{"id":5788,"date":"2012-11-24T16:56:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T21:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/wordpress\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2012-11-24T16:56:09","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T21:56:09","slug":"soundtrack-reviews-a-quintet-of-heroes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5788","title":{"rendered":"Soundtrack Reviews: A Quintet of Heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Just uploaded is a quintet of soundtrack reviews more or less themed towards heroes \u2013 comic book, pulp, fantasy, novelish, and dumb.<\/p>\n

Thomas Newman\u2019s debut as a Bond composer with Skyfall <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (Sony Classical) marks the first time in 5 years the franchise opened the door to a new musical voice. I liked David Arnold, but always felt his music couldn\u2019t save the increasing awfulness of the Pierce Brosnan films (and if you think Die Another Day<\/strong> was a quality franchise entry, I call temporary insanity).<\/p>\n

John Ottman got his chance to score a X-Men film with X2: X-Men United<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] after scheduling conflicts made it impossible to score the first of Bryan Singer\u2019s franchise entries. La-La Land released a 2-disc edition of Ottman\u2019s score, and it works even better in its epic length.<\/p>\n

Less successful were a set of efforts that ended up just being one-offs. David Newman\u2019s The Phantom <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (also from LLL) was the best thing about this terrible attempt to ride the comic book hero wave in the late 80s \/ early 90s, whereas James Horner\u2019s Krull <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (LLL) spread over 2 CDs has aged better than expected; the orchestrations and writing are sharp, but there are bits & pieces of prior \/ later scores which will reinforce the stance of his critics\u2019 that he\u2019s been riffing off 3 original works for a long while.<\/p>\n

The last score is Hans Zimmer\u2019s Black Rain <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>],aka the dumb hero film because it codifies all the stupidities inherent to the arrogant action films of the late 80s \/ early 90s which almost 2 decades later, kind of make them fun, given their inherent fromage factor. Also expanded by LLL, the 2-disc edition features what became the standard in action scoring, and it\u2019s filled with bombastic synths & percussions in the best possible way.<\/p>\n

Coming shortly: a review of Fritz Lang\u2019s so-called Indian epics, recently screened at the TIFF Bell Lightbox (real prints!), more soundtrack reviews, a podcast, and smutty films.<\/p>\n

Also note: This Tuesday, the Lightbox will feature are rare screening of Puppet on a Chain<\/a><\/strong> (1971) as part of their all-things spyish screenings, interpolated into their 007 retrospective. Based on the novel by Alistair MacLean. Dutch locations. Hideous life-size dolls. Music by Piero Piccioni. Hopefully a real print. Why not?<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com <\/strong>( Main Site<\/a> \/ Mobile Site<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CD reviews of Thomas Newman’s Skyfall (Sony), plus from La-La Land we have Hans Zimmer’s Black Rain (1989), James Horner’s Krull, David Newman’s The Phantom (1996), and John Ottman’s X2: X-Men United.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":[1],"tags":[45,1641,1648,1649,1650],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1vm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5788"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}