Apocalypto Soundtrack
© Hollywood Records

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Apocalypto Now

THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATIONS 

James Horner’s music for the new Mel Gibson film, Apocalypto, an 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.  Released this week by Hollywood Records, the music to Apocalypto 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.  On CD is may be less enduring but it is nonetheless powerful in creating a unique and quite fascinating musical terrain.  Enhanced with vocal solos by noted Pakistani Qawwali singer Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – an unusual but very effective choice, given the film’s setting, Horner’s music is an outstanding achievement of music effectively integrated into the fabric of a film’s aesthetic as well as its subtext.  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. Have a listen to the score on CD through headphones, in the dark, and be truly transported.

www.hollywoodrecords.com 
 

FILM MUSIC NEWS 

Composer-conductor Ennio Morricone, who has composed more than 300 motion picture scores over a 45-year career, has been voted an Honorary Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Award, an Oscar® statuette, will be given to Morricone at the 79th Academy Awards® presentation on February 25, 2007, “for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.” Morricone has earned five Academy Award nominations for original score — for Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Malèna (2000) — but has not previously received an Oscar. “The board was responding not just to the remarkable number of scores that Mr. Morricone has produced,” said Academy President Sid Ganis, “but to the fact that so many of them are beloved and popular masterpieces.” Morricone’s current project, Leningrad, a historical epic that depicts the siege of Leningrad by the German army during World War II, for Italian director Guiseppe Tornatore (Morricone’s director on Cinema Paradiso, Malèna , La Sconosciuta, and others) has been announced for a 2008 release. 

The Broadcast Film Critics Association has announced their nominations for their 2006 awards. In the category ”Best Composer”, the following were nominated: Philip Glass for The Illusionist, Clint Mansell for The Fountain, Thomas Newman for The Good German, Gustavo Santaolalla for Babel, Howard Shore for The Departed, and Hans Zimmer for The Da Vinci Code. The association includes over 192 television, radio and on-line movie critics from the U.S. and Canada.

-via filmmusicradio.com 

As we reported on Monday, Hans Zimmer and John Williams were nominated to two Grammy Awards each in the ”Best Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.” Zimmer was nominated for The Da Vinci Code (Decca) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Walt Disney), while Williams was nominated for Memoirs of a Geisha (Sony Classical) and Munich (Decca). In addition to these, Harry Gregson-Williams was nominated for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Walt Disney). John Williams was also nominated twice in the Best Instrumental Composition category, for “A Prayer for Peace” from Munich and for “Sayuri’s Theme and End Credits” from Memoirs of a Geisha. In this category, Patrick Williams was nominated for “A Concerto in Swing” from the CD Evolution. Also, Randy Newman was nominated for the “Best Song written for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media” Grammy for “Our Town” from Cars.

- via filmmusicradio.com 

And, in still more movie award news, French composer Alexandre Desplat and American minimalist icon Philip Glass won the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Awards for Best Original Score 2006. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced that Desplat won the award for his scores to The Painted Veil and The Queen, while the New York Film Critics Circle gave their award to Glass score to The Illusionist.

- via filmmusicradio.com 

frostbite

©

This is MovieScore Media's fifteenth release and its second from a Swedish film, the previous one being the Academy Award-nominated Evil. Frostbite is an exciting horror comedy that has impressed audiences all around the world. It recently won several awards at the biggest horror film festival in the USA, the Screamfest in Los Angeles. Among the honors were the “Best Score” award which went to Lledo, whose dark and classical score pays a wonderful homage to the genre, but is also a very personal work, showcasing a mature orchestral writing style and a knack for strong themes. The gothic music was recorded in Bratislava, Slovakia, conducted by industry veteran Allan Wilson. Lledo visited the vampire genre previously when he wrote the music for the play Vampiresat the age of 23. Among his other credits are the award winning documentary With a Right to Kill. Frostbite is his first major feature film score and one of the most impressive debuts in recent years.  The Frostbite soundtrack is available to purchase and download from Apple's iTunes store on December 12, 2006, and will be available shortly from MovieScore Media's online shop in 320kbit mp3 format: www.moviescoremedia.com 

Just when you thought you had all The Man From U.N.C.L.E. music there was, thanks to FSM’s 3-volume set of original episode and main title variation soundtracks, FSM comes and discovers still more soundtrack music, this time from the feature films adapted from the popular show (1964-1968).  The series was so successful that M-G-M created no less than eight feature films, primarily adapted from the series' two-part episodes. These films were by and large destined for the international audience, and to this day many fans throughout the globe know U.N.C.L.E. not by the television episodes, but the feature-film adaptations. For this reason, this fourth volume of Man From U.N.C.L.E. music from FSM is a definitive collection of the feature-film soundtracks, intended to please the fan who discovered U.N.C.L.E. via the big screen, as well as anyone interested in yet more unreleased music from the franchise. The films themselves ran the gamut from having mostly original scores (such as Gerald Fried's stereo music recorded for One of Our Spies Is Missing and The Karate Killers); to featuring new music written by the same composer as the related TV episode (such as Morton Stevens's music for The Spy With My Face); to mostly reusing the TV episode scores, but often with a newly recorded main and end title. All eight feature films are represented on FSM’s new CD, with the most space devoted to the ones with original music. While some cues were previously included on the earlier volumes, most have never before been released, and all of the selections are programmed to reflect their feature-film incarnations, rather than the television sources. As always with FSM's U.N.C.L.E. releases, the album has been produced and annotated by renowned U.N.C.L.E. music authority Jon Burlingame, whose well-researched liner notes meticulously chronicle the origins of each score and cue.

