Archive
THE MONKEY KING – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In Chinese folklore and mythology, the story of The Monkey King is as important and well known as The Iliad and The Odyssey are to the Greeks, or as The Wizard of Oz is to Americans. Technically, The Monkey King is part of “Journey to the West,” one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature, which was written in the 16th century during the Ming Dynasty by Wu Cheng En. It tells the story of Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a magical stone who acquires supernatural powers. After rebelling against heaven and being imprisoned under a mountain for 500 years, he later accompanies a monk named Xuanzang on a journey to India, and subsequently brings Buddhism to ancient China. The story his been told in film and on TV several times, but never so lavishly as in this big-budget 3D Chinese film (Xi You Ji: Da Nao Tian Gong in its native language), which is directed by Pou-Soi Cheang and stars Donnie Yen and Chow-Yun Fat. It is the first of three planned movies, and is essentially the origin story – beginning with the birth of Sun Wukong and ending with his imprisonment for his crimes under the Five-Peaked Mountain. Along the way he acquires incredible powers, battling the armies of the gods and the armies of the demons to find his rightful place in the heavens. Read more…
THE RUM DIARY – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Rum Diary doesn’t quite know what kind of film it wants to be. On the one hand it’s another wry look at life through the alcohol-soaked and frequently hilarious lens of the late Gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson, on whose novel this film is based, and on whom the lead character Paul Kemp is clearly modeled. On the other hand, it’s a comparatively serious examination of the American suppression of native culture of Puerto Rico in the 1950s, specifically the way in which rich industrialists manipulate the system and steal from the local landowners in order to line their pockets. Then again, it’s a romance, in which the Kemp character falls in lust with the beautiful young wife of a shady entrepreneur. But, most of all, it’s a love letter to Puerto Rico itself – the unspoiled beaches, the sunny climes, the generous people, and the seemingly unlimited supply of alcohol that keep the wheels of the island greased. Read more…
A SYMPHONY OF HOPE: THE HAITI PROJECT – Christopher Lennertz et al.
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On January 12, 2010, the city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti was effectively flattened when it was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Within a matter of seconds over 50,000 people had been killed, and over a million people left homeless. Diseases such as cholera blighted the survivors and thwarted relief efforts, and since then the humanitarian crisis in the country has reached staggering proportions, with over 250,000 residences destroyed and basic services and infrastructure left in ruins. Reacting to the global call for help, film composer Christopher Lennertz was inspired to act. Calling upon his fellow composers and other members of the Los Angeles film music community of musicians and engineers, Lennertz teamed up with the charity Hands Together to create A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project, a musical fundraising project intended to help the people of Haiti. Read more…
PRIEST – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
You always know where you stand with a Christopher Young horror score. Throughout his career, going all the way back to Hellraiser in 1987 and continuing on through scores like Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Bless the Child and Drag Me to Hell, horror movies with religious overtones have defined the majority of his best work, brought him the most fans, and earned him the most acclaim. Although he is enormously accomplished at writing in literally dozens of styles, from the smooth jazz of scores like Rounders to the soaring orchestral beauty of scores like Murder in the First, his work in this genre remains the cornerstone of his writing, and Priest is yet another outstanding example of why he remains one of the best in the business as this kind of thing. Read more…
A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project
Last Saturday, March 26th, I had the honor attending the recording sessions for “A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project” at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, CA. The brainchild of composer Christopher Lennertz, the Symphony is musical fundraising project designed to help the people of Haiti in their desperate time of need.
A year after the terrible earthquake which destroyed the lives of thousands of Haitians, it was clear to Lennertz that the need for assistance was greater than ever. In response Lennertz came up with the idea of the “Symphony of Hope”, and invited 25 leading film composers to collaborate with him on a project to benefit the Haiti Earthquake Relief fund. Read more…
CREATION – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The English naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin was a controversial figure even before he published his seminal work, “On the Origin of the Species”, in 1859. Darwin’s theories on human evolution and natural selection turned him into a divisive figure, especially in religious circles, to the point that the theological validity of his work remains controversial and strongly debated to this day. Creation, the latest film from director Jon Amiel, is a fairly straightforward biographical telling of Darwin’s life, with Paul Bettany in the title role, Jennifer Connelly as Darwin’s wife Emma, and supporting performances from the likes of Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jim Carter.
The music for Creation is by Christopher Young, who previously worked with Jon Amiel on films such as Copycat, Entrapment and The Core. 2009 was an especially good year for Young, with horror scores such as Drag Me to Hell and The Univited sitting comfortably alongside the jazzy Read more…
DRAG ME TO HELL – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Drag Me To Hell is the best pure horror score I have heard in probably a decade – at least since Brian Tyler’s Darkness Falls in 2003, and probably since a great deal before then. It’s also one of the best scores of Christopher Young’s entire career – and that’s saying something for the man who wrote such stellar scores as Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Murder in the First. So, now that I have made these two potentially outrageous statements, let me clarify why I think this is the case.
