Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life


Colosseum (4005939650223)
Varèse Sarabande (0030206650228)
Movie | Release date: 08/26/2003 | Format: CD, Download
 

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# Track   Duration
1.Opening1:39
2.The Luna Temple7:43
3.Shark Attack3:18
4."I Need Terry Sheridan"5:41
5.Arrival In China1:46
6.Captured By The Shay Ling5:59
7.Escape From Chen4:19
8.Flower Pagoda Battle5:45
9.Skydive Getaway2:11
10.Orb Transmission1:42
11.Journey To The Cradle Of Life6:24
12.The Cradle Of Life6:33
13.Pandora's Box5:24
14."Not Meant To Be Found"0:45
15.Lara Croft - Tomb Raider0:51
 60:00
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Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life - 06/10 - Review of Tom Daish, submitted at (English)
Without evident irony, Alan Silvestri's score is paired up with Klaus Badelt's dreadful Pirates of the Caribbean for one of Amazon's buy two and save a few quid deals. It is well known than Silvestri was made to jump ship from Pirates, yet by the same thing happening to Craig Armstrong on Tomb Raider 2 (I can't be doing with the endless subtitles), Silvestri moved onto this project almost immediately. Silvestri's certainly a more exciting prospect than Graeme Revell was for the original, whose music for Angelina Jolie's lycra glad assets' first film was a dreadful bore. In many ways, the film got the score it deserved, one of the crappiest big budget motion pictures I've ever had the misfortune to endure. Saying that The Cradle of Life is an improvement is damnation through faint praise. It's not great, but by sticking to the Indiana Jones formula even more carefully (replace the Ark of the Covenant with Pandora's Box and you have the basic premise) than first time through, the results are at least moderately entertaining, but even so, Spielberg did it much better.

Tempting a prospect though Alan Silvestri is for such a theoretically rousing adventure, the results fall short of expectation. I don't wish to drag up the old 'doesn't have a theme' debate, but Silvestri is usually much better than average in this area and so it's quite a surprise that his main theme is rather unexciting; a grim, but nobly heroic fanfare. It works better covering the scenery as each new location is introduced than as an action motif for the heroine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best portions are the action cues of which there are a good number, although they are more solidly crafted than inspired. There is certainly none of the swashbuckling swagger of The Mummy Returns and the propensity toward digital percussion to drive things along seems to have allowed a little laziness in its construction. Yes, it's exciting, but this is more of the brass punctuating a digital underlay than excitement through complexity and counterpoint. If any of Silvestri's ideas from Pirates of the Caribbean are used here, then it's still a level of sophistication many times that of Klaus Badelt's ear numbing score. Still, outings like the early Luna Temple and the exciting Escape from Chen and Flower Pagoda Battle work well enough on visceral thrill alone, with plenty of Silvestri's touches to give it a bit of personality.

For films and scores of this sort, it is often the quiet moments that make or break the enjoyment of the album. Again, the results here are variable. Some are downright tedious, 'I need Terry Sheridan' (sounds like the name of a fat, balding football manager to me) and Captured by the Shay Ling noodle around not doing much, but some are quite attractive. Arrival in China has the expected sonorities of the region molded into a slightly sombre, but most fetching lullaby and it's just unfortunate that it doesn't last longer. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of any kind of spectacle. There isn't much in Jan de Bont's film, and hence little Silvestri's score, for anything approaching awe and wonder; again, The Mummy Returns might have been a naff film, but at least Silvestri was given some (CGI) gob smacking moments to compose for, which added an extra dimension that is sorely lacking here. Eliminating a few of the suspense and other quiet cues would improve things somewhat, but it just doesn't seem as though his heart was in it. However, like Jerry Goldsmith, Silvestri is too good to do anything less than a professional job, even if we all hoped for something inspired.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life - 08/10 - Review of Arvid Fossen, submitted at (Dutch)
Lara Croft, de digitale creatie in vlees en bloed opnieuw vertolkt door Angelina Jolie in een opnieuw erg avontuurlijk scenario. Leuke aan deze film zijn de settings in Hong Kong, Kenya, Wales, Griekenland en Afrika, variatie ten over dus! Ze gaat op zoek naar "De Wieg van het Leven", maar is niet de enige. Dit lijkt allemaal wel veel op Indiana Jones, maar in een modern jasje gestoken dan.
De muziek is van componist Alan Silvestri, die nog maar net door de producers van Pirates of the Caribbean werd opzij gezet en meteen opgevangen werd om in allerijl een nieuwe score voor Lara Croft in elkaar te boxen. In vergelijking met de eerste Lara Croft film werd er een veel ruimer budget voorzien, waarmee Alan Silvestri een volledig orkestrale score kon schrijven die hij door een 100 muzikanten en 40 koorleden liet uitvoeren. En dit verschil is dan ook meteen te horen. Lara Croft komt een stapje dichter bij Indiana Jones films, welke zowat de bekendste avontuurlijke symfonische scores hebben van John Williams. Gezien de synthesizer stijl van de eerste film, die toch ook nog wel werkte, bleven de producers overtuigd van de nood aan een zelfde elektronische ondergrond als de score van Graeme Revell. Dit is dan ook het enige stijlkenmerk wat Silvestri heeft overgenomen. Dit resulteert in een geslaagde mix van elektronische loops, een orkest, met naast strijkers extra nadruk op blazers, en het koor. Thematisch is zoals niet anders van Alan Silvestri te verwachten goed uitgebouwd, met een eenvoudig maar herkenbaar titel thema, dat in de score terugkomt bij de climax momenten in de film, steeds in volle orkestraties in combinatie met synthesizers. De pure actie scènes leunen dan weer dichter bij de pure, bijna techno, elektronische ritmes. De algemene sfeer van de score heeft een soort 'nature sound' waarbij pseudo jungle geluiden het avontuur typeert op verre exotische settings. Zoals meer met Silvestri zal de stijl van deze score in de actie sequenties doen denken aan die van Jerry Goldsmith. Een echt probleem is dat niet, want dit is weer typisch een soundtrack die erg afwisselend en toegankelijk is.


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