Intrada plans to announce two new CDs next week.
Varese Sarabande plans to announce the latest soundtrack in their LP to CD subscription series this weekend.
CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Air - Eric van Breemen - Nettwerk [CD-R]
Animals - Ian Hultquist - Phineas Atwood
Bad Channels - Blue Oyster Cult - Full Moon
Burying the Ex - Joseph LoDuca - Phineas Atwood
Castle Freak - Richard Band - Perseverance
Dawn Patrol - Joe Kraemer - Phineas Atwood
Fantastic Four - Marco Beltrami, Philip Glass - Sony
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Carmen Dragon - La-La Land
Justice League: Gods and Monsters - Frederik Wiedmann - La-La Land
Loitering without Intent - Carl Davis - Carl Davis Collection
Luv - Nuno Malo - Phineas Atwood
Mission: Impossible - The Television Scores - Lalo Schifrin, etc. - La-La Land
Mistress America - Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips - Milan
Trishna - Shigeru Umebayashi - Caldera
The Vatican Tapes - Joseph Bishara - Lakeshore
Wayward Pines - Charlie Clouser - Lakeshore
IN THEATERS TODAY
Air - Eric Van Breemen - Score CD-R on Nettwerk
Brothers: Blood Against Blood - Ajay Gogavale, Atul Gogavale
Court - Sambhaji Bhagat
Final Girl - Marc Canham
Fort Tilden - Alexander Moro
The Kindergarten Teacher - Michael Emet
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - Daniel Pemberton - Score CD on Watertower
Meru - J. Ralph
Mistress America - Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips - Score CD on Milan
People, Places, Things - Mark Orton
Prince - Palmbomen [Kai Hugo]
Return to Sender - Daniel Hart
Straight Outta Compton - Joseph Trapanese
Ten Thousand Saints - Garth Stevenson
Tom at the Farm - Gabriel Yared - Score CD on Quartet
COMING SOON
August 21
Learning to Drive - Dhani Harrison, Paul Hicks - Milan
August 28
The Aristocats - George Bruns - Disney
The End of the Tour - Danny Elfman - Lakeshore
Grandma - Joel P. West - Lakeshore
Hitman: Agent 47 - Marco Beltrami - La-La Land
The Last Boy Scout - Michael Kamen - La-La Land
Mr. Holmes - Carter Burwell - Lakeshore
September 4
Z for Zachariah - Heather McIntosh - Varese Sarabande
September 11
Wolf Totem (U.S. release) - James Horner - Milan
September 18
Barely Lethal - Mateo Messina - Phineas Atwood
Cartel Land - H. Scott Salinas, Jackson Greenberg - Phineas Atwood
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials - John Paesano - Sony
Sicario - Johann Johannsson - Varese Sarabande
October 2
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Bear McCreary - Hollywood
Date Unknown
Cosa Avete Fatto A Solange/Spasmo - Ennio Morricone - GDM
La Morte Viene Da Manila - Francesco De Masi - Beat
Maria Di Nazaret/L'Uomo Che Sognava Con L'aquile - Guy Farley - Caldera
Mark Donen Agente Zeta 7 - Aldo Piga - Beat
Rapsodica Satanica/The Leopard - Pietro Mascagni/Nino Rota - Capriccio
THIS WEEK IN FILM MUSIC HISTORY
August 14 - Lee Zahler born (1893)
August 14 - Edmund Meisel born (1894)
August 14 - James Horner born (1953)
August 14 - Oscar Levant died (1972)
August 14 - Michael McCormack born (1973)
August 15 - Jacques Ibert born (1890)
August 15 - Ned Washington born (1901)
August 15 - Jimmy Webb born (1946)
August 15 -
Henry Mancini begins recording his score for
Harry and Son (1983)
August 15 - Ronald Stein died (1988)
August 15 -
Ron Jones records his pilot score for the animated
Superman series (1988)
August 16 - Bruno Nicolai died (1991)
August 16 - Miles Goodman died (1996)
August 16 - Tadashi Hattori died (2008)
August 17 - Lisa Coleman born (1960)
August 17 -
John Williams begins recording his score for
Black Sunday (1976)
August 18 - Igo Kantor born (1930)
August 18 - John Debney born (1956)
August 18 - Stuart Matthewman born (1960)
August 18 - Robert Russell Bennett died (1981)
August 18 - Jack Elliott died (2001)
August 18 - Elmer Bernstein died (2004)
August 19 - Fumio Hayasaka born (1914)
August 19 - Herman Stein born (1915)
August 19 - Luchi De Jesus born (1923)
August 19 - William Motzing born (1937)
August 19 - Ray Cooper born (1942)
August 19 - Gustavo Santaolalla born (1951)
August 19 - Elmer Bernstein begins recording his score for Desire Under the Elms (1957)
August 19 - Recording sessions begin for
Bronislau Kaper's score for
BUtterfield 8 (1960)
August 19 -
Alexander Courage's score for the
Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" is recorded (1966)
August 19 - Jerry Goldsmith begins recording his score to The Illustrated Man (1968)
August 19 -
Lalo Schifrin begins recording his score for
Telefon (1977)
August 19 - Luchi De Jesus died (1984)
August 20 - Raoul Kraushaar born (1908)
August 20 - Alain Goraguer born (1931)
August 20 - Stelvio Cipriani born (1937)
August 20 - Isaac Hayes born (1942)
DID THEY MENTION THE MUSIC?
