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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. The Dark Knight 2. WALL·E 3. Kung Fu Panda 4. The Incredible Hulk 5. Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | . | . |
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... only if you are attempting to complete a Varèse Sarabande Club CD set or are an Ennio Morricone completist. Avoid it... if you never cared much for Basil Poledouris' music for the Hyborian Age, and wouldn't care to hear it slightly updated for 1980's pop culture. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Familiar to listeners of Conan will be the consistent use of prominent woodwinds, large symphonic blasts of noise, layers of brass, and, most notably, the accentuated adult chorus. Morricone handles brute force relatively well in Red Sonja, producing propulsive sections with bashing, deliberate statements of theme over quicker timpani rhythms. His battle sequences for Schwarzenegger's character are just as impressive as similar cues in Conan the Barbarian, and they easily eclipse the often sparse and tepid performances by the ensemble in Conan the Destroyer. Where Morricone sets off in a new direction is with his instrumental representations for the Red Sonja character. Using, oddly enough, a trumpet as the title instrument, Morricone offers a somewhat trite theme to represent the entire film, and the high pitch of the trumpet along with the lightly prancing rhythm under the theme doesn't really suit a female warrior seeking revenge for being raped. Outside of this theme, however, Morricone's other ideas for the film are lush and romantic, as to be expected, and are generously repeated with great beauty throughout. One such performance makes use of an electronic rhythm, heard five minutes into the first suite of music on album, and oozes with the "coolness" of the 1980's fantasy/adventure genre. On album, Varèse Sarabande released Red Sonja first on LP and then as part of its original Club Title CDs in 1990. The CD suffered a few major faults, however, even aside from the fact that the 1,000-copy run (low even for the Club CDs) caused it to become a top collectible almost immediately. The arrangement of the music for the LP existed in 17 minutes on "side 1" and 19 minutes on "side 2," and the CD simply takes the music from each side of the LP and combines it into two lengthy suites. This format fails to correct several unfortunate cue mixes that plagued the second side of the LP. On CD, the second suite of music will disappoint with its hasty edits. Also of note is poor sound quality on the Club CD; some people prefer the commercial Varèse Sarabande cassette release of Red Sonja, with arguably better clarity. Luckily, the Club CD's sound quality for the other Morricone score in its double feature, Bloodline, is significantly better. A few years before Red Sonja, Morricone composed the score for Bloodline, the only R-rated Audrey Hepburn film and a project she was dissatisfied with because of its unnecessary subplot involving snuff films and the subsequently gratuitous nudity it involved. Hepburn is the sole heir to a pharmaceutical company after her father is assassinated, and her life is the only thing separating the board members of the company from a piece of the wealth. The snuff film subplot weaves in and out of several attempts on her life, and while the film's direction by Terence Young lacked cohesion, the ensemble's star power led it to moderate success. Signing on for the ride is Morricone, whose thriller score is sophisticated for the era, exhibiting many common characteristics of urban mystery and thriller scores of the 1970's. His instrumentation is extremely broad, ranging from a decent orchestral ensemble to modern light rock elements and occasional soft choral use. Cues such as "Almost Perfect Indiscretion" and "Dinner at Maxims" present an almost Georges Delerue-inspired light jazz atmosphere, while the murder investigation cues turn 180 degrees to minimalistic brooding of strings and piano crashes. The highlights of the score are the title theme for Hepburn's character herself, appearing three times on album, including the opening and closing titles. A lonely female voice performs over a lofty string theme that elegantly and romantically sways with the spirit of Elmer Bernstein's softer Silver Age classics (the voice even sounds like Bernstein's trademark use of the ondes martenot). The eleven cues from Bloodline are rearranged from the LP release for inclusion on this Club CD, and while both composed by Morricone, Bloodline and Red Sonja really have nothing in common and should be appreciated separately. Red Sonja in particular is overdue for an overhaul on album from source tapes. The Club CD has disappeared from the market, fetching in the hundreds of dollars at the peak of rare CDs in the late 1990's. Identical bootlegs have popped up, but include no new material and arguably worse sound quality. Morricone fans will delight in this rare gem, though, for it offers a small piece of his vast and usually high-quality production from the early 1980's era.
Bloodline: *** Album: ***
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