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5/29/01 - The Legend of Bagger Vance: (Rachel Portman) "Back
in July, 2000, I sat in a jam-packed theater eagerly awaiting the start of
The Patriot when the trailer of Robert Redford's golfing drama
The Legend of Bagger Vance graced the screen. I was drawn into the
images by a sweeping melody and became instantly excited of the musical
potential when Rachel Portman's name appeared in the credits. The result
of my long anticipation is an Americana infused score that is marvelous in
every respect. This music makes one proud to play a sport. The title theme
moves joyously along with its brisk strings, cheerful trumpet solo, and
melodious interlude. Portman radiantly punctuates Bagger Vance's suave and
benevolent qualities as well as the movie's underlying theme of
redemption. Portman's effort for this film will long be remembered in the
pantheon of sports scores...." Read the entire
donated review.
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5/28/01 - Two days are left until the end of the April-May Cue Clue
Contest. Filmtracks and Varèse Sarabande are proud to be
offering ten prizes for this 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. Good
luck!
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5/27/01 - Now and Then: (Cliff Eidelman) --All new
review-- "After several years of excellent production in the early
1990's, Cliff Eidelman was beginning to experience some road bumps in
1995. With his other score of 1995, Picture Bride, rejected, and a
year of 1996 during which he would not score a feature film, Eidelman's
Now and Then represented the last of a yearly string of solid
character drama scores. The film, revolving around the young and adult
lives of four women/girls and featuring a strong cast, gained moderate
success, and a song album for the film took much of the attention away
from Eidelman's score... a score which doesn't jump out too much at the
listener in the film. It was a very typical project for Eidelman in the
mid to late 1990's, and a long cry away from his most popular and
bombastic days of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery...." *** Read the entire
review.
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5/25/01 - Initial critical reactions to the Hans Zimmer
score for Pearl
Harbor have been overwhelmingly negative, as have critics' reviews
of the film itself. The NBC Today Show review of the film this morning
mentioned Zimmer's score as banal and intrusive. A CNN Showbiz Today
Report, also airing today, commented that the music for the film was phony
and sappy. Reviews featured at Dark Horizons, Aint-it-cool-news.com, and
Rotten-Tomatoes have also indicated that Zimmer's score is a weak, boring,
and underscored effort. Why do you think? Now that the film is finally out
in the theatres, is the score really inappropriate for the film? Or is the
film so bad that Zimmer's score is irrelevant? Join the debate at The Filmtracks
ScoreBoard!
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5/17/01 - One True Thing: (Cliff Eidelman) --All new
review-- "The score for One True Thing represented many turns
for Cliff Eidelman, who had burst onto the scoring scene in the 1990's as
one of the potentially great composers of the next few decades. Never had
the young composer produced such a minimalistic and intimate score for
such a major film. It would also be the last motion picture score for
Eidelman in the decade, and with the exception of the television film
Witness Protection a year later, One True Thing would usher
in a long drought of major score production for Eidelman. He would
continue to work on re-recordings with large performing groups, conducting
suites and themes that would be released on CD. The film One True
Thing passed with a moderate reception by audiences, though its
brutally honest depiction of family life turned away much of the residual
viewership, and both the film and score have faded into obscurity...."
*** Read the
entire review.
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5/16/01 - Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles: (Basil
Poledouris) "Ready to accompany this completely unnecessary sequel film is
an equally unnecessary album. Basil Poledouris' assignments of the last
three years have all been of a smaller scale, avoiding the typically
blockbuster assignments that the veteran composer is best known for. The
new century has yielded three Poledouris albums thus far, and with the
pleasant Kimberly and uninteresting Love and Treason scores
failing to turn many heads, Poledouris follows with a score that is more
likely to irritate his fans rather than reverse his current trend. It is
difficult not to be acquainted with the Crocodile Dundee franchise,
especially with Paul Hogan in so many commercials for substandard vehicles
(even in his advancing years), so it should come as no surprise that the
soundtrack is not to be taken with much seriousness. The first two films
in the series were scored by Peter
Best, though neither effort proved to be memorable. Poledouris'
involvement with Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles surely involved
more than a small paycheck, but likely a "sounds like fun" motivation as
well. After all, how many composers get the opportunity to score an entry
into such an intelligently illustrious film franchise?..." ** Read the entire
review.
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5/14/01 - Pavilion of Women: (Conrad Pope) "Known by almost
every composer as one of the top notch orchestrators of film music, Conrad
Pope has now finally ventured into his first original score with enough
attantion warranted to produce an album for the diverse artist. Pope's
orchestration credits can be found on the scores of John Williams, James
Horner, and Alan Silvestri as recently as this year, and his knack for
precise balance of instrumentation is perhaps what caught the eye of the
producers of Pavilion of Women. The film is a World War II account
of the budding romance between a Chinese woman and Western man set against
the horrors of the Japanese invasion and occupation of mainland China. For
the project, therefore, a composer with talents accentuating the mixture
of Western and Eastern instrumentation was required, and Pope received the
call. While dominantly Eastern scores have become more and more popular
over the past five to ten years, culminating in the Academy Award win for
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, that particular sound is still not
the ideal choice for many filmmakers (or, for that matter, the ears of
Western audiences)...." **** Read the
entire review.
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5/9/01 - Ruby Cairo: (John Barry) "A forgotten film, Ruby
Cairo is a suspenseful action mystery with star power that just
happened to suffer from some bad timing in its release date. The year 1993
was stocked with blockbuster scores and films, and it was easy for both
this film and score to simply wash away into obscurity. For John Barry, it
was a period in his career when he was accumulating Academy Award
nominations and wins for scores of immense and melodramatic romance,
creating often simplistic, but very appealing scores that flew off the
record shelves. It was also the time of his career when the Moviola albums
were becoming hot in correlation with Barry's tendency to score the
biggest new epic films. Ruby Cairo came in between these epics and
the his year of heavy drama (1995), and while it is
very much reminiscent of this period of his work, it has more enthic
flavour than usual. The film's worldly locale, including the opportunity
to score for scenes in Latin America, allowed Barry to deviate from the
typical, neatly packaged score for the time. One of the strengths of the
film is its cinematography, for which Barry's music is especially well
suited given its naturally expansive traits...." **** Read the entire
review.
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5/3/01 - Love and Treason: (Basil Poledouris) "This
television suspense thriller of 2001, based loosely on the cover-up and
exposure of military secrets, was produced by the same team who brought
Flight of the Intruder and The Hunt for Red October to the
big screen. Because of the long standing collaboration with Basil
Poledouris, the producers asked him to score the pilot of the show.
Discovering how miniscule the budget for the score was, however, caused
Poledouris to laugh for a moment. With less that 5% of the amount that had
been allocated to The Hunt for Red October's score available for
this one, Poledouris, who enjoyed the show and wanted to be a part of it,
took a new approach to scoring it. For some time, Poledouris has been
collaborating with his friends and associates to create the "Blowtorch
Flats" studio in Venice where the composer (along with others) can use
state of the art digital recording, mixing, and mastering technologies to
synthesize cheaper scores. Sound familiar? Well, it's not entirely that
different from the direction that the entire film scoring industry is
headed...." ** Read the entire
review.
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