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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if ten minutes of choral statements and majestic anthems are worth the price of the whole album. Avoid it... if you expect really kick-ass, rhythmic action material in any great quantity. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Alien vs. Predator: (Harald Kloser) Just about every casual movie-goer would probably agree that both the Alien and Predator franchises had already exhausted their welcome and brought themselves to a natural close several years ago. But comic book collectors know better, with a very popular and long-running spin-off comic series pitting the two notorious creatures against each other. It seems as though 20th Century Fox had resisted this concept as a film during the run of the comics, although the profitable pairing of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees in last year's Freddy vs. Jason proved that just about anything is worth a shot (and can make money) these days. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson's Alien vs. Predator debuted well financially despite a plethora of poor critical and audience reviews (the studio knows what it's doing when it doesn't even provide press screenings). The plot really isn't important in flicks such as this, but for the sake of context, the only thing you really need to know is that there is a secret pyramid under the Antarctic in which those nasty alien creates are bred in captivity so that adolescent predators can be shipped in to Earth to "come of age" and prove their battle skills against the aliens. Why it had to be Earth, nobody knows, but it does conveniently explain away the predators' previous involvement on the planet and the existence of some irritating humans as auxiliary characters in this movie. As hard as it is to fathom, the predators are as close to being the good-guys as any party can get, and the musical approach taken for the film by composer Harald Kloser follows the history of the predators' music on the big screen far more than the aliens' music. That said, Kloser's score still doesn't resemble or make strong use of themes from either franchise, instead relying on his own brand of music beefed-up from The Day After Tomorrow and presented as a stand-alone entry in both series. Starting with the basic musical ingredients of The Day After Tomorrow and beefing them up is a good thing, for that score's weakness was its rather tepid tone and lethargic sense of movement. Whether you accept Alien vs. Predator as a movie premise or not, Kloser has done a more reasonable job with the score than anyone might have expected. Largely orchestral, Kloser combines the same symphonic sound with a chorus and an array of slashing and grinding electronic sound effects. His theme for the film carries over the anthemic qualities from The Day After Tomorrow --after all, this is serious material for comic book collectors!-- and performs it in a similarly slow style with emboldened brass and an enhanced choral presence. It may be tongue in cheek to an extent, but the most enjoyable cues in Alien Vs. Predator are those during which Kloser instills the story with a sense of epic sweep and awe-inspiring realization. The opening and closing titles, along with the "History of the World" cue --a great snare-driven moment of bombast-- provide enough interesting harmonic material to make the whole score worthwhile. The entire effort is surprisingly pleasant, with only four or five cues of downright battle music and several cues dedicated to choral-laced melody for moments of discovery and intrigue. Kloser does make an interesting distinction between the predators and aliens in his sound effects: the predator makes a metallic slashing sound for the wrist-worn blades it uses in battle and the alien produces a more extended, swishing and scraping sound that imitates its distinctive cry and whipping tail. With these two effects alternating in the fight cues, Kloser takes much more time to generate a coherent score than was probably necessary. The entire score for Alien vs. Predator produces the same response; the score is nothing spectacular, but it offers far more than was expected given the cheesiness of the film's concept. If at the very least, the project confirms that Kloser is serious about projecting his career in the direction of largely orchestral action efforts, with results so far that may be simplistic and wasted on poor films, but show considerable promise in their intent. ***
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