Cartoon Concerto (Bruce Broughton, 2003): I generally haven’t been including compilation albums in my reviews of my soundtrack collection (although I have many), but I am making an exception in order to call attention to this wonderful collection of cartoon scores composed by Bruce Broughton.  The scores are generally complete and not available anywhere else.  This is actually a promotional release, but copies can usually be tracked down with some searching.  At the time I’m writing this, there is one copy available at a reasonable price from the Amazon link above and Percepto Records (which, I believe, produced the album) has copies available from their website.

The CD includes complete scores to the Disney animated short “Off His Rockers” (which played with the Broughton-scored film Honey, I Blew Up the Kid) and the two Roger Rabbit shorts “Roller Coaster Rabbit” and “Trail Mix-Up”.  Also included is an 18-minute suite of music from Broughton’s numerous scores to the popular Steven Spielberg produced TV series “Tiny Toon Adventures”.  The CD also includes another 18 minute suite entitled “Scherzo Berzerko in 3 Portions”, which isn’t identified as coming from a specific source.  This is most likely a suite compiled from a variety of sources and, since this is a promo disc, it may be partly or entirely example music composed specifically for the promo.

Considering that the majority of the source music was pretty clearly inspired by the classic Warner Bros “Looney Toons” shorts, it isn’t surprising that Broughton’s style throughout this album calls to mind the work of Carl Stalling.  The music is all orchestral and extremely brass heavy with a very fast paced and lots of quick stings and humorous motifs, including occasional samples of familiar melodies.  The music is exceptionally well organized on this CD and it really does play like a cohesive symphonic work.  This disc is simply a lot of fun!

Casablanca (Max Steiner, 1942): Casablanca is a pretty likely candidate for being the most truly beloved of American films.  I’m sure there are people out there that don’t care for it, but I can’t say that I recall encountering any.  The movie was a nearly perfect mix of drama, romance, intrigue, and humor.  Max Steiner’s score and Dooley Wilson’s entertaining performances of several classic songs contributed a lot to the film’s success.

Rhino Records released a soundtrack CD, which contains a mix of dialog, songs, and score.  A better, purely score and songs release would certainly be welcome, although the Rhino release is probably a more commercially acceptable approach for this film.  The condition of the recordings is also surprisingly poor for such a famous film, with quite a bit of static and noise in many of the cues.  The orchestral score portions are in much better condition than the songs and dialog segments and sometimes there is a noticeable shift in quality even within a single cue.  In some cases, it sounds like the music may have come from LP sources.

The most famous music in the film is, of course, the song “As Time Goes By”, written by Herman Hupfeld.  The song wasn’t originally written for the film, but is now pretty much inseparably associated with it.  In addition to Wilson’s famous performance of the song, Steiner very frequently incorporates the melody into the score.  The rest of the score is extremely romantic, with extensive use of lush strings and piano melodies.  Some ethnic elements come into play, particularly during the medleys from the Paris sequences.

I’m generally not a fan of dialog on a soundtrack album and do feel that there is too much here.  On the other hand, Casablanca has such a rich selection of exceptionally well-known lines and speeches that it isn’t hard to understand why it was included.  Very little of the album features score that doesn’t have dialog and/or sound-effects over the top and it almost plays more like a story album than a score soundtrack.  At the end of the album, there are 3 cues, running about 15 minutes, that do present some of the score cues without the dialog.  A better presentation of Steiner’s score is definitely needed, but at least the key parts are there.

Casino Royale (David Arnold, 2006): For most of the history of the series, the producers of the James Bond movies had never been able to obtain the rights to Ian Fleming’s first novel featuring the character, Casino Royale.  Through various business deals, most notably one of the many times that MGM changed ownership, they were finally able to get the rights and produce a film that was released in 2006.  They took the opportunity to do a “reboot” of the series, casting Daniel Craig as a young and inexperienced Bond going on his first major mission after earning his license to kill.  The result was a the series’ biggest critical and financial success in years.

One major behind-the-scenes figure retained from the Pierce Brosnan starring Bond films was composer David Arnold, who was scoring his 4th consecutive film in the series.  Arnold really embraced the concept of the film, delivering a score that built the musical conventions of the series over time.  Over the course of the score, Arnold regularly hints at Monty Norman’s famous James Bond Theme, often presenting a couple recognizable notes of it, without playing it in full.  This all led up to a wonderfully full-blooded, orchestral performance of the classic theme that played over the film’s closing moments and end credits.  This works extremely well, allowing the music to play a definite role in the film’s concept of showing James Bond becoming the character the audience knows so well.

Arnold’s Bond scores have all shown a good balance between faithfulness to the series’ musical conventions that John Barry established, while still lending them a bit more of a contemporary sound.  The Barry style horns and fast paced strings are still there, but with a somewhat stronger emphasis on percussion.  The more direct jazz influences that dominated Barry’s work give way in Arnold’s scores to a bit more of a rock influence, including sparing use of electronics.  He also provides a nice piano and strings love theme, best presented in the cue “Vesper”.

Of course, distinctive opening title songs are another convention of James Bond films and this one has one of the best of recent memory.  Chris Cornell performed “You Know My Name”, which Cornell and Arnold co-wrote.  The song has a classic style that makes it recognizable as a James Bond theme, although it has a somewhat rougher, grittier sound in keeping with the film’s style.  Cornell’s somewhat gravelly voice gives it this grittier sound, while Arnold helps to deliver a melody that still sounds like a Bond theme, and which is incorporated periodically into the score.  Oddly, rights issues resulted in the song not being included on the soundtrack album.  It is available as a CD single or as an individual song download from the usual sources such as Amazon and iTunes.  The extra effort to obtain the song is definitely worthwhile.

The soundtrack album as included on the CD is a very good album presentation of the score, organized to provide a good overall listening experience.  It contains about an hour and 15 minutes of Arnold’s score and covers all the key thematic material.  Sony also made a deal with Apple to offer an exclusive to iTunes version that includes an additional 14 minutes of score as bonus tracks.  While the extra music isn’t essential, it does include some nice to have bits, particularly the music from the film’s prologue sequence.

Those extra tracks are all marked as “album only”, meaning that they can’t be purchased separately.  Unless you are willing to buy the standard album twice, you are basically faced with a choice between the higher sound quality of a lossless presentation on CD or getting the extra music but at the price of reduced sound quality.  I did opt to purchase the album from iTunes for the extra tracks, but I find it lamentable that the full score isn’t available with the best sound quality.

Casper (James Horner, 1995): The Steven Spielberg produced live action adaptation of the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoons was a film that was much better than the source material ever would have suggested was possible.  Much of that was a result of an overqualified cast and crew, including a highly entertaining score from composer James Horner.

The score is one of the better, if somewhat lesser known, examples of the type of melodic, sentimental fantasy adventure scoring that was common to Horner’s output in the late 1980s and the early part of the 1990s.  The score’s strongest parts are built around variations of one primary theme, which is presented in a concert arrangement in the cue “Casper’s Lullaby”.  It is a gentle, sensitive theme that is played at various points on solo piano, woodwinds, strings, and even a few brass arrangements.  Choral elements also are used to elevate the theme at some points as well.  It is one of Horner’s strongest melodies from that period of his career and it is very well used in the score.

The film’s format as a family friendly, kind of sentimentally comedic haunted house movie does also provide Horner the opportunity to write some light suspense cues, sometimes with a bit of a comic tone.  The cue “First Haunting/The Swordfight” is a good example of this aspect of the score.  Particularly during the first half, it includes some harsh strings, sudden bursts of brass, minor key piano, and a few brief choral outbursts.  It then transitions into a more fully adventure-oriented conclusion, with lots of strings and brass.

While Horner does not use the well-known TV series theme song in the score, the soundtrack album does include a performance of it by Little Richard, which I believe played over the first part of the end credits.  The album also includes another song entitled “Remember Me This Way”, which is performed by Jordan Hill.  This song was written by David Foster and Linda Thompson and is a fairly typical early 90s pop song.

The Cassandra Crossing (Jerry Goldsmith, 1978): This score comes from one of Jerry Goldsmith’s strongest periods both creatively and in the caliber of films that he was being hired to score.  While a fairly short LP program was released with the film and has been re-issued a few times, the best representation of this score is definitely the 2-CD set put out by the Belgian label Prometheus Records, which includes both the full score and the LP program.

One of Goldsmith’s trademark strengths was his skill at composing lush, romantic main themes, usually with a strong string and woodwind base, as a central component to action film scores.  These themes would help to provide a strong emotional anchor, something that was especially helpful in films like this one that have a strong focus on ordinary people in peril.  First presented during the “Main Title” cue, the main theme to The Cassandra Crossing is well used during most of the score’s quieter, more character driven segments and is also effectively dropped in during some of suspense and action sequences to better connect them with the human element.

The score also has some great, driving action cues.  The second cue on the soundtrack, “Break In”, includes some extremely wild and aggressive string playing that is very impressive.  In the cue “Train on the Move”, he includes some atonal, basically mechanical sounding elements that eventually transition into some really kinetic action music, all of which really plays up the on-board a train setting of the film.  Many of the action cues also have a progressive rhythm that helps to convey the sense of the moving vehicle.  Occasional atonal elements somewhat resemble the style Goldsmith used in his famous Planet of the Apes score, making this a very rare example of him mixing that approach with his usual, more melodic action scoring.

The original LP program was a much shorter (less than 30 minutes) presentation of the score that, not surprisingly, focused mainly on the melodic main theme and some of the more accessible action music.  While there are a few hints of the score’s more atonal elements, the bulk of that material was absent. 

The LP also included two songs, including “It’s All a Game” which is based on Goldsmith’s primary theme and featured lyrics by Hal Shaper.   The version on the Prometheus album is instrumental only and I am not sure if the original album included an actual vocal version.  The instrumental basically sounds like a pop/disco version of the theme.  The other song is called “I’m Still on My Way” and was written by Dave Jordan and performed by Ann Turkel.  The Prometheus album includes the album version of Turkel’s performance of the song plus an instrumental version (which also has the backing vocals) and a vocal-only track.  The song has kind of a folksy/country sound and doesn’t really fit too well with the score.

Cast a Long Shadow (Gerald Fried, 1959): This score was included as part of a Film Score Monthly 3-CD collection of scores from five different movie westerns released by United Artists.  The collection was originally released for $35, but is now out of print and used copies tend to go for much higher prices.

Fried’s score was from a fairly lesser known western that was classified as a B-movie.  The score is a generally colorful, fully-orchestral score that follows a lot of the standard western conventions.  The “Main Title’ cue opens with big brassy fanfares, with a strong emphasis on trumpet.  At various points, the score incorporates the other various instruments most commonly associated with westerns, including harmonica, banjo, and acoustic guitar. 

Despite it being a fairly conventional western score, Fried creates some very good melodies and it is a fun score to listen to.  The set includes a fairly generous 41 minutes of the score, which the liner notes indicate to be a complete presentation.

Cast Away (Alan Silvestri, 2001): This score is an extremely unusual case.  Robert Zemeckis hired his usual collaborator, Alan Silvestri, to score this film which, of course, generated interest in the music within the soundtrack community.  Zemeckis made the artistic decision, though, to leave the film unscored for the first 1 hour and 24 minutes of its 2 hour and 20 minute running time, which didn’t really leave enough music for a full soundtrack album. 

While there is about 20 minutes or so of score during the final act of the film, it is all built around a single theme that Silvestri wrote for a relatively small ensemble.  It is a fairly quiet, melancholy theme that principally features the oboe, piano, and the orchestra’s string section.  It is a great theme and this musical approach works amazingly well in the film.  The scene where the Tom Hanks character leaves the island where he had been stranded and the score swells up for the very first time is rather breathtaking.

Obviously, the nature of the score made a full soundtrack release a difficult prospect at best.  Varese Sarabande came up with a pretty good solution, though.  They licensed the 7 minute closing credits suite and released it as the anchor for a compilation album that contained suites from each of Silvestri’s scores for Zemeckis’ films to date.  The suite contains a complete presentation of Silvestri’s theme and then ends with a couple minutes of ocean sounds intermixed with brief orchestral bursts.  The result is a very effective orchestral suite that is quite evocative of the film.  The inclusion of the other Silvestri/Zemeckis scores makes for an overall great compilation album as well.

Catch Me If You Can (John Williams, 2002): This is one of the most atypical scores in John Williams’ catalog.  The jazz style certainly really stands out as a significant stylistic change of pace among his scores for Steven Spielberg’s films, although I don’t want to overstate it as the score contains many orchestral melodies that are distinctly and recognizably Williams’.  This score has become one of Williams’ favorites to include during his concerts as it provides a great opportunity both to showcase skilled jazz instrumental soloists and the performances of the full orchestra.

As a primary approach, Williams chose to score this film using a predominantly jazz-inspired orchestral approach.  Substantial sections of the score feature solo saxophone, sometimes playing clearly defined melodies but also frequently performing in a highly improvisational-sounding (but not truly improvisation) manner.  One of the most impressive accomplishments of this score is Williams’ success at making the music sound like improvisational jazz even as though the players are still performing to a fully defined score.  Piano is also more dominant in this score than is often the case for Williams, with the pianist occasionally joining with the saxophone in the pseudo-improvisation.

Even with the jazz inspired approach, Williams still makes substantial use of the full orchestra.  The solo saxophone and piano segments are nearly always eventually joined by the full orchestra, often providing highly melodic counterpoints.  As I noted at the top, the orchestral elements are recognizably in Williams’ traditional style, bringing an impressive fullness to the music.  One of the most impressive examples of this is in the cue “Reflections (The Father’s Theme)” which opens with a lengthy solo saxophone section, before having the full orchestra join in to bring the piece to a finish.

Spielberg worked hard to clearly depict the film’s period settings and, thus, very effectively made us of period contemporary popular songs during several key sequences.  The soundtrack CD includes Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me”, Stan Getz’s “The Girl from Ipanema”, Judy Garland’s “Embraceable You”, Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and Dusty Springfield’s "The Look of Love”.  All of these are the original recordings that are available elsewhere, but their inclusion does make the album an effective representation of the film’s overall musical identity.  Even with the songs, the CD still contains a pretty generous 44 minutes of Williams’ score.

Caboblanco (Jerry Goldsmith, 1980): This film was essentially a low-budget remake of Casablanca set in Peru and starring Charles Bronson in the Bogart role, so it isn’t too surprising that this isn’t a particularly well remembered movie.  This was the first collaboration between Jerry Goldsmith and director J. Lee Thompson (their best known project together was King Solomon’s Mines) and the composer delivered a pleasant, if unspectacular, Spanish-styled score for the film.

The soundtrack CD opens with a fun “Main Title” cue that establishes a primary theme for the film that is characterized by Latin rhythms and instruments, including acoustic guitar, tambourines,  castanets,  and a solo trumpet.  The theme is typically distinctive for Goldsmith, but isn’t developed very much during the remainder of the soundtrack.  Outside of the titles, Goldsmith’s main theme and Latin-influenced styling is on best display in the cue “Beckdorf’s House” and in a very nicely melodic arrangement in the opening portion of the cue “The Drowning”.

The primary romantic theme in the score isn’t actually composed by Goldsmith at all.  Instead, Goldsmith adapted the classic Nat King Cole song “The Very Thought of You”, which was written by Ray Noble.  The soundtrack includes a few different instrumental arrangements of the song’s melody.  Goldsmith also composed another period-appropriate song entitled “Heaven Knows”, which is sung by his wife Carol on the soundtrack.

A soundtrack CD for the film was originally issued in 1993 by Belgium film music label Prometheus Records.  That same label reissued the same program in a limited edition release in 2005.  Both editions are relatively easy to find at reasonable prices.

Cain’s Hundred (Jerry Goldsmith, Morton Stevens, 1961): This early 60s TV series was one of the earliest scoring projects for Jerry Goldsmith (he was actually billed as “Jerrald” instead of “Jerry”).  Film Score Monthly released a CD containing the scores to the four episodes of the series that were scored by Goldsmith as well as one episode scored by Morton Stevens. 

The disc opens with Goldsmith’s end title cue, which is a full arrangement of his main theme and also includes a couple bumpers and alternate arrangements of the theme.  Goldsmith also pretty regularly incorporates the theme into his scores and even Morton uses it occasionally.  The theme has kind of a swing-style to it, while still being reasonably dark in tone.  It is a style that Goldsmith would return to pretty regularly for his TV series themes.

