Happy Feet score
© N/A
Annual Recap: Best Film Score Licks of 2006
By: Randall LarsonDate: Thursday, January 04, 2007
2006 ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK RECAP
By far the best soundtrack release of 2007 was certainly the majestic, 3-CD release of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: The Complete Recording – but that’s a revived archival score, and we’ll look at those closely in two weeks. While 2006’s most significant soundtrack releases were among the revived, restored, and resurrected category, the year also produced some fine new scores, and that’s what we’ll be taking a look at this week. Unranked this time, mainly due to the number of notable scores that piqued my interest, these are my considered favorites for best soundtracks of scores written for films released during 2006 – two baker’s dozens that are worth your attention for reasons I’ll briefly illuminate below. The envelope, please:
The Da Vinci Code/Hans Zimmer (Decca/Universal)
Hans Zimmer’s score to Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code is subtle somber, affecting, and sobering. The music is beautifully arcane and tragically sumptuous. It’s an attractive and very varied score, reverent in its tonality but darkly cynical at the same time. Dominated with strings, playing in massive surges and thick, deliberately slow timings, the score is a severely expressive one, brooding with solemnity and then suddenly rising with a tonal ferocity of massed, high-end violins in some barely restrained passion. This is not a thematic score but a beautifully textural one, with both an orchestral and choral veneer. Some motifs seem to recur, but it’s a very subtle recurrence. The semblance in many tracks is much more that of a concert chorale piece with accompanying orchestra. Much of the score, in fact, takes on a shadowy resemblance to sacred music, but only in suggestion, never in obviousness. Zimmer alludes to the story’s religious implications through musical style and texture, but never coming out and directly acknowledging them.
The Promise [Wu Ji]/Klaus Badelt (Superb Records)
Klaus Badelt’s score for this picturesque and opulent Hong Kong martial-arts fantasy is a sumptuously orchestral and intensely emotive one. The score is very much based on a series of interrelated leitmotifs, which are introduced, one at a time, in the CD’s first six tracks. Because the characters are so interlaced with their mythic destiny, there is a similarity in the way their themes culminate. Badelt’s music is heartfelt and persuasive, integrating each of the motifs into a score that is beautifully textured, captivating in its intensity, and thrilling in its fluidly emotive musical dynamic.
Eragon/Patrick Doyle (RCA)
Patrick Doyle has composed a graceful and beautifully-postured symphonic score for Eragon which captures both the elegance of the film’s direction and that of its flying reptiles, as well as the inner heart of its characters. Eragon is the kind of lavish, beautifully bombastic epic-heroic-adventure-fantasy score that is vast fun to listen to. While it’s thematically and organizationally simplistic, it works wonders in captivating the listener with the right kinds of musical colors and emotions. It embodies a powerful musical dynamic that is as pleasingly charismatic and as alluring as the dragons of Eragon themselves.
Happy Feet/ John Powell (Warner Sunset/Atlantic)
This is an astonishing score. Apart from a single, simple melodic phrase associated with the sense of family that runs throughout the storyline, John Powell’s music for Happy Feet is continually changing. And most tracks run into the next one with little break in between, intensifying the schizophrenia of the score, which exists on multiple levels and serves to drive the music into fascinating extensions and progressive stylisms. Almost every cue changes shape and pattern at least once; many shift in shape and mass and density and texture multiple times – but that is entirely the score’s charm. The music moves freely from farcical interpretation into jaunty musical scherzo into emotive poignancy and back again. Instrumentally, the score ranges from surging symphonics to delicately strummed mandolin to deep-throated electric guitar, and an array of choirs and vocal textures, frequently bridged by some stunningly persuasive dramatic orchestral air or marvelous melodic upsurge. Released far too late and obscured by the more-commercially driven song CD, John Powell’s score soundtrack is a treasure and a delight.
Superman Returns/John Ottman (Rhino)
Just as the film is a spiritual incarnation of Richard Donner’s mythic 1978 Superman, so John Williams’ stalwart, swashbuckling music for that film is vividly recaptured by John Ottman in his splendidly rousing overture for Superman Returns. Ottman has really outdone himself and has proven himself more than worthy to wear Williams’ Superman cape – Superman Returns is an excellent score every bit as exciting as the Williams original. Ottman recognizes the musical roots of Superman are found in Williams’ seminal conceptualizations of 1978, and allows them to form the foundation of what he is doing. But he has also brought his own sensibility to the Man of Steel as well, mainly through the use of a very elegant melody with a choir-heavy texture that elevates the story and its concept far above even Superman’s cruising altitude. Ottman invests the score with a near-spiritual sensibility, opening up the character and his mythology with a haunting melody that carries with it a tremendous passion and honor; it is at once captivating, emotive, and humbling.
