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Under-the-Radar Round Up 2021, Part 2
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
The new year is already half way done and, as the world of mainstream blockbuster cinema and film music continues to recover from the COVID-19 Coronavirus, we must again look to smaller international features not as reliant on massive theatrical releases to discover the best new soundtracks. As such I am very pleased to present the second installment (for this calendar year) in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world.
The five titles included here are heavily based around love and romance, and include a WWII-era drama from the Czech Republic, a Spanish period drama television series set in early 18th-century Madrid, a tragic teenage romance from the Philippines, a biopic from Colombia about a son remembering his murdered father, and another Ramadan series from Egypt, this time a family drama about parents trying to make a better life for their unborn child.
Ramadan Scores 2021
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
Every year, during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, television stations across the Middle East and North Africa broadcast lavishly-produced, high profile drama and comedy series. The cream of the Arabic-speaking world is involved in their creation – directors, writers, actors, and composers – and the resulting shows play to audiences of millions across the region. Many of the best series come from Egypt, and this article takes a look at the music from three of the most high profile Egyptian-made Ramadan dramas of 2021, featuring music by composers Khaled Hammad and Mohamed Elashey. Also included in this article as a bonus is a review of the Pharoahs’ Golden Parade, a wondrous extravaganza of music, dance, and Egyptian culture featuring music by composer Hesham Nazih, written for a special live TV event back in April.
I want to publicly thank my friend, the award-winning author and poet Hasan Namir, for his invaluable help here – this article literally would not be possible without him!
THE PHARAOHS’ GOLDEN PARADE – Hesham Nazih
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade was an event held in Cairo, Egypt on 3 April 2021, during which twenty-two mummies belonging to Kings and Queens of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt were moved from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, a few miles away. The mummies moved include some of the most famous ancient Egyptian monarchs, including the legendary Rameses II. Each mummy was housed in a specially-designed sarcophagus filled with nitrogen to protect them, and then placed in a specially-designed vehicle with decoration based on Egyptian funerary boats. The whole thing was a grand, spectacular celebration of Egyptian culture, featuring light and laser displays, and parades of men and women in traditional dress accompanying these ancient rulers to their new resting places. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2021, Part 1
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
Yes it’s that time of year again! The new year is already one quarter gone and, as the world of mainstream blockbuster cinema and film music continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 Coronavirus continues, we must again look to smaller international features not as reliant on massive theatrical releases to discover the best new soundtracks. As such I am very pleased to present the first installment (for this calendar year) in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world.
The titles included are two Spanish action thrillers, a Vietnamese romantic drama, an Italian period murder-mystery television series, a Russian fantasy-adventure sequel, and a contemporary French TV series re-telling a classic story about a gentleman thief!
TOURS DU MONDE, TOURS DU CIEL – Georges Delerue
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Tours du Monde, Tours du Ciel was a groundbreaking 10-part French documentary series broadcast on the La Sept network in 1991. Like the similarly-themed Cosmos, which was presented by Carl Sagan on American television in 1980, it attempted to tell the history of astronomy, from the prehistoric era to the classical Greeks and Romans, through the work of Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler, to the present day, as scientists around the world continue to seek to unlock the secrets of the universe by observing the sky. The series featured interviews with numerous contemporary astronomers and scientists, interspersed with archaeological footage, and spectacular imagery of space; it was directed by Robert Pansard-Besson, and is still recognized today as one of the most important French-language scientific documentaries of all time. Read more…
THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT – Carlos Rafael Rivera
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Queen’s Gambit is a Netflix mini-series directed by Scott Frank, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. It stars the luminous Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon, a young girl growing up in an orphanage in the mid-1950s, where she has lived since her parents died in a car crash. Beth discovers an extraordinary aptitude for chess, and the series charts her life from then on, as she starts competing in and winning games, becoming more famous in the chess world, but simultaneously becomes increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol in order to cope with the high pressure environment. The series co-stars Bill Camp, Marielle Heller, Harry Melling, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, and was an enormous critical hit when it debuted in October 2020, with special praise bestowed on Taylor-Joy’s lead performance, as well as the period style and design. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2020, Part 2
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
With the COVID-19 Coronavirus continuing to decimate the 2020 theatrical movie schedule, as well as the general mood of the world, good music is more important than ever when it comes to getting is all through these difficult times. As such (and as I did last year under much different circumstances) I am very pleased to present the latest installment in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world – this time concentrating on the second quarter of 2020! The titles include an intense action drama from Egypt, a charming romantic drama from Italy, a German version of a classic children’s story, and two titles from the Netherlands – one of which reboots a beloved 1970s British TV series!
TWIN PEAKS – Angelo Badalamenti
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s a case to be made for the notion that television as we know it changed on April 8th, 1990. On that date, on the American network channel ABC, Twin Peaks premiered. The brainchild of surrealist writer-director David Lynch, and TV producer Mark Frost, Twin Peaks was ostensibly a murder-mystery show that followed an investigation led by FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) into the death of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a teenage beauty queen from a fictional town in Washington state. But of course, it was much more than that. It touched on elements of horror and science fiction, offbeat comedy, and satirized many of the tropes inherent on American soap operas. It had a sprawling cast of eccentric characters, whose interlocking lives drive the plot. It was also deeply, deeply weird: there are giants delivering cryptic messages, dwarves talking backwards, demons possessing people, doppelgängers, fever dreams and horrific nightmares, and copious amounts of coffee and cherry pie. By the end of the second season the plot had become so incomprehensible and maddeningly obtuse that it hemorrhaged viewers and was eventually cancelled; I admit that I found the show incredibly frustrating, and by the end of it I was convinced that Lynch was playing an elaborate prank on his own audience – he created a show that was so impenetrable, was so confusing, had such a bizarre visual style, and contained so much ‘intentional bad acting,’ because he wanted to see how long people would tolerate it by convincing themselves it was ‘art’. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2020, Part 1
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
With the COVID-19 Coronavirus having decimated the 2020 theatrical movie schedule, as well as the general mood of the world, good music is more important than ever when it comes to getting us all through these difficult times. As such (and as I did last year under much different circumstances) I am very pleased to present the latest installment in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world – this time concentrating on the first quarter of 2020!