The music is very atmospheric and suspense oriented and is generally a precursor to the style that Goldsmith would use for a number of crime dramas (particularly for TV) over the course of his career.  Strings and percussion dominate as well as some occasional piano and some punctuating bursts of brass.  The scores seem to be played by pretty much a full orchestra, which is somewhat surprising for a TV series.  As is typical for TV scores, the cues tend to be short, although the soundtrack CD is organized to sometimes combine multiple short cues into longer ones.

The Morton Stevens score does follow the basic musical style that Goldsmith had established for the series, but is also recognizably the music of a different composer.  In particular, Stevens’ approach included a bit more use of solo instruments, particularly piano and violin.

Cannon for Cordoba (Elmer Bernstein, 1970): Varese Sarbande released this Bernstein western/war movie score as part of their CD Club series on a 2-CD set that paired it with Bernstein’s score to From Noon to Three.  While a limited edition of 3000 copies, this set is still available from their website.

The CD opens with an absolutely tremendous “Main Title” cue.  The cue starts with some exciting percussion music before transitioning into a wonderfully brassy march.  While the little-known film that it came from has kept this theme from becoming very familiar, I think it is in the same league as Bernstein’s famous themes to The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. 

The film is set during the early 20th century border skirmishes between Mexico and Texas and major parts of the score has a definite Mexican flavor to it, although mixed with some of Bernstein’s usual military-style action cues.  The main theme is brought in periodically throughout the score, although Bernstein does use it somewhat sparingly.  Acoustic guitar and trumpet are featured pretty prominently during much of the score.  There is a particularly nice secondary theme that plays regularly in the score, usually on the acoustic guitar.

The score includes some Bernstein-composed source music, such as the cue “One Man Band” that is a fun tune played primarily on the acoustic guitar and harmonica, while the later “One Man Band II” and “One Man Band III” are other Mexican-style cues that bring in a larger range of instruments, particularly violin and trumpet.  The last 25 minutes of the hour and 10 minute disc is all source music, mostly Bernstein’s arrangements of traditional street mariachi music, which is highly entertaining.  The last couple tracks also include a belly dance and a fairly traditional, patriotic-sounding march.

Cape Fear (Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, 1991): For Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of the 1962 thriller Cape Fear, they made the somewhat unusual decision of hiring Elmer Bernstein to adapt Bernard Herrmann’s distinctive score from the original film instead of commissioning an original score.  The resultant soundtrack is an exceptionally crisp and skillful performance of Herrmann’s classic music.

The most-familiar theme is a darkly menacing 4-note trombone fanfare, regularly used throughout the score to herald the moments of darkest tension.  After seeing the film, or even just listening to the soundtrack, it is a theme that is difficult to forget.  The theme has also gained some extra familiarity from its parody-use on The Simpsons as the primary theme for the Sideshow Bob character ever since an episode that directly parodied Cape Fear.

This is among Herrmann’s most relentlessly dark and menacing scores, pretty much always remaining in the low registers with lots of very deep brass and screaming strings.  One of Herrmann’s real gifts was his ability to keep the music generally melodic even while working with this kind of score.  This allows this score to remain much more consistently listenable than might be the case had the score descended more into dissonance.

Adapting the music to the newer film was likely quite a challenge for Bernstein as Scorsese was not entirely faithful to the source material, instead choosing to rework various sequences and characterizations.  This certainly was not a shot-by-shot remake like Gus Van Sant’s version of Psycho, which meant that Bernstein had to adapt Herrmann’s score to fit a different film.  Bernstein is usually thought of as a co-composer for the film (although his credit was “adapted and conducted”)  and it is pretty likely that he did compose some original cues.  Musically, the style is so consistent, though, that it is unlikely anyone would be able to distinguish any Bernstein compositions without having the original film’s score essentially memorized.

My only major complaint about this soundtrack is that the album ends very abruptly.  The last cue is entitled “The End”, but doesn’t really come to much of a conclusion.  I suspect that this final cue was probably from the film’s climax instead of an end credit suite and the album definitely could have used a better wrap-up.

Capricorn One (Jerry Goldsmith, 1978): One of Jerry Goldsmith’s most popular science-fiction scores was from this late 70s Peter Hyams conspiracy thriller.  At the time of the film’s original release, Goldsmith conducted a re-recording of about 35 minutes of the score with the National Philharmonic Orchestra.  This re-recording has been released on CD a couple times, including a GNP Crescendo CD that paired it with Goldsmith’s Outland and a more recent release from Collector’s Choice Music, which is still readily available.

A 55 minute CD of the original film recordings was released by Intrada in 2005 as a 3,000 copy limited edition.  That is the version that I have in my collection as I had never actually bought the re-recording before.  The Intrada release sold out extremely quickly and now typically costs hundreds of dollars on the secondary market.  The re-recording is typically a value-priced CD now and is likely a worthwhile purchase if you don’t have this score in your collection at all.

The brass and percussion main theme is one of Goldsmith’s most memorable and appears on enough compilation albums that it probably will be pretty recognizable even to Goldsmith’s more casual fans.  This theme is introduced during the “Main Title” cue and is interpolated into some of the other action/suspense portions of the score.

The other primary theme from the score is the secondary, romantic theme, which is regularly featured during the quieter parts of the score.  A particularly good piano and strings rendition of the theme is presented in the cue “Bedtime Story” while a lounge-style source music version of the theme is provided in the cue entitled “Kay’s Theme”.

Careful, He Might Hear You (Ray Cook, 1983): Even though the composer is virtually unknown (this is only one of two films he scored) and the film was mainly an art house release in the US, Varese Sarabande was able to very quickly sell out a 1000 copy CD Club release simply by strongly encouraging people to listen to the samples.  The music is so good that it was an easy decision to purchase after hearing what it sounds like.  Although sold out at Varese, a quick check on Amazon found several copies available at very reasonable prices.

While the title might at first suggest a horror movie, the film was actually a highly acclaimed Australian drama set during the depression era.  Cook’s score is simply beautiful.  It is a lush, highly romantic score that is consistently highly melodic.  The score is dominated by soaring strings and gentle woodwinds.  Choral elements are added periodically in a manner that sometimes gives the music an almost dreamlike quality, such as in the lovely cue “P.S. Saying His Prayers”. 

One particularly interesting and unusual cue is “P.S.’ Piano Practice”.  As the title implies, this cue is characterized by a piano solo, but it also features an effective use of a ticking metronome as a rhythm instrument and overlaying orchestral elements that serve to elevate the performance.  The melody used is Cook’s main theme for the score, which keeps it firmly connected to the rest of the score rather than sounding like a separate source cue.

I really can’t recommend this score highly enough.  The composer and the film are likely to be unfamiliar to most, but this is an exceptionally impressive orchestral work that stands very well on its own.

The Caretakers (Elmer Bernstein, 1963): This Elmer Bernstein score to this psychological thriller was released in a deluxe edition on a Varese Sarabande CD Club release where it was paired with Bernstein’s score to another medical drama, The Young Doctors.  The CD is sold out at Varese, but reasonably priced copies are available through Amazon.

The album opens with a “Main Title” cue that starts with a some suspense-style bursts of brass, followed by a fast-paced main theme that has kind of a 60s pop sensibility to it.  The theme is orchestral, but with an underlying percussion rhythm that moves it into the pop direction.  This theme shows up during other parts of the score as well, although string and brass suspense music is also commonplace.

Another recurring theme in the score is a woodwind melody that brings to mind a child’s lullaby, but played in a vaguely unsettling style and context.  This first appears towards the end of the “Main Title” cue and is re-visited periodically, providing one of the score’s most distinctive features.

Quite a few cues on the soundtrack are Bernstein jazz instrumental cues, starting with “Blues for a Four String Guitar” (which is more horn-centric than the title would suggest) and continuing through “Picnic 3”.  Bernstein had a talent for this type of music and these are good, but they do feel a bit out of place with the otherwise more suspense-oriented score.  Most of these are likely source cues, but I think the listening experience might have been improved by grouping these at the end of the album.

The Carey Treatment (Roy Budd, 1972): Film Score Monthly included 35 minutes of music from this film, which was based on a novel that Michael Crichton wrote under a pseudonym, as part of a 2-disc set that also contained the scores from Crichton’s much better known Coma and Westworld.  The album is a limited edition in their Silver Age Classics series, but is still readily available.  Note that the CD only had cover art for the other two titles, so the above image is makeshift cover art I created from the poster art that I found online.

The score has a generally jazzy style, although with a mostly melodic approach.  It is symphonic, but with some electronic elements and a lot of percussion, trumpet, piano, and saxophone.  A lot of the score has a smaller-ensemble sound and quite a few of the cues sound likely to be source cues from party scenes or other similar settings.  One of those cues is even entitled “Party” and another is named “Source”.

Other parts of the score have a more tension-filled sound, with deep bass strings and horns.  “The Heavy” and “Hospital Attack”, both cues fairly late in the score, are particularly strong examples of that.  Both cues do bring in bits of piano and trumpet that occasionally add a touch of chaos to these cues while also giving it a bit more of a connection to the main themes.

Carried Away (Bruce Broughton, 1996): Bruce Broughton’s score for this little known Dennis Hopper/Amy Irving drama is one of his quietest and most subtle scores with an overall feeling of melancholy.  The score is fully orchestral, dominated by gentle strings and woodwinds.  Broughton also makes pretty frequent and effective use of solo piano, as in the cues “Time To Marry Me” and “Momma”.  The score doesn’t really establish extremely distinctive themes, but instead develops an overall melodic atmosphere that is carried through the score.

Intrada released a soundtrack CD at the time that the film was originally released.  It is out of print now and Intrada sold off its inventory during a sale on Broughton CDs a few years back (which was when I got it), but it looks like used and new copies are pretty easy to locate.

Cars (Randy Newman, 2006): This is one of the most listenable soundtracks to a Pixar film and,  I will note, it is pretty much my 6-year-old son’s favorite music album.  Most critics and adult fans often rank the film pretty low among Pixar’s films (although that is admittedly an extremely high bar), but it is absolutely beloved by pre-teens, particularly boys, and the album really does reflect the film exceptionally well.

The album is a mixed score and song album with Randy Newman’s score only taking up 20 minutes of the 52 minute running time.  The songs are all used pretty prominently in the film itself, so this is probably a pretty appropriate mix. Only one of the songs, “Our Town” performed by James Taylor, was written by Newman.  That very effective song was used during one of the most emotionally-charged sequences in the film, a montage that looked back at the film’s town of Radiator Springs during its heyday. 

The other two best known original songs from the film are Sheryl Crow’s “Real Gone” and “Life Is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts.  The Rascal Flatts song is a particularly catchy tune, although I admit that I’m fairly tired of it due to my son playing it over and over and over…  The Sheryl Crow song is ok, although how much one likes it is probably going to be dependent on how much one likes Sheryl Crow and I admit I’m not really a fan.  The album also includes two original songs by country star Brad Paisley.  The better of the two, and the most prominently used in the film, is “Find Yourself”.

Because of the film’s Route 66 setting, it isn’t surprising at all that the soundtrack contains two versions of the classic Bobby Troup song “Route 66”.  The first is Chuck Berry’s famous recording of the song and the second is a cover version performed by John Mayer.  Other non-original songs included on the soundtrack are “Sh-Boom” by The Chords and “My Heart Would Know” by Hank Williams.

Randy Newman’s Americana style of composing is very appropriate to the film and fits extremely well.  With the race sequences, as well as the chase music in the cue “McQueen Lost", he provides some nice, brassy action music as well.  Newman also provides some fun rural/country style sounds during some parts of the score.  The short cue “Bessie” and the cues “New Road” and “Tractor Tipping” are particularly good examples of this.  The Americana aspect is particularly well-represented in the wistfully emotional cue “Goodbye”.

The opening score cue entitled “Opening Race” is one of the best demonstrations of the more action-oriented aspects of the score.  It opens with a short statement of Newman’s very Americana main theme for the film and then ends with some some very fast paced race music.  In the middle, Newman is given the chance to use some of his rock composition skills with some purely rock-style instrumental music.  The score is bookended with this approach, ending with the highly brassy and action packed “The Big Race”. 

Braveheart (James Horner, 1995): 1995 was a pretty big year for James Horner.  That year, he scored two highly-acclaimed films, both of which were front-runners at the Academy Awards.  While Apollo 13 was the bigger hit at the box office, Braveheart was the Best Picture winner and both the film and score have retained an extremely loyal following, with the soundtrack album remaining one of the top sellers of the genre.  Somewhat famously, Horner’s two scores apparently split the Academy’s vote for Best Original Score, resulting in the award going to Luis Bacalov’s Il Postino, instead. 

Horner has always been influenced quite a bit by Scottish and Irish regional music and the Scottish theme and setting of this film certainly gave him a major opportunity to directly exercise those influences.  Thus, the score is pretty heavy on bagpipes, pan flute, and other instruments from that culture.  Choral elements are also included and are used sparingly enough to be quite effective.  That Horner has a tendency to sometimes mix Scottish and Irish influences in the score is somewhat of a minor quibble for most fans/viewers.  The scores overall style is one that Horner has continued to revisit from time to time, most famously with his enormously popular Titanic score.

One element of the score’s popularity is Horner’s noble and evocative main theme, which is first introduced as a bagpipe melody during the “Main Title” cue and is presented in a variety of orchestrations throughout the rest of the score.  Horner also provides a couple of effective, more romantic themes which are brought together very well in the cue “For the Love of a Princess”.  The films’ several battle sequences are scored with a mix of fairly typical Horner action motifs along with some percussion-driven ethnic elements.

The soundtrack CD runs for a little over an hour and 17 minutes and features quite a few pretty lengthy cues.  At that length, I think it very effectively covers the important parts of this score and may even be a bit long, considering that the score does repeat itself a fair amount.  The ongoing popularity of the score resulted in the release of a second More Music From Braveheart album that contained some more of Horner’s music as well as various source cues from the film.  I’ve always felt that the first release was enough, though, and have never felt the need to pick up the second album.

Breakheart Pass (Jerry Goldsmith, 1975): In the 1960s and 1970s, Jerry Goldsmith was given many opportunities to score westerns, although his projects generally were less prominent projects than the assignments his contemporaries like Elmer Bernstein and Ennio Morricone tended to get.  This Charles Bronson western was one of the latest ones that he worked on, coming out at a time when audience interest in the genre was definitely on the decline.

The highlight of the score is definitely Goldsmith’s brassy and upbeat theme, which was pretty typical of his themes for the genre, but also extremely entertaining.  The theme is fully developed in the terrific “Main Title” cue and also wraps the score up very well during the end credits suite.  Goldsmith peppers the rest of the score with bits and pieces of the theme as well, although he doesn’t use it quite as regularly as he sometimes has with other main themes in his scores.

The score also has some good action music, with my favorite being the fast paced and exciting cue “On the Move – Runaway”, in which Goldsmith is able to musically very successfully evoke the image of a runaway train.  The moving train motif is one that he returns to in several other cues as well, including “The Casket – Box Car Fight”.  Overall, the score is a bit more driven by suspense cues, although periodically punctuated by some bursts of fairly exciting action.

One somewhat surprising aspect to this score is that Goldsmith fairly rarely uses common western conventions (the harmonica is almost entirely absent), instead giving the score a somewhat more modern sound, even using electronics occasionally.  The main theme is generally pretty brassy and the action sequences are dominated by brass and strings.  Some of the score’s quieter moments include some sensitive acoustic guitar and woodwind music as well.

La La Land Records released a limited edition (3,000 copies) CD containing 45 minutes of the score.  The CD is sold out, but copies can generally be found in the $25-$30 range.  This is a good score and definitely worth seeking out for Goldsmith’s fans, particularly those that especially enjoy his western themes.

The Bridge at Remagen (Elmer Bernstein, 1969): This World War II adventure score by Elmer Bernstein was released by Film Score Monthly as a Silver Age Classics limited edition, paired on a single disc with Maurice Jarre’s score to the 1964 film The Train.  Bernstein’s score only runs for slightly under 30 minutes on the CD, but the liner notes indicates that to be a complete presentation of the music that he wrote for the film.

The score opens with a very impressive “Main Title” cue featuring an exciting, military-style march with lots of brass and percussion.  It is the type of theme that really grabs your attention.  While I haven’t seen the film, I would imagine this theme was a very effective way to get the audience pumped up and attentive.