Casino Royale/David Arnold (Sony)
David Arnold’s fourth time behind the baton on a James Bond score is another masterful romantic action adventure mixing the distinguishing flavors of John Barry’s traditional 007 sound with the modern textures and vitality of David Arnold’s new-millennium take on James Bond. Percussion and brasses pound and wail and crash and drive the action cues into a frenzied dissonance; the score congeals on those action riffs and get underway from there, maintaining its energetic ferocity while accommodating plenty of time for the music’s more romantic and melodically heroic moments to shine through. Arnold lets the more romantic flavorings of his orchestra resound and harmonize very nicely, and sets the stage for the album’s showpiece, the nearly 12-minute “Miami International,” where he magnificently lets loose with a splendid mixture of action and the romantic/heroic main theme. Arnold’s interpolation of Chris Cornell’s theme song is effective and as melodically-potent as that of Barry’s frequent use of “We Have All the Time in the World” in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or “All Time High” in Octopussy. But Casino Royale is pure David Arnold, containing none of the famous John Barry themes until it’s concluding track, wherein Arnold ends his score with an affectionate and full-blown version of the James Bond Theme, closing the movie in splendidly traditional fashion.
Apocalypto/James Horner (Hollywood Records)
James Horner’s music for Mel Gibson’s adventure drama about the decline of the Mayan Empire is compellingly environmental and atmospheric, avoiding the kind of large, bombastic and heroic flavored scores that the composer was once associated with. The music is ambient and textural, a sound design and tone poem for the native inhabitants of Latin America prior to the invasion of Columbus. By eschewing dramatic music in favor of crafting an underlying musical milieu associated with the Mayan civilization as depicted in the film, Horner has composed an appropriate sonic atmosphere for the film, a brilliant component that fits the film perfectly without any sense of showing off. It’s the right music for the film and helps establish what in the film is a living, breathing, and changing civilization rooted in its own history and environment. In a way, Horner’s Apocalypto is a refreshing change from the expected kind of contemporary Hollywood film scoring – an unusual and very potent and even haunting approach. Rather than grafting sincere yet artificial feelings onto the film via the usual breed of orchestral melodies and motifs, no matter how effective and memorable that approach has been over the 75 years, Horner’s approach ingrains the film and its texture with a species of environmental musical tonality that transforms Apocalypto into a new and far more powerful lifeforce.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest/Hans Zimmer (Disney)
The second Pirates score, composed by Hans Zimmer, who produced his protégé Klaus Badelt’s masterful score for the original Pirates, is very much in the vein of Badelt’s original, especially in its use of strident, fast, and powerfully-stroked violin notes, but the actual rhythmic melody of the Black Pearl score only shows up in a couple of places on the album. More often, Zimmer adopts the pulsating rhythmic essence of the original theme and makes more of a non-melodic, rhythmic riff out of it. Zimmer’s Jack Sparrow theme initially suggests the playful cynicism of the pirate Captain, before advancing into the power powerful measures that reflect his swashbuckling daring-do. Zimmer’s theme for the Kraken represents the film’s many monstrous threats, played on an organ which provides a fresh and unusual texture amid the track’s heavy-laden electric guitar, synth-percussion, and orchestra. The motif for squidbearded Davy Jones reprises a similar tonality in another new theme, introduced by music box and then taken by orchestra, given a slow and quite ominous cadence. The score is built around these themes, deriving a compellingly rhythmic pace in its musical mix of humor and adventure.
Poseidon/Klaus Badelt (A&M Records)
At the risk of overpopulating this list with members of Zimmer’s Media Ventures outlet, I still feel that Klaus Badelt’s splendid score for this remake of Irwin Allen’s Poseidon Adventure is a grand and eloquently romantic score, definitely among my 2006 faves. His Main Theme undulates gracefully and purposefully, suggestive of the massive ocean liner gliding across the majestic sea, strident beats of multiple percussion accentuating the French horns, strings, and hints of choir. It’s a beautiful and compelling melody, a bit reminiscent of the style of Harald Kloser’s The Day After Tomorrow in that it also retains a melancholy and tragic air about it. Badelt supports the film’s high-end spectacle and hyper-activity while maintaining a solid tonality of melody and thematic depth.
