Featured scores
The Place Beyond The Pines
Mike Patton
Star Ryan Gosling reteams with Blue Valentine Director Derek Cianfrance in this ambitious 2012 follow-up film that details the ripple effect of fate and destiny in the family lives of two very different men, one (Gosling) a motorcycle stunt performer with a shadowy past, the other (Bradley Cooper) a rookie police officer with a promising future. Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta and Bruce Greenwood round out the all-star cast.
Since seguing into film scoring with 2009’s Crank: High Voltage, former Faith No More lead singer Mike Patton has quickly forged a reputation for his innovative and eclectic approach to the craft. Tackling Cianfrance’s gritty existential epic from the inside-out, Patton’s avant-gardist approach merges synthesizers, guitar and vocals in a series of unconventional arrangements designed to evoke the characters’ ever-changing mental and emotional states. As fate toys unpredictably with the course of human events, Patton toys equally unpredictably with the harmonic convergence of jazz, folk, rock, blues and classical. If the blues-affected backwater moodiness of synth and reverb guitars in “Schenectady” suggests something ominous and foreboding, it’s quickly detoured by the neo-gothic vocal arrangement of “Family Trees” and the gently jazzy romanticism of “Bromance.” Subsequent tracks further stir the unpredictability of Patton’s musically shape-shifting pot: the post-modern Gregorian chant of “Evergreen,” the cacophonous guitar-driven dissonance of “Misremembering,” the thunderous, purgatorial oppression of “Handsome Luke” – a free-flowing musical journey through a volatile, ever-changing minefield of lost hopes, forgotten dreams, lingering nightmares and retributive karma.
» All tracks from this score
Since seguing into film scoring with 2009’s Crank: High Voltage, former Faith No More lead singer Mike Patton has quickly forged a reputation for his innovative and eclectic approach to the craft. Tackling Cianfrance’s gritty existential epic from the inside-out, Patton’s avant-gardist approach merges synthesizers, guitar and vocals in a series of unconventional arrangements designed to evoke the characters’ ever-changing mental and emotional states. As fate toys unpredictably with the course of human events, Patton toys equally unpredictably with the harmonic convergence of jazz, folk, rock, blues and classical. If the blues-affected backwater moodiness of synth and reverb guitars in “Schenectady” suggests something ominous and foreboding, it’s quickly detoured by the neo-gothic vocal arrangement of “Family Trees” and the gently jazzy romanticism of “Bromance.” Subsequent tracks further stir the unpredictability of Patton’s musically shape-shifting pot: the post-modern Gregorian chant of “Evergreen,” the cacophonous guitar-driven dissonance of “Misremembering,” the thunderous, purgatorial oppression of “Handsome Luke” – a free-flowing musical journey through a volatile, ever-changing minefield of lost hopes, forgotten dreams, lingering nightmares and retributive karma.
» All tracks from this score
Hummingbird
Dario Marianelli
Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises writer Steven Knight’s directorial debut stars Jason Statham as a renegade special ops soldier turned avenging vigilante in the heart of London’s seedy underworld.
Trading the florid, classical stylings of his Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina scores for the grittier intonations of a modern crime film, Dario Marianelli takes an uncharacteristically subdued approach – less percussive and more overtly emotional than is typical for the genre. Tracks like “Getting Better,” with its nervous yet soulful strings and tentative, suspenseful bass highlight the film’s rich tapestry of conflicted, constrained emotions. Even more traditionally percussive and electronic-industrial tracks like “Do You Want to Work” and “Joey’s Career” evoke a kind of colorful, interior melancholy whereas “Nun in Red” and “At the Ballet” opt for the pure, unreconstructed emotional power of the orchestra. » All tracks from this score
Trading the florid, classical stylings of his Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina scores for the grittier intonations of a modern crime film, Dario Marianelli takes an uncharacteristically subdued approach – less percussive and more overtly emotional than is typical for the genre. Tracks like “Getting Better,” with its nervous yet soulful strings and tentative, suspenseful bass highlight the film’s rich tapestry of conflicted, constrained emotions. Even more traditionally percussive and electronic-industrial tracks like “Do You Want to Work” and “Joey’s Career” evoke a kind of colorful, interior melancholy whereas “Nun in Red” and “At the Ballet” opt for the pure, unreconstructed emotional power of the orchestra. » All tracks from this score
Welcome to the Punch
Harry Escott
Once considered one of the best unproduced scripts in the UK, “Shifty” writer/director Eran Creevy’s sophomore effort stars Mark Strong as a wanted criminal whose unexpected return to London to help his son puts him back on a collision course with the determined detective (James McAvoy) he previously eluded.