Bernstein does occasionally return to the main theme during the rest of the score, but other parts of the score are quieter and more subtle in nature.  Often times, the score shifts to fairly intimate, string and/or piano focused melodies, often intermixed with periodic shifts to brass and percussion that signal more action oriented segments.  Particularly good examples of this mix are the cues “Defenses” and “Confrontation/More Madness”.  The combination is quite effective and very enjoyable.

Broadcast News (Bill Conti, 1987): This film was a big critical and financial success and a major contender at the Academy Awards in 1987 (and is a personal favorite of mine), yet there was no soundtrack album released until 18 years later when Varese Sarabande released a limited edition as part of their Soundtrack Club series.  At the time that I’m writing this, copies are still available from their website, although they warn that less than 500 remain.

The score is fairly small in scale, composed mainly for piano with occasional orchestral elements usually played by a relatively small ensemble.  Playing to the film’s newsroom setting, much of the music does have a tendency to bring to mind local news themes, and not just in the couple cues that actually are the fictional news themes from the film.  The film is very dialog-heavy, so it doesn’t really lend itself to larger scale scoring and that is probably a big part of the reason why no soundtrack was released at the time.  The album also contains quite a few source cues (composed for the film) used in various party scenes and other similar settings.

Another likely big driver on the delayed soundtrack release was that the film underwent quite a bit of re-scoring prior to release.  This included composer Michael Gore being brought in to re-score some parts of the film in addition to Conti providing some alternates himself.  Another composer, Michel Cimilo, was brought in to write one cue entitled “News Theme Ballad”. The CD ends with about 20 minutes of alternate score takes after the complete presentation of the score as used in the film.

The end result is a score that is interesting and does evoke positive memories for fans of the film, but it doesn’t really hold together exceptionally well.  The re-scoring combined with the film’s talky nature results in a score that doesn’t really establish strong thematic threads or generally provide an overly cohesive listening experience.  The album is worth getting for big fans of Conti or of the film, but it is understandable why it hasn’t had a more widely distributed release despite the popularity of the film.

Broken Arrow (Hans Zimmer, 1996): Back in 1996, Hans Zimmer’s rock-infused style of action music sounded a lot fresher than it does today.  I saw the film soon after it was released and the music had caught my attention sufficiently that I quickly went out to buy the soundtrack album.  While I was already familiar with Zimmer from his scores to Backdraft and The Lion King, this was really my first exposure to the action score style that would ultimately become his signature.

The score is primarily performed using a mix of synthesizers and electronic instruments, with a pretty heavy emphasis on bass guitar, featuring soloist Duane Eddy.  More purely orchestral moments do poke through occasionally, such as during the introduction to the cue “Stealth”, but they are few and far between.  This is definitely primarily a synthesizer and rock instrument score.  Zimmer also uses wordless choral elements occasionally to pretty good effect.

Some parts of the score, particularly the major theme for John Travolta’s villain, have a western sound that is obviously inspired by Ennio Morricone’s classic Sergio Leone film scores.  The cue entitled “Mine” is a particularly strong example of this aspect of the score, particularly during the early part of the cue.

Broken Lance (Leigh Harline, 1954): Over the last few years, the specialty soundtrack labels have released quite a few golden age scores from composer Leigh Harline.  While Harline scored many films, he generally wasn’t as well-known as many of his contemporaries.  His biggest claim to fame was his work on Pinocchio, including writing the music to “When You Wish Upon a Star”, but his scoring career covered a pretty wide range of genres and styles.

Film Score Monthly released Harline’s score to the western Broken Lance as part of their Golden Age Classics limited edition series.  The score tends to minimize most of the expected movie western conventions, instead going for a pretty broadly orchestral approach, although still with a certain sense of Americana.  Much of the score is built upon a simple 5-note motif that is introduced as a fanfare right at the start of the “Main Title” cue.  Harline develops a lot of other orchestral ideas throughout the score, but this primary motif remains central to it.

The score includes some very tender, melodic themes, sometimes enhanced by subtle choral elements that are almost angelic in approach.  I tend to be pretty partial to this kind of choral scoring.  The early cue entitled “The Home Place/Desolate Home/Conversation With Portrait” as well as the late cue “Burial/Joe and Signora” are very good examples of this aspect of the score and are among my favorites on this soundtrack.

Brother Bear (Phil Collins and Mark Mancina, 2003): This Disney animated feature re-united the musical team of songwriter/singer Phil Collins and composer Mark Mancina, who had previously worked together on Tarzan in 1999.  While neither the film nor the music were as popular or well-received as that earlier one, the soundtrack is still quite good and I actually find it a bit more varied and, thus, a more enjoyable listen.

One advantage of this album over Tarzan is that Collins didn’t choose to perform all the songs himself this time.  While I like Collins voice and I actually think it worked pretty well to have him serve as effectively a musical narrator in the earlier film, the soundtrack is pretty repetitive, particularly since most of the songs are presented  both in “film” and “single” versions which pretty much sound the same.  While Collins’ voice is still prominent in both this film and soundtrack, there are also performances by Tina Turner, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and The Bulgarian Woman’s Choir. 

This album does once again present two versions of many of the songs, but only in the case of the ballad “No Way Out” (one of three songs that Collins sings solo in the film) are the two versions both performed by Collins.  In the case of this song, the two versions are pretty substantially different, with the film version (which is only about 1/2 the length of the single) featuring lyrics that more directly reflect the events in the film.  The other two Collins solos in the film are "Look Through My Eyes” and “On My Way”, but each are presented only once on the soundtrack.

In the film versions, Turner performs “Great Spirits”, The Blind Boys of Alabama (backed up by Collins) perform “Welcome” and The Bulgarian Woman’s Choir performs “Transformation”.  The album also includes Collins’ solo versions of the latter two songs, which have more of a straightforward pop style than the more exotic arrangements used in the film.  Collins did record a version of “Great Spirits” as well, but it was only included on a version of the soundtrack that was exclusively offered at Best Buy stores.  The very infectious “Welcome” is my pick for the best song from the film.  This catchy song was even used as the primary theme for Disneyland’s daytime parade for a few years.

Typical of many Disney animated features, Mancina’s score is somewhat under-represented.  The soundtrack contains only three score cues, although they are pretty lengthy adding up to a relatively generous (for a Disney soundtrack) 19 minutes of score.  The score is orchestral, although with some segments that have a bit of a pop beat that connects it a bit more with the Collins songs.  The film’s rustic setting is reflected in parts of the score with some jungle-rhythms and exotic wordless vocals, while other parts are more gently melodic.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Stu Philips, 1979): The pilot for the early 80s Buck Rogers TV series was released as a theatrical feature in 1979.  A soundtrack LP containing selections from the score by Stu Philips as well as the theme song performed by Kipp Lennon was released at the time of the movie.  In 2008, Intrada reissued the LP program on a limited edition CD that is still available from their website.

The song, which is titled “Suspension” but billed on the soundtrack as “The Song from Buck Rogers (Suspension)”, is a fairly cheesy 70s pop song with a bit of a waltz rhythm to it.  The album includes both the main title version of the song as well as a slightly shorter end title reprise.  An instrumental-only version of the song became the TV theme song.

The score is mostly a very brassy and high-energy swashbuckler-style score with lots of fanfares and crescendos.  Action cues dominate, with exciting-sounding cue names like “Pirate Attack”, “Buck Vs. Tigerman” and “Tailpipe Torpedo”.  No, this isn’t sophisticated, but it definitely is quite a bit of fun.  The score also includes some very 70s electronic music in a few places, with hints of it in "Introducing: Twiki and Dr. Theo” and more fully in “Something Kinda Funny”.

A Bug’s Life (Randy Newman, 1998): For Pixar Animation Studios and director John Lassiter’s second film, they brought back Randy Newman, who had provided the popular score for Toy Story, their first big hit.  This time, the movie was more of a lush, outdoor adventure and called for a score that was a bit grander in scope and less folksy than that previous score.

While A Bug’s Life wasn’t a musical, Newman did write one original song for the film.  The song is entitled “The Time of Your Life” and his own vocal performance of it opens the CD.  The melody of the song does get incorporated into the score pretty regularly and essentially serves as a  main theme to the score.

When played as an instrumental, the song’s melody features a brassy fanfare, with the main melody then usually presented via jazzy trumpet solos with a piano counterpart.  This theme is repeated pretty frequently throughout the score’s running time, essentially providing the main framework on which Newman hangs most of the film’s action and adventure oriented cues.  A somewhat similarly orchestrated secondary theme underscores most of the more emotional segments of the film and the two themes often intermix well.

A key secondary theme that Newman creates to represent the quirkier side of the film’s main character, Flik, takes the score in a pretty significantly different direction.  This theme, which is fully developed in the cue “Flik’s Machine”, has a pretty full-on swing style to it.  Newman brings the two fairly different aspects of the score together fairly memorably in the cue “The City”. 

Bushwhacked (Bill Conti, 1995): About 25 minutes of Conti’s score from this largely forgotten Daniel Stern comedy was included on a Varese Sarabande CD Club limited edition (1,500 copies) that also included Conti’s scores to Rookie of the Year and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. 

The score opens with a cue entitled “Whacked!” which is a rock instrumental heavy on synthesizers, electric guitar, and rock percussion.  Conti returns to this same style periodically during other parts of the score, including the cue “Devil’s Peak” which is pretty much a heavy metal instrumental, but the bulk of the score actually is more fully orchestral.  

The second cue in the score, “The Fire”, demonstrates the overall range of styles.  The cue opens with a brief western-style harmonica riff before going into an orchestral piece dominated by strings and woodwinds. This is followed by a brass-dominated section and then it ends with a return to the rock style from the first cue.  A cue entitled “Max Meets Kids” is pretty much a brass and percussion dominated march, a style that tends to dominate the later part of the score.  One thing I found a bit surprising was that a key motif in the finale cue “The Big Finish” very closely resembles Conti’s main theme from The Right Stuff.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Burt Bacharach, 1969): Burt Bacharach has only scored a handful of movies in his long career and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is almost certainly the most famous and popular of those scores.  The relatively short (just under 30 minutes) soundtrack album is widely available.

The best known part of this score is, of course, the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”, which is performed by B.J. Thomas both in the film and on the soundtrack CD.  This song is so familiar that there isn’t really all that much to be said about it.  The album features two versions of the song performed by Thomas, the familiar single as well as the cue “On a Bicycle Built for Joy”, which is the version as used in the film.  It also includes an instrumental arrangement of it.

The rest of the score generally has the late 60s pop sound that is usually associated with Bacharach’s music.  The cue “South American Getaway” features wordless vocals that give it a sound that essentially resembles a scat version of a typical Bacharach song.  The tune “Not Goin’ Home Anymore” has an Italian style to it and features an accordion as a primary instrument.  The other tunes are all very melodic with a jazzy style.

By Love Possessed (Elmer Bernstein, 1961): This is one of the most lushly romantic of Elmer Bernstein’s scores.  Varese Sarabande released it as part of their CD Club series in a limited edition of 1,500 copies, which has sold out at their website.  Copies can still be found on Amazon for under $30, though.

Much of the score is a highly melodic, classical-style work with an emphasis on some very impressive string melodies.  One of the best cues is “Full Circle”, which includes some well-played statements of the score’s primary theme on solo violin.  Another good variation is in “Last Quiet Moments”, which has solo violin and piano statements of the main theme eventually joined by a more fully orchestral presentation.  This score contains some of Bernstein’s most beautiful compositions.

The score also has some jazzy portions as well, including the cues “Veronica”, “Timber’s Jazz”, and “Sex Hex”.  These cues include a lot of solo horns combined with some spirited piano and percussion. 

Bolt (John Powell, 2008): Disney’s 2008 CGI animated feature was not a musical, thus the soundtrack album primarily features the orchestral score by composer John Powell, who has generally done some of his best work in animated features (including Shrek, the Ice Age sequels, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon).  This was his first score for Disney and it is well suited to the film.

The soundtrack album opens with the two songs from the film, both of which have a modern country style.  The first is “I Thought I Lost You”, the end-credits song performed by the film’s voice stars John Travolta and Miley Cyrus, which is a fairly interesting pairing for a duet.  The other song is “Barking at the Moon” performed by Jenny Lewis, which was used more prominently over a key montage sequence in the film.

Powell’s score has an interesting mix of styles, due to the somewhat dual nature of the film itself.  The main story of the lost dog trying to find its way home called for a fairly tender, emotionally driven score, which Powell builds around a piano-driven main theme.  This aspect of the score is quickly introduced during the first cue of the score portion of the soundtrack entitled “Meet Bolt”.  Powell also provides a fun, vaguely Godfather-inspired  theme for Mittens the cat, which is introduced in the cue “Meet Mittens”.  Other parts of the score have a bit more of a rural, country-inspired feel.

The other key aspect of the score is the very fast-paced, action music that is principally featured in the title character’s super-hero type TV series within the movie.  For these sequences, Powell provides an edgy, heavily synthesizer driven score.  On the soundtrack album, these cues feel a bit out of step with the rest of the score, although they fit perfectly in those sequences in the film.  This aspect of the score is heard early on with “Bolt Transforms” and “Scooter Chase” and Powell does occasionally re-introduce some of the TV series action music during appropriate, action-oriented sections of the main storyline.

Born Free (John Barry, 1966): Outside of his James Bond songs, the title song from Born Free is almost certainly the most recognizable and familiar composition of John Barry’s career.  The Matt Monro recording of the song (which features lyrics by Don Black) was a big hit and  became Monro’s signature song.  A cover version by Roger Williams was also a top-10 hit.

The title song is the best remembered aspect of the score and its melody is the dominant theme.  Like the song, the score is very lush and romantic and extremely melodic.  Fitting the family-oriented adventure film, the score has a definite playful quality to it and Barry also occasionally introduces some bits and pieces of African styling, such as some of the use of percussion in the cue “Elsa at Play”.  Some slightly darker tones come into play in “The Death of Pati”, while still maintaining the overall style of the score.

For the 1966 soundtrack album, Barry conducted a re-recording of the score’s highlights.  This re-recording plus the Monro version of the song runs just under 40 minutes in length.  The soundtrack album was released on CD by Film Score Monthly in 2004 in a, rare for the label, non limited-edition that was widely distributed to stores.  The CD doesn’t contain any additional music (or the original film tracks), but it is a solid representation of the score.

Born on the Fourth of July (John Williams and Various artists, 1989): This film featured John Williams first of the three scores (preceding JFK and Nixon) that he composed for director Oliver Stone.  Those scores were among the darkest and most somber that Williams composed.  This means that they weren’t among the most accessible to listen to separately from the films, but the scores were exceptionally effective within the films.  The Born on the Fourth of July score isn’t one that I return to very often, but it is a very impressive, serious composition that should be a part of any serious film music collection.

The soundtrack album for Born on the Fourth of July is a mix of a song and score album.  The film used contemporary to the era music pretty extensively to help establish the late 60s/early 70s setting and, particularly, the scenes involving the Vietnam War protest groups and the general counterculture of the era.  The album opens with cover versions of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall” by Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians” and John Fogerty’s  “Born On the Bayou” recorded by The Broken Homes.  Both of these were recorded for the film.

The rest of the songs were original artists versions of “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, “American Pie” by Don Mclean, “My Girl” by The Temptations, “Soldier Boy” by The Shirelles, “Venus” by Frankie Avalon, and  the familiar choral version of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River”.  All are good songs, of course, but they are also very widely available from other sources and it would have been vastly preferable to have had more of the score instead.

The score portion of the album opens with “Prologue”, a distinguished and somber theme for solo trumpet, extremely well performed by former Boston Pops lead trumpeter Tim Morrison, a frequent Williams collaborator.  This immediately establishes the very serious mood of the score.  This theme is re-visited quite a bit during the rest of the score cues and Morrison’s solo trumpet is also utilized to perform other themes within the score.

During the second cue, “The Early Days, Massapequa, 1957”, Williams establishes the other primary theme of the score, which is a fairly romantic Americana theme that reflects the all-American, small town origins of the film’s central character.  As the score progresses, this theme is re-visited frequently, but with darker, more downbeat shadings as the film’s very serious story arc plays out.  This is especially true of the last couple cues of the album, which score the last parts of the film after the injured main character has returned home from the war.  Especially effective is Williams use of a bit of a pop beat under the trumpet performance of his Americana theme during “Homecoming”, with a revisit of the “Prologue” theme interrupting it, causing a fairly abrupt shift from optimism to sadness.

