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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 Editorial Review:
For a sci-fi/horror genre score, the Mission to Mars album is extremely heavy on the contemplation and very light on the excitement. It takes a very long time for the album to begin to heat up. The lengthy opening sequences drudge through minutes of stringy electronic underscore. As a mood setting device, it works to push the unknown into the forefront, but at the same time, it offers nothing even remotely heroic to symbolize the astronauts. The title theme is lazy and almost loungy, and even when it builds to include various sections of the orchestra, it never ceases to encompass the sound of an "elevator music" performance. In fact, it is this very lack of enthusiasm or power that makes me wonder exactly what genre the film belongs to. One could only imagine that the discovery of life on Mars, with implications rising even beyond that, would warrant at least a little bit of excitement. To its credit, the score does improve in its final ten minutes on the album. The construction of the album divides it into three distinct sections. The opening cues, long in length, switch back and forth between ambience and the title theme, and those movements are often so subtle that one could easily miss them. The swirling strings of the orchestra carry these tracks. The middle section of the score is unfortunate --tracks four and six introduce a wretched combination of pipe organ and electronic pulses, neither of which ever resonates with a pleasing sound. Continuing for many minutes, these are simply unlistenable sequences. The final few tracks, however, show a glimpse of excitement, culminating in one heroic performance of the title theme well into track nine. Joined by a full adult chorus, these more rambunctious orchestral performances are short lived, but welcomed with open arms. Morricone even introduces a distinctly Apollo 13 snare drum and solo horn tribute in his own wishy washy sort of way. Overall, this score is all atmosphere and no energy (beyond the track mentioned immediately above). I found it to be an uninteresting album --one that will probably never again enter my CD player. Perhaps that's due to my lack of interest in Morricone's drawn out style, or perhaps because his drawn out style simply doesn't hold water for me in a sci-fi thriller setting. There's nothing wrong with a contemplative score for such a film, as long as it has some sense of awe about it that lives up to the wonders of space. **
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