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Filmtracks Recommends: Buy it... if you enjoy John Ottman's ability to provide overachieving scores that rely heavily on creativity in rhythm and instrumentation. Avoid it... if no measure of creativity in soundscapes can compensate for the more intimate, small-scale scope of these B-film scores by Ottman. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Ottman does seem to take shameless pride in his attention to unique sounds, and he should. If a purely average (if not substandard) score such as Point of Origin (released on album last year) can be made into a delightfully wicked listening experience simply because of the incorporation of typewriter sounds, then why can't Cellular be equally as enticing with its distorted cell phone tones and police sirens? The score opens over the studio logo with the phone tones, distorted and overlayed with woodwinds so that they're not as obvious as they probably needed to be (they could easily be missed by a casual listener). The police sirens do catch your attention to a greater extent when their brass renditions are present, although they too seemed underplayed. At some point, with a score like Cellular that is average in every other regard, you almost wish that Ottman would hit us with even more blatant elements of musical intrigue. He's proven that it's difficult to even outsmart himself, no matter the project... so let's have more of it! As for Cellular, Ottman uses one somewhat mundane theme for both the hero and the hostage, with appropriate mutations for their separate performances for the two very different characters. The hero's thematic representations border on coolness, from the hip stealing of a Porsche to the "Going Shopping" and "Making a Connection" cues --both of which enjoying some life from electric guitars and rocking rhythms. The hostage's version of the theme exists in both "Abduction" and "The Bait" (the latter of which has slurred brass a la Jerry Goldsmith's The Shadow), and has the sentimentality you hear from Ottman's morbidly sad electronic choir style of writing. Neither is preferable on album, really, and Ottman is careful to make sure that these differing styles never overlap to any degree. In presence, the primary theme is often performed in full only by woodwinds, strings, and piano in subtle fashion, allowing a powerful and commanding brass motif (highlighted by a strong grouping of French horns) during moments of suspense as the most memorable aspect of Cellular. Overall, Ottman's creative nature continues to float what would otherwise be a rather uninteresting project. ***
The insert includes extensive information about the score and film. The score was recorded at Benroya Performance Hall in Seattle, Washington (06/28/2004 - 06/31/2004). This album contains none of the songs from the film. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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