When I was a budding clarinetist back in high school and college, I would have killed to be able to play arrangements of film music. Except for the odd band arrangement, like Jerry Goldsmith’s wickedly difficult THE WIND AND THE LION, the opportunities to play film music just didn’t exist,...

There’s only one word to describe IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD…”mad.” Thankfully for us film score fans, Ernest Gold’s wonderful score ties together all the loose threads of this bombastic film. This loud comedy (and I do mean LOUD, as evidenced by its Oscar for...

Bear McCreary, best known for his acclaimed television scores for BATTLESTAR GALACTIC and CAPRICA, makes his video game debut with the new sci-fi action adventure DARK VOID. The game’s story story takes place during World War II and centers around a cargo pilot who is teleported to another world–the...

Creation requires dedication and passion. And that no doubt spurned Charles Darwin in his pursuit of the theory of evolution, dramatized in the new film CREATION. The film stars Paul Bettany as Darwin, who tries to balance his scientific theories with the religious beliefs of his wife (Jennifer Connelly). Yet...

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I read Hans Zimmer’s name among the list of this year’s Academy Award nominees. And yet I was. Even though Zimmer is the most financially successful film composer of the new millennium, the Academy had ignored his work for the past decade. Since...

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, one of the joys of running this blog has been the introduction to so many different scores and composers that I would might not have come across on my own. My latest “discovery” is Venezuelan composer Elik Álvarez and his score for...

For all you lovers of Golden Age film music, have I got a DVD for you! THE HOLLYWOOD SOUND is a concert (well, a recording session), a history lesson, a film lesson, a music lesson, but most of all it’s an entertaining look at the birth of modern film music. The 1995 film (originally aired on...

When it was announced back in October that John Corigliano’s score for the Mel Gibson thriller EDGE OF DARKNESS had been rejected in the 11th hour (the film was due to open a few weeks later), I was sorely disappointed. I had been looking forward to a new score from the Oscar winner after a 10-year...

I first became aware of Edwin Wendler’s music a few years ago when Screen Archives sent me a promo copy of his delightful score to WRONG HOLLYWOOD NUMBER with a big CD order I had placed. His album, CHESHIRE ADVENTURES, furthers the promise I heard in the earlier score. CHESHIRE ADVENTURES is...

On the eve of its surprising win from the Producers Guild, THE HURT LOCKER continues its astonishing run of awards kudos. The film about a bomb squad in Iraq opened in June to stellar critical praise and brought in a paltry $12.6 million at the box office. But the film has rallied at the end of the...