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/ 

The Spy With My Face

© FSM

Perseverance Records will devote a part of their 2007 release schedule to composer Jim Manzie, a horror specialist who has been scoring films since the late 1980s. He scored films such as Krocodylus, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings and Night of the Demons 2. Coming out first is his score for Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 from 1990. Later, two CDs entitled The Film Music of Jim Manzie, presenting music from around 20 films, will come out. Perseverance will also release Charles Bernstein’s orchestral music from Deadly Friend, the 1986 horror flick that had an electronic score soundtrack issued from Varèse Sarabande at the time of the film’s release. This CD, which is coming out in March, also features a 35-minute interview with Charles Bernstein and the film’s director, Wes Craven. All the four CDs are limited to 500 copies each.  –via filmmusicradio.com

www.perseverancerecords.com 

Tyler Bates adds yet another high profile horror film to his filmography: the remake of George A Romero’s 1985 classic Day of the Dead, directed by Steve Miner. The new version will be released next year, produced by Millennium Films. Tyler Bates scored the previous Romero remake, Dawn of the Dead, two years ago and has since then written the music for genre films such as See No Evil, Slither, and The Devil’s Rejects. Apart from Day of the Dead, he will also score the new Halloween film, directed by Rob Zombie, and Resident Evil: Extinction. He recently completed work on 300, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and also has the score for Rob Zombie’s The Haunted World of El Superbeasto coming up. (See Mania’s interview with Bates about these new scores in our Nov 2^nd Soundtrax column.)

-via filmmusicradio.com 

Intrada has released a limited edition soundtrack from Blizzard – LeVar Burton’s 2003 Christmas fantasy. Composer Mark McKenzie pulls out the stops and delivers a sledfull of spectacular and heartfelt original music for large orchestra, chorus. The score features McKenzie’s characteristic array of brilliant fanfares, soaring flight music and winter fantasia, balanced by gentle themes and warm harmonies. McKenzie creates symphonic music that is both winningly festive andmovingly beautiful. (BTW: McKenzie’s "Blizzard Suite" enjoyed world-wide exposure when used for montage during 75th Annual Academy Awards presentation). This special Signature Edition release is limited to 1000 copies. www.intrada.com 

James Newton Howard’s score for the new action thriller, Blood Diamond, will be released by Varese Sarabande on December 19^th.  Alan Silvestri’s score to Night at the Museum and Christophe Beck’s We Are Marshall will be released the same day. Varese’s release of Cliff Eidelman’s jazz-infused score for Open Window, Mia Goldman's moving drama about the effect an act of violence has upon a young couple’s life and romance, is available this far only as an i-tunes exclusive download.

www.varesesarabande.com 

Prometheus will shortly release a significantly expanded CD of Basil Poledouris' Quigley Down Under and a slightly expanded CD of Jerry Goldsmith's King Solomon's Mines, as well as a remastered version of the Georges Delerue/Oliver Stone CD which paired the score to Salvador with the mostly-unused score for Platoon.

http://www.soundtrackmag.com/

Beginning on December 16th, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City will present Franz Waxman: Music for the Cinema, a 21-film screening series which will include such classics as The Bride of Frankenstein, Rebecca, Sunset Blvd. and Peyton Place, as well as some of his early European films and other presentations in his honor. For more information, go to their web site: www.moma.org/exhibitions/film_media/2006/Franz_Waxman.html

- via filmscoremonthly.com 

Steve Jablonsky continues to be the composer of choice for Hollywood remakes, following the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and The Amityville Horror, not to mention The Island. Jablonsky’s latest score is The Hitcher, composed for a new version of the 1986 Rutger Hauer thriller, featuring Sean Bean as the psychotic killer. Dave Meyers directs the film which will premiere on January 19. Jablonsky also has the music for Transformers, reuniting with director Michael Bay, on his schedule and he also recently scored fantasy adventure D-War for South Korean director Hyung-rae Shim.

- via filmmusicradio.com 
 
 

Recommended Soundtrack sources:

www.buysoundtrax.com

www.intrada.com

www.screenarchives.com

www.footlight.com

www.arksquare.com/index_main.html (Japan)

www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)

www.moviegrooves.com