From the slow and steady electronic crescendo of the film’s “Titles” track, the ominous and epic trajectory of Creevy’s film is assured – all part and parcel of “Hardy Candy” and “Shame” composer Harry Escott’s bag of heart-stopping genre tricks. Percussive, pulsating and unrelentingly driven tracks like “St. Botloph’s,” “Burning Hella” and “Gunfire at the Greigo Mar” move the film along like a high-speed train, setting a dramatic stage for the inevitable collision of wills. By contrast, eerily industrial mood tracks like “Off into the Sunset,” “Morgue” and “Punch” almost fade into the sound design, thoughtful interludes that allow the story the chance to inhale before Creevy springs his next unexpected twist or eruption of violence. » All tracks from this score
From the slow and steady electronic crescendo of the film’s “Titles” track, the ominous and epic trajectory of Creevy’s film is assured – all part and parcel of “Hardy Candy” and “Shame” composer Harry Escott’s bag of heart-stopping genre tricks. Percussive, pulsating and unrelentingly driven tracks like “St. Botloph’s,” “Burning Hella” and “Gunfire at the Greigo Mar” move the film along like a high-speed train, setting a dramatic stage for the inevitable collision of wills. By contrast, eerily industrial mood tracks like “Off into the Sunset,” “Morgue” and “Punch” almost fade into the sound design, thoughtful interludes that allow the story the chance to inhale before Creevy springs his next unexpected twist or eruption of violence. » All tracks from this score
Lars and the Real Girl
David Torn
Ryan Gosling delivered a breakout performance in Australian director Craig Gillespie’s offbeat 2007 comedy about an awkward young man whose earnest relationship with a blowup sex doll named Bianca has a curiously unforeseeable effect on his family and home town.
With a warm, homespun folksiness, renowned guitarist and composer David Torn gives an otherwise peculiar premise precisely the earnestness it needed to win the hearts and minds of audiences. One of 2007’s surprise independent hits, Gillespie’s film glides along the rails of Torn’s score like a well-worn boxcar, its seemingly inconceivable contrivances ironed and folded into emotionally honest vignettes courtesy of gentle and genteel tracks like “Opening” and “Still Opening,” “Karin Accepts Him,” “Lars Changing…” and “They Actually Touch,” and “Where We Started.” » All tracks from this score
With a warm, homespun folksiness, renowned guitarist and composer David Torn gives an otherwise peculiar premise precisely the earnestness it needed to win the hearts and minds of audiences. One of 2007’s surprise independent hits, Gillespie’s film glides along the rails of Torn’s score like a well-worn boxcar, its seemingly inconceivable contrivances ironed and folded into emotionally honest vignettes courtesy of gentle and genteel tracks like “Opening” and “Still Opening,” “Karin Accepts Him,” “Lars Changing…” and “They Actually Touch,” and “Where We Started.” » All tracks from this score
Broken City
Atticus Ross, Claudia Sarne, Leopold Ross
Allen Hughes’ first solo directing effort away from brother Albert stars Mark Wahlberg as a New York cop who ends up in the crosshairs of the city’s powerful mayor (Russell Crowe) after uncovering a scandal involving the mayor’s wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
Oscar-winning The Social Network co-composer (with Trent Reznor) Atticus Ross, who previously scored the Hughes Brothers’ The Book of Eli, here reteams with wife Claudia Sarne and brother Leo Ross for a dense, chillingly techno-noir score reminiscent of the trio’s previous work for the Hughes Brothers’ television series “Touching Evil.” Bearing the familiar industrial signatures associated with the Nine Inch Nails sound that Ross and Reznor helped pioneer, Broken City's score is a masterpiece of electronic tension and texture, capturing the ominous foreboding and brooding alienation of its modern-noir storyline with breathily pulsating chord arrangements that evoke New York’s reputation as a labyrinthine, politically unpredictable urban jungle. Noteworthy tracks include "Broken City," "Broken Men," "Valiant" and "Baptism."
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Oscar-winning The Social Network co-composer (with Trent Reznor) Atticus Ross, who previously scored the Hughes Brothers’ The Book of Eli, here reteams with wife Claudia Sarne and brother Leo Ross for a dense, chillingly techno-noir score reminiscent of the trio’s previous work for the Hughes Brothers’ television series “Touching Evil.” Bearing the familiar industrial signatures associated with the Nine Inch Nails sound that Ross and Reznor helped pioneer, Broken City's score is a masterpiece of electronic tension and texture, capturing the ominous foreboding and brooding alienation of its modern-noir storyline with breathily pulsating chord arrangements that evoke New York’s reputation as a labyrinthine, politically unpredictable urban jungle. Noteworthy tracks include "Broken City," "Broken Men," "Valiant" and "Baptism."
