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12/29/03 - Cherry 2000: (Basil Poledouris) --Expanded
Review-- "What a blast! Every once in a while, you get the impression
that composer knows that he's taking a scoring assignment for a horrible
film, but doesn't care. One prefect example of this is Cherry 2000, a
sci-fi/action B-flick starring Melanie Griffith as a female mercenary in the
post-apocalyptic world of robot infiltration and societal disorder. With
flashy cars, atrociously dumb dialogue, and futuristic sexuality on the line,
the film holds no punches in its sort of Mad Max depiction of future
societal brutality. But then again, the film was laughably horrible, perhaps
in a semi-intentional way. Its release was limited to begin with, and yet,
budding composer Basil Poledouris decided to use the project as his own
testing grounds for ideas and unhindered fun. Poledouris, at the time, was
best known for his grand, thematically complex scores for sword and sorcery
films, from Conan the Barbarian to Flesh + Blood, and Cherry
2000 would be released concurrently with Robocop...." **** Read the entire
review.
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12/26/03 - Dreamkeeper: (Stephen Warbeck) --All New
Review-- "Debuting on ABC in late December 2003, Dreamkeeper is
a Hallmark Entertainment film with all the makings of a family-friendly
story. It is a tale of generational conflict and understanding, revolving
around a trek made by a Native American elder and his grandson from South
Dakota to New Mexico for the All Nations ceremony. The rebellious grandson,
only making the journey at first because he is evading his local gang (to
whom he owes money), listens to the elder's fantastic stories of adventure,
humor, and love from the history of their tribe as they travel. The format
of the story is similar in ways to Secondhand Lions (released earlier
in the same year), which also shifted between locations and times to tell
about the days of high adventure from one generation to another. The film
was brought to life as a project by Robert Halmi Sr., whose Merlin
series on NBC was a spectacular success five years prior, and
Dreamkeeper was conceived with the same values of production...."
**** Read the entire
review.
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12/21/03 - Mystic River: (Clint Eastwood) --All New
Review-- "The 24th film for Eastwood as a director, Mystic River
marks the fourth time he has served as a composer as well. He doesn't
often direct movies in which he does not also star, but Mystic River
(along with 1997's underrated Midnight in the Garden of Evil) is a
notable exception. Dennis Lehane's best-selling 2001 novel "Mystic River" has
been best described as a contemporary Shakespearean tragedy set on the mean
streets of South Boston. The friendship and gruesome bond that connects three
boys and their adulthood counterparts lands them in the middle of a tense
murder mystery when one of their daughters is murdered, another one of them
is a suspect, and a third is the cop investigating the crime. The film has
been hailed as one of the best dramas of 2003, and is likely to serve
Eastwood his best chance in the awards season since Unforgiven ten
years earlier. While leaving the bulk of the film's workload for the six or
seven primary actors to carry, Eastwood takes on much of the rest of the
production duties himself, including the composition of the score...." ** Read the entire
review.
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12/19/03 - Commando (Limited Edition): (James Horner)
"By 1985, Arnold Schwarzenegger was determined to take on an acting roll in
which he could not only kick butt, but also show a softer side not seen in
The Terminator or the two Conan films. It marked the beginning
of the series of films that Joel Silver would produce for 20th Century Fox,
leading to the Predator and Die Hard franchises. Thus, for the
actors (including Alyssa Milano as the daughter of Schwarzenegger's
character, John Matrix), the studio, the producer, and even the composer,
Commando was an important stepping stone on the path to bigger and
better things. This isn't to say that Commando itself was a classic;
in fact, despite the larger-than-usual arrays of explosions and locales, the
film is nothing more than another simplistic paramilitaristic joy ride... an
excuse to show the same building exploding nine different times from nine
different angles. Because it was a formula film, even down to the dumb
dialogue, two-dimensional characters, and 70's-ish camera placements and
editing..." ** Read the entire
review.
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12/16/03 - Composer Daniel Kolton has sued Universal Studios and
others for copyright infringement involving his music for Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Young
Hercules. According to his attorney, Kolton composed cues for over 100
episodes of these shows and never transferred copyright to the primary,
listed composer for the series, Joseph Lo Duca. The awards and royalties for
these shows were given to Lo Duca, and Kolton may be eligible for hundreds of
thousands of dollars of writers' royalties paid to Lo Duca over the last 7
years by ASCAP. Kolton claims that he "ghostwrote" music for the shows
between 1995 and 2000 at the request of Lo Duca, but never received due
credit for the music because Lo Duca's name appears alone atop the cue sheets
(which is the determinating factor for awarding royalties). Attorney Brian
Lee Corber said, "While Universal's record division through the RIAA
continues to sue little old ladies and teenagers for copyright violations
involving internet downloads, Universal's television distribution division
continues to violate copyright and profits on a worldwide basis by using my
client's music without permission." The case continues debate about the
practice of "ghostwriting," which is increasingly becoming a system of
exploitation in the entertainment industry and exists at the heart of a
recent lawsuit involving Hans Zimmer and Media Ventures. Voice your opinion
about this issue at the Filmtracks
Scoreboard.
