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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you can appreciate restrained, solemn performances of traditional bluegrass tunes and a conservative suite of string underscore. Avoid it... if you were expecting either fast paced, enthusiastic bluegrass performances or a robust orchestral score for the Civil War setting. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Miramax, with their sniffers pointed in the direction of a "best song" Oscar nomination or win, even went so far as to hire Elvis Costello and Sting to each write a song for the soundtrack; despite early indications that they would sing for the soundtrack, these performances never materialized on album. In the end, a more humble collection of somber bluegrass tunes was combined with an equally somber score by composer Gabriel Yared for the overall package. As you could expect, the restrained approach for Cold Mountain makes it a 180 degree turn from the faster-paced enthusiasm of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The soundtrack in the film and on album alternates between traditional bluegrass pieces and modern bluegrass adaptations of those ideas, all performed by the same, contemporary voices. In some cases, an argument could be made that some of the vocals are too polished in a contemporary sense to really bring out the historically accurate qualities of the traditional tunes, and bluegrass collectors should be aware of this flaw before diving into this album without hearing its application in the film. Returning for T-Bone Burnett is the voice of Alison Krauss, but this time her performances are so tentative that they lose their appeal. Likewise, the songs performed by Jack White are also lackluster in energy and genuine bluegrass spirit. Only in the latter half of the album does a more heartening sound take effect; Cassie Franklin finally puts some defiance into the female vocals, and the two tracks by the Sacred Harp Singers (recorded with fantastic authenticity in an old wooden-framed church) are easily the highlight of the album. All of the bluegrass music will likely seem like a foreign world to score collectors interested in Gabriel Yared's work for the film. There can't be any greater difference between the fiddle, banjo, and mandolin performances by the ensembles for the songs and the orchestral composition for the score. This difference alone causes the album serious trouble, because bluegrass listeners will be bored to death by Yared's typical, meandering string writing. Even for score collectors, the album won't be worth the price for the fifteen minutes (in four tracks) of score material, because it is music that Yared album-owners have heard again and again. Having collaborated with the same director for The English Patient (and winning the Oscar for that effort), some might have expected something more than a repetition of his sullen, uninteresting string writing for Sylvia just a few months earlier. But even his title theme, performed in extended sequences by piano and strings, is dragged on and on, taking forever to complete its own statement and giving the whole chamber score a wishy-washy effect on the listener. There is nothing here to indicate that there are chases, battles, or even anything historical about the score. Yared failed to incorporate anything related to the genre of the film, or the bluegrass soundtrack, and (especially considering that this outcome could have been predicted) Yared is thus a very curious choice to compose for this film. Overall, everything seems out of place, and for the package to have worked to any listenable degree, the songs and score needed to be separated into two distinct albums. Even so, score collectors probably wouldn't be impressed by the Yared album. For both Yared and Burnett, you sometimes just can't recapture same magic a second time. **
* Score track by Gabriel Yared
The insert includes extensive credits, but no information about the score or film. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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