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A Royal Affair
Gabriel Yared, Cyrille Aufort
The legendary 18th Century affair between Denmark’s British-born Queen Caroline Matilda (Alicia Vikander) and the court physician Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), confidant to her mentally-ill husband King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard), is the subject of director Nikolaj Arcel’s opulent, acclaimed 2012 Danish Oscar nominee.
With this unusual collaboration between Oscar-winning (for The English Patient) veteran Gabriel Yard and former Alexandre Desplat orchestrator Cyrille Aufort, a powerful Gallic tandem is born, a classic orchestral score that evokes not only the best in Arcel’s magnificent film but the very best of contemporary European film music. Fluid orchestrations highlighted by velvety string arrangements in such tracks as “Summer Castle” and “Love Scene” bring a sense of contemporary urgency to the film’s unusually prescient philosophical subtext. As the words of Voltaire inspire scandal and invite tragedy among the film’s fated lovers, Aufort’s and Yared’s music redeems them with hope and the timeless vitality of passion.
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With this unusual collaboration between Oscar-winning (for The English Patient) veteran Gabriel Yard and former Alexandre Desplat orchestrator Cyrille Aufort, a powerful Gallic tandem is born, a classic orchestral score that evokes not only the best in Arcel’s magnificent film but the very best of contemporary European film music. Fluid orchestrations highlighted by velvety string arrangements in such tracks as “Summer Castle” and “Love Scene” bring a sense of contemporary urgency to the film’s unusually prescient philosophical subtext. As the words of Voltaire inspire scandal and invite tragedy among the film’s fated lovers, Aufort’s and Yared’s music redeems them with hope and the timeless vitality of passion.
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The Host
Antonio Pinto
Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, Hanna) stars in writer/director Andrew Niccol’s (Gattaca) adaptation of the Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) novel about one girl’s courageous quest to fight an invasion of aliens determined to take over all human bodies and subjugate their minds.
An elegant, hypnotic fusion of orchestral and electronic, Brazilian composer Antonio Pinto’s (City of God, Lord of War) alternately romantic, suspenseful and elegiac score captures the bittersweet passions aroused by the film’s unusual and challenging dilemma. Injecting intermittent electronic motifs into otherwise traditional, classical orchestrations (“Escape,” “Catch Us,” “I’m Alive”), Pinto shrewdly places a musical exclamation point on the film’s otherwise daunting alien invasion storyline while relying on straightforward orchestral cues like “Into the Caves” to underline its overriding faith in humanity and the resilience of human emotion. » All tracks from this score
An elegant, hypnotic fusion of orchestral and electronic, Brazilian composer Antonio Pinto’s (City of God, Lord of War) alternately romantic, suspenseful and elegiac score captures the bittersweet passions aroused by the film’s unusual and challenging dilemma. Injecting intermittent electronic motifs into otherwise traditional, classical orchestrations (“Escape,” “Catch Us,” “I’m Alive”), Pinto shrewdly places a musical exclamation point on the film’s otherwise daunting alien invasion storyline while relying on straightforward orchestral cues like “Into the Caves” to underline its overriding faith in humanity and the resilience of human emotion. » All tracks from this score
The Company You Keep
Cliff Martinez
Produced and directed by Robert Redford, this adaptation of Neil Gordon’s 2003 novel also stars Redford as a former Weather Underground radical whose life is thrown into turmoil after an ambitious young reporter (Shia LaBeouf) delves into the arrest of another former radical (Susan Sarandon).
Regular Steven Soderbergh composer Cliff Martinez channels a tense sense of ideological ambivalence into his minimalistic but highly effective score. Short cues comprised primarily of synthesizer and electronic percussion – sometimes moody and ambient ("Bye Mom," "You’re My Brother," "It Was Hardly Groovy"), elsewhere tense and percussive ("Bring Home the War," "Take the Subway," "Close Call on the Train") – underline the film’s key narrative and emotional tension, youthful rage versus mature reflection. Part thriller, part socio-political drama, Martinez’ approach to the film combines and blends musical elements of both genres, achieving a rare and beguiling musical hybrid.