The titles include romantic comedies from both China and Vietnam, children’s fantasy films from both Germany and France, a serious drama from Japan, a period murder-mystery from Australia, and a children’s adventure from the Netherlands. I heartily recommend all of these scores to anyone who needs some outstanding film music to ease them though their quarantine period!
DRACULA – David Arnold, Michael Price
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There have been literally dozens and dozens of adaptations of and variations on the Dracula story in the years since Bram Stoker wrote it in 1897. The most recent version is this BBC mini-series developed by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, the brains behind such successful shows as Doctor Who, Sherlock, and The League of Gentleman. Danish actor Claes Bang is the latest to star in the title role as the undead aristocrat from Eastern Europe who drinks human blood to survive; the show begins with a fairly conventional re-telling of the Dracula myth – castles and brides, voyages to Whitby, Lucy and Mina and Jonathan Harker – but ends with a very unconventional contemporary twist that places Dracula in modern society and completely upends vampire lore. The show has not been entirely successful, but it certainly has handsome and impressive production values, which extend to its score by composers David Arnold and Michael Price. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2019, Part 4
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
I am pleased to present the fourth installment in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world in 2019. Rather than grouping the scores on a geographical basis, this year I decided to simply present the scores in a random order, and so this fourth batch again includes reviews of seven more disparate scores all around the world – including two TV scores from Spain, a psychological thriller score from Italy, a horror movie from Morocco, a Chinese drama TV series, a comedy from Argentina, and an intimate love story from Vietnam!
THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE – Daniel Pemberton, Samuel Sim
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 1982 the Jim Henson Company released what was, at the time, the most ambitious puppet-centric movie ever made: The Dark Crystal. Despite being a rich fantasy film of evil monsters and gallant heroes, visually stunning and wondrously creative, it was not an immediate success upon its release, with many people considering it much too scary for its young target audience. However, in the intervening 37 years it has become a beloved cult classic, a cultural touchstone for many 1980s children who were left enchanted and terrified in equal measure. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel for decades, but have been forced to be content with various comic books and novels to quench their thirst for additional tales from this universe – until now. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a 10-episode series produced by Netflix which acts as a prequel to the original movie, and with its increased budget actually surpasses the original in terms of its larger scope, richer detailing, brilliant storytelling, and visual majesty. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2019, Part 2
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
As I have done for the past several years, I am pleased to present the second installment in my ongoing series of articles looking at the best “under the radar” scores from around the world. Rather than grouping the scores on a geographical basis, this year I decided to again simply present the scores in a random order, and so this second batch includes reviews of five more disparate scores from the first six months of the year – including a German apocalyptic drama, an Australian horror movie, a Spanish animated film about a surrealist filmmaker, a French drama about religion and pig farming, and a sweeping romance set in the German film industry in the 1960s!
GOOD OMENS – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I have been a fan of the late great British author Sir Terry Pratchett ever since I was a kid. Titles like The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Mort, and Pyramids were among my most treasured literary discoveries in the 1980s and 90s; the combination of fantasy, science-fiction, and historical adventure with a distinctly Pythonesque brand of English humor and wit appealed to my sensibility greatly. Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, very few of his works have been translated into film or television projects, and even fewer of them have been seen outside of the UK, which means that while he remains massively popular at home, he is something of an unknown quantity to the rest of the world. This is why I’m so pleased that Good Omens has been so well received; it’s a 6-part TV adaptation of the novel Pratchett wrote with sci-fi author Neil Gaiman in 1990, and is a comedy about the end of the world. Michael Sheen and David Tennant star as Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon, who have been living on Earth since the beginning of time as the official representatives of God and Satan. When they learn that the son of Satan has been born – an event which will in time trigger the apocalypse – Aziraphale and Crowley team up to stop it happening. It turns out that, over the millennia, the pair have become unlikely friends, and are not willing to give up their pleasant and comfortable lives in England – even if Armageddon is part of God’s ineffable plan. Read more…
CHERNOBYL – Hildur Guðnadóttir
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, close to the Ukraine-Belarus border in what was then the Soviet Union, suffered a catastrophic accident in which one of the plant’s four nuclear reactor cores exploded. The explosion started a fire and released massive amounts of nuclear radiation into the atmosphere and across most of Eastern Europe; it entirely irradiated the nearby city of Pripyat and, although official totals are much lower, may have directly and indirectly lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The new mini-series Chernobyl, produced jointly by HBO in the United States and Sky in the UK, is a detailed look at what happened: the events leading up to the disaster, the work of the emergency services in the immediate aftermath, the work of the scientists tasked with finding out what happened, and the fates of those directly affected. Many people have taken Chernobyl to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear power, but director Johan Renck and screenwriter Craig Mazin say that is not what the show is about at all. Instead, it’s supposed to be a damning indictment of government corruption, lies, and abuse of power, with parallels echoing the current situation involving global warming and climate change. Read more…
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