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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... only if you are an extremely avid John Williams collector and appreciate his soft and very restrained character scores for small ensembles. Avoid it... if you have no interest in hearing one of Williams' most underachieving and ineffective scores for an equally disappointing film. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Without a doubt, Williams' score for Stanley & Iris is pretty and respectful. It reminds of a more innocent time and place, just as scores like A Patch of Blue and Raggedy Man exist in the same role for Jerry Goldsmith. But Williams' subdued character scores, with The Accidental Tourist most recent at the time, fluctuate greatly between the magical and the mundane, and Stanley & Iris gravitates towards the latter. Designed for piano, woodwinds, and strings, the score's tempos are relaxing and volumes are restrained. Its two sweet themes are simple and repetitive, drawing similar performances from piano and flute in several cues. The piano is the heart of the urban piece, often setting a soothing rhythm in the background while a woodwind performs a central theme in the middle ranges and a moderate string section provides your elevator music accompaniment in higher ranges. An occasional trumpet and French horn repeat the same themes again, with the same rhythms. Then it's the cellos. Then it's back to the piano. Only once does Williams' piano spur the score into showing signs of life; at the start of "The Bicycle," the faster, more ambitious piano performance from the opening of E.T.'s end titles/"Over the Moon"/concert piece get the cue rolling with gusto. Williams is certainly capable of providing truly magical music in the form of small character themes. There were restrained sections of Hook that did just that, and from the same year, the family theme from Presumed Innocent, which shares many characteristics with the Stanley & Iris theme (as heard in the opening and closing cues on the album), presented similar ideas with much more authenticity. The usual, brilliant twists of key and rhythm aren't present in Stanley & Iris; it is about as simple-minded as the composer can get, and compared to his usual level of complexities, the score fails to maintain much interest. The album from Varèse Sarabande is only 29 minutes in length, and fell out of print only a few years after production. It's curious to see collectors shell out over $50 for Stanley & Iris, because it is among Williams' most underachieving and ineffective scores in the modern era. **
The insert includes notes from Robert Townson about the score or film. The following is an excerpt from the latter half of those notes, discussing the score:
Film experiences of this caliber are as rare as film scores of such inspired insight, and the combination of these two elements are more mutually exclusive than one might think. In John Williams' case, however, after scoring an unparalleled number of truly outstanding and memorable motion pictures and treating them all to a bounty of musical riches to help further elevate them, it is no wonder that he is considered among the best to ever practice his craft. Be it with the assistance of a huge symphonic pallet or working within an economy of means, as is the situation here, Williams always knows just what to say-what needs to be said-after which it is impossible to imagine any film of his existing without his contribution." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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