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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 |
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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... 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. 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. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
One quick listen to the short album for Mercury Rising immediately exposes Barry's score as indeed an underachievement. He centered his efforts around the theme for the boy, and "Simon's Theme" thus dominates the score with tender, woodwind-led tones that could easily be confused with Barry's Swept from the Sea just prior. As a method of identification with the boy, this theme is sufficient, though Barry collectors will quickly draw parallels between this theme and other family-related scores in his recent past, most notably My Life. His habit of repeating each section of a theme twice is actually abandoned to some degree, with those fragments altered frequently to form a more fluid theme. But this theme is still trademark Barry, not to be mistaken with any other composer's work. String layers with conservative brass accompaniment are once again providing the mass of the substance. When this theme is transferred to sax later in the score (leading to a remarkably romantic performance in the final cue), whispers of Barry's great scores in the ranks of Body Heat are faintly evident. Unfortunately, as you would expect, Barry's action and mystery motifs are heavily recycled; they lack the same tone of malice heard in either the later James Bond scores or The Specialist, and it's hard to imagine how this music would have worked in the film to any degree. The usual thunderous piano strikes in a bass octave are repeated as the only genuine method of signaling suspense. A promising set of progressions late in "Rooftop Arrival" are perhaps Barry's best representation of the government forces, but this motif is never again utilized. Burwell's contributions aren't heard on the 30+ minute commercial album, mostly because the product was already in its finished stages when Burwell was recording his replacement cues. But any avid film music collector will be able to immediately notice his six cues in the film; while he does match the woodwind and percussion use to Barry's, his employment of electronics exposes his work by contrast. These cues aren't of a quality grand enough to merit a search on the secondary market, though there have been several leaks of these cues. The Barry music for Mercury Rising ranges from pleasant to non-offensive on album, and lackluster in the film.
Score as Heard on CD: *** Overall: ***
Insert includes no extra information about the score or film. An online clip of one cue from the Burwell score has been long posted on the website of one of the orchestrators for the replacement material. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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