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12/15/03 - Taken: (Laura Karpman) --All New Review-- "In
the 2000's, Steven Spielberg has increased his efforts in producing
large-scale, epic mini-series for television, and after the great success of
Band of Brothers, Spielberg turned his attention to the ultimate story
of UFO abductions. Following a spread of alien-related ideas Spielberg
explored in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the
Third Kind, the 20-hour mini-series Taken that he produced for the
Sci-Fi Channel debuted in November, 2002 and immediately became (at the time)
the highest ranked show ever for the channel. Winning an Emmy award for "Best
Mini-Series" and answering to a hail of positive reviews from critics,
Taken has gone on to rebroadcasts and a DVD set in 2003. In addition
to the hype about the series, the score for Taken, written by rising
composer Laura Karpman, is also seeing its first separate release to the
public at the time of the DVD set's initial offering. The story of the series
spans the entire latter half of the 20th Century..." **** Read the entire
review.
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12/13/03 - 21 Grams: (Gustavo Santaolalla) --All New
Review-- "From Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, the Mexican filmmaker who hit
the big screen with a big splash due to his Academy Award nomination for
Amores Perros in 2000, seems fond of presenting films out of
chronological order. Such is the case once again with 21 Grams in
2003, a film that tells the doomed tale of torment and salvation through the
lives of three people connected by a single traffic accident. Their lives are
presented before, during, and after this connection in a disjointed series of
time and location shifts, with the numbing whole of the film brilliantly, but
disturbingly painting a glum overall picture. The film spent several weeks
just below the mainstream radar late in 2003, but received a decent response
from critics and audiences alike. Inarritu's fascination with this
disconnected form of storytelling, however, wears thin despite the
magnificence of its own concept, and the score is yet another sometimes
baffling piece of the 21 Grams puzzle...." * Read the entire
review.
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12/10/03 - The Gospel of John: (Jeff Danna) --All New
Review-- "In the Golden Age of
Hollywood, large-scale movies of historical religious origin were like
Ben-Hur and The Robe. Even if you weren't in tune with the
religious nature of these films, they sustained enough epic action and grand
scenery to capture your attention. In today's world of arthouse films,
however, we've reached a moment in history when word for word adaptations of
religious texts are becoming popular on the big screen. Inherent in this
transition are the inevitable discussions and arguments over which
translations of gospels to put into live action, and no bigger has interest
in this debate been than in 2003 and 2004, when Jesus Christ appears in
theatres in more than one widely publicized picture. Most of the attention
has gone to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, with its original
language presentation and excruciating attention to violent details.
Overshadowed by this film, however, is The Gospel of John, director
Philip Saville presentation of Christ's teachings with Canadian and British
actors..." ***** Read the entire
review.
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12/7/03 - Timeline: (Brian Tyler) --All New Review--
"Director Richard Donner's films have included a plethora of sequel-inspiring
works, from Superman: The Movie and The Omen to the Lethal
Weapon series. The Michael Crichton-written Timeline is not likely
to be one of them, with the sci-fi/adventure film debuting to only moderately
interested audiences. The time travel concept in Timeline involves a
secretive multinational corporation (no surprise there) that has invented a
method of reverse time exploration, and the characters who test the new
technology end up fighting for their lives in the 15th Century when things,
naturally, go wrong. The movie seems like a nifty excuse to place tomorrow's
technology in the setting of knight and castle warfare, and at the very
least, the film is a visual stunner. Both Donner had Crichton projects had
been accompanied by the music of veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith over the
past twenty-five years, from Coma to Goldsmith's lone Academy
Award-winning The Omen...." **** Read the entire
review.
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12/6/03 - Composer Hans Zimmer is being sued by former
associate and friend, composer Jay Rifkin, ending their 30-year
friendship and a 15-year professional partnership that produced the creation
of the Media Ventures scoring studio enterprise. According to the $10 million
breach-of-fiduciary-duties suit, Hans Zimmer has
abruptly withdrawn from his co-leadership of Media Ventures and
attempted to lure several composers away with him after finishing work on
Disney's Pirates of
the Caribbean. In some cases, this would be a breach of contract for
those assistant composers. Furthermore, the suit exposes Media Ventures'
"practice of hiring resident composers who 'ghosted' parts of Zimmer's motion
picture scores, with Zimmer receiving main-title composer credit and keeping
'the lion's share' of the fees." Rifkin alleges that Zimmer suddenly
abandoned their shared Media Ventures business and then smeared Rifkin's
reputation while committing "a textbook example of breach of fiduciary
duties." In response to claims that Zimmer attempted to isolate Rifkin by
tarnishing his professional reputation, Zimmer's attorney has stated that
Rifkin is only attempting to steal Zimmer's larger spotlight. A countersuit
is
expected in the coming weeks. The future of Media Ventures, meanwhile, is in
considerable doubt.
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12/3/03 - Flesh + Blood: (Basil Poledouris) --Expanded,
Updated Review-- "By 1985, composer Basil Poledouris was becoming the
master of the Middle Ages in Hollywood's continuing fascination with films
about swords and sorcery. The popular acceptance of these brutal depictions
of barbarians and magic would begin to taper off by the time Paul Verhoeven's
Flesh + Blood blindsided audiences with what would perhaps be the most
bloody and gruesome vision of the era to come from Hollywood to date. The
story of Flesh + Blood wasn't spectacularly new, although unlike many
of the other films to come from that genre, there wasn't one clear-cut hero
in the film to follow. Each of the film's primary characters is flawed,
leaving the audience to exist as a sort of outside observer while witnessing
massive sieges, bloody battles, and conflicting courtship splash across the
screen. Perhaps due to the lack of a single superstar in the cast, Flesh +
Blood was soon forgotten by audiences, and many critics blamed
Verhoeven's blood-spattering realism in the violence for turning audiences
away...." **** Read the entire
review.
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