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| 2/7/10
- | Behind Enemy Lines: (Don Davis)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
only if you specifically seek five to ten minutes of harmonious grandeur or synthetically
rocking action sequences that you appreciated in the film.
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Avoid it... |
if you prefer not to be reminded of half a dozen other composers' music when trying to
assemble this completely unfocused score into some semblance of a unified work.
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| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
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| 2/5/10
- | Gettysburg: (Randy Edelman)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you, like most viewers of this film, became enamored with Randy Edelman's blatantly heroic
music, a simplistic pleasure considered by the mainstream to be a wholesome statement of
nobility.
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Avoid it... |
if you have ever been remotely bothered by Edelman's amateurish thematic structures,
non-existent textural creativity, or cheap blend of symphony and electronics, all of which do
an incredible disservice to the historical complexity and gruesome conditions of the American
Civil War's most famous battle.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 2/3/10
- | Solaris: (Cliff Martinez)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if an extremely conservative and alienating combination of tone, instrumentation, and rhythm
typical to the scores of Clint Mansell, Jon Brion, and Philip Glass is your ticket to deep,
quiet, and meaningful contemplation.
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Avoid it... |
if you have feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, pessimism, emptiness, anxiety, or
hopelessness, in addition to suicidal thoughts, appetite loss, fatigue, persistent aches,
excessive sleeping, or loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including
sex.
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| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
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| 2/1/10
- | Back to the Future Part III: (Alan Silvestri)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you've always loved the themes from the original Back to the Future score but were
discouraged by the simple regurgitation of them in the first sequel; they are explored more
intelligently in the final entry.
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Avoid it... |
if you seek the tight cohesion, overwhelming sense of wonder, and full thematic spectrum of
the first score, for Alan Silvestri does lose some of its magic in his attempt to explore new
thematic territory.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
|
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| 1/30/10
- | Back to the Future Part II: (Alan Silvestri)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you simply can't get enough of the boisterous and lovable adventure themes from the
original film, all of which reprised (sometimes too frequently) for similar situations on
screen in the sequel.
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Avoid it... |
if you feel no need to complete your trilogy of Back to the Future scores, for the second
installment is, outside of some minimal new suspense material for alternate realities, largely
redundant and poor in sound quality.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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|
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| 1/27/10
- | Back to the Future: (Alan Silvestri)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
without reservation if you, like the majority of modern film music collectors, have awaited a
proper treatment of Alan Silvestri's fantastic and memorable score on album for decades.
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Avoid it... |
on the 2009 Intrada 2-CD set if you are a casual enthusiast of the film who seeks only the
best of the score material to accompany the famous songs on the soundtrack, in which case the
original, best-selling album should suffice.
| |
| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
|
 |
| 1/25/10 - |
Filmtracks to Eliminate Major Awards Coverage |
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|
|
After decades of frustration with the ridiculous methodology and dubious merit of the
"Best Original Score" categories (and their variations) at major awards ceremonies,
Filmtracks will no longer provide coverage of such fraudulent popularity contests.
Notes about the award consideration earned by scores and composers will continue to be
marked in the individual reviews and composer tributes, but no special mention of the
major international awards (nominations or winners) will be made on Filmtracks'
homepage or in the awards section of this site. That latter directory of information
will, in the forthcoming weeks, be stripped of its database of past winners of Oscars
and Golden Globes and will concentrate on only those awards published by this site and
its esteemed peers within the soundtrack community.
Read more about the reasons for this permanent dismissal of industry awards...
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| 1/23/10
- | Monster: (Brian Transeau)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you are an enthusiast of BT's style of electronic experimentation, because the audience for
this score on album is squarely aimed at those who appreciate the romantic side of his
sensibilities.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect anything about Transeau's music to adhere to even the most basic conventions of
film music structure, for this is a score that plays more like a solo album than a soundtrack.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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|
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| 1/21/10
- | Excalibur: (Trevor Jones)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
on any of the various bootlegs if you seek a competent, though not complete presentation of
the decent but rather sparse Trevor Jones score and borrowed Carl Orff and Richard Wagner
classics.
| |
Avoid it... |
if you expect the Jones material to live up to the hype generated in the mainstream by the
Wagner and Orff music, because everything that he accomplished in a limited role in Excalibur
would be better explored and executed in The Dark Crystal not long after.
| |
| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
|
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