X-Men: The Last Stand/John Powell (Varese Sarabande)
John Powell has composed a magnificent, melodic, and powerfully reverent score for the third and final (?) film in the X-trilogy. The music has plenty of furious action moments, but arcing above them is a compelling melodic motif that elevates the characters and their events into an epic scale. Performed by full orchestra with choir, Powell’s motif takes on a larger-than-life heroism and elevates the titular mutants into legendary mythic status. His astonishing orchestral action material embodies a splendid cohesion of powerful orchestral patterns, flailing percussion, raging female choir, shrieking winds, and muscular violin measures. At the same time Powell keeps the fury of the orchestra and choir well heeled, his melodic theme making frequent appearances to humanize the raging musical chaos, culminating in a splendid triumphant ascension for full orchestra an chorus. Powell’s work is as captivatingly aggressive and as sonically persuasive as either of its antecedents; as a more reflective and introspective composition, The Last Stand is a terrifically power and impressive score, truly epic in scope while also frequently tender and subdued.
Lady in the Water Soundtrack © Warner Bros.
James Newton Howard has provided intrinsically atmospheric and moody underscores to all of M. Night Shyamalan’s films, from The Sixth Sense in 1999 through 2004’s The Village. His latest collaboration with the noted director affords a rich and moody score, crafting slowly undulating layers of fluidity that shift restlessly across Howard’s orchestral palette. It full of brooding harmonies and softly drifting tonalities, often very Herrmannesque, other times lilting in Howard’s own sense of melodic quietude. Strings and piano abound. For the most part, the score is moody and melancholic, building its layers of phrasing and melodic tonality slowly, crafting brief tunes that are eloquent and even sublime, but initially remain very restrained and confined, never opening into complete melodic phrasing.
Flyboys/Trevor Rabin (Varese Sarabande)
Rabin’s reverential orchestral score for this tribute to World War I flying aces is richly melodic and full of emotion. While the film is about the pilots of the French Lafayette Escadrille, most of them were American, and so the score is rooted in Americana textures and sensibilities even as it evokes the dark realities of war and of loss. It’s not a flag-waving score, although it resonates with heroic melodies; but the music recognizes the harsher realities of battle in its darker tonalities just as it applauds the heroic spirit that rises above (or perhaps even from) them. Rabin has successfully migrated from his role as the guitarist for the prog rock band Yes into a capable and significant composer for symphonic film music, with Flyboys being his triumph for the year 2006. While it’s a simplistic approach in musical terms, Rabin’s has crafted a masterful score that is affectingly eloquent and rich in human feeling.
Pan’s Labyrinth/Javier Navarrete (Milan)
Spanish composer Javier Navarrete has provided a fragile and mesmerizingly fragrant score for Guillermo Del Toro haunting fantasy. Exuding a world of fairies, fauns and magic, Pan’s Labyrinth is a sobering and mature fantasy drama, delineating the fantasy world created by a young girl eager to escape fascism in 1944 Spain. Navarrete’s score hints at the occasional triumphant and heroic melodies of fairyland, but acknowledges the intrusion of reality throughout its scope and sensibility. Albeit based on a lullaby motif, the music is at turns vibrantly melodic and lovely, and at others it begrudgingly turns melancholy and futile, as if pausing to reacquaint itself with the unhappy realities of reality. It’s therefore a fairy tale score carrying the omnipresent darkness of the street, a schizophrenic score that delights in pretty music for a world that if only it could be, existing under the melancholic reign of the sturdier semblance of what is.
The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift/Brian Tyler (Varese Sarabande)
Brian Tyler’s music for the third Fast and The Furious variation on a cinematic theme runs far ahead of what you might expect from the typical urban street drama. The music is a suitably raucous and rhythmically progressive, an urban ceremony of synths, symphs, electric guitar, hip-hope vibes, and metallic riffing that carves out an effectively in-your-face ambiance for this streetwise tale of the need for speed. Balanced with a number of provocative guitar-based instrumentals that provide a subtler undercurrent of reflective emotionality for the film’s character interactions, Tyler’s score drifts well between the film’s moments of character, story, and sheer adrenalin-rushing action, giving Tokyo Drift as much of an edge as a push. The soundtrack CD concludes with a 7-minute symphonic variation, wherein Tyler dispenses with the guitars and hip-hop drums and produces the same ferocious drive and speed purely with the orchestra. It’s an amazing track – one of Tyler’s best – rich in nuance, texture changes, and propulsion that, even in the midst of its roaring drive, it provides a heroic, well-measured theme for heroism that is effectively stated.
