{"id":12186,"date":"2015-09-07T14:40:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=12186"},"modified":"2015-09-07T23:10:51","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T03:10:51","slug":"mp3-fantastic-four-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=12186","title":{"rendered":"MP3: Fantastic Four (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"FantasticFour2015\"<\/a>Score<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label<\/strong>: Sony Classical<\/a><\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong> \u00a0August 11, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n

Tracks \/ Album Length:<\/strong> \u00a025 tracks \/ (66:20)<\/p>\n

Composer:<\/strong> Marco Beltrami, Philip Glass<\/p>\n

Special Notes:<\/strong>\u00a0 n\/a<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The question certainly begs, seeing the names of Philip Glass and Marco Beltrami attached to a comic book action film: What the heck does a score sound like when the two composers come from very different generational backgrounds?<\/p>\n

Beltrami\u2019s prior collaboration with Marilyn Manson on Resident Evil<\/b> (2002) worked out swimmingly, as the two found common ground in developing themes and motifs with hard industrial synth sounds, and Glass found a similar balance in scoring Secret Window <\/b>(2004) with Geoff Zanelli, resulting in a small, elegant thriller score that transcended the film\u2019s loopy twist and denouement.<\/p>\n

Director Josh Trank wanted Glass to score Fantastic Four <\/b>(the director reported in an interview<\/a> that he often plays Glass in the background when writing scripts), and Beltrami seemed logical in adding more oomph to action scenes, since his C.V.of late features music from several action franchises, including the Die Hards, the Terminators, and the Underworlds.<\/p>\n

Fantastic Four<\/b> isn\u2019t a full blending of styles \u2013 much like the famous collaboration between silver screen greats Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann on The Egyptian<\/a> <\/b>(1954), one can often pinpoint the dominant style or who tackled a scene outright \u2013 but there is indeed a balance, as Glass seemed charged with establishing main themes and the central rhythms in the score\u2019s prelude, while Beltrami initially accented the former\u2019s material with thicker synth bass, deeper brass, and his recurring use of churning, blurring strings.<\/p>\n

Glass\u2019s music is actually quite playful, and sets up character intros with a certain mystique, conveying tenderness with glockenspiele, harp, and lovely oboe, whereas Beltrami seems to have fed off Glass\u2019 minimalism by applying doses of modernism at certain junctures, such as the chromatic brass in \u201cRun\u201d reminiscent of Leonard Rosenman (especially his score for The Car<\/b>), and creates some really weird brass effects, like the cue\u2019s finale where the instruments sound like their being folded in half (with musicians in mid-play).<\/p>\n

Much of the score\u2019s centre features a mix of slowly rendered themes preceding action tracks, such as \u201cLaunch One,\u201d which also makes use of an echoing two-note motif akin to Goldmsith\u2019s Alien<\/b> (1979). Beltrami\u2019s closing percussion is dark and grim, but it\u2019s contrasted with warm melodic material that often harkens back to a 1950s sensibility \u2013 perhaps a signal that the two composers chose to feature steady contrasts between romantic heroism (as in the beginning of the very pretty \u201cNeill Armstrong\u201d) and industrial modernism (\u201cBen\u2019s Drop\u201d).<\/p>\n

One of the score\u2019s more interesting action cues is \u201cHe\u2019s Awake\u201d which flows between sound design and score, starting with a tonal breath of reverberating bass and faint, sustained brass chords, and a fast acceleration to a steady pulse and fast-moving brass sounds that are soon drenched in grotty electronic feedback. \u201cStrength in Numbers\u201d is large-scale orchestral, and has shades of classical Hollywood scoring, with strings and chorals, and thunderous percussion which shore up cyclical reiterations of the score\u2019s heroic main theme.<\/p>\n

The frenzied action is quickly diluted and replaced with a slowly evolving theme variation for the \u201cEnd Titles,\u201d building towards a crescendo with Glass\u2019s cyclical patterns on watery keyboards before a huge orchestral blast (that\u2019s more than a little Herrmannesque in its harmonics).<\/p>\n

Trank\u2019s instincts in pairing Glass with Beltrami paired off in what\u2019s the most unique collaboration between two generations of composers for a comic book film, giving it gravitas, and doses of classical drama by threading together aspects of minimalism, modernism, and maybe faint dollops of Herrmann and Goldsmith.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Additional Links:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — Composers on IMDB: Beltrami<\/a> \/ Glass<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Composer Filmographies: Beltrami<\/a> \/ Glass<\/a> —\u00a0 Soundtrack Album<\/a>
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Select Merchants:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" —\u00a0BSX<\/a> —\u00a0Intrada<\/a> —\u00a0Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The question certainly begs, seeing the names of Philip Glass and Marco Beltrami attached to a comic book action film: What the heck does a score sound like when the two composers come from very different generational backgrounds?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[3920,3922,526,3921],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3ay","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12197,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12186\/revisions\/12197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}