The soundtrack also includes a couple cues that underscore the film’s war sequences.  The first of these, “The Shooting of Wilson” is mostly very dissonant in sound with harsh strings and bursts of percussion and brass underlining the tension and pain of the war.  It is the most difficult cue on the album to listen to, although it is still very expertly composed.  The cue ends with repeats of the score’s two main themes, providing a sort of release.  The second war cue, “Cua Viet River, Vietnam, 1968” is more melodic and interweaves more of the main themes, but in a very dark and foreboding style.  Williams’ use of vocal whispering (with unrecognizable words) is a particularly unsettling element of this cue.

Williams’ score only takes up about 25 minutes on the album, so this is obviously a very prime candidate for an expanded release.  Not counting Williams (mostly early) scores that have never been released outside of their films at all, this is almost certainly his most under-represented score out there.  The album does hit the top highlights of the score giving a solid taste for it, but there definitely is a need for more of it to be made available.

Boy On a Dolphin (Hugo Friedhofer, 1957): Intrada released a limited edition CD release of this interesting and fairly exotic Hugo Friedhofer score.  Previously, the score had been released on LP several times (including a release contemporary to the film) as well as on a Japanese-import CD, but the Intrada disc added a little over 10 minutes of additional music and was the first domestic CD release and the first time the score has been available in stereo.    The CD also includes a demo version of the title song.

The album opens with a title song, performed by singer Mary Kaye.  The song’s melody serves as a primary theme for the instrumental score as well.  It is a melodic, vaguely fantastical song that establishes the primary overall tone for the score.  The entire score has a somewhat exotic, vaguely Mediterranean sound to it.

Friedhofer also makes good use of slower paced string and woodwind centered melodies to help establish a mood fitting to the film’s underwater sequences.  Adding to the exotic, vaguely otherworldly quality are some wordless female vocals that overlay some of the cues.  The cue “Nocturnal Sea” is a particularly notable example of this aspect of the score.

The Boy Who Could Fly (Bruce Broughton, 1986): This is one of my favorite film scores and a soundtrack that I return to very often.  The CD that I have was a promotional release that was put out by Percepto Records in a limited edition of only 500 copies.  I purchased it when it originally became available, but it is now long sold out and used copies generally go for hundreds of dollars.  An earlier Varese Sarabande release contained a shorter, re-recording of the score, which was released on LP contemporary with the film and was also briefly available on CD, although it is now a bit hard to find.  The Varese album is still available from iTunes as a download.

The score is primarily built around an absolutely beautiful, sensitive and highly memorable main theme.  The theme is introduced right at the beginning of the soundtrack in the cue “Meeting Eric”.  The theme is initially presented in a very low key version played on piano, harp, flute and acoustic guitar, but the theme builds over the course of the score, eventually making it to soaring, fully orchestral presentations that primarily score the film’s flying sequences, particularly in the cue “The Hospital/Flying” and in the last portion of the spectacular finale cue “Milly and Eric Flee/Into the Air”.

While the main theme is repeated frequently throughout the score in a wide variety of orchestrations, Broughton does also provide some very effective secondary themes as well.  For the film’s soldier-obsessed younger brother character (who was played by a very young Fred Savage), Broughton provides a theme that manages to successfully sound military while still remaining gentle and playful.  A sensitive, somewhat melancholy theme is presented in the cue “Family”, which blends a piano theme with some short, very low key statements of the main theme.

Broughton also effectively brings the score into some darker places, when needed, with both some more subdued variations on the themes for some of the sadder sequences of the film as well as some occasionally tense music when needed.  This is especially noted in the cues “Eric Agitated/Louis Defeated” and “The Rainstorm/The Ring” as well as in the fairly abrupt strings that conclude “The Hospital/Flying”.

In the film itself, a pop song was selected to play over the film’s end credits, but the Percepto CD includes an unused end credits suite that Broughton wrote for the film.  This cue, simply entitled “The Boy Who Could Fly”, is the most complete presentation of the main theme, including its progression from the simple, lightly-orchestrated version into the fully orchestral theme.  It is a major shame that this wasn’t kept for the film as it would have been the ideal conclusion.

One bit of trivia about this score is that the main theme is likely to be very familiar to frequent movie-goers in Los Angeles, particularly Disney fans, even if they don’t remember or never saw the movie.  Before every show at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, they do an elaborate light show as they open the curtains.  The music used during the curtain opening is the theme from The Boy Who Could Fly.  The exact music used at the theater starts at the 1:25 mark during the unused closing credits cue on the Percepto CD, although I strongly suspect that the recording used is actually taken from the re-recording that Erich Kunzel did with the Cincinnati Pops for the CD entitled Fantastic Journey.

The Boys from Brazil (Jerry Goldsmith, 1978): For this thriller, Jerry Goldsmith made the somewhat unusual choice of crafting an original waltz that would serve as the score’s primary theme.  This impressive composition of soaring strings and triumphant brass is one of Goldsmith’s most popular compositions among film score enthusiasts.

The waltz is immediately introduced during the film’s “Main Title” cue and is re-visited pretty regularly.  The rest of the score includes some pretty impressive action music, which emphasizes percussion and brass.  Particularly notable is Goldsmith’s use of tuba and trombone to ramp up the intensity of some of the action cues.  The lengthy, early cue “The Killer’s Arrive” introduces the key action themes up front, before impressively segueing into the waltz.

The original soundtrack album produced at the time of the film’s release featured a 20 minute suite of the highlights from the score, edited into a single cue plus two shorter (relatively speaking) score cues that run another 15 minutes or so combined.   The album also included the song “We’re Home Again” performed by Elaine Page and written by Goldsmith with lyricist Hal Shaper.  While not complete or in film order, the album arrangements are a nice selection of music from the film, although the omitted portions do include some of the strongest action-oriented cues.  The original album also put a bit more emphasis on the waltz, placing it more front-and-center than it really was in the complete score.

In 2008, Intrada released a 2-CD limited edition (5,000 copies) containing the complete score in film order on disc 1 and the original soundtrack album tracks plus some source music and demo tracks on disc 2.  This release is no longer available from Intrada, but copies can generally be found in the $30-$40 range.  Intrada’s release really is a best-of-both-worlds release by including both the complete score and the album arrangements.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Wojciech Kilar, 1992): Francis Ford Coppola’s very stylish and very strange version of the Dracula story was one of those films that pretty heavily divided audiences.  I generally found it to be an interesting and absorbing film and I felt that Wojciech Kilar’s classically gothic score played a big role in helping to establish the film’s distinctive mood.

The score has a fairly old-fashioned, highly thematic sound.  The music is extremely atmospheric and really cranks up the tension with themes that heavily emphasize percussion, low brass, choral elements, and extremely active strings.  Kilar establishes the score’s most significant theme during the soundtrack’s second cue, entitled “Vampire Hunters”.  This theme features a simple repeating melody, played over the top of a progressive beat of brass and percussion.

A substantial portion of the soundtrack consists of action cues that tend to emphasize the building of tension over pure adrenaline-pumping themes.  Choral elements are frequently used in cues such as “The Storm” and “The Hunt Builds”, with lots of low-register brass and fairly relentless percussion.  The action cues are very dark, but constantly interesting and engaging.

Kilar also provides some quieter, more romantic melodies, primarily serving as themes for the major female characters.  The theme for the character of Mina is a primarily string melody that is first introduced during “Mina’s Photo” and more fully developed in “Love Remembered”, while the cue “Lucy’s Party” introduces a gentle, but vaguely ominous minor-key piano melody.  “The Brides” presents a more intense, violin-driven melody.

The one cue that seems pretty out of place on the soundtrack is “The Ring of Fire”, which seems to be made up more of sound effects from the film’s finale than actual musical material.  It does have a dissonant, rhythmic, mostly percussion musical element, but it still seems pretty out of place in the otherwise mostly melodic album.

The soundtrack album ends with a song entitled “Love Song for a Vampire” that is performed by Annie Lennox.  The melody is based on Mina’s theme.  The musical accompaniment is mostly electronic rather than orchestral, making it a bit of an odd fit with the rest of the album.

The Bravados (Alfred Newman, Hugo Friedhofer, 1958): This western featured a collaboration between two of the top golden age composers.  The resultant score is a blend of the two composers’ distinct, but still mostly compatible, styles.  Film Score monthly released an impressively complete soundtrack CD as part of their Golden Age Classics series.

The soundtrack opens with an exciting, brassy march that was composed by Newman, which gets the score off to a very rousing start and is further developed nicely in “The Posse Rides”.  Newman also contributes some of the film’s more romantic and contemplative melodies, including a fairly reverent theme heard in the cue “A Mother’s Prayer” and a romantic theme with some very impressive work for strings in the cue “The Dead Miner and Emma/Josefa”.

Friedhofer’s contributions are primarily the more dark and brooding aspect of the score.   His themes tend to have more of an emphasis on lower brass and strings, providing the score with some more tense passages such as in cues like “Jailbreak” and “Parral’s Ambush”.  I will say that I’ve never been a huge fan of Friedhofer’s style and this score kind of drives that home.  While I’m sure his compositions were appropriate to the darker parts of the film, I definitely prefer the Newman themes.

The program on the CD is in 3 parts.  The first half hour or so is a fairly complete version of the score presented in stereo.  This is followed by about 13 minutes of source cues.  The album ends with a little under 20 minutes of the score presented in its original monaural mix.

The Brave Little Toaster (David Newman, 1986): This film was an independently-produced animated feature that primarily played on television and home video here in the US after a few showings at film festivals.  David Newman scored the film, which also contains a few songs composed by Van Dyke Parks.

Percepto Records released a limited edition soundtrack CD for the film, but it is a pretty mixed bag.  The score on the album is complete, but it is covered with dialog and sound effects on quite a few tracks.  Newman provides an impressively melodic and fully orchestral score, but so much of the music is overwhelmed on the album that it is difficult to get a solid feel for the flavor of this score.

Still, there is some very good music on the disc and the passages that play uninterrupted are sometimes pretty impressive.  The film’s primary theme is introduced during a nicely presented “Main Title” cue and Newman has the opportunity to develop the themes pretty well during some of the lengthier cues such as “The Pond/Busby Berkley/The Meadow” (which has a lot of sound effects during the first part, but is mostly music-only after that) and the 7 minute “Finale” cue.

The songs are ok, but generally pretty forgettable.  I’m not exceptionally familiar with the movie (saw it once quite a while back), so perhaps the songs would connect with me more if I knew it better.  The most entertaining of the songs is the clever horror spoof “It’s a ‘B’ Movie”.

The Black Stallion (Carmine Coppola, 1978): Intrada’s 3-CD set of the score to The Black Stallion may simply be too much of a good thing, at least when attempting to listen to it all at once.  The first two discs essentially contain everything that was written for the film: the score as heard in the movie, numerous unused cues, and various source cues.  The 3rd disc contains the 35 minute LP program that was released with the film.  The total of the 3 discs comes out to over 2 hours of music.

Fortunately, there is nothing that says that one has to listen to the music all at one time.  Certainly the score is very good and it is certainly not a bad thing that all of it is available.  For the most part, I’ve found that the album version is probably the best choice for listening straight through, while the other parts  might be better suited to playing in parts or to occasionally include in broader “shuffle play” mixes.

While Carmine Coppola (father of Francis, who produced the film) is the primary credit composer, the film also contained contributions from composers Shirley Walker, Nyle Steiner, Kenneth Nash, George Marsh, and Dick Rosmini.   The Intrada set includes appropriate credits for all the composers, thus making it possible to identify who wrote what parts.

Much of the score is very guitar-centered, with generally simple orchestration.  The score includes a fairly distinctive primary theme melody (which opens and closes the original album presentation), which features a solo guitar backing a main melody played by the orchestra, particularly the strings.  This theme is used throughout the score and generally establishes the overall tone of the presentation.  Other parts of the score tend to have a bit of an ethnic flavor, with a number of different instruments in use.  Some of the unused cues on the Intrada complete score discs are more fully orchestral than is generally heard on the cues used in the film.

The Black Stallion Returns (Georges Delerue, 1983): Not too long after Intrada put out their CD release of The Black Stallion, they also put out a disc of Georges Delerue’s score to the film’s sequel.  While this score only required a single CD release, it still contains the complete score as heard in the movie as well as the original 1983 album presentation for a total running time of around an hour and 17 minutes.

Delerue doesn’t reuse the themes from the original film, but instead scores the film in his own distinctly melodic style.  His main theme for the sequel does have some similarity, at least in spirit, to Carmine Coppola’s theme for the original film, but it is significantly more fully orchestral, with an emphasis on strings and woodwinds.  The acoustic guitar that was fairly central to the first film’s score is not carried over to the sequel.  I overall think that Delerue’s score is an easier and more satisfying listen than Coppola’s outside of the film.  It tends to be more melodic and straightforward orchestral with a definite flare towards the adventurous.

A huge highlight on this soundtrack is the absolutely thrilling “Finale” cue, which runs for over 8 minutes in length and masterfully sums up all of the film’s themes on its way to an immensely satisfying conclusion.  Due to the discs format of presenting the complete score followed by the original album, this finale is presented twice on the disc.  It is good enough that I don’t really object to hearing it twice in one play through.

Black Sunday (John Williams, 1977): For many years, Black Sunday was arguably the most significant John Williams score that had never received a soundtrack release.  In early 2010, Film Score Monthly finally corrected this by releasing a CD containing over an hour of Williams’ music from the film.  The CD is part of their limited edition Silver Age Classics series, but they produced 10,000 copies which should keep it available for at least a little while.

This score was composed during possibly the most important phase of his career.  The two other scores that he composed for films released  the same year were Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  His Black Sunday score does resemble his other scores from that time period, but it is quite a bit darker in tone as required by the disturbing subject matter of the film.

Building of tension is Williams’ prime role here and he is very effective at  accomplishing that.  For a good example, the cue “Nurse Dahlia/Kabakov’s Card/The Hypodermic” primarily features some low, fairly repetitive notes that build up a great deal of tension until the cue finally ends with a burst of shrieking strings reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s famous Psycho music.   Another interesting cue is “The Test”, which features chimes, initially by themselves and then later joined by the orchestra’s string section, an effect that builds a notably tense and foreboding atmosphere.

Other cues do have a more melodic style, such as the fairly sad melody that Williams contributes for the cue “Moshevsky’s Dead” or the more active string and brass driven melody in “Preparations”.  Williams also provides a melancholy, brass melody for the end titles, which the CD includes both in the film version and in a version without the underlying pop-style percussion.

The score also includes some very good chase and action music, particularly late in the score.  It is in the action cues that the connections to his other scores of that time period are most evident.  In particular, there is some noticeable similarities to some of the action cues from Close Encounters in this score.

Black Widow (Leigh Harline, 1954): Intrada released this classic Leigh Harline score on a limited edition CD paired with Harline’s score to Good Morning, Miss Dove.  The score is very piano-centric, although with strings and horns also featured in some of the settings.  As is typical for this genre of music from the era, it sometimes reflects a fairly dark setting while still maintaining a primarily melodic style.

While the presentation of Harline’s score on the CD is only around 20 minutes in length, there are some very impressive cues.  The cue “New York Skyline” opens with a fanfare before transitioning into a very melodic theme performed by solo piano. A later cue entitled “Iris Bolieres” essentially reverses that format by primarily featuring the solo piano before bringing in the full orchestra for its conclusion.

Impressive examples of more fully orchestral cues include “West Ninth Street”, which features a pretty lushly romantic melody that kind of serves as a central theme to the score as well as “Salome’s Dance”, an impressive waltz.  The score shifts in a darker direction during its later segments, introducing some more brooding, but still melodic, themes in cues such as “The Letter” and “Confession”.

Blazing Saddles (John Morris, 1974): The western parody Blazing Saddles is arguably Mel Brooks’ most famous film.  It featured a score by Brooks’ most frequent musical collaborator, John Morris, who provided an interesting mix of fairly traditional western motifs, including instruments such as the harmonica and acoustic guitar, as well as some more cartoonish, slapstick music.  In the later category, he occasionally incorporates samples of such songs as the Looney Toons theme and the Mexican Hat Dance.

The most familiar piece of music from the movie was Morris’ title song, which was performed by Frankie Lane.  The song is actually performed fairly straight and the melody is so evocative of the old west that it sometimes shows up in other contexts, including as part of the music loop in Frontierland at Disneyland.  The song’s melody, of course, serves as the primary theme for the film’s score and it is very effective at keeping the film rooted in western traditions.