Frostbite/Anthony Lledo (MovieScore Media)
Danish composer Anthony Lledo has provided a very attractive, straightforward, and Gothically elegant score for this award-winning Swedish vampire comedy. The score is filled with exciting action music, dark suspense music and rich thematic material; a rich orchestral tapestry very much in the vein of the classic horror scores of Universal and Hammer. Gothic melodies, compelling arpeggios, and surging symphonic attacks abound, crafted in an elegant grace. Faint female voicings add a luminous glow to the dark musical sentiments. Lledo’s score proceeds very nicely along the ground trodden by Hammer’s James Bernard, providing a score that swells with rhythm and melody, yet exudes a personification of power and diabolical elegance all its own. Most tracks run into one another making for one large continuous symphonic listening experience – a terrific, extremely muscular horror score tinged with romantic elements that makes for a rousing and compelling listen.
The Fountain/Clint Mansell (Nonesuch)
Mansell’s minimalist score for Darren Aronofsky’s compelling metaphysical fantasy is an affecting score, nicely performed by the Kronos Quartet (a string quartet based in San Francisco) and the Scottish “post-rock” band Mogwai, the music is highly intimate, layered in quiet patterns and exuding resonances. Compelling rhythms and melodic fragrances lay down a continual sonic vibe that runs softly and slowly beneath the film’s activity, accentuating environment and linking Aronofsky’s multiple time frames and character stories with a consistent and omnipresent musical tonality. It’s both a relaxing and stimulating sonic environment, vaporous in its melodies and harmonically elegant in its texture and style.
The Grudge 2/Christopher Young (Varese Sarabande)
Chris Young’s score for Takashi Shimizu sequel to his Americanized remake of his 2003 Japanese horror hit (which itself was a remake of his own original 2000 video version of the same story – follow?), the American version of The Grudge 2 is a heavily string-laden score and another in a long line of beautifully articulate and atmospherically-frightening horror scores. Contrasting absorbing themes for strings, piano, and flutes with darker and moodier low strings and Japanese flutes and drums, embellished by a men’s choir, the music takes on a richer sonic environment than Young’s first Grudge score while exuding a similar apprehensive ambiance. Its
The Wicker Man/Angelo Badalamenti (Silva Screen)
Angelo Badalamenti has always had a remarkable flair for melodic fluidity, even in the midst of very diverse and unusual scores. In the new remake of The Wicker Man, the composer beautifully captures the story’s tragic emotional resonance in a lyrically melodic score that is grounded in melancholy and sorrow, even in the midst of its very pretty main melody, performed by voice and orchestra. Badalamenti’s approach is far less environmental that Paul Giovanni’s folk-based score for the original film, but it is also much more integrated with the emotional psychologies of the film. He crafts a trio of richly melodic themes which work together to identify characters, setting, and the unusual seductivity of the island’s women. The score is at once alluring, deceptive, and inevitably tragic, wonderfully capturing those very essences of Summerisle in a most provocative and thoughtful manner.
A Scanner Darkly/Graham Reynolds (Lakeshore)
Graham Reynolds’ eerie score for Richard Linklater’s “visually innovative” adaptation of the classic Philip K. Dick novel matches the director’s technique of interpolating live-action with animated rotoscoping with a fascinating musical interpretation of the film’s visual dynamic. What the score does not provide in terms of thematic unity, accessible melody, and dramatic development it more than makes up for in the simple interestingness of its style and progressive musical behavior. Reynolds grabs for literally every musical evocation, style, semblance, and idiom within arms reach (and Reynolds apparently has very long arms) and concocts a compelling mixture that dazzles the ears with its sonic extremism while also intriguing the mind with its constantly shifting variations, textures, and colorations. On the soundtrack CD, the cues tend to run into one another, making for a very interesting listening experience akin to a long progressive modern symphony freely embracing territories of rock, chamber music, electronica, jazz-noir, and much more.
