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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 the lyrical romanticism of lush themes and soaring action cues catches you with its broad scope and harmony. Avoid it... if scores about flying leave your feet on the ground, for George Fenton's score here is a pinnacle of compositions for flight. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The romanticism in Memphis Belle swells with all the alluring style of classical lyricism and harmony. While the majority of the original cues for Memphis Belle are in the major key, Fenton inserts a handful of minor key motifs in order to accentuate the fright of the crew. The structural consistency of Fenton's themes and motifs, from beginning to end, cause these shifts between emotions to happen without the listener even noticing until he or she is hit with the emotional response. The score's weakness --although some would easily rate Memphis Belle as a flawless work-- is the score's slow build-up to the emotional plateau that Fenton maintains during the entire final flight of the bomber. A more powerful hint of the mission to come, as well as a deeper emotional response in the earlier cues, may have elevated this score to even greater heights. Even as it is, Memphis Belle takes hold of you without fail in its sixth cue on album (unless you are caught by the rendition of "Amazing Grace" in the previous cue), as the plane becomes airborne. The raw energy and enthusiasm of the driving bass strings and snare create a dominant, emotional hold over the listener from that moment on. After an interlude with one somber cue and another period song, Fenton presents over fifteen minutes of uninterrupted action and romantic success from the cue "The Bomb Run" through the magnificent "End Title Suite." Fenton's ability to merge all of the major motifs and themes from the score into one suite at the end of the album is remarkable, making for a powerful and sometimes intoxicating melodic effect. While all of this action is going on, Fenton never loses the hint of swing that was inserted into the musical mix with the period songs; a slight jazz is evident in underscore during which the action is held to a minimum. Overall, Fenton fans may be disappointed by the fact that only about 30 minutes of actual, original Fenton composition appears on the album, but the period songs are so well interpreted and merged by Fenton into his own original works that the album will be a positive experience for nearly any classical or film score fan. ****
* not original score by George Fenton
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