Howard Shore scores again with THE TWO TOWERS, his continuation of the musical mythology begun in the Oscar winning FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.
© 2002 Reprise
Best Soundtracks of 2002 Part One
By: Randall D. LarsonDate: Wednesday, January 29, 2003
We begin our two-part subjective overview of last year's science fiction, fantasy, and horror soundtracks with my choices for 2002's best new soundtracks my top 16 favorites, anyhow. These are the ones I felt made the most rewarding soundtrack albums and generated frequent listening on my CD player. Next week we'll give credit to the best archival restorations and film music compilations.
The New Scores
#16: CQ
Music by The SPIDER-MAN soundtrack © 2002 Columbia/Sony Music
emperorNorton EMN 7053-2
In terms of pure 1960s nostalgia, I have to include the score by the French group Mellow for Roman Coppola's charming homage to such lovably quirky European '60s sci-fi/spy films as BARBARELLA and DANGER DIABOLIK. The music is a pleasing light pop score laced with cool '60s overtones. CQ is as much an enjoyable album as it is a perfect underpinning to the film's contemporary and "futuristic" settings. There's even a track of electronic musical effects using pure '60s technology. And theremins!
Music by Brian Tyler's FRAILTY - a splendidly atmospheric and broodingly spooky score. © 2002 OCF Entertainment
Varese Sarabande 302 066 368 2
Debney's amalgamation of rock and roll with symphonic heroics works as nicely on disc as it did playing sidekick to The Rock on the big screen. The pumped-up action music is nicely orchestrated and integrated into a symphonic sensibility, while chorus and ethnic-vocalisms and atmospheres provide a degree of power and evocative atmosphere. SCORPION KING is full-blooded and iron-hewed music, full of deep, groaning mysteriosos and brooding choral passages to its percussive, thwanging electric guitar.
#14: SAINT SINNER
Music by The HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS soundtrack © 2002 Atlantic
La-La Land LLLCD 1003
A large-scale orchestral and choral score accentuates Clive Barker's Sci-Fi Channel movie about demons, monks, and time travel. With elements of 19th Century church music contrasted with 20th Century modern classical scoring, Lennertz achieves a striking juxtaposition between traditional and inventive horror scoring, melodic material and huge, horrific crescendos. The darkly textured score is careful and calculating, brooding and bombastic, sinewy and suspenseful, with heavy tonalities, rhythms, and ominous motifs that solidify the weight of the story's own suppositions.
#13: DOG SOLDIERS
Music by Tokuma's Japanese issue of Hisaishi's SPIRITED AWAY score © Tokuma
First Night Records REELCD 104
Newcomer Mark Thomas' music for Neil Marshall's werewolf story is a dynamic orchestral score full of action and mysterioso. Eschewing the idea of scoring a horror film, Thomas instead composes a score that has a sense of brotherhood at its base and carries that sensibility into the battle and werewolf sequences. The result is a solid composition that treats its characters with dignity and honor, and treats its action sequences with a furious vitality that dances with the graceful agility and intensity of attacking, moonlit werewolves.
#12: FRAILTY
Music by John Debney's rousing rock-n-symph score CD eclipses the standard rock and roll soundtrack issued previously for THE SCORPION KING. © 2002 Varese Sarabande
OCF Entertainment OCF 004
Brian Tyler provided a genuinely frightening ambience for Bill Paxton's compelling American Gothic horror story, FRAILTY. Tyler's composition is predominantly orchestral and highly Herrmannesque in tonality, moody and evocative, and tremendously atmospheric. The score creeps about like moving shadows, seething with brooding textures and disturbing mysterioso. It's a first-rate psychological horror score. The music sustains an aural fluidity that flows through the soundtrack as the story unravels itself, adding a sense of intensity and weight to the film's intimate story.
Music by MINORITY REPORT, an effective action score from John Williams in the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS vein © 2002 Dreamworks
Varese Sarabande 302-066-380-2
John Ottman's wonderfully quirky, adventurous score nicely straddles the thin line between humor and horror. With a compelling main theme that exudes all the tongue-in-cheek charm of 1950s movie monsterdom, Ottman has crafted a spellbinding score that is as mysterious as it is exciting, and just as often intoxicating in its eccentric rhythms and textures. Ottman captures the film's sense of fun and humor while also supporting the obvious fact that these are vicious, Volkswagen-sized arachnids that are eating people in a most distressing manner.