The movie also included a handful of original songs written by Brooks.  The first is “The Ballad of Rock Ridge”, which sounds like a traditional western ballad, but with fairly ridiculous (and occasionally profane) lyrics.  “I’m Tired” is a demented and funny lounge song performed by Madeline Kahn.  Finally, “The French Mistake” is a brief and odd dance song.

No soundtrack was released for the film during its original release.  For a long time, the only availability of music from the film was a 1978 LP, released in conjunction with Brooks’ High Anxiety, that contained the songs from several of Brooks’ films.  La-La-Land Records finally released a CD in 2008 containing 40 minutes of the songs and score from the film.  This includes both vocal and instrumental versions of the songs as well as several source music tracks.

Blizzard (Mark McKenzie, 2003): This is one of the best, truly hidden gems in my collection.  When Intrada put out their 1000 copy limited edition in 2006, I’d never heard of this film before, and still really know basically nothing about it other than it was a winter-themed film directed by Levar Burton.  On Intrada’s online forums, they really were strongly encouraging their regular customers to at least listen to the samples if they didn’t know the music.  I did and was instantly hooked by it and placed an order.

The score is simply beautiful, with soaring melodies and lots of exciting, brassy fanfares.  The score also has some extremely nice, quietly tender moments such as the cue “The Best Friend Ever”, which features some solo piano as well as a nice, woodwind statement of the film’s main theme.  McKenzie also makes very effective use of wordless choir.  This, along with the occasional use of bells, helps to lend the score a wintery feeling at times.

The soundtrack CD opens with a tremendously enjoyable 8 minute “Blizzard Suite”, which basically serves as an overture to the album and a greater summary of the entire score.  I really wish that suites like this were more common on soundtrack albums.  A lot of movies have this kind of suite over the end credits (assuming a pop song hasn’t been used), but those suites often don’t make it onto the CD.  Note that suite did get some wider exposure when used during the opening montage for the 75th Academy Awards.

The Blue and the Gray (Bruce Broughton, 1982): This popular, heavily promoted early 1980s TV mini-series about the Civil War was one of the earliest, really prominent scoring assignments for Bruce Broughton after having previously mainly worked as a composer-for-hire on various TV series episodes.  The project called for a pretty big in scope orchestral score and Broughton delivered a strong, Americana-style score that was a clear predecessor to the style he would use a few years later in his best-known score for Silverado.

The old-fashioned rural Americana style is emphasized by Broughton’s frequent use of instruments such as the acoustic guitar, harmonica, and fiddle for the more intimate portions of the score, while the full orchestra comes into play for the broader in scope sequences, particularly the battle scenes.  For the battles, Broughton provides especially stirring action music, sometimes impressively built around some of the same themes that he introduced in more subtle orchestrations during the quieter parts of the scores.

Intrada has had a very long-standing relationship with Broughton and has been responsible for the release of many of his scores.  They released a limited edition (2,000 copies) 2-CD set containing just over 2 hours of Broughton’s score.  This set is still available from their website and is very much worth getting for fans of Broughton and/or of this style of Americana orchestral music.

Blue Denim (Bernard Herrmann, 1959): Film Score Monthly released this score on a limited edition Golden Age Classics CD where it is paired with Elmer Bernstein’s score to The View from Pompey’s Head (the connection between the two films was director Philip Dunne).  The CD contains a little under a half hour of Herrmann’s score.  While this is a fairly minor score in Herrmann’s impressive career, it still is nice that it is available and definitely worth getting for fans of the composer’s work.

The score brings to mind the type of music that Herrmann typically wrote for Alfred Hitchcock around that era.  It has a melodic, but darkly romantic quality with a strong emphasis on strings.  The music actually bears a pretty close resemblance to the composer’s very famous score to Vertigo, including a primary theme that definitely sounds like a close cousin to the theme from that film.

The Blue Max (Jerry Goldsmith, 1966): This war movie score was one of Jerry Goldsmith’s most famous and popular scores.  The score is particularly well known among film score enthusiasts for its exciting main theme, which features a great brass fanfare leading into a fully orchestral melody characterized by soaring strings.  The theme fits perfectly with the fighter pilot storyline of the film, with a melody that simply feels aeronautical.   This type of soaring theme that brings to mind flight became something of a Goldsmith trademark throughout his career with several later scores also having a similar feel.  His main theme from Air Force One nearly 2 decades later particularly seems to owe a lot to The Blue Max.

The main theme is given a full-length presentation during the “Main Title” cue and then is presented in numerous variations throughout the score.  It is given a number of different orchestrations and is frequently surrounded by other similarly flight-driven and militaristic themes.  Brass, percussion, and very active strings are dominant throughout the majority of the score.  One very nice respite is the tender and melodic “Love Theme from The Blue Max”, which prominently features a solo piano, although bookended by orchestral segments.

There have been a few releases of this score, including two that were reasonably complete.  The best and most recent is Intrada’s limited edition from early 2010, which is now sold out and fairly expensive to purchase on the secondary market.  The previous Legacy Records release from 1995 (linked to at the top of this entry) is much more readily available and is still a good representation of the score.  The Intrada release only includes a small amount of additional music compared to the Legacy release, but it has been remastered for better sound quality and also includes some improvements in score assembly and presentation order.  The Intrada is the best choice if you can get it, but it probably isn’t worth paying the substantially higher prices that release fetches over the Legacy release.

Varese Sarabande also previously released a 50 minute re-recording of the score back in 1985.  While not the original soundtrack recordings, Goldsmith still conducted the orchestra.  This was the best and most complete available recording of the score (and the only on CD) until the Legacy release.  It is now out of print and probably not worth the effort to track down.

The Blues Brothers (Various, 1980): The Blues Brothers is still the best film based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, admittedly a questionable distinction considering how bad most have been.  This was a genuinely good film, though, and a huge part of the reason for that was the music.  The movie was made as a full-blown musical, using classic blues and soul songs (as well as a bit of rock and roll) and an all-star guest cast of musicians.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt at all that stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd were themselves skilled blues musicians.

All the major songs from the film are here and so familiar that there isn’t a lot of elaboration needed other than to give the titles.  Belushi and Aykroyd provide lead vocals on 7 of the 11 songs on the soundtrack, including “She Caught the Caty”, “Gimme Some Lovin’”, “Shake Your Tailfeather” (Ray Charles joins them on this one), “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”, “Theme from Rawhide” (from the film’s country western bar scene), “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Jailhouse Rock”.  All are played with great energy by the stars as well as the distinguished blues band that they put together for the film.

In addition to Ray Charles’ vocals on “Shake Your Tailfeather”, the other star turns on the album include James Brown with “The Old Landmark”, Aretha Franklin performing “Think”, and Cab Calloway’s “Minnie The Moocher”.  Of course, all three songs are available elsewhere too, but the versions performed for the film are great arrangements.

The only instrumental on the album is an arrangement of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” that was used in the film.  Elmer Bernstein provided a very small amount of original score for the film (mainly what was commonly called the “God Music”), but it is unfortunately not present on the CD.

Blues Brothers 2000 (Various, 1998): The much-belated sequel to The Blues Brothers definitely isn’t as good  a film as the first one, and was a fairly famous box-office bomb, but both the film and the soundtrack album contains darned good music.  While the first soundtrack may be a bit more accessible due to its use of very familiar songs, the sequel’s soundtrack is perhaps richer.  For one thing, the original film’s soundtrack came out in the LP/cassette era while the sequel soundtrack originated on CD.  Because of this, the sequel album runs 20 minutes longer and contains 7 more songs than the original.

Of course, the obvious gap in the sequel is the absence of the late John Belushi.  Replacing Belushi as Dan Aykroyd’s new partner in the sequel was John Goodman, who certainly does bring quite a bit to the role.  Even still, Belushi’s deadpan delivery and surprisingly strong vocal skills are missed on the sequel soundtrack.  Goodman’s best showcase on the album is his lead vocals on “Ghost Riders In the Sky”, performed during a scene that paralleled the “Rawhide” scene from the first film.  Joe Morton also appears as a lost brother.  He is the villain during the first part of the film, but eventually joins the band and participates in the last few songs.

On the sequel, Paul Shaffer serves as the music director, reprising the role he played on the original SNL sketches and late 70s tour, although he was unavailable to work on the first film.  Shaffer really leverages the musical contacts that he has made over the course of his long career, particularly his very long run as David Letterman’s band leader, and manages to bring in an extremely impressive, all-star cast of musicians.

Aretha Franklin once again appears on this album, this time performing “Respect”, which is possibly her best known song.  James Brown appeared in the film again, but does not have a song on the album.  Some of the other big name musicians to appear include Shaffer, John Popper and Blues Traveler, Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore, Erykah Badu, and Dr. John.

For the film’s big “Battle of the Bands” finale, the Blues Brothers face off against a group named The Louisiana Gator Boys, which is an all-star band including such performers as B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Clarence Clemons, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Lou Rawls, Steve Winwood, Travis Tritt, Grover Washington, Jr., and others.  This super group performs the song “How Blue Can You Get?” and then joins the Blues Brothers and their band for “New Orleans”, which closes the album.

Big (Howard Shore, 1988): Despite the fact that the film was an enormous blockbuster that essentially led Tom Hanks’ transformation from light comedy actor to major movie star, no soundtrack album was released at the time that the film came out.  There wasn’t even a pop-song album with songs inspired from the film.  Howard Shore’s score to the film remained unavailable until 2002 when Varese Sarabande finally issued a limited edition CD (which is still available) as part of their CD Club series.

Those familiar with Howard Shore’s music mainly from his popular scores to the Lord of the Rings trilogy or for thrillers like Silence of the Lambs and Seven probably wouldn’t be too quick to recognize this score as coming from the same composer.  The Big score is light and pop-infused, with a bit of a new-age jazz styling to it.  In fact, hearing this score without knowing the composer, I would probably be more apt to guess it was by someone like Dave Grusin or Michael Gore. 

That isn’t to say that the score isn’t good.  In fact, it is very charming and fits the film perfectly.  The score is generally not fully orchestral, instead featuring piano as the predominant instrument, with synthesizers providing most of the backing for it.  The score is primarily built around a fairly simple piano melody that serves as a primary theme for Hanks’ character.  Shore creatively expands on the theme over the course of the film, with it essentially growing larger in scale, and becoming more fully orchestral, as the character becomes more a part of the adult world.  Particularly notable is the addition of strings to the theme during the cue “Falling In Love”, essentially growing it into more of a romantic theme.

The score does also include some fantasy elements, mainly for the scenes involving the carnival and the story’s central fortune telling machine.  The cue “Zoltar” is the primary example of this, with the music taking on a somewhat darker, almost creepy, tone.  The CD also includes alternate takes of several cues as bonus tracks.  These are all a bit darker in style and, interestingly, mostly more fully orchestral.  Shore likely chose to rework portions of the score to lighten the tone a bit, partly by scaling the score down a bit.

The CD does include a couple source cues, most notably the toy piano version of “Heart and Soul” that accompanied the film’s most famous sequence.  Shore also incorporates the melody of that famous song into the film’s end titles suite.  The album also includes an adaptation of Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade”.

Big Fish (Danny Elfman, 2003): While the film was definitely extremely quirky and off-beat, Big Fish is probably the least flamboyantly weird of Tim Burton’s films to date.  The film’s story of an adult son recalling the tall tales that had been shared by his dying father is very character-driven drama, but in a format that still allows Burton to allow his very skewed view of the world to shine through.  The variety of settings and circumstances of the recounted tales gave Danny Elfman a particularly rich set of opportunities and he delivers one of his more varied and complex scores.

The soundtrack album is actually a mixed song and score album, although Elfman’s portion runs about 40 minutes, which is roughly 2/3 of the album.  The songs are the first seven cues on the album, opening with “Man of the Hour”, a Pearl Jam song specifically written and recorded for the film.  The rest of the songs are period classics from Bing Crosby, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, The Vogues, The Allman Brothers, and Canned Heat.  It is a nice collection of songs, although, other than the Pearl Jam song, they are so common that it is pretty likely most people already have one or two in their collection elsewhere.

Those expecting the gothic styling or predominant choruses that are common in Elfman’s Tim Burton scores are apt to be pretty surprised by this one.  This is a much more intimately orchestral score, dominated by piano and strings.  A gentle and effective main theme is established in the title cue.  The theme is tender and melodic, bringing to mind the side of Elfman that was first noted in his score for Sommersby, but which doesn’t come out in too many of his scores.  His “Sandra’s Theme” is a romantic, major key theme that had an interestingly more downbeat ending to it.  Another highlight is “The Growing Montage”, which starts off quiet but builds into a brassy fanfare complete with a little bit of Elfman’s trademark choral writing.

The score does showcase a few different styles in order to accommodate the changing settings of the film.  “Shoe Stealing” has a bit of a country feel, including a featured solo guitar.  The cues “Leaving Spectre” and “Return to Spectre” have a bit of a sad tone, with the latter making very effective use of a solo violin.   “Returning Home”, on the other hand, has a much more optimistic style, complete with soaring strings and triumphant-sounding horns.  Pretty much the full range of the score is represented in the impressive 11 minute “Finale” cue.

Elfman does contribute one brief song to the film, which ends the soundtrack album.  The song is entitled “Twice the Love (Siamese Twins’ Song)” and is performed by Bobbi Page and Candice Rumph, who played the twins in the film.  It is a pretty typically goofy and quirky song, but pretty entertaining.  Of course, it will mean basically nothing to anyone who hasn’t seen the film, though.

Big Wednesday (Basil Poledouris, 1978): Film Score Monthly released this CD of Basil Poledouris’ first major scoring project, and the first of his collaborations with director John Milius, as part of their Silver Age Classics series.  The film was a beach/surfing movie (although with some very dramatic elements) and the use of a symphonic score instead of a rock soundtrack was a significant change of pace for the genre.

The score has a bit of a folksy quality to it, with some of the cues very prominently featuring guitar performed by Hawaiian musicians Keola and Kapono Beamer.  Their guitar playing is front and center on the more personal, character-oriented themes while Poledouris engages the full orchestra for the surfing themes.  The fully orchestral material particularly takes the forefront in “The Challenge/Big Wednesday Montage”, which contains some very brassy fanfares along with some impressive percussion and strings.

The soundtrack contains two songs as well.  One entitled “Crumple Car” is performed by Danny Aaburg and there is an end credits song entitled “Song of Three Friends (Only Good Times)” which is performed by the Beamers.  The album also has a number of bonus tracks containing film versions or alternates of some of the cues and some source music.  The album ends with the trailer music.

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (David Newman, 1991): For the sequel to the hit Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, returning composer David Newman provided a large-scale, orchestral score.  Despite the film’s obvious comedic focus, Newman provided the film with a generally serious action/fantasy score that served the film exceptionally well and is also very enjoyable to listen to on CD.

While rock music is a central element of the film’s storytelling and songs are used to score portions of the film, the David Newman score avoids including rock elements.  The score is dominated by brass and percussion action music, with synthesizers occasionally serving to add some otherworldly sounds to a few sequences or to help ramp up the action a bit.  The score also occasionally slows down for some more tender, melodic themes, such as in “The Proposal”.

The characters’ visits to Hell and Heaven provide Newman the opportunity to write two lengthy (about 6 minutes each) showcase cues that prove to be the highlight of this score.  As expected, the Hell cue is fairly dark music, with brass and strings supplemented by wordless choir.  While dark, the Hell music isn’t as somber as might be expected, certainly a side effect of the film’s comic side and the characters’ basically nonchalant attitude even in the most extreme situations.

The music for the Heaven sequence is, of course, much lighter and more upbeat.  Once again a wordless choir is employed, although with more of an angelic sound.  Strings, woodwinds, and even chimes dominate the orchestral accompaniment.  It is a fairly predictable way to score a Heaven sequence, but that is really what the film called for and Newman delivers the expected in an effective manner.

At the time of the film’s release, the only soundtrack release was a song album that didn’t include any of Newman’s music.  Intrada released a limited edition score album in 2007 that presents a 40 minute program of the score.  While the CD is sold out at Intrada, copies are still fairly easy to locate at around the original price.  The album is also still available as a digital download.   It should also be noted that, at least so far, Newman’s score to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure remains unreleased.

Billion Dollar Brain (Richard Rodney Bennett, 1967): This score was included on Film Score Monthly’s MGM Soundtrack Treasury boxed set released in 2008 and was re-issued in 2009 by Kritzerland on a single CD paired with Roy Budd’s The Final Option (which was also in the FSM boxed set).  I’m not familiar with the film or, outside of this score, the composer, but this is actually a pretty cool score.

