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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'd enjoy hearing a strong compilation of re-recorded themes from The Godfather saga, performed with the right Sicilian touch. Avoid it... if nothing but the original masterpieces will do. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Godfather Trilogy: (Compilation) As much as John Williams fans would argue with the claim, no trilogy of film music has had a more significant influence on world-wide audiences than the scores by Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola for the three parts of The Godfather saga. Rota only lived less than ten years beyond his involvement with the first two films for The Godfather, and he recalled in those late years how astonished he was to hear the love theme from the original film performed on so many street corners as he would travel about the city. Indeed, the themes from Rota's two scores are infamous in such a way that the music has touched a grand array of people beyond the usual film music enthusiasts. It also helps that the first two films are also considered among the best of all time, with devoted fans ranging from the saga's own actors to the deposed Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The quality of the music for the films is difficult to qualify from an American perspective. Both of Rota's efforts were nominated for Academy Awards, with a rare sequel win for the second score. The producers of the film, at the time of assigning the first score, wanted to avoid both an Americanized sound as well as a cliche Italian one, and they thus hired classical European composer Nino Rota to provide the Sicilian accent for the series. Director Francis Ford Coppola hired his own father (who had scored several decent, though not overwhelming films in his lengthy writing career) for additional dance numbers to exist as source music for the film. While Carmine Coppola's material holds several key dance scenes in the first two films, it is Nino Rota's thematic music that stands out as the obvious favorite. Coppola's score for the third installment integrated themes from the first two scores and extends the same source music sound that identified his contributed music for the first two scores. The choice of Rota for the start of the saga was successful because his work brilliantly played to both the authentic and stereotypical expectations for the series, breathing life into the myth of Sicilian power. The romantic elements within the scores add to the appeal of an otherwise dreary and horrific storyline. The title theme for the series was adapted from one of Rota's early comedy scores, though the films are best known by their respective secondary themes. The love theme from the first film is the one that Rota always heard on street corners. The immigrant theme in the second score carries the most emotional weight of any in The Godfather series, and remains a highlight of Rota's career. In 2001, The City of Prague Philharmonic, under a long-standing contract with the Silva Screen record label in England, recorded a variety of film scores (with John Barry classics among their most usual selections), and a recording of about 50 minutes of music from The Godfather saga was one of those endeavors. With selections from all three films, The City of Prague Philharmonic captured the spirit of the Sicilian crime family with interestingly precise performances. While the music isn't that complicated to interpret, the emotional style in which it was originally performed was key to its appeal. The Prague performers excelled in their task of revisiting that Sicilian style, and the broad performances of the three primary themes are well done. The highlight of the album is the four-minute finale cue for the first film, during which the Crouch End Festival Chorus offered magical accompaniment to the otherwise instrumentally consistent presentation. The selections from the third film reflect the weaknesses of Coppola's score, and in the end, it is Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" prelude piece (which accompanies the massive hits at the end of the film) that carries the attention from the score. A more diverse selection of cues from the second score may have also assisted this album in achieving an even greater status. As is, however, the album remains a strong set of performances of the very best from a saga of cinematic icons. ****
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