|
 |
| 4/30/10
- | Backdraft: (Hans Zimmer)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you own several scores from later in Hans Zimmer's career and seek his first, highly
successful and enjoyable large-scale merging of an orchestra and choir with his electronics.
| |
Avoid it... |
if no variant on the extremely masculine tones and simplistic themes consistent to Zimmer's
style (from any era in his career) will fit with your preference for subtlety and delicacy.
| |
| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/28/10
- | Green Card: (Hans Zimmer)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you have a soft spot for Hans Zimmer's relatively dated but easily digestible soft rock and
new age tones for contemporary romance of the late 80's and early 90's.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you expect to hear anything strikingly unique from Zimmer in Green Card outside of a
single, enticingly exotic cue of alluring female vocals over worldly percussion and woodwind
performances.
| |
| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/26/10
- | Pacific Heights: (Hans Zimmer)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if stylish jazz (with noir sentiments in snazzy solo performances) over satisfying, synthetic
orchestral accompaniment is how like you like your urban thrillers to be packaged.
| |
Avoid it... |
if only twenty minutes of occasionally intoxicating thematic exploration in Pacific Heights
isn't worth hearing Hans Zimmer's somewhat generic suspense material in the remainder.
| |
| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/24/10
- | Days of Thunder: (Hans Zimmer)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you desire a cross between Hans Zimmer's later bad-ass attitude and electric
guitar-dominated style of Drop Zone and the easy-going romantic sensibilities of Green Card.
| |
Avoid it... |
if the composer's early hard rock material leaves you as cold as Days of Thunder does for
those not interested in moody hunks and ridiculous cars.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/21/10
- | Driving Miss Daisy: (Hans Zimmer)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you seek ultimate proof that Hans Zimmer can uncork whimsically breezy and
setting-appropriate music of immense personality and style with only his one-man electronic
ensemble.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you quickly tire of Zimmer's rhythmic light drama and romance music of this era in his
career, because Driving Miss Daisy is simply a bluesy variation on those early trademarks of
the composer's work.
| |
| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/19/10
- | Black Rain: (Hans Zimmer)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you're curious to know where the action truly started for Hans Zimmer, Black Rain being the
composer's first entry into a genre that eventually developed directly out of the sound heard
in this score.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you have no interest in hearing Zimmer's intuitively smart but not particularly well
refined merging of Eastern solo instruments with his comfortably familiar rock-influenced
tones.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/17/10
- | Rain Man: (Hans Zimmer)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you want to trace most of Hans Zimmer's enduring and arguably superior output from 1989 to
1994 back to its origin, because Rain Man was the initiation point for a wide variety of the
composer's later techniques.
| |
Avoid it... |
if the eleven minutes of Zimmer's likable, optimistic score on the commercial product isn't
enough and you expect the various score-only bootlegs to provide a consistent, decent sounding
presentation of the score's prettier parts.
| |
| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/15/10
- | Article 99: (Danny Elfman)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you have always loved Danny Elfman's early film music but have never heard any of Article
99, because this pleasant, lightweight score will make you nostalgic for that period.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you have no interest in hearing Elfman sleepwalk through redemptive melodies while
revisiting shadows of the trademarks that made his other scores of that era so great.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/13/10
- | To Die For: (Danny Elfman)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if, frankly, you desire some of the songs in the film, because the 19 minutes of Danny
Elfman's score sharing time with those songs on the album is as schizophrenic, bizarre, and
casually unlistenable as anything the composer has ever written for the screen.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you already own Elfman's second "Music for a Darkened Theatre" compilation featuring more
than half of the same material and all of the score's highlights.
| |
| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/11/10
- | Dolores Claiborne: (Danny Elfman)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if feelings of disillusionment in your film scores never yield boredom for you, for this music
is effectively troubling in its morbidly deliberate themes and unappealing instrumental
demeanor.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you will need more than just a drab sibling to Danny Elfman's engaging melodrama for
Sommersby to justify a 30-minute album that offers little relief from its solemn
contemplation.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/9/10
- | Extreme Measures: (Danny Elfman)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you love being enveloped by the understated dramatic atmosphere of Danny Elfman's closely
related Dolores Claiborne, though Extreme Measures does feature a more memorable title theme
that finally develops nicely in the closing cue.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you expect to hear a significant dose of Elfman's usual knack for creative instrumentation
in what is instead a surprisingly mundane thriller score that resembles the composer's
tendencies less than most of his other works.
| |
| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/8/10
- | Mars Attacks!: (Danny Elfman)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you are a hardcore collector of Danny Elfman's most zany and frenetic symphonic works.
| |
Avoid it... |
if either theremines give you nightmares or if you seek extended, organized treatment of this
score's ambitious and memorable main titles arrangement.
| |
| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/6/10
- | Taking Woodstock: (Danny Elfman)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you have low expectations for this minimalistic expression of surprisingly somber folk, for
Danny Elfman creates a consistent atmosphere with his guitar performances for this brief score
and album.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you want to hear Elfman groove with outward style, a sound limited to just a handful of
cues in Taking Woodstock, leaving you wishing you were hearing the songs from the festival
instead.
| |
| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/4/10
- | The Black Stallion Returns: (Georges Delerue)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you need a perfect, ready-made national anthem for your fledgling country, courtesy of
Georges Delerue's resoundingly beautiful theme for this film.
| |
Avoid it... |
on the thorough but not earth-shattering 2009 Intrada album if you own the 2001 Prometheus CD
pressing of the original LP and have only casual interest in either of the scores for this
franchise.
| |
| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/3/10
- | The Black Stallion: (Carmine Coppola/Shirley
Walker)
- All New Review |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
on the limited 2009 Intrada album if you love the film and desire a truly comprehensive
examination of the evolution of Carmine Coppola's troubled efforts to find the right heart for
the concept.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you expect the butchered, often badly understated score for the classic to meet any of the
same standards of storytelling excellence by which you casually recall the film itself.
| |
| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
|
|
|
| 4/1/10
- | Innerspace: (Jerry Goldsmith)
- Updated Review, With Additional Album |
|
|
| |
Buy it... |
if you have already sought and enjoyed all of Jerry Goldsmith's related fantasy and adventure
music of the era and therefore wouldn't mind the derivative nature of this otherwise decent
score.
| |
Avoid it... |
if the historically restrictive album situation for Innerspace has never justified hearing a
strong, but ultimately redundant collection of Goldsmith filler material with themes that lack
the punch necessary to give it a particularly memorable identity.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
|
|
