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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Howard Shore, welcome to the world of film music pressure. It’s a peculiar phenomenon, akin to the “second album” syndrome faced by rock and pop musicians whose debut works are hugely successful; John Williams faced it when embarking on the follow-up scores in the Star Wars saga. Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, such is their popularity and fan base, face it each time they write a new score. Other composers face it when they write music for a beloved piece of fiction – especially in the fantasy or comic book genres – or have scored a major hit with their last effort in a series. With The Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore has joined this latter group. Read more…
Academy Award Winners 2001
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 74th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2001.
In the Best Original Score category, Canadian composer Howard Shore won the Academy Award for his score for Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his acceptance speech Shore said:
This is incredible. Thank you to the members of the Academy. I had the good fortune of having such fantastic collaborators on this project. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens who guided me on an amazing journey through Middle Earth. It was just a tremendously rewarding experience to translate the words of Tolkien into music and I just feel blessed to be a part of this production. I want to thank my wife Elizabeth and daughter Mae whose love and support are incredible to me and have just guided me on my journey. Thanks to Bob Shaye, Michael Lynne, Mark Ordesky, Paul Broucek, Barrie Osborne, everybody at, the crew in Tuxedo. I love you all. Thank you very much.
The other nominees for Best Original Score were John Williams for A.I. Artificial Intelligence, James Horner for A Beautiful Mind, John Williams for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Randy Newman for Monsters, Inc.
In the Best Original Song category, composer and songwriter Randy Newman won the Academy Award for “If I Didn’t Have You” from Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.
The other nominees for Best Original Song were Enya, Nicky Ryan and Roma Ryan for “May It Be” from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Diane Warren for “There You’ll Be” from Pearl Harbor; Sting for “Until” from Kate & Leopold; and Paul McCartney for “Vanilla Sky” from Vanilla Sky.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
To say that Peter Jackson took on a mammoth task in undertaking a 9-hour, three-film cinematic version of The Lord of the Rings is an understatement indeed. Adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s mammoth literary work for the screen took three years of the affable New Zealander’s life, and as the first part of the trilogy hits the world’s multiplexes, his vision and talent are for all to see. The Fellowship of the Ring is quite possibly the best fantasy film ever made, putting to shame Ralph Bakshi’s lamentable 1978 attempt to tell the same story through animation. Read more…
THE CELL – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Writing a review of a film score like The Cell is a very difficult thing to do. The music is so challenging and abstract it almost defies conventional description, and unless you have seen the film it is difficult to appreciate Howard Shore’s scoring techniques which, away from the screen, seem to be made up of mere random noise and ear-shattering dissonance. It’s also a very difficult score to “enjoy” on any kind of emotional, or thematic level, simply because the music is so consistently harsh. Instead, where The Cell’s brilliance lies is in its complexity and structure, and for the thought processes that went into its creation. Read more…
DOGMA – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Kevin Smith’s Dogma stirred up a lot of ill feeling in the religious community upon its release. As the director of the irreverent Clerks and Chasing Amy, Smith is never one to shy away from courting controversy, but I doubt even he could have anticipated the severe backlash aimed at him by the Catholic church. Basically, they didn’t like the idea of their beliefs being mocked but the problem (as is often the case in these situations) was that they didn’t actually bother to sit down and watch the movie before condemning it. If anything, Dogma positively encourages the notion of having some sort of faith – in God, or Buddha, or Allah, or whatever – while taking pot shots at the many hypocrites who hold a bible in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. Read more…
EXISTENZ – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
David Cronenberg inspires Howard Shore to compose some of his best and most memorable movie music. Through such notable works as The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly and Crash, Cronenberg had always allowed Shore plenty of room to manoeuvre and stretch his musical muscles. eXistenZ is probably the most approachable and, from a soundtrack fan’s perspective, enjoyable work that has resulted from their collaboration to date. An original science fiction tale, eXistenZ is a film which again merges humanity and technology and blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as the designer of a virtual reality video game played through a genetically modified organism known as a “Game Pod”, which inserts an umbilical cord into a special socket inserted into the base of the player’s spinal column and taps into the player’s mind. When the game’s first demonstration goes wrong, Leigh and her bodyguard Jude Law are forced to run for their from various violent factions, all of whom want to stop eXistenZ from becoming a reality. Read more…
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