Freedomland/James Newton Howard (Varese Sarabande)
James Newton Howard’s score for Joe Roth’s urban action thriller, Freedomland. The film explores inner city racism as it describes the search for a white woman’s son inadvertently kidnapped in a carjacking. Unlike Howard’s more familiar symphonic/melodic compositional style, Freedomland is a gritty, percussive, almost electronica composition. The music evokes a kind of hip-hop noir, effectively echoing the stark, hopeless austerity of the inner city and the malignant racism that the film dwells on there. The score’s primary attribute is one of bleak pessimism, associating itself with the external ambiances that exists within the films subtexts of racism and poverty and attitudes. It’s only when Roth’s storyline pulls back the layers of prejudice and presumption that we begin to get a clearer picture of what the movie – and its subtexts – are all about, and it’s here that Howard’s score moves into more motivic and heartfelt territory, and we see the human element existing within Roth’s gritty environment. The score ultimately resolves itself with a gentle, homespun melody for piano over gradually increasing strings, completely eclipsing the sonic environment of the inner city with a resonant tonality for the human spirit; breaking free from the trappings of milieu or gender or race and driving to the heart of what it is to be human.
World Trade Center/Craig Armstrong (Sony Classical)
Craig Armstrong’s score for Oliver Stone’s magnificent and articulate tribute to two police officers who survived being buried beneath the Twin Towers on September 11th is understated and eloquent, finding its center in the heart and spirit of the two men whose static sojourn beneath concrete, rock, and steel, whose story is both a microcosm of many and a singularly poignant human drama. The film is so well-told and rich in multiple layers of emotion, made all the stronger due to the recent relevancy of the film’s central event (forgotten as it seems to have been in favour of political stances of one kind or another), and the music supports that in a quiet and inconspicuous manner, built around the personal intimacy of a solo piano theme and the mournful cry of a resonant cello solo, the two motifs united by ethereal elegies of orchestra and synths. It’s a quiet score but as such it cries with passion and human spirit.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning/Steve Jablonsky (Varese Sarabande)
Steve Jablonsky reprises the dark ambiances he created for the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with an equally brooding and disconsolate score for The Beginning. He plays the horror card with devastating composure, creating a transfixing aural ambiance that keeps the listener agitated and apprehensive from start to finish. The score powers straight ahead with a sonic horror derived from a hybrid combination of sounds and textures, from raging, pulse-endangering electronic fusions to drifting strains of violins and sinewy strands of synth tonalities that tend to signify hopeless solitude in the midst of an inescapable dread. A slight theme crops up from time to time, associated with the character of Chrissie, which is the score’s sole melodic element, used to bolster the character’s unpromising predicament and, as things progress, encapsulate her courage and fortitude as she stands up against the young man with the chainsaw. It’s a very potent score, and a great example of how music and texture can generate a very powerful mood all on its own.
Stay Alive/John Frizzell (Nicabella)
John Frizzell’s excellent score for William Brent Ball’s eerie thriller about a group of teens who stumble upon a new video game called Stay Alive and are soon being murdered in the same method as the character they played in the game is a terrific hybrid of electronic and orchestral recordings. Frizzell’s score is both chilling and character-driven, and a great example of a predominantly ambient, dissonant horror score that never goes over the line into unlistenability when separated from its film on CD. Frizzell maintains a likable balance between creepy atmospheres and emotional tonality which serves both the film and its soundtrack well.
Abominable/Lalo Schifrin (Aleph)
Veteran maestro Lalo Schifrin’s first new feature film score in two years, written for his son Ryan’s directorial debut, is a potent and scary mix of orchestral and electronic chills and one of the most pervasive horror scores in years. Like the film – one of the most truly frightening horror films in recent years, Schifrin’s music is a richly frightening score, resplendent in orchestral darkness. Sinewy strings and hardened, ivory-like percussion raps portray a consistent tonality of creepiness, while ferocious atonal layers of piano and percussion, beaten, scraped, and rustled, create an ominously overpowering mood of dread. This is not a happy score by any means, but its proclivity to increase the film’s visual scares with an aural soundscape of persuasive pulse-poundingness is uniquely memorable. But it’s not all chills. After a while, Schifrin switches slightly from monster music to mission music – with an aggressive, percussive riffing that would not have been out of place in an episode of his old Mission: Impossible series, punctuated by a strident trumpet melody. It’s an effective about-face as the former victims attempt to gain control of the situation and face the monster head on. Above all, it’s an absolutely splendid score
Ice Age 2: Meltdown/John Powell (Varese Sarabande)
Animated films continue to generate memorable musical thrills, and John Powell’s visit to Ice Age 2: Meltdown, is a musical riot, a manic assortment of cartoonlike musical images that, rather than developing the themes and motifs created by David Newman in the first film, create an entirely new musical setting for the story, albeit along somewhat similar lines to Newman’s original Ice Age. The score follows the storyline’s manic action and comedic moments quite well; as cartoonmusic it’s overly busy and rages stylistically from moment to moment, but its also hugely enjoyable to see where Powell takes his orchestra; the music also has a great deal of heart to go with its antic behavior; witness the brilliant brass crescendo that emerges midway through “The Water Recedes” for an excellent example of the expressiveness that Powell has brought to these animated antics.