#10: MINORITY REPORT
Music by John Ottman's quirky and creepy giant spider score EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS © 2002 Varese Sarabande
Dreamworks 0044-50385-2
In his score for Spielberg's dark-hewn MINORITY REPORT, Williams paints a bleak musical picture of a mechanistic, controlled future. Sustained chords and tonalities abound but Williams offsets the dark austerity with an enchanting melodic theme that lends a poignant, emotive charm to the more oppressive atmospheres that dominate. It's a powerful if understated work, compelling not so much in melody but in a developing musical design that spreads out across an unseen sonic network, eventually completing a pattern of fascinating texture, filling its own frequent dark spaces with ultimate beauty.
#9: RED DRAGON
Music by THE SUM OF ALL FEARS soundtrack © 2002 Elektra
Decca 289 473 248-2
RED DRAGON is a composition of moody chord progressions, shifting melodic fragments, and layered, undulating orchestral patterns. Taking a pair of musical patterns, Danny Elfman paints a musical psychological profile of the serial killer whose story is the core of the film, representing in the music both his relentless motivation and his childlike fragility. Elfman's music was intended primarily to decorate the dementia of the Dolarhyde character, but in its domineering heaviness it works equally well to represent the brooding, deviously shrewd machinations of Hannibal Lecter as well.
#8: SPIRITED AWAY
Music by Klaus Badelt's THE TIME MACHINE score © 2002 Varese Sarabande
Milan 73138-35999-2
Released in Japan in 2001 but issued last year in the U.S., Joe Hisaishi's latest score for anime director Hiyao Mayazaki is a magical orchestral work ranging from powerful orchestral surges to intimate motifs and jaunty-folk tunes. Prevailing Western musical styles occasionally take on Eastern characteristics that lend an intriguing texture and tonality to the work. But the overall sensation is one of sweeping orchestral melody, rich in passion and broad, eloquent musical statements.
#7: THE TIME MACHINE
Music by Howard Shore scores again with THE TWO TOWERS, his continuation of the musical mythology begun in the Oscar winning FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. © 2002 Reprise
Varese Sarabande Records 302 066 337 2
Badelt's first solo score is thoroughly likable, fluidly symphonic and lyrically melodic. His evocative main theme is full of romance and adventure, completely enchanting in its harmonic orchestration and melody. Set against this is a pair of motifs that represent the adversarial tribes of the future Earth. As he develops these interlacing motifs, Badelt captures a fine gift for broad lyricism and genuine poignancy, bringing back a beautifully passionate sense of melody into a field that in recent years has eschewed melody in exchange for rhythm in many ways.
#6: THE SUM OF ALL FEARS
Music by Mark Thomas's score for Neill Marshall's military werewolf movie, DOG SOLDIERS, released on CD by London's First Night Soundtracks. © 2002 First Night Soundtracks
Elektra 62786-2
While Jerry Goldsmith's STAR TREK: NEMESIS was effective enough accompaniment, its lack of a solid thematic grounding failed to sustain a lot of repeated CD listening. Not true for his massive score for Phil Alden Robinson's apocalyptic political fantasy, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, which is a massively powerful statement. The contrast between an ascending voice melody and slowly descending orchestral chords - light and dark, hope and dissolution - characterizes the score. Goldsmith contrasts the best and worst of humanity with powerful orchestral statements. The score is both devastatingly apocalyptic and poignantly intimate.
#5: SPIDER-MAN
Music by Christopher Lennertz' music for Clive Barker's SAINT SINNER is one of cable TV's biggest ever scores - expansive and expressive dark music © 2002 La-La Land Records
Columbia CK 86681
Elfman's web-swinging music, splendidly rhythmic and atmospheric, albeit melodically sparse, seethes with the power derived from its own metered cadences, substituting melody with rhythmic development. The music illustrates through layered tone progressions both Peter Parker's heroic personage as Spider-Man and his hidden human side as the picked-on high school kid. There are shadows of Elfman's BATMAN music lurking throughout the music, in the rhythm, in the use of the choir, in the dynamic and heroically-majestic presence of the music; but beyond that similarity in feel, SPIDER-MAN's music takes on its own shape and scope. Not unlike a swinging web.
