Freedomland: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

From AwardAnnals

Jump to: navigation, search
This creative work has a long or truncated description.
Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description.
Freedomland
Artist(s)James Newton Howard
SubtitleOriginal Motion Picture Soundtrack
LabelVarese Records
In this soundtrack to the thriller starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson, James Newton Howard takes a departure from his usual neo-traditional scores. Oh sure, there are atmospheric pianos and lush orchestrations here (“Brenda’s Apartment,” “Inside Freedomland”), but Howard also ventures out a bit closer to the edge (which still isn’t that far-out, but should make his fans jerk to attention). “Main Title,” for instance, deploys harsh guitar riffing against discreet synth whooshes reminiscent of the 1980s soundtracks of Giorgio Moroder (a feeling that also…

Reviews

Amazon.com

In this soundtrack to the thriller starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson, James Newton Howard takes a departure from his usual neo-traditional scores. Oh sure, there are atmospheric pianos and lush orchestrations here (“Brenda’s Apartment,” “Inside Freedomland”), but Howard also ventures out a bit closer to the edge (which still isn’t that far-out, but should make his fans jerk to attention). “Main Title,” for instance, deploys harsh guitar riffing against discreet synth whooshes reminiscent of the 1980s soundtracks of Giorgio Moroder (a feeling that also creeps up on “Burning”). “Unrest” features striking electronics ricocheting around and creating a percussive, bumping wall that can sound like a game of Pong on steroid. And sometimes, those electronics and the melancholy atmospherics meet on the same track, as in “Did They Arrest Anyone?” and “You’re in the Wrong Park,” and the result is intriguing enough to let one wish Howard would drop the big orchestras more often. —Elisabeth Vincentelli

Find this album


Related works

Freedomland

Richard Price

A white woman, her hands gashed and bloody, stumbles into an inner-city emergency room and announces that she has just been carjacked by a black man. But then comes the horrifying twist: Her young son was asleep in the back seat, and he has now disappeared into the night.

So begins Richard Price’s electrifying new novel, a tale set on the same turf—Dempsey, New Jersey—as Clockers. Assigned to investigate the case of Brenda Martin’s missing child is detective Lorenzo Council, a local son of the very housing project targeted as the scene of the crime.…

 

Freedomland

Joe Roth

There are an abundance of outstanding performances in the uneven dramatic thriller Freedomland, with leads Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore leading the way for a string of strong actors. The disappointment comes in the telling of the tale and getting all those performances on the same page. The movie is based on a dense novel by the talented and highly acclaimed writer Richard Price (who adapted the screenplay); the setting is a fictional town in Northern New Jersey and the low-income housing complex at its heart. As a housing project cop who’s…
 
Personal tools