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9/27/04 - Beyond Rangoon: (Hans Zimmer) --Expanded
Review-- "Director John Boorman is no stranger to the action genre set in
exotic locations, and Beyond Rangoon would be a thrilling tale of
every American tourist's worst nightmare come true. The story places an
American doctor and her sister on a vacation in Burma, but the main
character's passport is stolen and she becomes separated from her tour group.
While waiting for a replacement, she witnesses a government crime that she
was not supposed to see, and she ends up on the run for her life. The edgy
atmosphere in Beyond Rangoon, or any Boorman film for that matter, is
balanced by an almost serene visual beauty. The film's breathtaking
cinematography of Burma is a blatant contrast to the horror of the story, so
the job of composer Hans Zimmer was to write a score that would root its
disturbed nature in an atmosphere of beauty. Zimmer composed Beyond
Rangoon at roughly the same time as The Lion King, marking an
enormously busy period for the composer..." ****
Read the
entire review.
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9/24/04 - Music from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy:
(Compilation) --All New Review-- "It was only a matter of time before
Howard Shore's three magnificent The Lord of the Rings scores would be
re-interpreted by conductors, re-recorded by ensembles, and re-released on
labels other than the original. In the case of Silva and The City of Prague
Philharmonic Orchestra, the opportunity came quickly after the release of
The Return of the King at the end of 2003. The ensemble/label
collaboration has yielded a significant wealth of film music re-recordings
over the years, with some hit-and-miss recordings in the early 1990's
maturing into some outstanding efforts in the late 1990's and early 2000's.
With much of the most famous film music already recorded by the City of
Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Crouch End Festival Chorus, it is not
often that a project involving as much soundtrack re-recording as this one is
undertaken by that group these days. Silva producer James Fitzpatrick was
already prepared with arrangements of Shore's trilogy of music..." **** Read the entire
review.
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9/21/04 - The Pledge: (Hans Zimmer/Klaus Badelt) --All New
Review-- "The 2001 directorial project of Sean Penn was received reasonably
well by critics, but failed at every level with audiences. Fans of Jack
Nicholson were presented, though, with a fantastic performance by the actor.
The role offered the usually cocky role actor an opportunity to seriously
examine his inner soul and do so in a pseudo-religious fashion. The film was
a sparse murder mystery in a small town during winter with Nicholson's
character, as a detective, making a pledge to the mother of a slain child to
find the killer. The battle between the temptation to retire, fear of getting
old, determination to solve the crime, and coming to terms with the town is
all balanced in a very slowly paced, deliberate film. Without an obvious
ending, the film is heavy in introspection from the start to the end, with
only the development of a single character to hold the interest of the
audience. Such projects were not unknown to Hans Zimmer. In recent years, the
now-popular composer has been playing the fields of offers..." ** Read the entire
review.
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9/18/04 - The Manchurian Candidate: (David Amram/Rachel
Portman) --All New Review-- "John Frankenheimer's original film, based
on Richard Condon's 1959 novel and adapted in George Axelrod's 1962
screenplay, remains a Hollywood classic and a historically fascinating
glimpse into the imaginative fears of America in the height of cold war
anti-Communism. It raised possibilities terrifying to the average American in
the 1960's, but all too real in current times: a group of American soldiers,
captured by an enemy of war during distant battle, is brainwashed and one of
them is falsely decorated by the illegitimate memories of his comrades and
goes on to eventually become a vice-presidential candidate. That candidate,
once in office, will become president after a planned assassination, and the
faceless enemy that brainwashed him would activate a controlling device that
would make him their drone. For Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, the enemy
was the Red Chinese government, but today, the villains in the Denzel
Washington and Meryl Streep remake by Jonathan Demme are, more believably,
corporations...." *** Read the entire
review.
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9/17/04 - The Notebook: (Aaron Zigman) --All New
Review-- "An arthouse film from New Line Cinema that has taken everyone by
surprise with its sustained box office success throughout the summer of 2004,
The Notebook is a tender love story spanning the generations since World War
II. It features James Garner as a man who reads his own stories of romance to a
similarly aged woman at a nursing home, with the film transitioning between the
present moment of storytelling and the 1940's era of youth and romance.
Inevitable from the first moments of the film, it turns out that the
Garner's character and the elderly woman at the modern-day nursing home are
by coincidence the same two lovers from the heart of the 1940's story. Their
first encounter was separated by World War II, but they passionately
reunited seven years later despite realizing that their lives had taken
substantially different paths. Their meeting at the nursing home now allows
them to relive and tie up the loose ends of their youth. The wide release of
the film..." *** Read the entire
review.
