|
|
4/30/01 - News from the London Symphony Orchestra: The
famous performing group has completed all 11 sessions of recording for
Elliot Goldenthal's highly anticipated Final Fantasy: The Spirits
Within. The CGI film
will feature a massive orchestral score, with 16 French horns, 8
trombones, choir, and a wide range of percussion. Also recorded is John
Cameron's oriental score for the WWII film To End All Wars. The
highlight of the London Symphony Orchestra's early summer schedule is
Jerry Goldsmith's concert on June 28th in the spectacular Royal Albert
Hall. The legendary composer will conduct suites from Star Trek: First
Contact, Planet of the Apes, The Blue Max, The First
Great Train Robbery, Supergirl, as well as samples of his early
television themes. For this performance, Goldsmith will present the world
premiere of a new suite of music from the popular sports film Rudy.
Ticket holders will also be able to attend a pre-concert talk when
Goldsmith will discuss his illustrious Hollywood career. To purchase
tickets for this event or learn more about the current and upcoming film
score projects of the performing group, visit the London Symphony Orchestra website.
|
|
4/28/01 - Just Visiting: (John Powell and Nick
Glennie-Smith) "This nonsensical film is a rehash of a European
franchise of Visitor films that has now degraded to the level of
American franchising. When you look at the basic storyline, nothing really
ever changes. And yet, Just Visiting marks the embarrassing series
debut in America, and a perfect match was established between the
production and the Media Ventures buddies of John Powell and Nick
Glennie-Smith. There's just something so false and ridiculous about the
whole film as an endeavor that it is fitting that the accompanying score
would be an auto-pilot Media Ventures effort that would, musically
speaking, add nothing substantially new to the careers of the composers.
From the trailers, film music fans who purchase this score without having
seen the film would assume another comedy routine of Chicken Run
proportions (after all, that score remains one of the most popular comedy
scores of the past five years). Unfortunately, Just Visiting is a
less inspiring and cheaper result...." ** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/22/01 - Frank Herbert's Dune (TV): (Graeme Revell) "With
so much cult controversy revolving around the David Lynch adaptation of
the epic novel in 1984, it was inevitable that another attempt would be
made to better conceptualize Herbert's plot. Writer and director John
Harrison's 288-minute television miniseries (airing on the Sci-Fi Channel
in December, 2000) of Dune is neither perfect, nor is it
necessarily better than the feature film version by Lynch. Where the 1984
film failed, the new television film improves drastically. Unfortunately,
while attempting to improve upon the weaknesses of the previous film, this
new Sci-Fi Channel affair forgets to take a lesson or two from the
strengths of the Lynch version. The acting in the 2000 film is a stunning
embarrassment, with William Hurt as an expressionless and seemingly
medicated Duke Leto and Alec Newman portraying an uninspiring and
desensitized Paul Atreides. Also completely lost in the new film is the
epic scope of the story, with few special effects and entire scenes of
action simply omitted to avoid costs and keep the story based at ground
level with the characters...." ** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/21/01 - The Replacements: (John Debney) "Sometimes, you
just have to sit and wonder... This film, a football comedy about the 1987
NFL players' strike, in which Keanu Reeves plays a scab quarterback on the
losing end of a career while coach Gene Hackman and team owner Jack Warden
lord over the unfortunate proceedings, has shaky merits at best. There is
no way kind to say that a movie sucks, but this one does. To its credit,
though, the producers of the film spent a enormous wealth of money to
garner the rights to parade dozens of well known songs over the speakers
during the film. Many of them were sports related, but in total, they all
represent a certain in-your-face attitude that the film wanted to exploit.
People who saw the film came away with the collection of songs fresh on
their mind, and immediately flocked to buy the soundtrack. What they
found, however, was an absurd score by John Debney and only one or two of
the songs that they really wanted. Thus, after selling well at record
stores initially, the album for The Replacements has become one of
the most frequent occurances in used CD bins of recent memory...." * Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/20/01 - Cliffhanger: (Trevor Jones) --All new
review-- "This film is one of those guilty pleasures that you see on
television occasionally, with a stereotypical plot of terrorist hijackings
in spectacular remote settings. For many people, the film's weaknesses are
more than compensated for by two key positives: first, John Lithgow's
wonderful performance as the treacherous ringleader of the terrorists, and
second, Trevor Jones' soaring orchestral score. The film landed with a
splash in 1993, however the competition with Jurassic Park
simultaneously in the theatres caused Cliffhanger to fade somewhat
into the ranks of lesser known action blockbusters. While it was difficult
to compete with John Williams' Jurassic score a well, Trevor Jones was hot
at the time. He had just come off of a confusing and disjointed project
with Randy Edelman, Last of the Mohicans, which had actually turned
into an incredible success in album sales for the score to that film. In
fact, Last of the Mohicans would continue to sell so well on CD in
the following ten years, that the immediately following Cliffhanger
has been forced into relative obscurity...." *** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/19/01 - The Golden Bowl: (Richard Robbins) "To say that
Merchant Ivory Productions appeal to a certain, narrow audience of devoted
and dramatic period films is not too far of a leap. With dozens of
adaptations
of classic dramatic novels under their belts, the Merchant Ivory team
continues to produce films of character development that take place in the
1800's or early 1900's. While these films always appeal to the arthouse
crowds, and sometimes even garner Academy recognition in their successes,
the films are never blockbuster hits. After all, nearly all of the
Merchant Ivory films involve a considerable amount of lengthy toiling
between the talking heads of several characters. For some, these films
become a wash, exhibiting the same kind of thematic character wrestling
that binds all the films together on a fundamental level. The Golden
Bowl involves two sets of characters in the early 1900's England
involved in various love affairs, betrayals, and the problems inherent in
the relations between the rich and the poor. To be expected, Richard
Robbins returns to score yet another chapter in the Merchant Ivory
saga...." ** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/16/01 - Finished with your taxes and have nothing to do?
