I fully expected you to take Easter off, my hat's off to you!
> Cry Macho (2021) - **½
Not heard, but man was that interview fun and interesting! And a new Mancina score is a treat. Again, he needs more work.
> Lorne had seven scores come out in 2021, including a reunion with
> Lego Batman director Chris McKay on The Tomorrow War,
> episodic scoring for one of the year’s most streamed shows, and music for
> the second season of the Batman butler prequel series Pennyworth
> which came about after that show’s post-production moved to London and a
> U.K. composer had to be hired for tax reasons. Lockdowns did have the
> benefit of allowing him to work closer to his family though, and the
> composer would joke that they now knew who he was.
Kind of like McCreary, you wonder how heavily a composer leans on their team when you have a schedule *this* packed. Also, I have no idea why, but "*nationality* composer picked for tax reasons" is just a funny thing to me!
> Black Widow (2021) - ****½
Not heard, and while (like Rogue One) I would kill to hear what Desplat would have done, it sounds like Balfe did a great job. I'm excited to hear this one!
> The Wheel of Time Season 1 (2021) - ****
Truly fantastic, this scratched a weirdly specific itch for me. I loved the folk rock element and dizzying mix of instruments. Goes to show that there's no one right way to do fantasy music. With this and others, Balfe reminded us that he's not just the reliable-RC-replacement-score guy, but a talented, creative and capable composer in his own right (there may be other better candidates, but this one did it for me).
> Dopesick (2021) - ***
Not heard, but wow, my sympathy to Balfe. My state was hit hard by the U.S. opioid crisis, and its costs have been in the news a lot. Need to hear this one.
> Rumble (2021) - ****½
I'd heard great things about this, but not heard. Sounds right up my alley! (Balfe needs more animated flicks.)
> In December 2021, my wife and I caught COVID while on a ski trip in
> Colorado. Thankfully our cases were relatively mild, with only the first
> day being rough, but we still couldn’t fly home, and staying in a ski town
> for a week-plus wasn’t viable either due to the cost and the need to
> relieve our pet-sitter back in Chicago. So we rented a car the next day
> and drove across the country over two days to get home. I won’t say I
> found that stretch of the I-80 highway to be the most scenic or varied,
> but I came to appreciate it more when a John Madden documentary aired on
> Christmas Day and a portion of its runtime covered the Greyhound bus that
> the flight-averse football commentator would take along that same road to
> get to games, which prompted me to shout, “Hey, we took that route!”
> Anyway, I couldn’t sleep very well at the place we stayed at that first
> travel night, so I logged on to Spotify at something like three in the
> morning to see what new music had come out that I could put on. Given the
> early hour, there’s a nonzero chance I was one of the first people in
> America to listen to these albums. One of those was Rumble. Another
> was something I immediately and hyperbolically characterized on Facebook
> as “a Medal of Honor score by way of John Powell.”
It's always so special when music gets a particular association or event in your mind. Love hearing backstories for memorable listens! Sorry that happened, and I hope y'all got better with no lasting effects.
> The King’s Man (2021) - *****
And one last "not heard" to close us out. Heard excellent things about it, and your effusive five-star rating made me wanna seek it out!
> -----------------------
> Next time: “Can we use a didgeridoo?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jygVayh0R4M
