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| 8/31/10
- | City Slickers: (Marc Shaiman)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you desire a competent companion album for the film, reflecting the same schizophrenic
balance between familiar Western stereotypes, contemporary tones, and wildly frenetic comedy
that defines the story.
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Avoid it... |
if you seek the best incarnation of Marc Shaiman's catchy music for the franchise, in which
case the 1994 sequel score's album is a better place to start.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 8/27/10
- | House of Flying Daggers: (Shigeru Umebayashi)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you find the blending of traditional Eastern instruments with Western symphonic
sensibilities to be intoxicating in every dramatic variation.
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Avoid it... |
if you demand depth to your passion, for Shigeru Umebayashi's score is impressive in its
technical precision but may often be too sparse to fully address the tragic spirit of the
concept for many Western ears.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 8/24/10
- | Indecent Proposal: (John Barry)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you apologize for even John Barry's most mundane 1980's and 1990's regurgitation in the
romance drama genre, a style of music without any distinctive variation in Indecent Proposal.
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Avoid it... |
if your already sufficient collection of Barry's music negates your need for endless
repetition of soft, harmonic phrases and a stubborn adherence to tired instrumental patterns
that fail to capture any of the agony, tension, and passion inherent in this film's plot.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 8/21/10
- | Battlestar Galactica (2007/2009 Special Events):
(Bear McCreary)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
only if you seek to complete your collection of Bear McCreary's contribution to the
re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series with this conservative application of later
instrumental and thematic elements into earlier plotlines once accompanied by sparse musical
constructs.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect this sixth album of music from the series to feature the same gorgeous thematic
interludes or truly interesting sustained action heard especially in the albums representing
the second and third seasons.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 8/17/10
- | Battlestar Galactica (2004 Series): (Bear
McCreary)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if, obviously, you have any affinity for the show, but also if you have long lamented the use
of conservatively minimalistic, anonymous music in science fiction television shows in general
and await an instrumentally creative and thematically cohesive alternative.
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Avoid it... |
if you need a quick payoff, because Bear McCreary uses the combination of a plethora of
character themes and an extremely diverse set of world instruments to form individual
identities in Battlestar Galactica without relying upon one dominant, overarching theme.
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| Rating: | ****
Read the entire review
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| 8/15/10
- | Battlestar Galactica (2003 Mini-Series): (Richard
Gibbs)
- Updated Review |
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Buy it... |
if you seek the stark origins of the challenging, multi-cultural, and arguably downbeat
attitude that has defined the music of the re-imagining of the Battlestar Galactica concept in
the 2000's.
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Avoid it... |
if you desire either the smoother flow of the material evolving from Bear McCreary's efforts
for the subsequent television series or if you expect to hear anything even remotely
resembling the style of Stu Phillips' music for the original series.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 8/12/10
- | Licence to Kill: (Michael Kamen)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you want a cheap souvenir from the film and are focused on the unmemorable opening and
closing songs.
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Avoid it... |
if you seek a remotely satisfying presentation of Michael Kamen's basically sufficient but
flawed score on an album that butchers it to pieces with poorly executed edits and
arrangement.
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| Rating: | **
Read the entire review
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| 8/9/10 - | Intrada's New Predator: Great Album, Lousy Release |
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For over a decade, the soundtrack community has been plagued by an obnoxious,
predictable byproduct of limited film score albums: private online resellers. These
are not specialty outlets, the storefronts that legitimately offer such albums to
loyal collectors. Instead, they are individuals who buy limited products of perceived
popularity in bulk with the intent of driving them out of print and making a residual
income off of them at eBay and other venues. One of the most notorious products to
suffer this fate was Varèse Sarabande's 3000-copy pressing of Alan Silvestri's
Predator.
The market for Predator had been dominated by bootlegs for many years before
2003, and Varèse's product was popular enough to sell out within just a few
months. It experienced another life in auctions over the rest of the 2000's, however,
fetching hundreds of dollars per unit as supply from the resellers continued to dwindle.
When Intrada provided a slightly altered presentation of that 2003 album from a source
of superior sound quality earlier this month, their product sold out within a single
day. It is, by all initial indications, a great album. But what some had hoped would be
a blow to the resellers turned out to be a feast for them, a fresh supply of
Predator albums with which to earn massive profits at the expense of the
soundtrack community. In fact, ridiculous auction prices for the 2010 Intrada album were
evident almost immediately after its retail sell-out.
There is no question that the resellers buying bulk quantities of these albums as retail
supply wanes are the villains of this tale. But the labels are also to blame in some
circumstances, because they often do little to protect their loyal customers from missing
out on their most popular offerings. There are easy steps that the labels and retailers
can take that will promote outstanding customer service without sacrificing their
financial stability (what little there exists in this market). While these suggestions
apply to all labels and specialty retailers, they are especially directed at Intrada,
which clearly misunderstood the market for Predator.
Read the
entire article...
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| 8/6/10 - | Filmtracks has hired another new staff member! |
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| Christian and Stella, co-owners of Filmtracks, are proud to
announce the birth of their second son, Sjoren, and his hiring as another assistant reviewer
for the site. For an update on his arrival and the review schedule for the site, read the official
announcement!
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| 8/5/10
- | Red Dawn: (Basil Poledouris)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you are familiar with and typically enjoy the muscular rhythmic nature of Basil Poledouris'
action music of the early 1980's, especially in the extremely menacing tones of deep brass.
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Avoid it... |
if you, like many, have disregarded the film as a badly dated macho fantasy for teenagers,
because the score is equally challenged as a representation of that era's patriotic fluff and
underdeveloped synthesizers.
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| Rating: | ***
Read the entire review
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| 8/2/10
- | Silverado: (Bruce Broughton)
- All New Review |
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Buy it... |
if you seek one of the most vibrant, satisfying adventure or Western themes in the history of
Hollywood, the 2005 2-CD set presenting its original recording in much improved sound quality.
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Avoid it... |
if you expect Silverado to excel in the mass of underscore added to the 2005 album, because
while that material ranges from competent to strong, none of it can really compete with Bruce
Broughton's signature title theme for the picture.
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| Rating: | *****
Read the entire review
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