Archive
ANGELS IN AMERICA – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The quality of original television music in recent years has improved immeasurably. Long gone are the days when all a TV-movie could hope for was a rising star or ageing has-been hiring a small orchestra or, worse still, mocking it all up on synths at home. Now, with recent excellent works like Brian Tyler’s Children of Dune, Laura Karpman’s Taken and Michael Kamen’s Band of Brothers, the upper echelons of television scoring is equaling – and occasionally surpassing – that of the cinema. One of these scores which surpasses almost everything written for the cinema is Thomas Newman’s Angels in America, by far one of the best scores written for any medium in 2003. Read more…
THE LAST SAMURAI – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The star of Hans Zimmer continues to grow as, year by year, he and his crew at Media Ventures continue to become attached to some of the most high profile, prestigious projects in Hollywood. With Klaus Badelt, Steve Jablonsky, and former alumni such as Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell all having successful years, Zimmer has increasingly found himself in an “over-seeing” role, or leading a team of composers in a multi-faceted approach to a project, such as this year’s Tears of the Sun. Only occasionally does Zimmer approach a score on his own: these projects being the ones which have the potential to become box-office blockbusters, or which could garner awards. The Last Samurai is one of these scores. Read more…
OPEN RANGE – Michael Kamen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As I write this review, it is now just over a week since Michael Kamen, the composer of Open Range, tragically died of a heart attack, at the age of just 55. In such circumstances, it is tempting to give in to sentimentality, and the fondness for which I held the man himself, and to allow it to cloud my judgment in giving what turned out to be his final score an impartial review. Kamen had taken something of a “sabbatical” during the years following the turn of the millennium, writing just three scores: Frequency, X-Men, and the amazing Band of Brothers. Even on Open Range he was not the first choice composer, being brought in as a replacement at short notice after the original score had been rejected by director Kevin Costner. Ultimately, Kamen wrote a gentle ballad to the old west, an evocative statement that celebrates the nobility, honor and steadfastness of the great American cowboy, a score which would have been just as lovely to listen to had its composer still been with us. Read more…
THE COOLER – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For all his successful forays into the world of orchestral film music, Mark Isham will always remain, at heart, a jazzer. Having grown up with a trumpet almost permanently attached to his lips, Isham has soloed with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, toured with The Beach Boys and Van Morrison, and performed as a “guest artist” on dozens and dozens of other records, as well as releasing many solo albums. Therefore, his jazz pedigree is in no doubt – but, in film at least, he rarely gets to show it. His work on The Cooler, therefore, is a wonderful change of pace. Read more…
THE MISSING – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After sitting out the entire summer of 2003, James Horner has exploded back onto the scene with four new scores in less than two months. The third of the four (the others being Radio, Beyond Borders and the Oscar-tipped House of Sand and Fog) is The Missing, a truly remarkable work which brings back wonderful memories of classic Horner scores from the early 1990s. And, although the stylistic elements of a dozen or so scores from his past are readily identifiable, in many ways it’s like revisiting an old friend. Yes, I have criticized other composers for doing the exact same thing in the past, but with Horner, it’s like coming home. Directed by Ron Howard and based on the novel “The Last Ride” by Thomas Eidson, The Missing stars Tommy Lee Jones as Samuel Jones, a father who returns to his home in 19th-century New Mexico, hoping to reconcile with his estranged adult daughter Maggie (Cate Blanchett). However, when Maggie’s young daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by a psychopathic leader of a cult with mysterious powers, who has been kidnapping young girls all over the American south west, father and daughter must put aside their differences and work together to get her back. Read more…
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD – Iva Davies, Christopher Gordon, Richard Tognetti
Original Review by Peter Simons
The movies of Peter Weir have had some interesting musical choices. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Maurice Jarre was his composer of choice, contributing electronic scores for films such as The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast and Witness. For his last major movie, The Truman Show, he combined new and old Philip Glass recordings with an original score by Burkhard Dallwitz. Weir’s latest movie, the sea-faring epic Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, follows a similar vein, with multiple composers credited. Iva Davies, Christopher Gordon and Richard Tognetti teamed up to write a score that is certainly atmospheric, and has a fair share of enjoyable tracks, yet for some reason is not very memorable. The soundtrack album is a mix of new music by the three composers, several tracks of traditional folk music, and a handful of classical tracks by Mozart, Bach, Vaughan-Williams and the like. The result is a mixed bag – in the negative sense of the word. 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…
VERONICA GUERIN – Harry Gregson-Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Veronica Guerin was an investigative journalist who covered organized crime for Ireland’s best-selling newspaper, the Sunday Independent. A household name, she was famous not only for her fearless reporting about the murderers and drug lords of Dublin’s criminal underworld but also for her commitment to defending the public’s right to know. As a result of her work, she received numerous death threats, and was attacked numerous times. Guerin was murdered on June 26 1996, when a man on a motorcycle fired six rounds from a pistol at close range as she waited in her car at a traffic light just outside Dublin. Her death led to Ireland’s largest criminal investigation, resulting in over 150 arrests and a crackdown on organized-crime gangs that her assassins could never have foreseen. In November 1998, a man named Paul Ward, a Dublin drug dealer, was convicted of Guerin’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. Read more…
