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…
Piero Piccioni, 1921-2004
Composer, pianist and conductor Piero Piccioni died in Rome, Italy, on July 23, 2004, at the age of 82.
One of the most prolific and distinctive voices of post-war Italian cinema, Piccioni combined jazz, lush orchestral writing, pop, lounge music and the avant-garde across a career encompassing hundreds of compositions for film, television and radio.
Piccioni was born in Turin on December 6, 1921. Largely self-taught as a musician, he developed an early passion for American jazz, especially Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, and first performed on radio in 1938. Following World War II he led his own jazz ensemble, Orchestra 013, and spent time in New York, where he immersed himself further in American jazz. He initially pursued a career as a lawyer, working with film companies including Titanus and De Laurentiis, before abandoning law for music.
Piccioni entered cinema during the early 1950s, initially using the pseudonym Piero Morgan. His first feature score was Gianni Franciolini’s Il Mondo le Condanna, followed by Alberto Lattuada’s La Spiaggia. His jazz background immediately distinguished his music, with improvisation, sophisticated harmonies and rhythmic vitality becoming recurring characteristics of his work.
One of Piccioni’s most important relationships was with director Francesco Rosi, for whom he scored 13 films. Their collaboration began with I Magliari in 1959 and continued through Salvatore Giuliano (1962), Hands Over the City (1963), The Moment of Truth (1965), More Than a Miracle (1967), The Mattei Affair (1972) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1987). Rosi’s politically charged cinema brought out a more austere side of Piccioni, notably in the sparse music for Salvatore Giuliano and the largely electronic textures of The Mattei Affair. His work on Salvatore Giuliano earned him the Nastro d’Argento.
Piccioni was equally renowned for his long friendship and collaboration with actor-director Alberto Sordi. Scores including An Italian in America (1967), Amore Mio Aiutami (1969) and Polvere di Stelle (1973) revealed another side of his personality: warm, melodic, playful and frequently steeped in jazz, bossa nova and contemporary popular music. His ability to move between Rosi’s serious political dramas and Sordi’s bittersweet comedies demonstrated his exceptional versatility. Read more…
Remembering Hans J. Salter, 1896-1994
Composer, conductor and musical director Hans J. Salter died at his home in Studio City, California, ten years ago today, on July 23, 1994, at the age of 98.
An Austrian émigré who became one of the principal architects of the classic Universal horror sound, Salter worked on more than 200 films during nearly three decades at the studio. His music accompanied werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein monsters, Sherlock Holmes adventures, westerns and musicals, and brought him six Academy Award nominations.
Hans Julius Salter was born in Vienna on January 14, 1896. He studied at the University of Vienna and Vienna Music Academy with teachers including Guido Adler, Franz Schreker, Felix Weingartner and, briefly, Alban Berg. After working in opera, Salter moved into cinema during the late 1920s, first conducting in Berlin movie theatres and then composing for UFA. As a Jewish musician he was forced out of the German film industry after the Nazi rise to power and eventually emigrated to the United States in 1937.
Universal hired Salter initially as an orchestrator in 1938, but he was soon promoted to composer and became one of the studio’s busiest musical craftsmen. Working frequently with Frank Skinner and other staff composers, he supplied music for everything from Deanna Durbin musicals and Abbott and Costello comedies to serials, melodramas and horror pictures. Much of this work went uncredited or was subsequently recycled as stock music throughout Universal’s productions. Read more…
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When The Bourne Identity, the first film based upon Robert Ludlum’s massively successful spy novels, grossed almost $122 million at the US box office, a sequel was inevitable. The Bourne Supremacy sees Matt Damon returning as the eponymous Jason Bourne, the former CIA assassin who, following the exploits of the last film, has settled down with a new identity in a tropical paradise with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente). However, when the CIA comes knocking on Bourne’s door once more, trying to frame him for a bungled operation, Bourne decides to fight back and clear his name. The film is directed by Englishman Paul Greengrass, making his Hollywood debut following years of sterling work creating top-notch dramas for British TV, and co-stars Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles and Karl Urban. Read more…
Jerry Goldsmith, 1929-2004
Composer Jerry Goldsmith died on July 21, 2004 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, after a battle with cancer. He was 75.