Destroy All Humans! 2/Garry Schyman (Lakeshore)
Garry Schyman’s score for the 2005 THQ alien invasion videogame Destroy All Humans! was a frenzied, lovingly retro science fiction horror score written in the style of 1950’s sci-fi movies, using a Theremin as the lead instrument. Scoring the sequel videogame, Destroy All Humans 2, Schyman moved ahead a decade and has drawn from the classic sci-fi/horror scores of the 1960s for his highly-emulative yet beautifully effective gamescore. The result is an amazingly crafted and resoundingly effective score that mimics, pays tribute to, and re-energizes the inventive clarity of 1960s horror scoring. There’s still plenty of the 1950s style that defined the first DAH gamescore, but DAH2 is a little more progressive in its musical palette. Schyman proves once again to be extremely capable at creating terrific science fiction action scoring that is both nostalgic in its style and tonality, and wickedly effective in building a mood that really makes you want to blast a bunch of aliens.
NOTABLE SONG SOUNDTRACKS
By their structure and scope, songs usually don’t have the dramatic progression to provide the kind of emotional resonance and affecting nuances needed of film scores. This hasn’t kept producers from immersing their films in all manner of songs, for commercial, artistic, or other reasons. Songs are usually dismissive from a film musical standpoint, for they usually provide setting, environmental, or time period associations to their films, although they do have the capabilities to punch up a modern action sequence built around consistent rhythms and vocal tonalities. Few song soundtracks are memorable to me for their cinematic effectiveness or attractiveness; they seem to serve better as a compilation of usually unrelated songs and types of music. A couple exceptions that seemed to especially congeal with the sonic harmony and resonance of their films, and worked well for me as song-based underscores:
Feast/Superb Records
The actual film score John Gulager’s lavishly brutal and wonderfully energetic Feast, the work of composer Stephen Edwards and scoring mixer Tom Erba, doesn’t appear to be on the release agenda, but Superb’s song soundtrack is actually a very good collection of rock and roll. With the songs being as much a potent part of the film’s sonic texture as they were, Superb’s release provided as much of the film’s accompaniment as we’re likely to get. The songs range from heavy metal (the stimulating rhythmic fracas of “House of Sleep” by Amorphis) and screaming alt/hard rock (Skid Roy’s “New Generation,” The Smashup’s “Never Gonna Kill Us”) to driving pop-rock (“Jet Black Heart” from Britt Black), soft pop (“Currently” by Keaton Simons), and progressive country-rock (“Don’t Come Back” from Quincy, and Rusty Truck’s “Candy”), most of which has been culled from previously released albums. It’s all a pretty good compilation of compelling tunes and effective songsmithing.
Snakes On A Plane/New Line Records
Guilty pleasure: probably the most fun I had at a film all year. For its humor and sheer boldness of concept, SoaP was this year’s Kill Bill for me – mesmerizingly fun, energetic, excitement. While unfortunately only one track of Trevor Rabin’s orchestral score was preserved on the soundtrack album (else it would surely have found its place in the score CDs applauded above), it’s a nice theme, committed and resolute in its persuasion, associated of course with the self-assurance of the Samuel L. Jackson character. The songs are quite good as well, from the catchy and determined theme song by Cobra Starship (a new band combining members from The Academy Is and Gym Class Heroes and the leggy blonde diva from The Sounds), written and performed especially for the film (the music video, included on the SoaP dvd, is terrific), to an attractive compilation of tunes from various mostly alternative rock bands, including all three previously-mentioned bands, Jack’s Mannequin, Coheed and Cambria, Panic! At The Disco, Fall out Boy, and others – much of which appears by way of remixes. It’s a very pleasing assemblage of contemporary tunes which worked well in snips and snatches in the film while Rabin’s true underscore built up the emotional queasiness and eventual triumph.
Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.arksquare.com/index_main
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
www.moviemusic.com
