Devil boy, death dealers and cowboys!

Here's more Marco Beltrami than you can shake a sacrificial dagger at...

The Omen
Remakes are becoming the bane of Hollywood these days. One after another after another seems to be coming out of the studio system. Rarely is the re-make ever really better than the original film, yet they mostly bring in high box office numbers on that first weekend, so they keep getting made. It's unfortunate that today's talented young composers have to find a way to score these remakes, so as to pay homage to original, yet still work with the new film and stay true to the composer's own voice. Continue reading review...

Underworld: Evolution
Vampires. Marco Beltrami has no lack of experience scoring films with vampires, what with Dracula 2000 and Blade II under his belt (though, none of them had Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight leather to provide inspiration!). Beyond vampire films, though, Beltrami seems to have been almost typecast as a horror/action horror specialist. This makes a film like Underworld: Evolution fall right up his alley. Continue reading review...

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
In principle, I have always firmly believed that a film score can eschew a Western orchestra and still carry the dramatic depth and heart that cinema demands. In practice, I rarely find scores that support this theory – more often then not, non-orchestral film scores float like generic deadweight and only serve to fuel the previous generation's argument that modern film music is dead. But every once and a while, a score comes along to prove my principle. At the moment, that score is Marco Beltrami's Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Continue reading review...