Reviews »
My take on CDs, DVDs, and scores from today and yesterday.
CD Review: John Carter
Disney has faced an uphill battle marketing its new film, JOHN CARTER. Based on Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1917 novel A Princess from Mars, the studio has endured negative press for months surrounding focus groups, changing
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CD Review: Downton Abbey
Welcome to the world of DOWTON ABBEY withdrawal. If you have yet to succumb to the pleasures of this superb PBS miniseries, I suggest you do so posthaste. I have three friends, whose opinions
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CD Review: Jane Eyre
Nobody conjures up unrequited love like those wacky Brontë sisters. And with all the doom and gloom of its Gothic trappings, there’s a reason why JANE EYRE has remained a classic for 165 years—Jane is one strong-willed
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CD Review: Iris
When his Serenada Schizophrana was performed live at Carnegie Hall in 2005, Danny Elfman seemed to shed the shackles and demands of film, providing some of the freshest music of his career. With IRIS, Cirque du Soleil’s
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CD Review: The New Babylon
Five years before Dmitri Shostakovich scandalized the operatic world and ran afoul of Stalin and the Soviet government with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, the legendary composer began his cinematic career with the 1929
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CD Review: The Artist
Every year, if we film music fans are lucky, a film score or two will come out of nowhere that surprises us and moves us in unexpected ways. This year’s winner for me (in
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Game Score Review: Warhammer 40,000 – Space Marine
It is no surprise that the Remote Control-ed film music landscape of feature films is also the primary music palette of video games. With so many dark chords, synth drum pads, and electronics, how does
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CD Review: Hugo
Martin Scorcese directing a family film? What the what? Based on Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning The Invention of Hugo Cabret, HUGO stars Asa Butterfield as an orphan living in the walls of a train station in 1930s
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CD Review: 55 Days at Peking
With the recent release of a complete FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE rerecording on Prometheus Records and La-La Land’s expanded soundtrack of 55 DAYS AT PEKING, it’s a good time to be a fan
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CD Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire
Samuel Bronston’s THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE belongs to cinema of a different era. In today’s world of bloated CGI, the 1964 film is impressive if for nothing else than the detailed sets and
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