Drag Me To Hell is Sam Raimi’s return to his roots. A clever, gory, and occasionally very funny horror story in the Evil Dead tradition, Drag Me To Hell stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, a New York loan officer with a decent job and a warm, loving boyfriend (Justin Long). Read more…
THE INFORMERS – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The second film to be based on one of Bret Easton Ellis’s novels after American Psycho, The Informers is an examination of the hedonistic 80s lifestyles of a group of twentysomethings in Los Angeles who treat life, sex and drugs as disposable commodities. The film, which was directed by Gregor Jordan, has an eclectic cast that includes such luminaries as Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Chris Isaak, and the late Brad Renfro. For the music, Jordan hired composer Christopher Young, who rarely gets the chance to take on dark personal dramas such as this, but is often very successful when he does. Read more…
THE UNINVITED – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There is something in the work of certain composers which makes them predisposed to be great at horror movie music. There’s something in the way they write, in their personality, in their musical language, which somehow manages to capture both the subtle nuance and sheer outright terror that horror movies require from their scores. Christopher Young is one of those composers. Although he has enjoyed successes in a wide variety of genres over his long and successful career, Young keeps coming back to horror: from his early day on films like The Dorm That Dripped Blood and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, through his classic Hellraiser scores, to more recent and popular box office hits like The Grudge and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, horror has always been a fertile feeding ground for Young’s talents. To start 2009, Young has again dipped his toes into the chilling pool, and emerged with The Uninvited: one of the best, and downright scariest horror scores in quite some time. Read more…
SLEEPWALKING – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
2007 was one of the best years of Christopher Young’s career in terms of his international profile, when he scored two of the highest grossing films of his career, Spider-Man 3 and Ghost Rider. Sleepwalking is a return to his indie roots; a coming-of-age drama directed by William Maher, the film stars Anna Sophia Robb as Tara, an 11 year old girl struggling to come to terms with her abandonment by her dropout mother Joleen (Charlize Theron), and the subsequent impact on Tara’s older brother James (Nick Stahl), who is left to pick up the pieces. As befits the film, Young’s score is small and intimate, making use of a reduced orchestra, augmented by solo guitar, solo piano, and ambient synth tones. Young has always been better than a lot of his contemporaries at making this kind of understated music interesting, and this is again the case here. Read more…
UNTRACEABLE – Christopher Young
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Gregory Hoblit’s “Untraceable” was a film that seemed to be made with good intentions, but it never really worked. The film stars Diane Lane as an FBI Agent investigating a website that allows it’s visitors to help kill a victim. How? All they have to do is go to the website. The more hits it gets, the closer some innocent victim comes to their death. The film is essentially a disgusted sermon about our horrible, desensitized culture (which I agree with in principle), but it too willingly revels in the very depraved violence that it seems to be condemning. Read more…
LUCKY YOU – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In addition to his horror and thriller scores, for some reason, Christopher Young often gets hired to score films about playing cards, or which are set in Las Vegas: titles like Shade, Rounders, and The Big Kahuna, for example. Lucky You, the latest film from director Curtis Hanson, is both about playing cards AND set in Las Vegas, so it’s almost inevitable that Young would end up scoring it!
The film stars Eric Bana as hotshot poker player Huck Cheever, who arrives in Nevada to play in a major tournament. However, Huck has personal demons – recklessness, compulsiveness, and a long-term rivalry with his poker-playing father (Robert Duvall). Just as Huck seems to be fighting a losing his battle, waitress Billie (Drew Barrymore) enters his life, who inspires him to turn things around and set him on the road to both personal and professional recovery. Read more…
SPIDER-MAN 3 – Christopher Young
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Is there any film in 2007 that has generated more simultaneous anticipation and dread than “Spider-Man 3”? Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” was a very good superhero movie, and his stunning “Spider-Man 2” raised the bar to a dizzying new level. After seeing the second film, I had two thoughts on my mind. The first was, “Wow, I can’t wait to see the next one!” The second was, “How on earth is he going to top that?” As someone once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Considering this situation, let’s go ahead and defuse a few bombs. Is “Spider-Man 3” as good as “Spider-Man 2”? Well, the answer is of course subjective, but in my humble opinion… no, it isn’t. Is it a round three stinker on the level of “X-Men: The Last Stand”? No, it most certainly is not. Read more…
GHOST RIDER – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The first of Christopher Young’s two major 2007 releases, Ghost Rider is a super hero movie with a twist. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson and starring Nicolas Cage, Peter Fonda, Eva Mendes, Sam Elliott and Wes Bentley, the film follows the life of daredevil stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze (Cage). When his father falls terminally ill with cancer, Blaze strikes a deal with the devil: his soul to save his father’s life. The deal, however, backfires on Johnny, turning him into a skeleton-headed motorbike-riding demon with a blazing inferno raging from his skull and hands! If this sounds all a bit hokey, you could well be right, but the fight between Cage’s urban cowboy superhero and Bentley’s evil son-of-the-devil strikes the right balance between over the top action and downright silliness. Read more…
THE GRUDGE – Christopher Young
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The story of The Grudge has a long history. Originally conceived as a TV movie in Japan in 2000 by writer/director Takeshi Shimizu, he adapted his own work for the big screen in Ju-On in 2003. Having been earmarked for the American re-make treatment by producers Sam Raimi and Bob Tapert, Shimizu was once again approached to give life to his subject, thereby putting him in the unique position of being the director of the remake of the remake of his own original film! Essentially a haunted house story, The Grudge tells the tale of Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an American nurse in Japan who, after visiting a seemingly catatonic patient in a everyday suburban neighborhood, finds herself experiencing terrible visions: a pallid, fish-eyed little boy named Toshio, who is virtually silent except when he meows like a cat, is hiding in a cupboard upstairs – and worse still, a ghastly, shadowy specter is hovering over the prone body of the old woman. Despite Karen fleeing the house, she – and everyone else who it comes into contact with – find themselves being haunted by these unearthly presences. Could it be that the house itself is causing these manifestations? And, if so, does it have anything to do with the murder of a mother and son at the hands of their husband/father there years previously? Read more…
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