Archive
TOKYO GHOUL – Don Davis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 2003, Don Davis had the film music world at his feet. Having spent much of the 1990s working a dual career, both as a successful TV composer and as a first-rate orchestrator for many of Hollywood’s leading talents, he burst into the spotlight off the back of his score for the smash hit 1999 sci-fi movie The Matrix. He followed that up with a string of excellent scores for genre pictures, notably Jurassic Park III and House on Haunted Hill, and then finished the Matrix trilogy with his scores for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Following the completion of the Matrix series, Davis stepped away from film music for what was expected to be a brief sabbatical, so that he could complete his long-desired passion project, the opera Rio de Sangre, but this took longer than expected; excerpts from the opera were performed in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Master Chorale in 2005, and more was performed at the New York City Opera in 2007, but it did not receive its full premiere until 2010. In the meantime, something utterly inexplicable happened: Davis stopped getting film work. 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…
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…
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS – Don Davis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For Don Davis (and for quite a number of score and movie fans) 2003 has been the year of The Matrix. With the original 1999 movie becoming a surprising world-wide smash, and the May release of The Matrix Reloaded taking a staggering $281 million in the US alone, The Matrix Revolutions is one of the most eagerly awaited films of this, or any year. Equally, following the stunningly realized score Davis provided for Part II, his work on Revolutions has equally become one of most anticipated releases of the year. In a rare turn of events, the score actually meets – and in some cases – surpasses all the expectations, making it easily one of the best scores of 2003. With the talented Wachowski Brothers, Andy and Larry, picking up where the last movie finished, The Matrix Revolutions finds Neo (Keanu Reeves) somehow trapped in an unusual limbo world in between the real world and the Matrix, in which he must again battle the nefarious Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), and from which he must escape before the sentinels reach the stronghold inside the last human city, Zion. Meanwhile, the human leaders and the erstwhile crew of the Nebuchadnezzar – Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), Link (Harold Perrineau), Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Lock (Harry Lennix) – begin making preparations for the imminent invasion…. an invasion which will surely mark the final battle between humans and machines on what remains of the Earth. Read more…
THE MATRIX RELOADED – Don Davis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The original Matrix movie was a bona-fide phenomenon when it was released in 1999, breaking new ground in many areas: the level and depth of the story by directors Andy and Larry Wachowski; the mysticism and theology that peppers the story; the fetish chic “look” of the film; the once-innovative special effects, with the now passé bullet-time slow motion sequences; and Don Davis’s lavish, electronically enhanced orchestral score, which was lauded by fans but which I personally didn’t care for. Whatever your feelings about its artistic merits, the impact of The Matrix was and is impossible to ignore – and the sequel raises the bar again. Beginning where the original movie left off, The Matrix Reloaded sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) now an established member of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, one of many ships under the control of human freedom fighters who are striving to rid the world of the race of machines who have enslaved humanity and tricked them into thinking they are free by creating “the matrix”, a vast computer programme designed to simulate reality. Along with crewmembers Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) and Link (Harold Perrineau), the crew seek to fulfill the prophecy of “The One” by tracing the Matrix to its source and freeing humanity… but this is only the beginning. Read more…
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL – Don Davis
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In the annals of horror movie history, House on Haunted Hill will surely go down as one of the worst efforts the 1990s had to offer. The genre having been revitalized by the Scream phenomenon, House on Haunted Hill is the epitome of everything the savvy protagonists of Wes Craven’s movie decried. It is a film populated by stupid people who say and do stupid things at the wrong time. It has a director who mistakes gratuitous gore and “shock” sound effects for fright, and a screenwriter with no sense of reality or common sense. Ultimately, the film is a disaster from start to finish, with only the special effects crew – and Don Davis – emerging with anything resembling an intact reputation. Read more…
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