» All tracks from this score
Regular Steven Soderbergh composer Cliff Martinez channels a tense sense of ideological ambivalence into his minimalistic but highly effective score. Short cues comprised primarily of synthesizer and electronic percussion – sometimes moody and ambient ("Bye Mom," "You’re My Brother," "It Was Hardly Groovy"), elsewhere tense and percussive ("Bring Home the War," "Take the Subway," "Close Call on the Train") – underline the film’s key narrative and emotional tension, youthful rage versus mature reflection. Part thriller, part socio-political drama, Martinez’ approach to the film combines and blends musical elements of both genres, achieving a rare and beguiling musical hybrid.
» All tracks from this score
Escape From Tomorrow
Abel Korzeniowski
Writer/director Randy Moore’s controversial, kinetically experimental black-and-white debut film emerged as one of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival’s most talked-about hits, a hallucinatory look at one man’s impending madness in the unlikeliest of locales.
A deeply impressionistic yet sweepingly romantic musical snapshot of the pulse and passion of the Magic Kingdom, this collection of unapologetically old-fashioned cues from Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski – best known for his award-winning original score for A Single Man (2009) as well as a new 2004 score for Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic Metropolis – harks back to the style of such Golden Era Hollywood composers as Hugo Friedhofer and Fred Steiner, as well as later keepers of the flame like Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. Wringing buckets of melodramatic inflection from his energetic orchestrations in tracks like “Gates of Tomorrow” and “Magic Kingdom,” Korzeniowski plunges the audiences into a swirling vortex of irony, setting them up for the psychological disconnect to ensue – brilliantly captured in the unexpectedly dissonant and minimalistic electronic tracks “Lost in Caves” and “Creepy Guy on a Scooter.”
» All tracks from this score
A deeply impressionistic yet sweepingly romantic musical snapshot of the pulse and passion of the Magic Kingdom, this collection of unapologetically old-fashioned cues from Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski – best known for his award-winning original score for A Single Man (2009) as well as a new 2004 score for Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic Metropolis – harks back to the style of such Golden Era Hollywood composers as Hugo Friedhofer and Fred Steiner, as well as later keepers of the flame like Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. Wringing buckets of melodramatic inflection from his energetic orchestrations in tracks like “Gates of Tomorrow” and “Magic Kingdom,” Korzeniowski plunges the audiences into a swirling vortex of irony, setting them up for the psychological disconnect to ensue – brilliantly captured in the unexpectedly dissonant and minimalistic electronic tracks “Lost in Caves” and “Creepy Guy on a Scooter.”
» All tracks from this score
Alex Cross
John Debney
The famous James Patterson character popularized by Morgan Freeman in the films Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider gets a new lease on cinematic life in this Rob Cohen-directed “origin” film starring Tyler Perry as a younger Cross plying the skills as a Detroit detective that will someday serve him as an FBI profiler. Co-starring Ed Burns as Cross’ partner and Matthew Fox as the brutal serial killer leading them on a game of cat-and-mouse.
Oscar-nominated for his score for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, composer John Debney here takes a darker, more contemporary approach, superimposing layers of pulsating, industrial electronica on traditional orchestra to generate a pervasive sense of anxiety and urgency in the desperate hunt for a ruthless killer. Tracks like “Aqua Building,” “Give Me a Name” and “Next Target” contribute to an ever-increasing escalation of the stakes, a musical adrenaline pump on steroids that never yields. A more familiar Debney, meanwhile, emerges in a handful of softer, more traditionally orchestrated tracks that suggest just a hint of John Barry – “Alex Comforts Janelle,” “Going to Pop Pop” and “Restrained Satisfaction” – softly emotive cues designed to evoke Cross’ ambivalent state of mind and deeply fractious internal struggles.
» All tracks from this score
Oscar-nominated for his score for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, composer John Debney here takes a darker, more contemporary approach, superimposing layers of pulsating, industrial electronica on traditional orchestra to generate a pervasive sense of anxiety and urgency in the desperate hunt for a ruthless killer. Tracks like “Aqua Building,” “Give Me a Name” and “Next Target” contribute to an ever-increasing escalation of the stakes, a musical adrenaline pump on steroids that never yields. A more familiar Debney, meanwhile, emerges in a handful of softer, more traditionally orchestrated tracks that suggest just a hint of John Barry – “Alex Comforts Janelle,” “Going to Pop Pop” and “Restrained Satisfaction” – softly emotive cues designed to evoke Cross’ ambivalent state of mind and deeply fractious internal struggles.
» All tracks from this score
