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12/17/04 - Blade: (Mark Isham) --All New Review-- "A
rare horror venture in composer Mark Isham's career, Blade is a 1998
adaptation from a comic strip which features the battles on and under our
city streets between vampires and Wesley Snipes' Blade character (a half
vampire/half human "daywalker"), who is intent on stopping the pureblood
vampires from raising evil gods, beginning the apocalypse, and increasing
everyone's insurance rates. Being British director Stephen Norrington's first
American film, Blade was also a first of sorts for Isham, whose career
is highlighted by scenic drama projects and classy urban jazz. For
Blade, Isham would drop all of those sensibilities, for the film would
replace Isham's usual delicacies (heard with great popularity in Fly Away
Home and A River Runs Through It) with the imagery of considerable
property damage and nasty deaths. While many people may classify it as a
horror/action film only, Blade is also a vampire flick, opening realms
in which Isham could explore the romantic, though deeply troubled minds of
the title character and his opponents...." ** Read the entire
review.
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12/7/04 - The House of the Spirits: (Hans Zimmer) --Expanded
Review-- "The violent and terrible tale of the trials and suffering of an
aristocratic Chilean family over the course of 45 years, The House of the
Spirits is not a pleasant film. Considering how gruesome the story is
(and it is performed with excruciating pain my a stellar cast of big name
stars), it is surprising how lyrical and darkly romantic Hans Zimmer's score
emphasizes the passion of the story. Despite the death and dismemberment on
screen, the score remains as one of Zimmer's softer and more melodic efforts,
combining his synthesizers with an orchestra and a touch of South American
flavor. The House of the Spirits, due to the threatening undertones
from beginning to end, becomes potentially depressing and almost haunting in
its music. Yet, the constant themes keep it from becoming burdensome for the
listener. The score begins with the patriotic, but subdued anthem that serves
as the only major-key theme of the album before it takes a slow, dramatic
turn in direction...." **** Read the entire
review.
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11/30/04 - The Fan: (Hans Zimmer/Jeff Rona) --All New
Review-- "This combination of film and score is easily a disaster for
most viewers and listeners, and if you just happen to be a baseball fan,
then you'd be better off ignoring it all together. Based on the novel by
Peter Abrahams, Phoef Sutton's screenplay must have seemed like a good
idea to the Crimson Tide duo of director Tony Scott and composer
Hans Zimmer. The story revolves around a man beaten by society (Robert
DeNiro) who is a devoted fan of the San Francisco Giants baseball team.
As he loses his job and all perspective on life, he becomes more and
more obsessed with the Giants' newest acquisition, played by Wesley
Snipes (clearly modeled after the real-life Giants' 1993 acquisition of
superstar Barry Bonds), and will do anything it takes to have him lead
the Giants to the World Series. For film score collectors and baseball
fans alike, The Fan will make you pull your hair out. Despite a
notable performance by DeNiro, Scott and Zimmer both fail in their jobs
so miserably that the resulting film is nearly laughable...."
*
Read the
entire review.
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11/21/04 - Smilla's Sense of Snow: (Harry Gregson-Williams and
Hans Zimmer) --Expanded Review-- "Based on the thrilling novel by
Peter Hoeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow features a half-Inuit scientist
(performed by Julia Ormand) who is compelled to investigate the mysterious
death of a neighbor boy. Naturally, the growing complexity of the
circumstances of the boy's death begin to grow to full-blown conspiracy
levels and the wintry adventure takes us on a tour of Denmark and its
colonies with several top flight actors at the helm. Directed by Bille
August, the film came and went through the theatres like one of the
free-floating snowflakes in its tale, with even the score flying largely
below radar. The murder mystery has a span of science that extends 140 years
and, in the age of criminal mischief when concerning potentially scary
discoveries, ends up dancing on the edge of fantasy and science fiction by
its conclusion. At its core, however, Smilla's Sense of Snow is a
slowly developing and soft mystery with occasional thrilling jolts and an
atmosphere of constantly dreary weather...." **
Read the entire
review.
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11/7/04 - Filmtracks is moving to a new office in Missoula,
Montana during the month of November. The office will be housed in a newly
built extension to a renovated mansion in the historical University District
of Missoula that will also house this site's trouble-making creators. This
process began in May of this year, and our renovations are nearly complete,
so with our impending move will come an expected, temporary decline in the
reviews of new albums at Filmtracks. There may be a few exceptions for major
early-holiday releases during the month, but for the most part, we'll finish
the ongoing unveiling of our new Hans Zimmer reviews and debut other new
reviews written earlier in the year. Look for a return to normalcy (if such a
thing exists here) at Filmtracks in December. In other news: After
over a year of persistence, we've resolved the block that AOL had placed on
Filmtracks' e-mailing to their members. The company had blocked Filmtracks'
e-mails to all of its customers due to its erroneous belief that Filmtracks
was a spam agent. If you are an AOL user (and that isn't recommended), be
advised that we can now respond to your e-mails. And in even more
news: About 140 e-mails rolled in to Filmtracks regarding the site's
presidential endorsement, with support and angst seemingly split in quantity.
If you wonder why a soundtrack site would ever endorse anything in the great
world of reality, read this
explanation. Incidentally, while the following have not been formally
mentioned before, Filmtracks also endorses predictions about the end of the
world, outrageous public nudity, dipping potato chips in ketchup, and any
video footage in which large groups of tourists are being attacked by wild
animals. Let the protests begin... We'll see you in December!
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