L'Arnacoeur (Soundtrack) by Klaus Badelt - Review

Heart Funk
Review by Helen San

L’ARNACOEUR (English title: “Heartbreaker”) is a French romantic comedy (released in France on March 17, 2010) about a team of 3 con artists who specialize in breaking up couples. Their multilingual chameleon grifter, Alex (think super spy meets Don Juan), seduces women to help them see how unhappy they are in their relationships with philanderers and brutes. His sister, Melanie, serves as the team’s manager and her husband of 15 years, Marc, as the high-tech support. While their reputation as the best in the break-up business precedes them, things start to go wrong when Alex takes a job against his ethics: break up a couple that is truly happy. Overwhelmed by debt, he consents to be hired by a rich father to break up his daughter Juliette’s engagement to “Mr. Perfect,” a wealthy, handsome, generous, and completely smitten Englishman (Andrew Lincoln, who played Mark in LOVE, ACTUALLY). Stumped, Alex can find no fault with Juliette’s fiancé. Juliette is not falling for his usual tricks, and he unexpectedly falls for her.

Very well received by audiences and critics alike, the film is said to be witty and hilarious, hailed already as the romantic comedy of the year—at least by the French. The comedy is spiced up by Juliette’s penchant for George Michael songs and Dirty Dancing choreography. Of course, on the romantic count, being filmed on location in gorgeous Monte Carlo doesn’t hurt. Not one bit.

KLAUS BADELT’S score is, predictably, a mixture of romance and comedy, but not at the same time. BADELT takes his romance seriously, with heartfelt poetry and yearning. The love theme is a delicate and vulnerable piano motif that perfectly represents wondrous admiration and quiet lovesickness...

Read the full review here

Unreleased? Klaus Badelt's Original Score for Solomon Kane

SOLOMON KANE is slowly making his way around the world...by way of its theatrical release.  As of yet, there has been no official word on a soundtrack release, which is nothing short of mindboggling.  If you have listened to the pieces above, then you already know why I make such a statement.  If you haven't listened yet....what are you waiting for?

Once again composer KLAUS BADELT proves his prowess with a score that will satisfy the action-hounds as well as sooth the savage beast with his tranquil melodies.  Badelt rarely disappoints and it sounds as though he's got the all the eyes on the stove burning for SOLOMON KANE.

Given some of the lackluster scores that find their way onto CD these days, there is no good reason why this Badelt project should not see a full release...and by "full release" I mean in full-CD glory.  Of course, we know how things can go and sometimes a very deserving score just doesn't see the laser-light of day, so in case not, please enjoy the tracks above as often as you like!

UPDATE: JANUARY 23

Good news!  According to KLAUS BADELT's official site a soundtrack is forthcoming!  Check it here: http://www.klausbadelt.com/solomonkanepreview

DAWN OF THE SNOW WALKER

Opus Ed
(originally posted 7/16/2007)

In the schlog of Summer and the tyranny of the box office...I have come across a number of entertaining pieces of film music that bear mentioning. Forget about the fact that there is no score release of SPIDERMAN 3 or TRANSFORMERS (yet). There's plenty of stuff out there waiting to be discovered. Here are a couple scores that I'm getting a lot of mileage out of in recent weeks.

THE SNOW WALKER by Mychael Danna - this is a gem of a little film with a gem of a score. Not many have seen the film and even less have taken notice of its score. Thankfully, Mychael Danna has released it on iTunes. There are a couple of strong themes and a beautiful blending of Americana a la Michael Kamen and Thomas Newman. It's an intimate and beautiful score...just like the film and both are highly recommended.

RESCUE DAWN by Klaus Badelt - This film has been a long time coming and you can probably hear get a hold of the soundtrack before the movie comes anywhere near a theater in your neck of the woods. A somber, surprisingly engaging score for a film that I can hardly wait to see myself. Word of Christian Bale's performance was inviting enough, but now, having heard Klaus Badelt's heartfelt music, that film will be irresistable.

Who says scores don't sell tickets?

Christopher Coleman

POSEIDON by KLAUS BADELT

Roll, Roll, Roll Your Boat Roughly with CG
Review by Christopher Coleman

There aren't a lot of movie moments I remember as child, but going to the drive-in with my entire family to see THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE is one of them. The images of that big boat rolling over with people flying everywhere were burned into my three-year-old-psyche. Well, maybe the constant repeat airings of the film over the years has helped to keep those images fresh, but being there at the drive-in remains one of my surviving child-hood memories. One thing I paid no conscious attention to was John Williams music for the film. (It would be five more years before he would arrest my attention and forever divert the course of my line of musical appreciation.) Still, in the hey-day of the disaster film, composer John Williams might have been king and his work for THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE ranks right up there with his other "score a la disaster" like EARTHQUAKE and THE TOWERING INFERNO.

POSEIDON ends up a high budget (as in $160 mllion high) thriller that delivers little more than a few impressive CG shots for all that money. It is vitually impossible to bring a movie like this to the screen, in the post-Titanic-era and not have compared to that new standard in sea-catastrophes. While boasting vastly improved CG-water, the film has nothing to offer "below the surface." An occasional "ooh" or "aah" hardly makes up for the painful dialogue and paper-thin characters. The decent cast was not given anything to work with and so one hardly cares for their fates at all - something that I'd have to say THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE did a better job at. Still, there was at least the possibility of cinematic-rescue in terms of emotional investment and that was the film's score. The question became would the score be good enough to keep the film afloat?

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