written by British sci-fi specialist Paul W.S. Anderson, essentially picks up where the first movie left off, with ass-kicking heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich), having battled hordes of virus-infected zombies and other assorted nasties, escaping alive from the Hive of the Umbrella Corporation building, only to find Raccoon City a desolate wasteland. With the deadly T-virus on the loose and turning the good citizens of the city into slavering zombies, Alice and the other survivors she encounters (Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Zack Ward) must fight their way through the hordes to safety. However, their biggest challenge lies with the seemingly unstoppable Nemesis, a super-human mutation created by the virus, whose sole goal is to kill every living thing… Read more…
ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID – Nerida Tyson-Chew
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Quite why anyone made a sequel to the 1997 minor hit Anaconda is beyond me. The original, directed by Luis Llosa, was famous for featuring early star turns from Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, for the ‘Jon Voight leer’, and (amongst score fans at least) for having a serviceable score by Randy Edelman. Now, seven years after the fact, journeyman director Dwight H. Little has resurrected the franchise, and turned out one of the most critically derided movies of 2004 – an over-egged pudding that threatens to destroy the fledgling movie careers of stars Johnny Messner, Kadee Strickland and former Coronation Street actor Matthew Marsden almost before they have begun. Read more…
Elmer Bernstein, 1922-2004
Composer Elmer Bernstein died on August 18, 2004, at his home in Ojai, California, after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 82.
Bernstein was born in New York City in April 1922, the son of immigrants from Ukraine and Austria-Hungary. He studied piano as a child and showed early promise as a performer; during his childhood, he performed professionally as a dancer and an actor, but then switched to music and trained at the Juilliard School where he was encouraged by prominent figures such as Aaron Copland. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces, where he composed and arranged music for military radio programs.
Bernstein moved to California in in the early 1950s, when he was hired to score the thriller Sudden Fear in 1952. However, along with many other artists in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, and was called by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After he refused to name names, pointing out that he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, he found himself composing music for Z-grade sci-fi movies such as Robot Monster and Cat-Women of the Moon.
His work on The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), one of the first major studio films to feature a jazz score, brought him back into the mainstream, earned him his first Oscar nomination and marked him as a daring and contemporary voice in film music. His score for The Ten Commandments (1956), an epic of biblical scale, demonstrated his facility with grand orchestration and established him as a composer of serious dramatic substance. He followed it with the heroic and unforgettable theme to The Magnificent Seven (1960), whose galloping rhythms and bold brass fanfares became one of the most enduring musical signatures in film history. Read more…
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR – Harald Kloser
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In an attempt to breathe life into the franchises, Twentieth Century Fox have done what Universal did over half a century ago by pitching two of their greatest monster creations against each other in a single motion picture. But this is not Frankenstein, Dracula or The Wolfman: the monsters here are Predators and Aliens. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, Alien vs. Predator stars Lance Henriksen as Charles Weyland, a billionaire industrialist leading an archaeological expedition in Antarctica in the not-so-distant future. When the team unearths the ruins of an ancient pyramid buried beneath the ice, it is hoped that a great breakthrough in human history has been reached. However, the team soon find themselves unwittingly caught in the middle of an intergalactic war in which the fearsome Predators come to earth to take part in a coming-of-age ritual that involves them hunting and killing a group of fully-grown Aliens, who have also been buried under the ice for the past few millennia… Read more…
David Raksin, 1912-2004
Composer David Raksin died on August 9, 2004, in Los Angeles, after a short illness. He was 92.
Raksin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in August 1912. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Curtis Institute of Music, and later with Isadore Freed in New York and Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles. He worked as an arranger for Charlie Chaplin on the score for Modern Times in 1936 when he was just 24 years old, and soon after began a long career as a composer for studio films.
With a career spanning more than six decades, Raksin composed music for over 100 films and numerous television programs, earning a reputation for melodic sophistication and dramatic sensitivity. His theme for the 1944 classic Laura is often cited as one of the most memorable in film history, and became a popular standard, with lyrics later added by Johnny Mercer. Raksin’s theme song for the 1953 film The Bad and the Beautiful (also called “Love is For the Very Young”) was also a hit.
Rakin’s other major composing credits include Forever Amber (1947), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), Force of Evil (1948), Whirlpool (1950), The Magnificent Yankee (1950), Across the Wide Missouri (1951), The Big Combo (1955), Bigger Than Life (1956), Separate Tables (1958), and Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), among many others. He received two Academy Award nominations and numerous honors for his work, which was admired for its lyrical beauty, harmonic depth, and keen dramatic sense. One of his last major scores was for the critically acclaimed nuclear holocaust-themed TV drama The Day After in 1983. Read more…
THE VILLAGE – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
With the exception of The Sixth Sense, which was brilliant on all fronts, I have never been that fond of M. Night Shyamalan’s slow-moving thrillers, or of the scores his regular composer James Newton Howard wrote for them. Unbreakable was sub-par, and Signs was a fairly good film but I was one of the few who did not connect with the score. Shyamalan’s fourth and latest film is The Village, a mysterious tale set in Covington, a hamlet in 19th century Pennsylvania. Creatures dwell in the woods near the village, and an unspoken truce has existed between the humans and the creatures for decades – essentially, we won’t disturb you, if you don’t disturb us. However, things change for the worse when young Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) ventures beyond the boundaries and into the domain of ‘Those We Don’t Speak Of’ and incites their wrath. With a cast that includes Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt and Adrien Brody, the film has the right credentials to be a success, while the score is a rarity in that, already, it is by far the best for a Shyamalan film to date. Read more…
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