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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. WALL·E 2. Kung Fu Panda 3. The Happening 4. Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 5. Iron Man | . | . |
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 you're a fan of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Golden Age swashbuckler style, which should be a surprising recommendation given the genre of this film. Avoid it... if you expect this score to exhibit many of the same superior qualities as its sword and sorcery contemporaries from the early 1980's. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Sword and the Sorcerer: (David Whitaker) The age of sword and sorcery returned in the early 1980's, when Hollywood saturated the market with similar films involving the ancient world, heroes with swords, sexy princesses, and villains with snakes. Many of these films were adequately funded by studios, but the results they got often looked second rate. The exception remains, of course, Conan the Barbarian. Otherwise, films like Krull, Excalibur, Beastmaster, and The Sword and the Sorcerer all failed to achieve the same classic status, and of these, The Sword and the Sorcerer is often the most ridiculed of the lot. The crew and cast of the film consisted of names that would never amount to anything in the industry, though most of the blame for the lack of audience enthusiasm for The Sword and the Sorcerer was due to the lack of a major star and an abysmal, rushed plot. One of the relatively unknown names attached to the film is David Whitaker, whose career is littered with B-level sci-fi and action scores. This is the score that has highlighted his career, and that for which he will most likely be remembered. It existed on many soundtrack collectors' "top ten wanted on CD" lists for many years. At the time Whitaker scored The Sword and the Sorcerer, this particular genre of sci-fi/fantasy music was at its peak as well. Between 1981 and 1983, a variety of outstanding scores often blessed these films with massive (and sometimes overblown) orchestral action music. Whitaker's score takes us back on that nostalgic journey to the majestic and curiously appealing time, when most of the films were undeserving of the music written for them. Even more than his contemporaries, Whitaker wrote a score that absolutely must be separated from the trash that it accompanied on screen, though, for some listeners, even that won't be enough. His work is relatively unique in that it bucked the trends of the genre's music and instead recreated the swashbuckling sound of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. So uncanny are the resembles that The Sword and the Sorcerer can, at times, sound bizarre. For the most part, it's this Golden Age retro style that defines the score for The Sword and the Sorcerer. It emphasizes the playful and jubilant aspects of the story while downplaying the interludes of the dark, brooding, and mysterious material. The majority of fully orchestral sequences, which make up a healthy portion of Whitaker's score, are fully equipped with the usual string and brass domination, a driving percussive force, and an occasional xylophone. Variations of woodwinds are utilized for the softer and source related cues. There are few moments of mundane underscore, with some instrumental development at work in each cue. Not all of it is harmonious, however, which will cause some problems with listeners looking for an easy sci-fi thrill; with a plot that contains as much gore and blood as this (another common complaint about the picture), perhaps this less than tonal approach is necessary. The lack of respite extends to "Alana's Theme" and its consistently rousing love interest variations throughout the latter half of the score. The performing ensemble, the Graunke Symphony Orchestra, is that which also gave us the remarkable recording of John Scott's King Kong Lives, though the balancing of the ensemble here is not always handled well. The mix of the flutes in particular seems unsynchronized with the rest of the ensemble. On the other hand, these very "personality" traits of the score lend the music very well to the often flawed characteristics of the film anyway. In the end, you can't elevate The Sword and the Sorcerer to the level of Conan the Barbarian or many of the other guilty pleasures in the genre. The dependency on old Korngold techniques and a muffled sound quality are both major detriments. The LP release of the score, if memory serves, seemed to have offered better clarity. The limited 1999 album, however, did extend the running time of the score by a considerable margin. But due to track mislabeling on that CD, don't expect the cues to match with what you see and hear in the film. As an album, The Sword and the Sorcerer serves its purpose, but the majority of film score collectors would likely be more satisfied with SuperTracks' release of James Horner's Krull the previous year. ***
* previously unreleased music
The insert contains a short note from Randall Larson about Whitaker's career. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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