#4: HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
Music by STAR WARS: EPISODE II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES © 2002 Sony Classical
Warner Bros 83574-2
John Williams' second HARRY POTTER score, adapted by William Ross, resurrects and expands the material from the first movie. The new score is as magical as the first, rich in adventurous melodies, brooding suspensements, and vibrant, virtuoso action motifs. Williams composed a number of new themes that take flight from the midst of the reprised material including an elegant and stately march for the Phoenix, Fawkes, that becomes an eloquent overture for full orchestra. The full score is a rich and very likable new composition, much of it quite dazzling indeed.
#3: STAR WARS: EPISODE II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Music by CQ: A neat take on '60s era Eurospy movie scoring © 2002 emperorNorton
Sony Classical SK 89965
EPISODE II is a worthy successor to Williams' prior quartet of STAR WARS musics. The new score is highlighted by a passionate Love Theme - an astounding composition of great power and pathos that I count among Williams' finest works. Williams' theme expresses the hope of growing desire while foreshadowing the tragedy that will ultimately erupt from it. The melody, and that of the STAR WARS themes reprised from previous films, is contrasted with a variety of typically Williamsesque action scoring, here emblazoned with the bold inclusion of electric guitar that lends a refreshing new texture to the tonality, as does the pounding roll of massed drums that perpetuates the fast-pace chase rhythms. The score is uniformly excellent, exciting, invigorating, and even occasionally exotic.
#2: SIGNS
Music by RED DRAGON: Danny Elfman's tasteful encounter with Hannibal Lecter, from Decca Records © 2002 Decca Records
Hollywood Records 2061-62368-2
James Newton Howard's third collaboration with M. Night Shyamalan, like the previous two, SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE, is an evocative and intimate suspense score. Adopting Herrmann's predilection for chord progression and tonal repetition, Howard crafts a brilliantly persuasive and frequently frightening symphonic score that breathes quietly in wispy tendrils and shocks in sudden crescendo. The score is constantly in motion, continuously developing, even at its most subdued and delicate moments, and carries fluidly Shyamalan's compelling story of abandoned faith renewed. Like the previous two scores, Howard carries above all the suspense and spookiness the film's underlying human emotions with a consistent melodic poignancy.
#1: THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
Music by James Newton Howard's richly Herrmannesque score for SIGNS is his third collaboration with director Shyamalan. © 2002 Hollywood Records
Reprise 48379-2 (deluxe edition 48408-2)
Shore broadens the excellence of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING with his new score for THE TWO TOWERS, further developing the myriad themes he gave to the first film and introducing a quiver-full of new motifs as he further develops what will become a massive composition. Shore is designing his LOTR music as one single work rather than three individual, albeit related, film scores; the result is a truly monumental work. He has illustrated the world and peoples of Middle Earth with a musical detail befitting that of Tolkien himself. The score is rich with lyricism, exotic mysterioso, and a pervading sense of delight and magic. The use of singing as a thematic element is magical and appropriate to Tolkien, sublimely investing the score with passion and power and poignancy.
And finally, a brief remark about some highly effective and enjoyable 2002 film scores that never made it to commercial CD release among them Angelo Badalamenti's THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (announced but not issued by Milan Records), Gary Chang's ROSE RED, George S. Clinton's AUSTIN POWERS: GOLDMEMBER (announced but not issued by New Line Records), John Debney's JIMMY NEUTRON (full score CD lacking; only issued as a promo CD), and David Newman's SCOOBY DOO (full score CD lacking). Perhaps some enterprising label might rectify this in the coming months...
NEXT WEEK
The best soundtracks of '02: part 2 - restorations & compilations.
Soundtrax is our weekly Movie Soundtrack column.
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