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Currently On Cue:
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| 5/12/08
- | Mulan: (Jerry Goldsmith)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
on the commercial albums if you seek an essentially competent collection of songs and score
from the film.
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Avoid it... |
on the commercial albums and seek the promos or bootlegs if you want the finer individual
moments of choral beauty and electronic experimentation in Jerry Goldsmith's score.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 5/10/08
- | Moby Dick (TV): (Christopher Gordon)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you enjoy adventurous scores rich with ambitious brass and percussion performances that
hail back to the glory days of Golden Age high seas epics.
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Avoid it... |
if the traditional sense of grand, swashbuckling style is an outdated sound for your 21st
Century ears.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 5/6/08
- | In Too Deep: (Christopher Young)
- Expanded Review, with Additional New Album |
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Buy it... |
on the rare 2008 promotional album if you originally enjoyed the R&B and noir elements of the
score and are open to hearing Christopher Young's own rearrangement of the material to better
reflect them.
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Avoid it... |
on the same promo album if you seek a true representation of the music actually used in the
film (including the orchestral portions), which the 1999 Varese Sarabande product more
accurately reflects.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 5/4/08
- | Mercury Rising: (John Barry)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
only if you are well aware of John Barry's tendency to write stagnant, romantically pleasant
music for nearly all of his 90's scores, regardless of its inappropriateness for the
individual films.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect either suspense music as varied as that heard in Barry's The Specialist, or any
of Carter Burwell's replacement action music.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 5/2/08
- | The Man in the Iron Mask: (Nick Glennie-Smith)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you listen regularly to The Rock and seek a compilation of the best parts of that score
slightly restructured into a more listenable package.
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Avoid it... |
if the Hans Zimmer style of powerful masculinity, simple harmonies, and synthetic constructs
doesn't fit your notion of a period film score.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 4/29/08
- | Les Misérables: (Basil Poledouris)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you want a truly distinct and overwhelmingly morbid Basil Poledouris score, the final
masterpiece of his illustrious career.
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Avoid it... |
if a deeply inflective, massively rendered, and heavily layered melodrama for this famous
story is too shamelessly characteristic of the transparent tactics of tear-jerking by Broadway
productions for your film score tastes.
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| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
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| 4/26/08
- | Incognito: (John Ottman)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you seek one of the most rhythmically and instrumentally creative scores of the digital
era, and the highlight of the first dozen years of John Ottman's mainstream composing career.
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Avoid it... |
if you are easily overwhelmed by wildly percussive scores that dazzle you with their
fiendishly executed diversity of sound.
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| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
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| 4/22/08
- | Elizabeth: (David Hirschfelder)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you appreciate highly tumultuous, dissonant chanting for full chorus and orchestra leading
a score of significantly weighty gloominess.
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Avoid it... |
if you prefer your grand period scores to lure you with lush, harmonious performances of theme
and a lack of stereotypical instrumentation for the genre.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 4/20/08
- | Warriors of the Silver Screen: (Compilation)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you want to fill an entire afternoon with some of the most heroic music ever written for
the big screen, all of which presented in outstanding sound quality.
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Avoid it... |
if you are deterred by the significant emphasis on Golden Age representation on this and
similar sets from Silva Screen.
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| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
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| 4/18/08
- | The Mark of Zorro/The Crimson Pirate:
(Compilations)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you want a collection of the definitive swashbuckling
works of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Miklos Rózsa, and
other Golden Age composers.
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Avoid it... |
if you are interested solely in the sparse inclusion of digital era scores on these albums.
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| Rating: | ***/****
Read the entire review
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| 4/15/08
- | Cinema Choral Classics: (Compilation)
- Expanded Review |
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Buy it... |
if you seek one of the most powerful compilations of choral film music ever
produced for album.
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Avoid it... |
if the overbearing nature of most of the selections on this compilation is too wild
and noisy for your taste.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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