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ROBOCOP: PRIME DIRECTIVES – Norman Orenstein
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Preconceptions are funny things, especially in film music. When Robocop: Prime Directives dropped through my door, with the name Norman Orenstein adorning the package, my first instinct was to dismiss it as cheesy TV music. Without wanting to sound unkind, Canadian composer Norman Orenstein’s career to date has hardly been stellar. A series of cut-price straight-to-video classics such as Ski School II, Mask of Death and The First 91/2 Weeks have been the highlights of his film music career so far – until Robocop Prime Directives came along. Working with a comparatively small budget, and out of his personal studio in Toronto, Orenstein emerged with a surprisingly vibrant, large-scale, enjoyable series of cues which mix electronics with sampled acoustics and a smattering of live instruments. It’s a world away from the classic march Basil Poledouris wrote for the film series, but as TV music goes this is as solid a score as you would expect. Read more…
P. T. BARNUM – Hummie Mann
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
P.T. Barnum is the first movie in the Hallmark Entertainment series not to have its music released on CD. Quite why this should be the case is unknown because, by and large, it is one of the best scores written for the excellent string of TV films and mini-series that have included Merlin, Moby Dick, Noah’s Ark, Animal Farm, Alice In Wonderland and Durango. The music for P.T. Barnum was written by Canadian composer Hummie Mann, whose work in Hollywood to date has mostly been limited to writing Mel Brooks comedies, small-scale features and undertaking orchestration duties for Marc Shaiman and others. Read more…
GORMENGHAST – Richard Rodney Bennett, John Tavener
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Gormenghast is one of the largest and most ambitious television productions ever mounted in the United Kingdom, the BBC’s lavish adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s celebrated fantasy novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast. Directed by Andy Wilson and featuring an all-star cast including Ian Richardson, Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, Fiona Shaw, Christopher Lee, Zoe Wanamaker and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gormenghast is the tale of madness, treachery and double-crossing in a corrupt and decaying monarchy. Set in an ancient mythical kingdom in a far away land, it charts the rise to power of a young scullery boy named Steerpike, who lies and cheats his way into the confidence of the royal court, but soon begins political machinations to overthrow the monarch and his heir, the new-born Titus, 77th Earl of Groan. Read more…
THE 10TH KINGDOM – Anne Dudley
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
At the risk of repeating myself, it seems like the Hallmark Hall of Fame series of TV movies has struck gold again. With eight popular scores (including the critically acclaimed Animal Farm, Merlin, Durango and the Emmy-winning Alice In Wonderland) already under their belt and several more projects in the pipeline, it could be that the collaboration between Hallmark and Varèse Sarabande becomes one of the most fruitful partnerships to grace the film music world for many years. Without a doubt, the standard of this kind of TV scoring has increased tremendously over the last couple of years, with composers as eminent as Trevor Jones, Richard Hartley and Stephen Warbeck lending their not inconsiderable talents to the series. The latest to join the list is fellow Oscar-winner Anne Dudley, writing music for the latest entry into the series, The 10th Kingdom. Read more…
SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN SCANDAL – Joel McNeely
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s pretty common knowledge that I’m not Joel McNeely’s greatest fan. In my opinion, these wild claims of him being “the new John Williams” merely on the strength of him writing Star Wars music for the Shadows of the Empire tie-in are vast overstatements. He’s obviously talented, and a very good conductor, but his scores for Virus and Soldier were both far too derivative, and The Avengers was just plain boring. There are plenty of similarly undervalued composers out there who are equally, if not more talented than he, and who deserve the opportunity to let their music shine in a broader setting. Having said that, it gives me a great deal of personal delight to report that his music for Sally Hemings: An American Scandal is quite lovely, and easily one of the most attractive and enjoyable scores of his career to date. Read more…
JESUS – Patrick Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve come to the conclusion that Patrick Williams doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. Williams is an Emmy Award-winning, Oscar nominated composer who, like many others, writes consistently excellent music for movies which get no attention whatsoever. Over the last five years or so, Williams has been involved with several highly respected TV movies and small-scale features, including Geronimo, The Siege at Ruby Ridge, the Bette Midler vehicle That Old Feeling and the period drama The Grass Harp, but his music hardly ever sees the light of day on disc. That is why it is so gratifying to see his efforts on Jesus, the self-proclaimed “epic mini-series” based on the bible stories, rewarded in this way. Read more…