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9/14/04 - Reel Chill: The Cinematic Chillout Album:
(Compilation) --All New Review-- "It's been several years now since
Silva Screen's collaboration with The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
and Crouch End Festival Chorus yielded the original Cinema Choral Classics
albums and dozens of other successful ventures. You begin to wonder if Silva
producer James Fitzpatrick (who we all have to thank for these performances
-- many of which are magnificent) and The City of Prague Philharmonic
Orchestra have run out of noteworthy (and more likely, profitable) music to
re-record and must rely on the most recent scores to choose material from.
While their production together has slowed since those glorious days of the
late 1990's, that doesn't mean that their library of recordings can't be
plucked for yet another new combination of these recordings along a new,
common theme. Some of these compilations in the past have been suspicious in
their inclusion of some recordings while they omit others, and some
collectors seem to stick to Silva re-recordings of either a single score..."
*** Read the entire
review.
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9/12/04 - Amerika: (Basil Poledouris) --All New Review--
"Extremely controversial for its time, it is difficult to look back upon
Amerika and imagine that a considerable portion of the American public
viewed the television series as one of realistic possibilities. Running over
seven nights for a mammoth 14 hours total, Amerika was a "what if"
novel about how individuals (representing the American spirit through their
actions and reactions) would respond to the Soviet invasion and occupation of
the United States. Despite the sensationalism applied to the reputation of
the film at the time, Amerika is not a film depicting the actual
military attack and seige. Rather, the point of the series was to concentrate
on the average American's reaction to the post-war occupation a full ten
years after the initial invasion. Thus, the series is a "people story" rather
than a massive political statement or action film. The somber spirit of the
film (including the execution of primary characters and, not to be forgotten,
the entire American legislative body) is tempered..." **** Read the entire
review.
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9/10/04 - The Whole Wide World: (Harry Gregson-Williams/Hans
Zimmer) --Expanded Review-- "Robert E. Howard was one of the more
inspired fantasy writers of a generation, conjuring such famous serial
characters as Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conquerer, and Red Sonja. His
youthful, platonic relationship with writer Novalyne Price Ellis is the
subject of the story for The Whole Wide World, with the three-year
friendship between writers recalled many decades later by the still-living
Ellis. The tumultuous, but undeniably sweet relationship between the two was
strained if only because Ellis enjoyed writing about naturalistic topics
while Howard was, well, stuck in the imaginary land of Conan. Ellis' book of
romantic recollection, "One Who Walked Alone," was several years in the
translation to the big screen, and while embraced with critical success
(especially in response to a strong early performance by actress Renee
Zellweger) at the time of its release, The Whole Wide World was
actually seen by very few people...." *** Read the entire
review.
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9/6/04 - Invincible: (Hans Zimmer/Klaus Badelt) --All New
Review-- "The first mainstream film by director Werner Herzog in many
years, 2002's Invincible was a polarizing tale of human dignity and
religious allegory set in Nazi Germany during its early pre-war years. It
tells the story of the world's strongest man, a modern carnival attraction
that was popular even back as far as the early 1930's. A talent scout finds
the strongest man and brings him to a German show house with live acts (run
by Tim Roth, who brutally portrays the theatre owner and a clairvoyant for
Hitler), where the boyish strongman lifts boulders and performs other
outstanding feats. The conflict of the story arises in the fact that the
strongman is a Polish Jew in a country slowly being squeezed by the Nazis.
And, as part of the necessary allegory of the story, the strongman, like
Samson, reveals his true self during a live performance (tearing off his
blonde wig and gladiator's uniform). The surprising tale spirals from there,
including a love triangle and the ultimately unhappy ending...." **** Read the entire
review.
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9/3/04 - Radio Flyer: (Hans Zimmer) --Expanded Review--
"If you want to study about a film that definitely should never have been
made, then Radio Flyer is your case in point. It's hard to think how
director Richard Donner couldn't see the writing on the wall, but the
screenplay for Radio Flyer by David Mickey Evans was passed around
Hollywood with extremely high interest, and Donner took it upon himself to
bring this terrible fantasy tale of child abuse to the big screen. Donner's
first film being The Omen was perhaps some indication at the time that
the director could take any film about a troubled child and make it into a
classic. Unfortunately, Radio Flyer falls into the trap of an
impossible reality: a mother of two children remarries an abusive alcoholic,
but she doesn't know that he is beating the younger son. Having seen another
child attempt to fly on his Radio Flyer wagon, the two brothers decide that
the only way to escape the abuse is to build their own flying wagon..." **** Read the entire
review.
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