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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 gravitate towards the noble and heroic themes for bold brass that seemed everywhere in 1980's science fiction movies. Avoid it... if cheesy 80's ray gun sounds in the rest of the underscore are simply too much to handle nowadays. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Last Starfighter: (Craig Safan) The early 1980's represented the peak of corny science-fiction movies, with one of the typical stories to streak into space at the time being The Last Starfighter. It's hard to imagine now that in 1984, The Last Starfighter was a rather innovative and serviceable film in the genre, featuring cutting edge special effects technology that served as the origins of computer-generated animation. You can laugh at it now, of course, with its silly effects displaying the modest budget of the film, but the early effects were a match for the subject matter of the film: video games. The story of the film is quite intriguing, especially for video game aficionados, basically entailing that aliens put certain video games on Earth as a test to see what humans would make the best pilots in for the real life representation of the game... in this case, a battle between advanced space-faring races. One particular everyday kind of guy is recruited from the arcade to the stars, and thus begins his fantastic journey. The choice for composer was not expected; with a music director to supervise song use in the film, Craig Safan was hired for the project. Safan is best known for his long-standing piano theme for the hit TV show Cheers, and science fiction on the big screen would be a new journey for him as well. The producers of the film wanted a large space opera score, with Holst and John Williams in mind, and offered Safan five days with an orchestra as large as he needed to achieve the right sound. As you might expect, that recording prospect was a once in a lifetime opportunity for Safan. He greeted it with enthusiasm that he recalls as the best moment of his career. He wanted to produce the space opera sound without allowing it to fall into the well of existing, cheap, Star Wars imitation scores. His theory was to have everything revolve around strong melodies, which was often lost in that era to experimental sounds and sheer weight of orchestral sound. The resulting theme for The Last Starfighter would live on as one of the most noble and heroic of the era. Its mirroring brass and yearning strings were performed against a backdrop of an oversized woodwind section and a militaristic snare drum. Most remarkable about Safan's theme is its versatility; its highly melodic construction allows for it to serve in romantic and dreamy situations as well as the battle sequences. The weaker moments of the score are those in which Safan succumbed to the use of cheesy early-80's electronics to make ray gun sounds and insert them into the faster cues with the full orchestra. In those sections, the score sounds dated and suffers the same fate as the movie. In the end, however, the depth of the layered brass is what elevates the score The Last Starfighter above most of its contemporary peers. The music was released twice on CD, with the first Southern Cross album of 1987 becoming out of print and somewhat collectible within five years. That album featured less score, but also offered two early 80's style rock songs written by Safan and sung by Cliff Magness for the film's source music (the first is reasonable, but who can listen to that generation of songs anymore?). In 1995, Intrada Records obtained the rights to the score and released a score-only album minus the songs and including about twice the number of Safan cues. Despite the much longer running time, the 1996 album didn't offer substantially better material than the old CD, but even score purists should not waste their time on the old Southern Cross album now. No matter the length, The Last Starfighter is a worthy score on album. Especially keep an eye out for several good re-recordings of the title theme on science-fiction score compilations, including a stunning performance by the Cincinatti Pops under the direction of Erich Kunzel in the mid-1980's. The title theme is a show-stopper and should be in every score fan's collection. ****
* written by C. Safan & M. Mueller, and performed by Cliff Magness
Inserts on both albums contain notes about the score and film. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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