The album opens with a main theme that features a fairly jazzy sound and some very impressive piano playing.  Another key theme, presented in the cue “Anya”, is a haunting, woodwind-based melody.  In a few cues, Bennett uses an ondes martinot, an electric instrument with a fairly eerie sound that is reminiscent of a theramin.  The result is an impressively varied and unusual sounding score.

Birdman of Alcatraz (Elmer Bernstein, 1962): This score comes from the era where Elmer Bernstein became established as a top film composer.  The score came from the same general time period as his seminal scores for The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and To Kill a Mockingbird.  While this score isn’t as well known as those others, and the soundtrack remained unavailable until 2006, it fits in pretty well with the others creatively and in terms of style.  The soundtrack was released by Varese Sarabande as part of their CD Club series.  It is a limited edition, but not currently sold out.

The score is a quietly dramatic orchestral score with dominant woodwind and strings.  It is very sensitive, subtle music that shows off Bernstein’s melodic talents.  A subtle main theme is established during the “Main Title” cue and is carried through the score. Most of the score remains very low-key, but occasionally some more brassy bits do shine through such as in “Cage Preparations” or “Book Montage”. 

The album ends interestingly with a cue simply entitled “The Birdman”, which is an interesting mix of more rhythmic instrumentals and piano playing as well as some wordless vocals.  This then transitions into a fully vocal song set to the same melody.

This score isn’t as flashy or dynamic a score as some of the composer’s others from that general era, but it is very well written and emotional score that should be in the collection of any Bernstein fan.

The Black Cauldron (Elmer Bernstein, 1985): The Black Cauldron is probably the most significant and important failure that the Disney company has had to date.  The box-office and critical failure of this very big budget and heavily promoted animated feature resulted in the company very nearly shutting down their entire animation division.  As a result it is a film that the company has a bit of a tendency to try and disown.  This unfortunately has led to the movie’s excellent Elmer Bernstein score not getting the attention that it deserves.

At the time of the film’s original release, Disney licensed Varese Sarabande to produce a soundtrack LP.  This album did not feature the music as recorded for the film, but is instead a Bernstein-conducted re-recording of a little over 30 minutes of the score.  That album was very briefly released on CD as well, but is now long out of print and nearly impossible to find.  Varese’s license did allow them to release that album on iTunes a couple years ago and it remains available as a download only.  The iTunes release is the version that I have.  Obviously, this score would benefit greatly from a new CD release containing more of the score and the original film tracks.

The taste of the score that is currently available is excellent, though.  Bernstein provided a very rich, orchestral score full of exciting action and adventure cues.  The film was not a musical, unusual for Disney animated films to that point, so Bernstein’s score was required to carry the entire film from a musical perspective.  The score pretty extensively uses the ondes martenot, a favorite instrument of Bernstein for his fantasy-oriented scores, particularly in Ghostbusters just a year earlier.  This instrument gives the score an otherworldly quality at times, helping to emphasize the fantasy setting.

The score is very thematic, with Bernstein’s music helping to capture the personalities of the key characters and the film’s settings. Highlights of the score include a very dark, percussion and piano driven theme for the film’s villain, The Horned King, as well as very playful themes for Gurgi, the film’s sidekick, and in the cue “The Fair Folk”.  The film’s protagonist, Taran, is given a nicely heroic theme.  A gentle, romantic theme is provided for Eilonwy, the love interest.

The Black Dahlia (Mark Isham, 2006): Brian DePalma’s 2006 attempt at an old fashioned film noir was not very successful or well regarded, but composer Mark Isham provided an impressively dark and moody score that actually plays pretty well for me even without having seen the film.

The score gets off to an exciting, action-packed start with “The Zoot Suit Riots”, with pounding brass and very active strings quickly grabbing the listener’s attention.  This type of action playing re-emerges at several other points in the score, although the majority is more moody and atmospheric rather than action-oriented.  Trumpet solos and piano are used pretty regularly, the cue “The Two of Us” is an excellent example, giving the score a bit of a slow jazz element.

The Black Hole (John Barry, 1979): This was my first film score album.  I was 10 years old when the movie was first released and my father took me to see the movie.  At that time, my music collecting mainly consisted of some Disney “story of” albums and an otherwise varied mix of kid-oriented albums.  When I saw the movie, I immediately took to John Barry’s music and, upon leaving the theater, I told my father that I wanted the soundtrack album.  He initially pointed out that the movie didn’t have any songs, but I confirmed it was the orchestral music that had caught my attention.  Since he has been a long-time classical music fan, I think he was pleased by this and he readily agreed to take me to the store to buy the album.

This was one of the last films that actually opened with an overture before anything even appeared on screen.  The overture introduces one of Barry’s two primary themes for the film, an exciting trumpet-driven fanfare that transitions into a brass and percussion march.  I think this is among the most memorable and distinctive themes of John Barry’s career.  The theme from the overture does re-appear in the later cue “Laser”.

The second primary theme is introduced over the film’s main title.  This is a much darker, more ominous theme that primarily features a continuously repeating six-note motif overlaid with a progressively building counterpoint.  As with the overture, this is another very distinctive and memorable theme, although one that I’m sure some may find to be a little overly repetitive.  The theme fits the film extremely well, though, as it basically sounds circular.  The “Main Title” version of the theme only runs a little under 2 minutes, but it is more thoroughly developed in the cue “Zero Gravity”.

Although the two main themes (especially the second one) are revisited frequently during the score, Barry does provide a variety of additional themes and general action music.  In many ways, this score actually seems to be something of a transition point for Barry, with some of the music resembling his action music for the James Bond series, but much of it also reflecting the more lush style that he would adapt during the later part of his career.

Unfortunately, the soundtrack to The Black Hole has never been released on CD.  The original LP release, which is often cited as the first digitally recorded movie soundtrack, runs just over 1/2 hour in length.  A few years ago, Disney did re-master the album and release it to iTunes as a digital download, but unfortunately not in a lossless format.  For some reason, I’ve found that this score suffers a bit more from compression artifacts than some of the other download-exclusive releases and would suggest that finding a good quality copy of the LP (it isn’t too hard to find) and transferring that to CD or digital files might be the better choice if you have the equipment.  Of course, an expanded CD release of this score would be extremely welcome.

Basic Instinct (Jerry Goldsmith, 1992): Throughout his career, Jerry Goldsmith all too frequently was hired as the composer for bad movies  that failed at the box-office.  Basic Instinct was a rare case where he scored a bad movie that ended up being a big hit.  Obviously, there are probably a lot of people that disagree with my assessment of the film, but I also expect that most people will agree that Goldsmith’s score was among the film’s biggest strengths.

The score is very atmospheric, built around a fairly dark main theme that would be very much at home in a classic film noir.  Much of the music has a sensual, even erotic, quality, that contrasts intriguingly with the tension-filled suspense music.  Strings dominate the score, with woodwinds and piano providing considerable support.  Brass is used sparingly, mainly for the few action sequences as well as to provide a sudden sting to underscore certain shock moments.  

Varese Sarabande released a nearly 45-minute long CD of the score when the film first came out.  In 2004, Prometheus Records put out a 75-minute CD containing the complete score presented in film order.  The expanded version is actually somewhat easier to find than the original, so it is probably the best choice if you don’t already have a copy of this score.  Whether or not to upgrade if you already have the original release is a harder call.  The score actually becomes somewhat repetitive over the longer running time and I suspect the shorter release would be sufficient for most people.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes (Leonard Rosenman, 1973): For the fifth film in the original Planet of the Apes series, Leonard Rosenman returned as composer, having previously scored the series’ second film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (reviewed later in this post).  Film Score Monthly released 35 minutes of the score on a Silver Age Classics limited edition CD (which is still available) paired with Tom Scott’s score for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth film of the series.

The style of the score is typical for the series, mostly retaining the mostly atonal, coldly intense symphonic approach that was first established with Jerry Goldsmith’s highly acclaimed score for the original film.  As you would expect, the music closely resembles Rosenman’s earlier score for the series, although he mostly introduces new themes for this entry. 

While most of the score does continue the atonal approach, this score does include some unexpectedly melodic material, which gives it a warmer overall sound than the previous scores in the series.  The “Main Title” cue actually is more melodic than expected for the series, opening with a fairly quirky, fast-paced march.  The melodic quality is also very well represented in the effective closing cue, entitled “Only the Dead”, which has a fairly upbeat, even optimistic quality to it.

A Beautiful Mind (James Horner, 2001): This Oscar-winning drama was the fifth collaboration between composer James Horner and director Ron Howard.  It was the most low-key and introspective of the films that the two have done together and Horner provided a suitably sensitive score, although one that will sound pretty familiar to fans of Horner’s work as it does use many of his favorite motifs.

One of the main strengths of this score is Horner’s effective use of female vocals.  Opera star Charlotte Church (who was only a teenager at the time) is the featured vocalist on the score and her considerable vocal talents serve to add quite a bit of weight to the score.  Church performed the song “All Love Can Be”, which was based on one of Horner’s main themes, but her vocals are a key component throughout the entire score, usually as a wordless vocal instrument.

The most prominent theme in the score is a rhythmic theme led by piano and vocals along with diverse instrumental projections.  It is a theme that is fairly difficult to describe in words, but is very reminiscent of a similar theme that was central to Horner’s earlier Sneakers score and which has also turned up periodically in some of his others as well.  This is a style that is distinctly and recognizably Horner’s and A Beautiful Mind may feature his most effective use of it.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Richard Sherman & Robert Sherman, 1971): Disney reteamed a number of key members of the creative team behind Mary Poppins for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, another musical that mixed live action and animation.  While not as successful either creatively or financially as the earlier film, it is still a film with many charms, including another winning song score by the Sherman Brothers.

Angela Lansbury was the lead in the film and her considerable vocal skills are very well used on the film’s signature ballad “The Age of Not Believing” and the peppy “A Step In the Right Direction”.  The male lead is David Tomlinson, probably best known as the father in Mary Poppins, and he is an especially entertaining performer.  He brings a lot of energy and fun to such numbers as “With a Flair” and the lengthy production number “Portebello Road”.  Lansbury and Tomlinson work together very effectively as well on “The Beautiful Briny” (from the film’s key animated sequence) and “Substitutiary Locomotion”. 

The soundtrack album includes a few bonus tracks, including “Nobody’s Problem”, another Lansbury solo ballad that was edited out of the film.  Demo versions of two other unused songs, “Solid Citizen” and “The Fundamental Element”, are also included.

Bee Season (Peter Nashal, 2005): This is one of the more obscure recent titles in my collection.  The CD was given to me by a friend who works for the distributor. I’m only slightly familiar with the film and not really familiar with the composer at all outside of this score.

The CD opens with a light folk/rock song entitled “I’ll be Near You” and performed by a single-named singer called Ivy, who has a whispering, breathy vocal style.  The song is pleasant enough, but not exceptionally memorable.

The rest of the CD contains score by Peter Nashal who, oddly, isn’t credited anywhere on the CD packaging.  The score is a very low-key and melodic score, mostly driven by piano and occasional violins and acoustic guitar.  The score is very atmospheric and mostly non-thematic.  The pacing is also generally kept slow.  Overall, this is music that plays well as background music, but doesn’t make much of an impression.

Beetlejuice (Danny Elfman, 1988): Danny Elfman’s second collaboration with Tim Burton made it look like the composer would be typecast with wacky, cartoonish comedy until the score for Batman a year later would pretty much blow away that perception.

Of course, the reason why it looked like this would be Elfman’s niche was that he did an exceptionally good job with it.  The score primarily features a quirky brass, piano and chorus mixture that would become a recognizable trademark of Elfman’s style.  The peppy and exceptionally catchy “Main Titles” theme has become familiar from the film, but the composer would almost certainly be quickly identifiable by anyone familiar with Elfman but not with this particular score. 

The mix of the macabre and dark comedy in the film gave Elfman the opportunity to stretch a bit and the score does contain some darker, more dramatic music that gives a hint of what was to come for the composer.  The opening portion of “The Book!/Obituaries” and the entire cue “Lydia Discovers?” are particularly strong examples of this side of the score.

The film very memorably used the two classic Harry Belafonte songs “The Banana Boat Song (Day-o)” and “Jump In the Line”.  Both songs are included on the soundtrack album.

Bell, Book and Candle (George Duning, 1958): Film Score Monthly released this score as part of their Golden Age Classics series on a CD paired with Duning’s score to 1001 Arabian Nights (which I discussed in an earlier post).  The music from the film runs for a little over 40 minutes on the CD.  The film is a romantic comedy starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak (released the same year that the two more famously co-starred in Vertigo) and Duning provides a light, melodic orchestral score with some jazz elements.

The light tone of the score is quickly established with the “Main Title” cue, which features a peppy, romantic theme that is occasionally interweaved with bits of the melody of “Jingle Bells”.  The film also contains some fantasy elements, which gives Duning the opportunity to expand the range a bit beyond usual romantic comedy styles.  In cues such as “The Spell/Shep Hooked”, there are bits of music that almost sound like they could come from a thriller as well as some more mystical sounding touches.

The jazzier side of the score is presented in several source cues, starting with “Send Me Nicky” and “Way Out Calypso”, which heavily feature trumpet (the Candoli Brothers are credited as trumpet players on the album) as well as piano and bass.  Another source cue, “Stormy Weather Polka”, is a jazzy instrumental arrangement of the classic song by Harold Arlen.

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (Bernard Herrmann, 1953): This was one of the earlier entries in Film Score Monthly’s Golden Age Classics series and is now out of print and fairly rare (used copies on Amazon are running around $40).  The CD contains nearly an hour of Bernard Herrmann’s thrilling and atmospheric score.  The CD was produced from original stereo masters and the sound quality is especially good for a score of this age.

The album opens with an exciting cue entitled “The Sea”, which quickly establishes the film’s nautical origins.  The theme stylistically resembles the main theme that Paul J. Smith would use for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea just one year later, so this seems to be the established style for nautical-themed scores of that era.  The score also includes some very warmly melodic, string-centric passages, such as in “The Homecoming” and “Flirtation” and some pretty intense action music, most notably in the cue “The Octopus”. 

The real highlight of the score is the very atmospheric music used to score the underwater sequences.  Herrmann makes extensive use of harp to help bring an other-worldly quality to those passages.  The liner notes mentions that nine harps were used, typically with each playing separate parts in the score.  This is a complex and unusual scoring and makes for an enjoyable listening experience.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Leonard Rosenman, 1970): For the first sequel to Planet of the Apes, Leonard Rosenman took over the scoring duties, following Jerry Goldsmith’s acclaimed score for the original film (Goldsmith would return one more time for the 3rd film in the series).  Like Goldsmith’s score, Rosenman took a largely atonal approach that provided the film with a sort of primitive sound.  Other than that similarity in overall approach, though, Rosenman’s score is very different from its predecessor.

This is a complex, challenging very multi-layered score.  Very little of the score is melodic.  Instead, Rosenman uses the orchestra and a variety of alternative instruments to create a complex, somewhat alien sound for the score.  In addition to the orchestra, Rosenman includes a variety of percussion devices as well as some inventively used electronics. 

The cue “Second Escape” is a particularly good example of the use of electronics and various percussion to create a particularly otherworldly quality.  The cues “Mind Boggler” and parts of “The Priest” actually are  closer to sound effects than score.   Other interesting parts of the score include an off-beat, very percussive march that is featured in the cues “Off To War” and “Ape Soldiers Advancing”.  Finally, the cue “Hail the Bomb” is primarily an unexpected choral and vocal piece, performed as a religious mass complete with organ accompaniment and vocal quotations from the Bible.

Film Score Monthly’s out of print Silver Age Classics CD release contains the complete score and a bonus track of sound effects.  It also includes the original concept album that was released at the time of the movie’s release.  Instead of a traditional soundtrack, this album was a re-imagining of the score where Rosenman re-orchestrated and newly recorded the music for a smaller orchestra plus some added rock elements.  The original album also contained quite a few dialog snippets from the film.  It is an interesting addition, but the score as heard in the movie is definitely the better listening experience.

Beowulf (Alan Silvestri, 2007): Robert Zemeckis’ big-budget, motion-capture adaptation of Beowulf was a fairly silly movie, but one that also tended to be entertainingly over-the-top.  The score, by Zemeckis’ long-time collaborator Alan Silvestri, tended to follow the movie’s lead by delivering a score that is heavy on bombast.