The April-May Cue Clue Contest
is now under way! If you're an American and you've suddenly realized that
you owe the government thousands of dollars in taxes, take heart in the
great generosity of this new Filmtracks contest! Due to popularity of last
month's contest, Filmtracks and Varèse Sarabande are proud to offer
ten prizes for this new contest. When you enter the contest, click
the box in front of which of the following albums you'd like as a prize if
you win: Along Came a Spider
(the new thriller from Jerry Goldsmith), In Session (the 2-CD starter-kit
of re-recorded classic themes) Monkeybone, (Anne Dudley's new
and zany score), Georges
Delerue (2-CD compilation of Delerue re-recordings from 1989), or
Cleopatra (the recent 2-CD set
of Alex North's original score). Listen to the Cue Clue Clips on the
Filmtracks Cool Stuff page and give
it your best shot. Good luck!
|
|
|
4/8/01 - In Session: A Film Music Celebration: (Compilation)
"This double-CD set is the ultimate souvenir from the Varèse
Sarabande label's lengthy collection of re-recordings of classic scores
over the past several years. Primarily with the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra in Glasgow, Varèse's executive producer Robert Townson
has contracted for an endless stream of re-recordings of complete scores
from classic films and composers. The majority of these efforts have
yielded newly discovered life in scores of the 1960's, with music from the
1940's through the 1990's represented in total. While many of the original
versions of these scores exist on other labels, these re-recordings offer
interpreations, often extremely close to the originals, by top composers
of today who conduct the performing groups. Continuing to this very day,
composers such as Jerry Goldsmith, John Debney, and Joel McNeely take time
off from their composing duties for current films to re-record these
scores for Varèse Sarabande in the U.K. and U.S...." **** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/7/01 - The Ballad of Lucy Whipple: (Bruce Broughton)
"February, 2001's most anticipated Sunday night television film on CBS,
The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, came and went without as much praise
and hooplah as some of the network's other Western/drama films of years
past. It was a project produced after much time by Glenn Close, who also
stars in the film. The plot line of the film is nothing atypical. It is a
story of a widow and her family who move west during the gold rush in
order to find a new life, and the coming of age of the children
--particularly the title character, who seems frustrated by the lifestyle
she discovers in the rough new land. In any case, the film is really no
different than the watered down family genre of productions by Hallmark,
and it is no surprise that this formula production faded away without much
interest. There can only be a certain number of low budget character
dramas set in the wild west before audiences begin wondering if they
recognize the sets and costumes from a previous rehash of the same
film...." *** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/5/01 - Monkeybone: (Anne Dudley) "From the director of
The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach
comes yet another claymation fantasy film of lovable weirdness. For
Monkeybone, the rotation of composers for this budding genre of
film stopped with Anne Dudley, who has proven herself to be one of the
most versatile composers of the past decade. While many mainstream fans
will recognize her name from such darkly dramatic projects as The
Crying Game and American History X, the lighter side of her
skills is often overlooked. Not only winning the Academy Award for The
Fully Monty in 1997 (which some might argue as inappropriate due to
the songs' success in the film), Dudley also composed the popular score
for the television fantasy The 10th Kingdom this past year. With
all of these talents readily available, Dudley produced for
Monkeybone exactly that which you would expect for the director of
the film. The uncanny similarities between this score and those of Danny
Elfman's early wackiness during the days of Pee Wee and
Beetlejuice is clearly evident, and it fits this particular film
well enough...." *** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/4/01 - Pollock: (Jeff Beal) "If you are one of those
people familiar with the artwork of Jackson Pollock, you'll know that it
is largely spontaneous and obscure in its expression of emotion and
thought. When producing, directing, and starring in the (eventually)
award-winning film about the artist's troubled life, Ed Harris had a
specific sound in mind for the score. He knew that certain aspects of the
real life man should play a part in the score, including a slight
preference for jazz and an experience which revolves around a banjo. After
rejecting the preliminary works of two other composers, Harris finally
heard the kind of music he wanted for the film from Jeff Beal. Known
throughout the circle of jazz followers as a contemporary performer and
composer of that genre, Beal's work in the past has combined jazzy
instrumentation and rhythm with classical overtones. As ultimately the
chosen match for Harris' project, Beal's score for Pollock would be
critically embraced in and out of the industry, even though it has been
popularly overlooked by mainstream film score fans....." *** Read the entire
review.
|
|
|
4/1/01 - The April, 2001, Theme of the Month is a look at
the current rankings of film music record labels. Film music is inherently
different from most other forms of music when it comes to its release on
CD. It is the one genre of music which is not specifically aimed at album
listeners; because it is composed for a film or show, not every piece of
music written in this genre makes it onto a CD album release. Neverthess,
there are both well known and specialty record labels that often take
fiscal chances in order to publish these film and television scores on CD.
In the list below, Filmtracks ranks the top labels pertaining to the film
music genre. This gives you, the fans, the opportunity to keep an eye on
these labels so that you can learn about the biggest and best upcoming
albums on their sites. Click here to browse
the rankings!
|
|
