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I usually agree with the guys from the british magazine Empire… But I couldn’t agree less with this one. I really liked Red Dragon.
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“After the weak Spider-Man and MIB II scores, Red Dragon could have prevented 2002 being Elfman’s year of auto-pilot work.
Certainly, it’s better than those efforts, but while it’s typically well- performed and perfectly adequate, it’s just not remarkable, lazily falling back on a mixture of his stylistic tics and genre clichés (Devouring The Dragon’s urgent strings, the bombastic crescendos of The Old Mansion).
Most disappointing of all, it’s just not scary. To be fair, the brooding, baroque scores for The Silence Of The Lambs (by Howard Shore) and Hannibal (by Hans Zimmer) cast long shadows, but as the third big-name composer to join the grisly party, Elfman just hasn’t tapped into the fear of Lecter’s world.”
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Any comments?
i NEVER agree with empire. all their soundtrack reviews are like that man… unless its williams, horner or newton howard they give crap reviews. they dont know a thing about music.
I only want them to continue with their song driven album reviews because they obviously can`t hear good music when it`s there but i must say that i actually don`t can say anything about the Red Dragon score because i haven`t heard it yet but i`m going to see the movie very soon, that`s for sure.
I don’t agree with that review. I think it’s a great score. I DO agree, however, that Elfman used WAY too much of his high long-note strings, and too much of his low brass cresendos that he seems to be using WAY too often in his recent works. He did use some different techniques in the score, but they were far and in between.
“Most disappointing of all, it’s just not scary”. . . WTF?! Is this person a freakin’ retard?! LOL!Nuno Markl wrote:
>
> I usually agree with the guys from the british magazine
> Empire… But I couldn’t agree less with this one. I really
> liked Red Dragon.Check out the current article at FilmScoreMonthly.com, several reviews there praise the score.
I take what any British film magazine says, with a block of salt.
Ryan
A whole block, eh?
One grain doesn’t cover their biases and errors?Ah, you Canadians
I tell you, it’s times like these (war drums booming so loudly I can hear them in my miniscule town) that make me want to move to Toronto…-E (who doesn’t want to judge Brits too harshly, as I’ve never been any of ’em)
Maybe it’s just me but I keep on being totally shocked and surprised by every score that Elfman does. While people (Even Elfman’s own fans) have downed some of his work, I have not heard one score I didn’t like by him. With Red Dragon’s main titles, I was hooked. I just rediscovered Freeway (Main Titles got me hooked on that one), and The Frighteners (Which Chilly got me hooked). I even really liked the MIB2 score (although I didn’t like the movie), and I cannot say the same about any other composer alive. It’s funny how many people do not see all the different directions Elfman goes in every score he does. I have heard people say “[Somemovie] sound just like [Somemovie],” (ex. Spider-Man, and Batman) when I couldn’t disagree more. I never listen to critics about film scores (and usually not about the movie either) because of the fact that they are going to base everything on if it’s “musically correct”, not by how it sounds. So even if it is a GREAT and totally moving score, they will call it crap if it’s not “musically correct” (you other music people know what I am talking about). Since Elfman doesn’t have much musical training, he is more likley to discover new sounds because he isn’t totally following what critics think is a good score. This is why (I think) he still has not won an Acadamy Award, and why so many people down his music, when, once again, he is (in my opinion) the best living film composer.
Knight (Always the uplifting yet depressing one)
The great thing about film scoring is that it there is no “correct” way to score a film – there are only different ways. You CAN sometimes serve the film better with a certain score, but as for it being the correct way? That’s like saying that if you give the same scene to ten composers then you expect them to write ten identical scores (with variations in style permitted of coarse). Film scoring is the last bastion of “snob-free” composition.
Nat
Nat: Then why hasn’t Elfman gotten the awards he most certainly deserves?
Knight (Boycot the Acadamy!!!)
Why? Danny’s a member of the Academy…does that mean we should boycott him? *Evil grin*
-E (who likes to play devil’s advocate)
Why should an Academy Award matter to us when it does nothing to change one note of his wonderful music?
Nat with one of my shortest post, but I thought that was all that was needed (well, until I started writing this)
Acadamy award = more jobs and more music
. That’s why.Knight (I wonder if Elfman will ever score an Epic, now that would be cool!)
Danny Elfman has already stated that he wishes to do about one film score a year, and has said that he wants to do smaller projects. It’s because of his friendships with his director collaborators that keep him so busy. An academy award does not equal more jobs; just see how many films John Corigliano has scored since winning for The Red Violin, check Tan Dun or even Alan Menken, and then check Elfman (he has done more since their Awards combined). Believe me, I think Danny gets all the jobs he wants, and he always sounds like he would like to do more (screen writing, solo vocal album, and maybe more classical oriented works). Danny is well respected where it matters (i.e. from many directors and his peers). He has won a lot of awards, just not the one that is based more on popularity than the others. Who would that put him in favor with? The Actors (who make up most of the Academy)? I’ll take the creative element over them any day (I’m not putting down the actors who seem to get it though). Besides Danny has already proven to most of Hollywood what really counts… the movies he scores usually do well at the box office, and money will always rule that town (that is what it was built for). Don’t get me wrong, if Elfman won one (and eventually he will) it would be great but I don’t base all of my end-all-be-all of film composers on how many Oscars (or if any) that they received. I’m a big Randy Newman fan (I know most here aren’t), but I was overjoyed that he got an Oscar; yet, him winning didn’t change how I listened to his music, nor will it change the way he is seen by Hollywood. He will not be scoring Spielberg’s next movie, nor will that fact make an up-and-coming director choose him over Elfman (they will decide that by how they like their music and what fits the film). It’s just eye candy when you’ve been around for a while – a sticker on his next CD that says Academy Award winner Randy Newman and nothing to change the content within.
Nat
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