One of the most prolific, versatile and influential film composers of the twentieth century, Goldsmith wrote music for more than 200 film and television productions during a career spanning half a century. He received 18 Academy Award nominations, winning for The Omen, and created landmark scores including Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, Alien, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Poltergeist, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and L.A. Confidential.
Jerrald King Goldsmith was born in Los Angeles on February 10, 1929. He began playing piano as a child, later studying with pianist Jakob Gimpel and composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. At the University of Southern California he attended classes taught by Miklós Rózsa, whose score for Spellbound had helped inspire Goldsmith’s ambition to write for films. He later studied at Los Angeles City College before joining CBS as a clerk-typist in its music department.
At CBS, Goldsmith progressed from selecting library music to composing for radio and live television. His early credits included Climax!, Playhouse 90, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke and The Twilight Zone, an extraordinarily demanding training ground in which music often had to be written and recorded at great speed. His first credited feature score was the western Black Patch in 1957, although television remained an important part of his career throughout the following decade.
Goldsmith’s breakthrough in cinema came during the early 1960s. Lonely Are the Brave (1962) displayed his gift for western Americana, while John Huston’s Freud (1962) brought his first Academy Award nomination with a dark, psychologically unsettling score. He followed with The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), A Patch of Blue (1965), In Harm’s Way (1965), The Blue Max (1966) and The Sand Pebbles (1966), rapidly establishing himself as one of Hollywood’s most inventive dramatic composers. Read more…
I, ROBOT – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Marco Beltrami was a late addition to the creative team of I Robot, following the dismissal of original composer Trevor Jones by director Alex Proyas. Beltrami had just nineteen days to write and record his replacement score – no mean feat to accomplish in such a short space of time, and with the added pressure of knowing that the film was one of 2004’s most anticipated summer releases. His success is nothing short of remarkable, and it’s quality is testament to his increasing stature as one of film music’s true emerging talents. Read more…
KING ARTHUR – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I was going to open this review by saying something along the lines of “Can Media Ventures sink any lower than this, yet another tepid regurgitation of past scores?”, but in actual fact, the more I have listened to King Arthur, it seems less terrible than it did on that first spin. It’s certainly not a great score: it’s unoriginal, clichéd, and at times quite laughably predictable in its construction and execution. But, mixed in with all the familiarity, there’s a great score trying to break out. Zimmer only lets it shine in brief, so-near-and-yet-so-far snippets, which tantalise the listener into wondering what this score could have been, if only… Read more…
THE CLEARING – Craig Armstrong
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve been a big admirer of the work of Scottish composer Craig Armstrong throughout his relatively short career. From his early work on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, through great scores such as Plunkett & Macleane, The Bone Collector, The Quiet American, Moulin Rouge and Love Actually, Armstrong has continually displayed a mastery of the orchestra, superb use of electronics, and an aptitude for powerful and memorable themes. It comes as something of a shock, therefore, to discover that The Clearing is a quite horribly boring score, easily one of the worst for a mainstream release in 2004. Read more…
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS – Trevor Jones
Original Review by Peter Simons
Based on Jules Verne’s classic novel, Around The World In 80 Days is not quite the adventure film fans were hoping for. With Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan in the lead roles, the classic adventure with a touch of science fiction – at least, it was sci fi when Verne wrote it – has been reduced to a comedy; and not a very funny one. Coogan, a British comedian, stars as inventor Phileas Fogg who wages his life to prove he can travel around the globe in eighty days. Chan plays Fogg’s assistant Passepartout, who is on a mission of his own to return a sacred sculpture that was stolen from his hometown in China. Needless to say, the film’s plot serves merely as a vehicle for Chan’s martial arts choreography. Read more…
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