SERENA - Johan Soderqvist
"It doesn’t help that Bier finds a way to over-direct and under-direct in alternately frustrating manners. The first act is filled with an overuse of score, gauzy camerawork and slow-mo montages of people riding horseback and making love by candlelight. But as the narrative gets darker and death enters this little world, Bier loses the romantic, old-fashioned filmmaking style, and the entire affair just becomes dour and depressing, which is all the more startling given the two typically-vibrant actors who star in it. None of it feels organic, genuine, or even moderately entertaining. It is a film in which performers and crew go through the motions in such a way that one can sense that they knew, long before production wrapped, that something was wrong. Maybe that’s why it took so long to come out. Even the people who made it didn’t want to finish it."
Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
"Everything seemed right, and then it wasn't. The story is set in Rash's home country, the mountains of western North Carolina, but the production was moved to Prague to save money. The plotline about a timber baron named Pemberton (Cooper) in the 1930s who's chopping down every tree in sight before the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is introduced and then abandoned in favor of the melodrama of Serena's slide into madness. The editing is so abrupt and arbitrary that the stories about Bier showing three different cuts to distributors (who passed) ring true. (Even Cooper took a turn in the editing room!) The music is generic."
Joann Ng, The Oregonian
"Played as a kind of constant wake, grimly marching on to tragedy, 'Serena' is hurt by relentless applications of Johan Söderqvist’s unimaginatively somber score and DP Morten Søborg’s reliance on lots of over-the-shoulder handheld shots, the camera swinging close to and around people’s faces and shoulders. There’s simply not that much to see in the performances. The Czech Republic stands in for the South, which isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. But Pemberton’s estate never seems like more than a few laboriously aged constructions populated by anonymous, largely silent extras -- in other words, something like 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller'’s Vancouver-built mining town, only it never comes to convincing life."
Vazim Ridov, The Onion AV Club
"'Serena' is quite bad, as it happens, but until it goes absolutely haywire in the final act, the biggest problem is that it’s all bones and no flesh, so busy combining all the structural elements that go into an award-winner that it has no personality of its own. That’s the Bier touch: Her films have no shortage of melodrama, but a complete absence of texture, as if directing a film is akin to turning up the gas. So the Smokies, through her lens, are a generic source of establishing-shot vistas and loggers hacking away until the script requires someone to lose a leg or a hand. Even the score, by Johan Soderqvist, plucks away absently on the banjo, doing just enough to make the atmosphere thinly but sufficiently authentic to frame the action. The whole production seems to be writing acceptance speeches for an award it hasn’t earned yet."
Scott Tobias, The Dissolve
"If Susanne Bier’s film were subtitled and going the arthouse route, it would probably get acclaim for its feverish homage to vintage melodrama and flagrant borrowing from Shakespeare’s 'Macbeth.' But it’s in English, with A-listers Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper giving intense pizzazz to a remorseless if intriguing tale of passion, ambition, misery, murder and madness. Alas, it is the second time Oscar-winning Danish director Bier ('In A Better World)' has made an American movie -- 'Things We Lost In The Fire' was her previous effort -- and been carried away with style. This is overwrought, unappealingly, almost comically, drenched with portentously scored and overplayed dread from the get-go while sense, context and taste waver."
Angie Errigo, Empire Magazine
"It would be uncharitable to blame Lawrence and Cooper for this half-baked excursion into retro-noir romance, since both give performances with more depth and texture than these star-crossed lovers deserve. More blame lies with Christopher Kyle's script, a string of jarring cliches and clunky attempts at subtext, including a heavy-handed hunting metaphor that recurs with wearying regularity. Johan Soderqvist's cloying, imploring orchestral score is also at fault, constantly straining for an emotional grandeur that Bier's low-voltage melodrama simply does not earn on its own merits. More disappointment than disaster, 'Serena' is nothing to Tweet home about."
Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG - James Murphy
"Since his 1995 debut 'Kicking And Screaming,' Baumbach has made arrested development a recurring theme. His films have never sided with those stuck in the past, and 'While We’re Young' is ultimately no exception, even if it spends a good stretch demonstrating both the appeal and therapeutic value of the relationship between the central foursome. James Murphy provides the score -- between bursts of Vivaldi and well-chosen pop songs -- and the film initially plays like a cinematic version of LCD Soundsystem’s 'Losing My Edge,' complete with an up-and-coming bunch of kids who are 'really, really nice.' But it turns into what Bob Dylan once called a 'finger-pointing song,' and while Driver and Seyfried are both quite good, there’s nothing specific enough about their characters to avoid making the film feel like a blanket condemnation of a whole generation and their new ways of doing things. Late in the movie, Josh delivers a rant with a parenthetical that he doesn’t care if what he’s saying makes him feel like an old man. It plays like a meta moment."