MATCHSTICK MEN – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Peter Simons
One of the most unexpectedly fun albums of the year undoubtedly has to be Hans Zimmer’s Matchstick Men. The sheer joy with which this score was written just oozes from its pores. That alone is worth a million bucks for me. Its snazzy, southern European feel is slightly reminiscent of As Good As It Gets, the score for which Zimmer received an Oscar nominated in 1997, but although it would be deserved, Hans won’t get that kind of recognition for Matchstick Men. The score deliberately weaves in performances of Nino Rota’s theme from La Dolce Vita, which automatically renders the score illegible for the Academy Awards. This is a shame, because this wicked little score deserves all attention and recognition it can get… but on the other hand — who gives a hoot about the Oscars? Read more…
S.W.A.T. – Elliot Goldenthal
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Elliot Goldenthal won the Best Original Score Academy Award last May, and joined the hallowed ranks of the Oscar winning composers, much interest was given to the film he would choose to score next. Goldenthal is a notoriously selective composer, rarely scoring more than two films per year, and who more often than not lends his talents to meaty dramas and weighty subjects. When S.W.A.T., an action packed cop thriller, was announced as being his next project, eyebrows were raised. But, after several quite “deep and meaningful” entries over the last couple of years, S.W.A.T. was exactly what the New Yorker needed: a chance to have fun. Read more…
SEABISCUIT – Randy Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been quite a while since Randy Newman scored something “serious”, having spent the last five years or so scoring either Pixar animations (A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc.) or comedies (Meet the Parents). His last movie of real dramatic worth was Pleasantville, directed by Gary Ross, and he re-teams with the creative forces behind that film for Seabiscuit, a heart-warming true story of triumph over adversity in horse racing. Seabiscuit is based on a non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand. Set in Depression-era America, it stars Jeff Bridges as Charles Howard, a millionaire businessman, and owner of a racehorse named Seabiscuit, whose small size and tendency to injure itself indicates that the thing will never win a race. Sensing hidden depths in the animal, Howard hires revolutionary trainer Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), who sets about rehabilitating the poor pony with his new-fangled methods. One of these methods is to hire a new jockey, in the shape of Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), a failed boxer who is considered too tall to be a jockey, and who has spent much of his life on the streets. However, bit by bit, Seabiscuit’s form improves – to the stage where, much to everyone’s surprise, the former failure has a shot at winning the 1938 Triple Crown. 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…
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN – Trevor Jones
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a quiet couple of years for Trevor Jones. The excellent Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell notwithstanding, the talented South African has limited himself to small-scale features and TV fare since the turn of the millennium, with titles such as Dinotopia, the Britney Spears vehicle Crossroads and the Charlotte Church movie I’ll Be There to his name. He wasn’t even the first choice composer for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with director Stephen Norrington originally approaching Mark Isham, with whom he had worked on Blade. But, with disastrous floods destroying sets in Prague, performers and directors clashing with each other on location, and a drawn out post-production period, LXG (the short-form acronym for the movie) eventually fell into the lap of Jones, who took it as another opportunity to create one of his well-liked action thriller scores. Read more…
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In giving Pirates of the Caribbean a four-star review, I’m making myself undergo a crisis of conscience. How can I, as a “respected” reviewer of film music, give such a high rating to a score which is quite blatantly inappropriate for the movie, predictable to the extreme, and derivative of virtually every major Media Ventures action score written in the last ten years? The answer, simply, is that it is a whole lot of fun. Pirates of the Caribbean is possibly the ultimate soundtrack guilty pleasure. Directed by Gore Verbinski, Pirates of the Caribbean is a large-budget action film based on the classic ride at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, in which visitors are treated to a stately underground boat ride through the old Caribbean, where animatronic pirates shiver their timbers on a daily basis. Read more…
SWIMMING POOL – Philippe Rombi
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Unlike twenty or thirty years ago, when composers such as Maurice Jarre and Georges Delerue were in the ascendancy, French film music today seems to be in a bit of a lull. There are certainly some extremely talented individuals writing music for French cinema at the moment – names such as Bruno Coulais, Jean-Claude Petit, Alexandre Desplat and Yann Tiersen spring to mind – but no-one from that part of the world has really taken the world by storm, in a soundtrack sense, for quite a while. This could all change if Hollywood ever discovers the work of Philippe Rombi. This album is actually subtitled “Music from the films of François Ozon”, and features score cuts from four of the talented young director’s most successful films – Swimming Pool (2003), Sous le Sable (2000), Les Amants Criminels (1999) and 8 Femmes (2002). It is Rombi’s music which dominates the CD, with sixteen minutes of his music from the headlining Swimming Pool, and a further 12 minutes of score from Sous Le Sable taking center stage. Read more…
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