The score is very heavy on electronic instruments and percussion, giving it a mostly hard-driving rock beat.  Vocal chanting is also used extensively, further adding to the hard-edged nature of the score while also lending it a bit of a primitive feel.  All that isn’t to say that the score lacks orchestral elements.  The orchestra is generally ever-present throughout the score and comes into prominence in certain cues, including the very brassy “I’m Here To Kill Your Monster” and the more introspective “I Didn’t Win the Race”. 

Silvestri wrote two songs for the film entitled “Gently As She Goes” and “A Hero Comes Home”.  Both songs are sung in the film by Robin Wright-Penn and are old-fashioned madrigal-style songs backed by acoustic strings.  The latter song provides the basis for one of the key themes.  A more pop arrangement of the song is performed by Idina Menzel over the end credits.

The Best of Everything (Alfred Newman, 1959): Generally, Alfred Newman is my favorite of the golden age film composers.  He typically had a lush, melodic orchestral style that I find especially appealing.  His score for The Best of Everything is a fairly famous one among film music fans due to its milestone standing as the last score he composed as head of the Fox music department before becoming a freelance composer. 

Film Score Monthly released an outstanding restoration of the score as part of the Golden Age Classics series.  The CD includes a nearly 50 minute recording of the score in stereo plus another 23 minutes of bonus tracks, including mono versions of some cues (where the mono version was in better condition than the also included stereo master), source cues, demos, and even a sample of the temp score.  It is an excellent presentation of this score.

The music is very romantic and melodic, with an emphasis on strings, woodwinds, and piano.  Newman uses two primary themes: an upbeat title song and a secondary piano melody that has more of a melancholy tone to it.  The title song was also given lyrics by Sammy Cahn and is performed by Johnny Mathis on the soundtrack. 

Between Heaven and Hell (Hugo Friedhofer, 1956): Film Score Monthly released this score as part of their Golden Age Classics series on a CD paired with Friedhofer’s Soldier of Fortune.  About 40 minutes of this dark and brooding war movie score are included on the CD.  It is an impressive score, although the somewhat somber mood of much of it makes it a fairly heavy listening experience. 

The soundtrack opens with “Sam and Jenny’s Theme”, a romantically melodic, string-focused theme that forms the basis of most of the quieter parts of the score.  This is a beautiful theme with a bit of a sad, wistful quality to it.  After the introduction of this theme, the album then changes tone for the “Main Titles” cue, which starts with military-style solo drums before leading into a darkly somber march that is partly an adaptation of the traditional Latin hymn Dies Irae.

The score also includes some very strong action music, which tends to be heavy on brass and percussion. The cues “Berzerk” and especially the finale cue “Don’t Argue/Desperate Journey” contain some especially strong action writing and listening to these cues does get the blood pumping.

Beverly Hills Cop (Various, 1984): The song album for Beverly Hills Cop was one of the best selling soundtrack albums of the 1980s.  I was 15 when the movie came out (the R-rating didn’t keep me or most of my peers from seeing it) and was pretty into the pop music of that time period, which meant I was less resistant to song soundtracks than I tend to be today.  My LP of this soundtrack did get played quite a bit at the time and I did eventually replace it with a CD copy.  I don’t listen to it as much now, but I admit to having a nostalgic fondness for it.

The two biggest hit singles from the soundtrack were Glenn Frey’s rock hit “The Heat Is On” and the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance”, which was kind of a mix of Motown and disco.  The Frey song was particularly associated with the film, with its title even becoming something of a tag line for it.  The Pointer Sisters song is still fun, although it is particularly dated.

One song that is likely to be of particular interest to film music fans is “Gratitude”, an off-beat rock song written and performed by Danny Elfman, roughly a year before he would kick off his film composing career with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.  While the song is credited as a solo work for Elfman, it sounds very much like the music that he did with Oingo Boingo.

The other songs on the album are somewhat varied in quality, although I listened to the record so much when it was new that all are still very familiar to me.  The album opens with Patti LaBelle’s fun “New Attitude” and LaBelle also contributed a second song entitled “Stir It Up”.  “Do You Really (Want My Love)?” is credited to someone simply named Junior, who sounds like he is trying very hard to be Michael Jackson.  Other songs include Rockie Robbins’ “Emergency” and “Rock and Roll Me Again” by The System.

The album only contains one cue by the film’s score composer, Harold Faltermeyer.  The cue is entitled “Axel F.” and served as the main theme for Eddie Murphy’s character.  The score was all electronic and came to represent  a signature sound for Faltermeyer, who was a much in demand composer at the time.  This score cue actually became a big hit on the pop charts.  A full score album to the film would be welcome and hopefully one of the soundtrack specialty labels is working on it now that Paramount’s catalog has become more available.

Beauty and the Beast (Alan Menken & Howard Ashman, 1991): Beauty and the Beast is my favorite of Disney’s animated films and on my short list of favorite movies in general.  The film’s music is absolutely critical to its success.  At the time, it was the closest that an animated film had come to duplicating the style of a modern Broadway musical and, thus, it was no big surprise when several years later an adaptation of the movie became Disney’s first Broadway show.

The film featured six songs, and two reprises, by the songwriting team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who had written songs for Disney’s The Little Mermaid a couple years earlier.  One previously deleted song, entitled “Human Again”, was added back in to the film for the 2002 re-issue of the film in Imax.  Menken also wrote the film’s score, which is largely based around the song melodies, but also introduces a couple additional themes.

The film and soundtrack albums open with a “Prologue” with David Ogden Stiers reading narration that sets up the story.  Alan Menken’s musical accompaniment to this is essentially an (unfortunately) uncredited adaptation of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Aquarium” from “Carnival of the Animals”.  The music fits wonderfully, although its pretty obvious source should have been credited.

The opening number is entitled “Belle” and serves as an introduction for both the film’s heroine and, late in the song, the villain Gaston.  This is an impressively-scoped number featuring an entire ensemble, led by Paige O’Hara as Belle.  During my first viewing of the film, I remember realizing during this sequence that my jaw was pretty much hanging open from the amazement that they had pulled off such a sweeping, Broadway-style number.  This really felt like something very new and unexpected for this medium and the song and sequence continues to impress even after numerous viewings.

“Gaston” remains one of the best villain songs from a Disney film.  It also has some of the most clever wordplay of Howard Ashman’s impressive career, even managing to work in the word “expectorating”, which may have been a first for a song lyric.  The song really captures Gaston’s distinctive traits while also being exceptionally funny, with Richard White’s (Gaston) and Jessi Corti’s (La Fou) contributing highly to that.  Probably because it really doesn’t mean much out of context, the song isn’t as well known as the others from the film, but it may actually be the most complex and accomplished.

The two best known songs from the film are “Be Our Guest” and the title song.  The former is presented in a big, Busby Berkley style showstopper.  The sequence is probably the most traditional for an animated music number, but it still is tremendous fun and aided greatly by the great vocals by Jerry Orbach (Lumiere) and David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth).

The Oscar winning title song is, of course, performed by Angela Lansbury and accompanies the romantic dance sequence late in the film.  The song has already become something of a standard and is easily one of the most beautiful songs in the Disney catalog.  The end credits’ duet version of the song performed by Peabo Bryson and Celine Dion became a huge hit on the pop chart, but pales in comparison to Lansbury’s version.

The other two songs in the film, “Something There” and “The Mob Song” are both used essentially as short cuts to progress the story.  The former depicts scenes of Belle and the Beast getting to know each other (and falling in love) and includes some impressive musical parallels to “Belle”, particularly one repeated musical passage to underline the fact that Belle is now living the story she described from her favorite book in the earlier song.  “Something There” is also the only song that contains sung vocals by Robbie Benson as the Beast, something that has always seemed like the one gap in the film’s music.  “The Mob Song” musically depicts the villagers preparing for their assault on the Beast’s castle.  The use of a song for this was a bold and very effective element of the film.

There have been 3 different editions of the soundtrack album to the film.  The original release that came out with the film contained the songs as well as about 20 minutes of the score. 

The second release was part of Disney’s The Music Behind the Magic boxed set (which also included music from The Little Mermaid and Aladdin) and contained the full contents of the original release (except for, oddly, the full version of the prologue) as well as demo versions of all the songs.  It also contained a bit more score.

Finally, a special edition soundtrack release came out at the same time as the 2002 re-issue.  This added in “Human Again”, a new production number that took place after “Something There” as the enchanted objects all expressed their hopes of being restored to their human state.  The song is very good, although the film is probably better without it as it does affect the pacing somewhat.  A demo version of that song was also on the “Music Behind the Magic” release and the song had been featured in the Broadway musical, but this was the first release of a completed version with the original cast.  The special edition CD also includes demo versions of “Be Our Guest” and “Beauty and the Beast” (both of which were also in the boxed set release) as well as one short, additional score cue.

The Broadway cast album should also be mentioned in any discussion of the music from Beauty and the Beast.  The cast album was recorded with the show’s original cast and released by Disney Records shortly after the show’s debut.  The cover on the left above was used for the original pressing (the CD that I have), but was replaced with the one on the right for later pressings.  I don’t think there is any difference in the content, although I’ve never heard the newer editions and can’t say for certain.

In addition to using all the songs from the film (including “Human Again”), the show featured 9 additional songs (plus some reprises) written by Alan Menken and lyricist Tim Rice (sadly, Howard Ashman died during the making of the film).  Some of the new songs were built around previously instrumental-only melodies from the film’s score.  The new songs are very good and do a lot to flesh out the score, taking good advantage of the longer running time available for the stage show.

The new songs for the stage musical included a couple new solos for Belle (“Home”, which is my favorite of the new additions, and “A Change In Me”) as well as new songs that featured Belle’s father (“No Matter What”) and a couple solos for the Beast (“How Long Must This Go On” and “If I Can’t Love Her”).  Songs were also created for a few key sequences that were instrumental only in the film, most notably “The Transformation” at the film’s finale.  Note that “A Change In Me” was added to the show a few years into its run and is not on the cast album.  Susan Egan, who played Belle in the original cast, did record it for her solo album entitled So Far…

There are also some key expansions to a few of the songs from the movie.  The stage version of “Be Our Guest” contains an extended dance sequence in the mid-section that significantly adds to the song’s length.  The running time on the stage version is just under 7 minutes, as opposed to the under 4 minute film version.  Even more significant is the addition of a section in “Something There” where Belle is teaching the Beast how to read, a sequence that later pays off during “Human Again”.  These segments add some intimacy to the growing relationship between the two characters which is a big help.  A little bit of this is included in the version of “Human Again” added to the special edition of the film, but it works much better in the stage show.

The Broadway cast was uniformly excellent, led by the wonderful Susan Egan as Belle.  Egan’s voice somewhat resembles Paige O’Hara’s, but Egan does a good job of allowing her own personality to shine through and making the role her own.  Both actresses created very effective and memorable versions of the character and it is great that both are available.  Other excellent contributors to the cast album include Terrance Mann as the Beast, Gary Beach as Lumierre, Tom Bosley as Maurice (Belle’s father) and Burke Moses as Gaston.  The only performance that falls a bit short is Beth Fowler, who’s performance of “Beauty and the Beast” can’t really live up to Angela Lansbury’s, although that was probably a nearly impossible act to follow.

I saw the show in Los Angeles in late 1996.  The original Broadway cast transferred to the L.A. production when it first started, so I did see a number of the original cast members, including Gary Beach and Tom Bosley.  I saw the show fairly late in its run and, unfortunately, Susan Egan and Terrance Mann had already left the show.  James Barbour had taken over the role of Beast and did an excellent job.  He eventually moved to the Broadway production as well. 

I don’t recall the name of the actress that had taken over the role of Belle, but I didn’t really care for her performance.  She played the character with too much of a “little girl” vocal style that would have been better suited to Snow White than to Belle.  Even with the weaker lead, it was still an extremely enjoyable production.  I saw the show one more time in Pasadena a couple years ago and still enjoyed it, even though the touring production was scaled down quite a bit compared to the longer run.

Not too long after I saw the show in 1996, Disney produced a TV special called “Beauty and the Beast: A Concert on Ice”.  This show featured Susan Egan plus the current (at the time) L.A. cast performing the songs as accompaniment for ice skating routines.  I ended up recording the audio from that show and was able to create a revised version of the cast album featuring James Barbour and some of the other performers that I had seen in L.A. 

The performances on the TV show also included several revisions that had been made to some of the songs after the original cast album was recorded.  Minor changes were made to “Home” and “The Transformation” while the lyrics for “Maison De Lune” and the reprise of “If I Can’t Love Her” were almost entirely re-written.  While the original cast album certainly has better sound quality than my music transfer from VHS tape, it is nice to have the revisions and, especially, Barbour’s versions of the Beast’s songs.

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (Rachel Portman, 1997): The direct-to-video sequel to Beauty and the Beast was typically in the mediocre-to-bad category, but the soundtrack album is actually quite good.  While Alan Menken wasn’t involved, the original voice cast did return.  Rachel Portman was brought on board to score the film and co-write the songs (with lyricist Don Black).  Portman was a surprisingly distinguished choice to take on this kind of project and the results, while not close to matching the quality of the Menken & Ashman songs from the original, are still pretty decent.

Portman and Black contributed four new songs to the film.  “Stories” and “As Long as There’s Christmas” are holiday-themed ballads performed by Paige O’Hara as Belle.  Both are catchy and generally pleasant songs, helped quite a bit by O’Hara’s winning delivery.   There is also a nice reprise of the latter song which is performed as a duet with Bernadette Peters, who voiced a new character.  That song is also featured in an end credits duet version performed by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack.

The villain of the film (an enchanted piano) is voiced by Tim Curry, who has a fun song entitled “Don’t Fall In Love”.  Curry is pretty much always an entertaining performer and the song is performed in his typically over-the-top style and is apt to appeal to any of his fans.  Finally, the song “A Cut Above the Rest” is a catchy little song primarily featuring Jerry Orbach as Lumierre and David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth.

Portman’s score is given very little attention on the album, with only about 3 minutes featured over 3 very short cues.  The score cues mainly derived from the song melodies and don’t really give more than just a small taste of what is offered.

The real highlight of the album, and the primary reason to buy it, is actually a set of cues that aren’t actually in the movie.  The album includes 8 traditional Christmas carols performed, in character, by Page O’Hara.  These are simply wonderful and, in fact, it has become one of our most frequently played albums during the holiday season.  I especially love O’Hara’s absolutely delightful rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, which she performs with a great deal of personality and charm.  Her versions of more reverent songs like “Silent Night”, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “What Child Is This?” are rendered with great emotion.

Batman (Nelson Riddle, 1966): Although I am too young to have seen it during its original airing, the late 1960s Batman TV series became a childhood favorite of mine via the syndicated reruns.  The series was very campy and silly, qualities that made it very appealing to me as a pre-teen.  My fondness for the series actually made it a bit difficult for me to warm up to the much darker version of the character that was seen in the later film versions.

Nelson Riddle scored many episodes of the series as well as the full-length feature version that was released theatrically at the end of the show’s first season.  The score to the movie was released on a limited edition CD by Film Score Monthly in 2000 and was re-issued, with a few minutes of additional music, by La La Land Records earlier this year.  I have the earlier release and didn’t see a need to upgrade to the newer one.

Riddle was best known as a jazz and big band arranger, having worked with numerous big names ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra.  This background is evident in his approach to the Batman music, where he provides a highly jazz-oriented score heavily dominated by horns and guitar.  It is a fun and fast-paced score, which is pretty deeply rooted in the 1960s Rat Pack style.  The score is very thematic, with Riddle providing a separate, distinctive theme for each of the villains.  The film brought together all the major villains, so there is quite a bit of variation to the score.

The famous and highly familiar main theme to the TV series was written by Neal Hefti and is incorporated pretty regularly into the score.  The theme gets a pretty complete performance (minus the vocals) during the cue “Batmobile to Airport” and then is referenced pretty regularly, usually in shorter bursts.  The complete theme, including the “Batman!” vocals, is featured as a bonus track at the end of the CD.

Batman (1989, Danny Elfman): Although Danny Elfman had already done a handful of film scores (including his first two projects with Tim Burton), his score for Burton’s 1989 Batman film really was the one that established him as an important voice in film scoring.  The score was so successful that Elfman has frequently been the first choice for other super-hero movies, to a degree that sometimes has come perilously close to type-casting.

