Saving Private Ryan: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
at Amazon.com: $5.46
C.A.M. Original Soundtracks
 
This Week's Most Popular Reviews:
   1. Schindler's List
   2. Gladiator
   3. Star Wars: A New Hope
   4. Finding Neverland
   5. Edward Scissorhands
   6. Moulin Rouge
   7. The Hunt for Red October
   8. Legends of the Fall
   9. Batman
   10. Titanic
Newest Major Reviews: Best-Selling Albums:
   1. Astro Boy
   2. The Vampire's Assistant
   3. The Final Destination
   4. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
   5. The Time Traveler's Wife
   1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
   2. Varèse Sarabande 30th Ann.
   3. Schindler's List
   4. Transformers: Revenge/Fallen
   5. Angels in America
 
Section Header
To Gillian on her 37th Birthday
(1996)
Composed, Orchestrated, Conducted, and Produced by:
James Horner

Label:
Epic Soundtrax/Sony Music

Release Date:
October 1st, 1996

Also See:
The Spitfire Grill
In Country
Dad
Searching for Bobby Fischer

Audio Clips:
1. A Far Away Time (0:29), 146K to_gillian1.ra

2. The Boating Accident (0:31), 156K to_gillian2.ra

6. Gillian's Visit (0:30), 150K to_gillian6.ra

8. End Title (0:29), 147K to_gillian8.ra

Availability:
Regular U.S. release, but the album quickly disappeared from stores due to a limited pressing and has been difficult to find since.

Awards:
  None.









To Gillian on her 37th Birthday
•  Printer
Friendly
Version
 
  @Amazon.com:
New Price: $39.98
Used Price: $19.69

Sales Rank: 143115

Avg. Rating:  out of 5 stars


or read more reviews and hear more audio clips at Amazon.com.


  Compare Prices:
eBay Stores
(new and used)

Amazon.com
(new and used)

CD Universe
(new only)


  Find it Used:
Check for used copies of this album in the:

Soundtrack Section at eBay

(including eBay Stores and Half.com listings)




Buy it... only if you regularly relax to James Horner's most introverted and contemplative character-scores with plenty of solo theme performances.

Avoid it... if you demand any kind of excitement or interesting instrumental and thematic development from your scores.



Horner
To Gillian on her 37th Birthday: (James Horner) Adapted by David E. Kelley from a play and directed by Michael Pressman, To Gillian on her 37th Birthday is a prolonged story about one man's grief over the death of his wife. Becoming a recluse on Nantucket Island with his 16-year-old daughter, the man suffers so much in the two years that follow a boating accident, he imagines his wife's ghost in conversations with her along the beach outside their home. Heck, maybe that's what happens when you marry and then lose Michelle Pfeiffer. But the film's unoriginal, drawn out story follows predictable paths of the daughter's coming of age and the nosey sister-in-law/aunt who attempts to first set up the ailing father on a blind date (before eventually trying to steal custody of the girl). For a survival story, To Gillian on her 37th Birthday is an exercise in a familiar sense of boredom... the kind of discomfort you get at family gatherings with the in-laws that you try to avoid because the routine is always the same. The film suffered from an immediate collection of unenthusiastic reviews and disappeared from theatres. For composer James Horner, To Gillian on her 37th Birthday comes on the heels of a last minute job for The Spitfire Grill, a film also about coming-of-age and survival, and arguably just as unsuccessful. On the part of Horner, however the quality of the two scores could not be further from each other. While the circumstances surrounding Horner's involvement with The Spitfire Grill, along with its more developed personality, gained that score considerable attention in autumn of 1996, the score for To Gillian on her 37th Birthday has fallen off the radar just as badly as the film. While his music is certainly functional for the film, Horner's production lacks inspiration and is minimally rendered. This may be a fault directly correlated with the film, but then again, you get the impression with To Gillian on her 37th Birthday that Horner was once again on auto-pilot.

Learn more about
supporting Filmtracks

The ensemble for To Gillian on her 37th Birthday consists of Horner's usual array of solo instruments along with a marginal orchestra stripped of its unnecessary depths. The title theme concocted by Horner is similar in structure to his basic character-based ideas for Searching for Bobby Fischer, In Country, and Dad, with predictable string progressions yielding less excitement and beauty. Similarly, duets between harp and piano dance behind lonely horn solos, often with delicate plucking of either the violins or harp adding as much light sensitivity to environment as possible. Many of the motifs Horner utilizes, especially in alternating piano progressions, are copied and pasted from The Spitfire Grill, but the magic of the location has been completely stripped. The score seems completely centered on the solace of the main character, refusing to budge for any of the other circumstances in the film. Thus, you get an effort that repeats the same lonely theme over and over and over again, rotating between solo instruments, with pacing that could put even the most hyper child to sleep. While a certain amount of that material makes for a consistently pleasant listen, Horner fails to even try scoring the stunning Nantucket locale... a considerable flaw in the film. Before the lengthy finale and end title enunciation of the title theme by the ensemble, the only disparate element in the score is the sharp piano clanging heard in the "Boating Accident" cue (which is the source of all the trauma in the film), and even this cue seems to short-change the importance of the event unfolding on screen. On album, the two full performances of the title theme in the first half of the finale track will be of interest to collectors of Horner's atmospheric sentimentality. Fans will either mock or be amused by the exact, note-for-note preview of the upcoming Titanic love theme (still a year off the coast) performed by woodwinds at the start of "Saying Goodbye." Overall, the film likely didn't deserve anything better than Horner's uninspired score, but the result on album is an underachieving repetition of solo themes that suffers when compared to the composer's greater collection of character-based work. **

Bias Check:For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.12 (in 89 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.34 (in 158,769 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.





 Viewer Ratings and Comments:  


Regular Average: 2.94 Stars
Smart Average: 2.95 Stars*
***** 30 
**** 33 
*** 41 
** 37 
* 33 
  (View results for all titles)
    * Smart Average only includes
         40% of 5-star and 1-star votes
              to counterbalance fringe voting.



No Comments Yet



Read All | Add New Post | Search | Help  




 Track Listings: Total Time: 37:09


• 1. A Far Away Time/Main Title (3:52)
• 2. The Boating Accident (2:14)
• 3. Gillian (3:58)
• 4. The Lighthouse (2:17)
• 5. Fond Hopes... Distant Memories (2:05)
• 6. Rachel's Dream/Gillian's Visit (6:47)
• 7. The Decision to Leave Home (3:11)
• 8. Saying Goodbye/End Title (12:40)




 Notes and Quotes:  


The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.





   
  All artwork and sound clips from To Gillian on her 37th Birthday are Copyright © 1996, Epic Soundtrax/Sony Music. The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 3/28/05. Review Version 5.0 (PHP). Copyright © 1996-2009, Christian Clemmensen (Filmtracks Publications). All rights reserved.