WARRIORS – Debbie Wiseman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Throughout the 1990s, the numerous crises in the Balkan nations of the former Yugoslavia – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia – have never been far from our television screens and our newspapers. Most recently, the coverage of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s ruthless “cleansing” of the ethnic Albanian population in the republic of Kosovo brought to light a series of terrible human tragedies seldom seen in Europe since the end of World War II. When the United Nations intervened, it was up to the combined peacekeeping forces – men and women from different countries around the world committed to ending the bloodshed – to step into the firing line and try to bring comparative peace to that troubled part of the globe. Peter Kosminsky’s film Warriors, made by the BBC for British TV, is an attempt to capture a dramatised version of their work on film. Read more…
ARISTOCRATS – Mark Thomas
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The BBC have always been good at costume dramas. Whether it be Jane Austen or Emily Brontë or Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare, the Brits lead the way in showing the world how to lace up a corset, adopt a regal tone and keep a respectful distance from your potential suitors. The BBC are also good at television music. In recent years, established composers such as Carl Davis, Geoffrey Burgon and Jim Parker have rubbed shoulders with talented new names such Richard G. Mitchell, Murray Gold and Julian Nott in composing some of the finest television music around. In my opinion, Aristocrats marks the absolute pinnacle in BBC television music, and is by far the best score to emerge from Auntie’s vaults in years. Read more…
ANIMAL FARM – Richard Harvey
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I love it when a score comes out of nowhere, bowls you over with its brilliance, and restores your faith in the genre as a whole. Animal Farm, the latest movie in the continually excellent Hallmark Hall of Fame series for American TV, has done just that, by emerging from the shadow of more popular and well-regarded works such as Merlin, Durango, Moby Dick and the Emmy-winning Alice In Wonderland to take its place as the series’ musical pinnacle. Animal Farm is based, of course, on the classic George Orwell novel, which candidly illustrates the corruptive nature of absolute power and charts the terrible rise of fascism in the microcosm of a farmyard barn. The story, for those who are unfamiliar with the tale, follows a restless pig named Napoleon who, unsatisfied with the current balance of power between the animals, mounts a kind of coup, overthrowing what he sees to be the unfairness of the regime. However, it soon becomes apparent that, having had the responsibility passed on to him, Napoleon is no more objective than those he removed from office. With a voice cast including Kelsey Grammar, Ian Holm, Patrick Stewart, Julia Ormond, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Ustinov and Paul Scofield bringing Jim Henson’s eye-popping animatronic livestock to life, this is arguably the best movie of the entire series to date. Read more…
NOAH’S ARK – Paul Grabowsky
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Hallmark Entertainment series on American TV is slowly developing into a rich musical well, out of which has sprung several splendid scores, including last year’s critically acclaimed Merlin (by Trevor Jones) and Moby Dick (by Christopher Gordon). It is to Varèse Sarabande’s credit that they are continuing to support the series by releasing extended CDs of music, for not only does it give the eager listener a chance to experience music which would not normally be heard outside the medium, but it also gives many lesser-known composers some much needed publicity. Read more…
ALICE IN WONDERLAND – Richard Hartley
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Lewis Carroll’s classic story of Alice in Wonderland has been told and re-told so many times that one would think there were no new ways of putting the cautionary children’s tale of substance abuse-induced hallucinations across. There was the Disney animated film in 1951, which everyone looks back on fondly, and no less than three big-screen versions in 1933, 1950 and 1972, none of which were enthusiastically received by the public. So, in an attempt to breathe new life into the proceedings, the producers of this re-telling, which is part of the Hallmark Entertainment series on American TV, decided to up the star factor and put dozens of Hollywood star names in the famous roles. Read more…
A RESPECTABLE TRADE – Julian Nott
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The BBC are renowned the world over for their high quality TV features and drama series, and many high profile composers cut their musical teeth on these comparatively small-scale projects. One of Rachel Portman’s first assignments was for the mini-series Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Debbie Wiseman wrote for sitcoms before getting her big break with Tom & Viv, and people like Harry Gregson-Williams, Barrington Pheloung and Richard Hartley were working on British TV movies as recently as 1996. The latest addition to the list of composers making names for themselves on this side of the pond is Julian Nott. Nott is probably most famous for the bouncy brass band march he wrote for the main titles of the cult Wallace and Gromit animated shorts, so the beautiful, emotional music in A Respectable Trade may come as something of a surprise to those unfamiliar with his other works. Read more…
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