Elfman’s main theme has fairly iconic and is pretty instantly recognizable and associated with the Batman character, despite that fact that it was only used in the two Tim Burton/Michael Keaton films and as the theme for the early 90s animated TV series.  The darkly ominous opening fanfare that transitions into a haunting, brass-centered march is a very distinctive construction that very effectively fits the portrayal of the title character as a mix of tortured angst and heroic action.

While the main theme serves as the primary theme for the title character, he also introduces very effective secondary themes.  Jack Nicholson’s Joker is introduced with some brassy circus music at the end of the cue “Kitchen, Surgery, Face-off” and the character’s over the top nature is also reflected in the fairly extravagant cues “Joker’s Poem” and especially the self-explanatory “Waltz to the Death”.  A darkly melodic theme is provided for the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Vicky Vale, fully presented in the cue “Love Theme”.

The cue “Decent Into Mystery” introduces a wordless chorus into the score in a darkly resonant manner that has later become one of the most recognizable trademarks of Elfman’s film scoring.  Well paced and exciting action music, of course, is also a hallmark of this score in very strong cues such as “Roof Fight”, “Attack of the Batwing” and especially the thrilling “Finale” cue.

At the time that the film came out, much of the emphasis was on the songs that Prince wrote and performed for the film and the initial soundtrack release only contained those songs.  Elfman’s score came out on a separate CD release a few months later.  Interestingly, today the Elfman score album is still in print while the Prince album is not, although it is still widely available on bargain tables or used copies.  I’m not really a Prince fan and never purchased his album, so I can’t really comment on the content.

Batman Returns (Danny Elfman, 1992): I’m well aware that my view is in the minority on this one, but I actually prefer both the film and score for Batman Returns to the more popular original.  After the enormous success of the first film, both Tim Burton and Danny Elfman were given a considerable amount of free reign and the result was a much more quirky film and score.

Of course, Elfman does reprise his main Batman theme in the sequel, but little else is repeated.  The new score is much more string focused than the brassy approach with the original.  Elfman also much more prominently features wordless choir in this score, particularly with his main theme for The Penguin.  In many ways, this score actually more closely resembles Elfman’s Edward Scissorhands score than the previous Batman score.

Elfman provides very distinctive themes for the film’s two primary villains: The Penguin and Catwoman.  As noted above, The Penguin’s main theme makes extensive use of wordless (and sometimes “la la la”) choir, providing something of an otherworldly quality to the theme.  The character’s theme is introduced during “Birth of a Penguin” and “Birth of a Penguin, part 2”, which open the soundtrack album and the film.  As these play over the film’s opening title, the theme is effectively interweaved with the Batman theme, at times with the choral elements actually layered over the older theme.

The Catwoman theme is introduced in “Selena Transforms” and “Selena Transforms, Part 2” and substantially developed further in “Cat Suite”.  This theme features solo violin, giving it a pretty distinctively feline quality.  The theme is melodic and haunting and generally sticks with me when I listen to the album.  As Catwoman doubles as Bruce Wayne’s love interest in the film, her theme also serves as the film’s romantic theme.

The album ends with the song “Face to Face”, which was performed by  Siouxsie and the Banshees and was used in the film during a ballroom sequence when Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle (Catwoman) are dancing together.  The song was co-written by Elfman and fits in very well with the score, including incorporating some brief references to the Catwoman theme.

Batman Forever (Elliot Goldenthal, 1995): Tim Burton and Danny Elfman (as well as star Michael Keaton) departed after the 2nd film and Joel Schumacher took over as director for the next two films, bringing along composer Elliot Goldenthal to take over the scoring.  I don’t know if it was a decision made by Goldenthal, Schumacher, Warner Bros, or some combination (or if it was a rights issue), but none of Elfman’s music, including the main theme, was retained.

The decision not to keep Elfman’s theme is all the more puzzling since Goldenthal ended up writing a pretty close approximation of it for his own new theme.  Structurally, it is very similar to Elfman’s theme with the same dark fanfare and march construction.  The similarity is definitely stylistic and not plagiarized in any way, but it is natural to wonder why such a similar new theme was constructed instead of simply adapting the extremely well-known and effective one that they already had.  This also established the precedent for the unfortunately lack of any musical continuity in the series.

Outside of the similarity of the theme, and a general “dark” quality, the rest of Goldenthal’s score doesn’t much resemble Elfman’s.  Goldenthal’s approach is less thematic and much busier and, often, over-the-top.  This matches Schumacher’s approach to the film.  The result is a score that is often interesting and which covers a broad range of styles, but which ultimately comes off as rather disjointed.

While the score is orchestral, it also makes pretty extensive use of synthesizers to present a rather dissonant sound.  The most interesting cue of the score is the lengthy cue, “Nygma Variations (An Ode to Science)” which runs through a broad range of styles including simple piano melodies, jazzy orchestral music, extremely dissonant synthesizer tones, and even classic sci-fi theremin music.  It is a fairly bold and kind of outrageous cue, but consistently fascinating.

As with the first film, the original soundtrack released with the movie was a song album with the score album hitting stores about a month later.  The song album included a couple of fairly prominent singles by U2 and Seal along with other songs that are mostly probably only known by those that bought the album (which doesn’t include me).   Goldenthal’s score to Batman and Robin, the second and final Schumacher film in the series, has never been released on CD.  I would be very surprised if one of the soundtrack specialty labels isn’t already working on bridging that obvious gap.

The Batman Trilogy (Joel McNeely and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, 1997): This Varese Sarabande compilation album contains re-recorded excerpts from Danny Elfman’s two Batman scores, Elliot Goldenthal’s Batman Forever and Neal Hefti’s theme from the 1960s TV series.  Although the CD was released around the same time that Batman and Robin was released to theater, it doesn’t include any score from the film.  That is definitely a shame as the inclusion of some excerpts from that unavailable score would have been a major selling point for this CD.

The CD isn’t a bad sampler of Elfman and Goldenthal’s music, although it really doesn’t have a lot to offer for anyone that already has the soundtrack albums.  The music is generally organized into concert arrangements that differ somewhat from the originals.  For the most part, I think Goldenthal’s compositions benefit a bit more from these arrangements than Elfman’s.  Hefti’s theme is presented in a fully orchestral arrangement and does not include vocals.

Note that the suite from Batman Forever was originally recorded for the Varese Sarabande compilation “Hollywood ‘85” and is presented identically on both albums.  The Elfman music and the recording of the Hefti theme were both newly recorded for this album.

Batman Begins (Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard, 2005): Christopher Nolan’s 2005 reboot of the Batman franchise once again brought new composers and a completely new score.  This time, two of the industry’s top film composers, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, collaborated on the score.  There isn’t a clear delineation between the contributions of the two composers (reportedly, they sat in a room together and bounced ideas off one another rather than splitting the work), but Zimmer’s style definitely is the dominant one.   

This first time teaming of two renowned film composers was an exciting prospect, but honestly the end result was kind of a disappointment.  The score generally works alright in the film, although I’m not convinced it wouldn’t have been even better served by a more thematic and heroic score.  On its own, I don’t think the score provides for an especially satisfying listening experience.  Nolan has shown a strong preference for keeping the score very firmly in the background in his films and the key way that Zimmer and Newton Howard accomplish this is to basically avoid establishing themes.

That isn’t to say that the score isn’t melodic, but it never establishes any consistent themes for the listener to grasp onto.  The music ends up being pleasant at times, but never manages any of the heroic scope that the Batman character would seem to suggest. The score includes substantial amounts of electronics along with some very deep strings and percussion and the score is almost entirely written in minor keys, emphasizing the darkness of the material.  The end result is a pretty low-key experience that couldn’t be much further removed from either Elfman’s or Goldenthal’s scores.

On the soundtrack album, all of the cue titles are actually the names of various species of bats.  This odd decision makes it difficult to associate them with the actual parts of the film that they scored unless you happen to know the film very well.

The Dark Knight (Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard, 2008): While this obviously doesn’t fit here alphabetically, it also seems obvious that it makes the most sense to discuss the most recent Batman movie score with its predecessors.  The Dark Knight reunited the principals responsible for Batman Begins, including director Christopher Nolan and composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who delivered a score fairly similar to the one they wrote for the previous film.

The Dark Knight ended up being an enormous hit, becoming not only the top-grossing Batman film, but the third highest grossing film of all time, domestically.  Of course, those grosses aren’t adjusted for inflation, but the film is still unquestionably one of the all-time top movie hits and, even with the adjusted numbers, it remains the most successful entry in the series. 

With all that in mind, I have to confess that I haven’t actually gotten around to seeing the movie.  It is certainly on the list of movies that I’d like to see, and I even bought the Blu-Ray disc, but I just haven’t found a good opportunity to sit down and watch it.  Obviously, I really should rectify that before too long, but for now I want to make it clear that these comments are strictly related to the score as it plays on CD.

The soundtrack CD get off to a fairly different start with the 9 minute cue “Why So Serious?” which is very heavy on electronics, including some segments that have something of a hard rock style.  The cue also has some segments that are so quiet that I have to strain a bit to tell if there is any sound at all. It is pretty dark, intense material and is pretty interesting, even if it isn’t necessarily what I would consider to be an overly enjoyable listening experience.

The rest of the score continues to be comparable in style to the previous one, although it does seem heavier on electronics overall.  James Newton Howard’s composing style is much more evident in this score than it did in the previous score, particularly in the theme introduced during the cue “Harvey Two-Face”.  Zimmer’s style still dominates, but this one does come closer to sounding like a collaboration than the previous one did.

While I do think this is a better (or at least more interesting) score than Batman Begins, I still can’t say that I’m all that crazy about it.  I will note that an expensive (over $50) 2-CD special edition containing additional music was released, but I didn’t bother to buy it as the standard edition contains enough of this music for my taste.  The cue names on the regular soundtrack are an improvement over the Batman Begins album as they are descriptive this time.  The only slight impediment to matching the music to what it scored is that the final cue is over 16 minutes long and simply entitled “A Dark Knight”.

Batman: The Animated Series (Shirley Walker, Lolita Ritmanus, Michael McCuistion, 1992-1995): Following the success of Tim Burton’s two Batman movies, Warner Bros went forward with a syndicated animated series that, rather successfully, attempted to duplicate the dark tone and style of the films.  The series received a lot of critical acclaim for effective casting, smart writing, and very good production values.

Shirley Walker, who had conducted Elfman’s Batman score, was brought in as supervising composer on the series.  An arrangement of Elfman’s theme was used for the main title, but the remaining music was original music done in a somewhat similar style.  Walker scored a few episodes and provided some stock cues and general supervision over the musical direction of the series. 

She and the other composers did a good job of remaining true to the musical style established by Elfman while still allowing the series’ music to have a voice of its own.  The music does sometimes kind of straddle the line between the fairly dark, gothic styling that Elfman used and lighter, more cartoonish music.  In particular, some of Walker’s music for the episodes “The Last Laugh” and “Joker’s Favor” (which features a catchy, circus-like theme) occasionally sounds more closely related to Carl Stalling’s Looney Tunes music than to Elfman.  The cues on the album also occasionally mix in some source music, such as the cleverly utilized Christmas carols during the music from “Christmas with the Joker”.

In 2008, La La Land Records released a 2-disc limited edition (now sold out) containing roughly 2 1/2 hours of music from the series.  Walker’s music is heavily featured, but the CDs also contain music from composers Lolita Ritmanus and Michael McCuistion as well as the series’ arrangement of Elfman’s theme.  Even with the multiple composers, the style is pretty consistent.  Elfman’s theme is occasionally interweaved into the scoring and Walker also wrote a stylistically similar secondary theme that is also used pretty regularly.

Not too surprisingly for an animated series like this, the majority of the score cues are short, most in the 1-4 minute range.  This does limit the amount of thematic development in the scores, but the music is well arranged on the soundtrack and doesn’t feel exceptionally disjointed.  The album opens with a lengthy suites (credited only to Walker) entitled “Gotham City Overture”, which runs over 14 minutes in length.  This suite provides an excellent sampling of the musical approach of the series.  The set ends with a 7 minute interview cue entitled “Music of the Bat 101”, which features Walker explaining and demoing the musical approach tot he series.

99 44/100% Dead! (Henry Mancini, 1974): Intrada recently released a limited edition CD of the soundtrack to this 1970s John Frankenheimer comedy.  Henry Mancini’s score is upbeat and fun with a very jazzy style.  The music is mainly performed by a relatively small ensemble, sometimes supplemented by electronic instruments.

The main title music gets the score off to a fast paced start with a tune that, somewhat surprisingly for Mancini, has something of a soft-rock beat to it.  The next cue, “Hangin’ Out”, shifts the music in more of a jazzy direction in a tune that mainly features piano, horns, and solo whistler.  That theme is reprised in “Bon Voyage”, the score’s concluding cue.    The score takes on a somewhat darker edge during some of the later cues, consistent with descriptions of the film (which I haven’t seen) as having a mix of comedy and drama.

As was common with Mancini’s scores, one of the central themes is built around a song.  In this case, the song is entitled “Easy Baby” and is a soft jazz number performed on the soundtrack by singer Jim Gilstrap.  The song features lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, who were frequent collaborators with Mancini.  The soundtrack also includes a “single version” of the song that has more of a 70s disco beat than the film version.

Intrada’s soundtrack presents the score and song in mono, but the sound quality is generally very good.  In addition to the complete score, the soundtrack also includes a number of bonus tracks, including one all-electronic cue (closer to sound effects) and a few source cues.  Three of the source cues are carousel music versions of “Man on the Flying Trapeze”, “Over the Waves”, and “Listen to the Mockingbird”.  The bonus tracks also include a few alternate score tracks.

Around the World in 80 Days (Victor Young, 1956): When I wrote up my comments about the Trevor Jones score to the 2004 remake, I noted that I didn’t have a copy of Victor Young’s score in my collection.  Some quick research found that a deluxe soundtrack release of that score from Hit Parade Records was pretty readily available and I ordered a copy from Amazon.com. 

Young’s score is a highly melodic, very brassy adventure score with a main theme that is instantly recognizable.  Even without previously having owned this soundtrack, the main theme was extremely familiar to me from compilation albums, pops concerts, and even radio play.  I suspect that even those that aren’t film music fans would probably find the tune to be familiar, even if they have no idea where it is from.

As expected from the film’s subject matter, there is definitely some ethnic styling to some of the cues.  In particular, the middle eastern and Indian influences are extremely evident in “A Princess in Distress (Pagoda of Pillagi)” while “Royal Barge of Siam” features low-pitched male wordless vocals that definitely are evocative of the Asian setting.  The lengthy “Sioux Attack” cue contains a lot of traditional American western music, eventually ending with quotes from “The William Tell Overture” and “Yankee Doodle”.

The Hit Parade soundtrack CD contains a little over 70 minutes of music, including an Overture, intermission music, and the exit music.  Due to the length of the film, this probably isn’t the complete score, but it definitely is a substantial representation of it.  The music is in stereo, but it does have a somewhat harsh, kind of thin sound that is fairly typical for recordings of that age. 

The A-Team (Alan Silvestri, 2010): It came as something of a pleasant surprise that Alan Silvestri was chosen to score the new film adaptation of the well-known 1980s action series, which was definitely a guilty pleasure for many of my generation.  The film seemed like a more likely project for someone from the Hans Zimmer factory or for a more song-driven soundtrack. 

Silvestri’s approach to the score is primarily synthesizer and percussion driven, but with some orchestral support.  The use of synthesizers is more prominent than is typical for Silvestri (although continues the approach he introduced with G.I. Joe last year), with some portions even having a techno sound.  Action is definitely the main focus of the score and the music is pretty consistently fast paced and adrenaline pumping in nature.  Most of the score is generally non-melodic, but Silvestri occasionally introduces some more melodic themes, with a primary one introduced at the end of “Court Martial”, which are generally fully orchestral and have a relatively high impact.

Stylistically, parts of the score do sound pretty consistent with 1980s action films, which is likely what the filmmakers were looking for based on reports that the film stayed pretty true to the tone of the original series.  Other portions are pretty distinctly modern in style, though, giving the score a bit of a disjointed quality.  The more orchestral action music shifts more to the forefront in the last part of the score album, particularly in the very lengthy “The Docks Part 1” and “The Docks Part 2”.

The original TV series theme composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter is only used on the album during the opening and closing cues.  The opening cue ends on a very short statement of the theme while the ending finally provides a very welcome, complete presentation.  The theme isn’t otherwise directly incorporated into the score, although there are suggestions of it that occasionally poke through.