Archive
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…
PASSENGERS – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An interesting horror/thriller which slipped under the radar despite starring Anne Hathaway, Passengers is directed by Rodrigo García and follows the increasingly disturbing life of a grief counselor (Hathaway) working with a group of plane-crash survivors (including Patrick Wilson, Dianne Weist and David Morse), who finds herself drawn into a dangerous mystery when her clients begin to disappear without explanation.
The score for Passengers is by Edward Shearmur, who has spent most of 2008 inexplicably scoring a series of crappy comedies – College Road Trip, Meet Bill – which are significantly beneath a man of his talents. Musically, Passengers is a world away from the heady heights Shearmur attained on Reign of Fire and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Read more…
EPIC MOVIE – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Does anybody else remember when this sort of movie used to be funny? There was once a time where these silly spoofs of movie genres were guaranteed to offer a few good laughs at worst, and a hysterical time at the movies at best. I suppose the 70’s and 80’s were the heyday for this kind of movie… I’m talking about stuff from Mel Brooks and the Zucker crew like “Young Frankenstein”, “Blazing Saddles”, “Silent Movie”, “Airplane”, “The Naked Gun”, and “Spaceballs”. There were even some okay ones in the 90’s, the first “Scary Movie” was pretty funny. I thought that “Date Movie” was the absolutely worst of these ever to be released, but that has now been topped by “Epic Movie”, which hasn’t got a funny bone in it’s body. Read more…
THE SKELETON KEY – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s something sinister going on down on the bayou in The Skeleton Key, the latest film by director Iain Softley and “Ring” screenwriter Ehren Kruger. Kate Hudson stars as Caroline Ellis, a palliative care nurse in New Orleans who accepts a job at a rural plantation house out in the Louisiana swamps owned by Violet Devereaux (Gena Rowlands) to look after Violet’s husband Ben (John Hurt), an old man who has suffered a debilitating stroke. However, as Violet sorts out some legal issues with the family lawyer Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), Caroline discovers disturbing evidence of old voodoo rituals up in the attic, leading her to believe that not everything to do with the Devereaux household is what it seems… 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…
JOHNNY ENGLISH – Edward Shearmur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Every now and again, a score of such life and energy and surprising brilliance comes out of left field and restores your faith in modern film music. Emerging out of the predictable banality of the early months of 2003 is Johnny English, the latest score from British composer Edward Shearmur, hitherto best known for his work on the Charlie’s Angels series and for raising a few eyebrows in 2002 following his scores for The Count of Monte Cristo and Reign of Fire. Basically, Johnny English is a James Bond John Barry knockoff score, in much the same way as David Arnold’s latest 007 scores have been Barry wannabes. The brilliance of Johnny English, however, lies in the fact that whereas Arnold’s works are mere pastiche, Shearmur somehow has managed to recapture the life and energy and panache and humor Barry brought to his works, while at the same time giving it a modern spin and making it musically relevant for millennium audiences. Read more…
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