/ Soundtracks

Had Francis Lai only composed the immortal (and for a time, ubiquitous) themes to Un Homme et Une Femme (A Man and a Woman) and Love Story, his name would have gone down in the annals of both film and popular music.  Thankfully, Lai – born in 1932 in Nice, France – has offered us much, much more. Un Autre Homme, Une Autre Chance (Another Man, Another Chance) arrived from director Claude Lelouch (the director of A Man and a Woman, and the director with whom Lai has had one of the longest-lasting

You know how it goes: When you wish upon a star…your dreams come true!  Well, if that’s not always quite so cut-and-dried in the real world, it certainly happened over the past couple of days in the film score and catalogue music world!   I’m recently returned from Anaheim, California and the second-ever D23 Expo, where thousands of fans and collectors descended on the Anaheim Convention Center to spend a weekend immersed in all things Disney.   On Friday, I shared some of our personal wishes

As if Intrada's new releases weren't exciting enough (more on that in our next post!), Film Score Monthly yesterday announced two major archival releases from two of filmdom's most beloved composers. Elmer Bernstein's score to The Great Santini (1979) and John Williams' soundtrack to Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1966) both make their CD debuts from the label. At the time of The Great Santini's release, Bernstein had done some great, if slightly thankless, work on comedies like Animal House and

Let’s hope all of you film score fans out there have been saving your pennies!  On Monday, Kritzerland will unveil its latest classic soundtrack release (watch this very space for that news!) and the very next day, La-La Land continues the musical bonanza with two unique offerings. Jean Neguelsco's 1958 film A Certain Smile starred Rosanno Brazzi (South Pacific) and Joan Fontaine (Rebecca).  Adding to the luster, the soundtrack to the 20th Century Fox drama about a middle-aged man’s affair with

Intrada Records sure knows how to keep promises!  We first reported on the film score label’s partnership with Walt Disney Records back on June 27 when the initial release in a series co-branded with Disney was announced.  That first Disney/Intrada release was Michael Giacchino’s Academy Award-winning score to Up (review here), and it was released simultaneously with John Scott’s score to the Touchstone picture Shoot to Kill, also from the Disney vaults under the Intrada Special Collection

Fans of Basil Pouledoris' scores to Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984) had a reason to be excited when the Tadlow label recorded the City of Prague Philharmonic performing the complete score to each film (the first score has already been released, the second is forthcoming). The late composer had expressed disappointment with the original film recordings (particularly that of Destroyer), and his family participated in the release in full. Plus, with

Composer Hugo Friedhofer picked up the 1947 Academy Award for his score to the William Wyler-directed The Best Years of Our Lives.  All told, Friedhofer would rack up nine nominations for the coveted gold statuette.  But despite this success, he didn’t work strictly within the major studio confines.  The 1948 Eagle-Lion film Adventures of Casanova is a B-movie take on the legendary ladies’ man, but it boasts an A-movie score by Friedhofer.  Following Intrada’s release of the composer’s score to

Raise your hand if you remember the golden age of the television miniseries!  Once upon a time, the miniseries was king:  Rich Man, Poor Man, QB VII, North and South, Roots, The Thorn Birds.  Sprawling novels were translated into multiple evenings of rich, dramatic television, with the small screen taking advantage of a length that even big screen fare couldn’t offer.  One such miniseries was 1976’s The Moneychangers, based on a novel by Arthur Hailey (Hotel, Airport) and scored by the same man

This has been a tremendous year for writer/director Terrence Malick. The filmmaker's latest effort, The Tree of Life, won the coveted Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and the film's weighty subject matter and oblique, nonlinear structure has made it one of the most talked-about pictures of the year. Just yesterday, Film Score Monthly indirectly addressed the minor Malick-mania by announcing a deluxe reissue of the Oscar-nominated score to Malick's Days of Heaven (1978). The

What Oscar-winning composer let the world know “And Then There’s Maude,” joined Billy Joel on 52nd Street and The Nylon Curtain, and shared the music of The Graduate with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel?  Something’s telling me it might be Dave Grusin.  His score to The Goonies was described as a “holy grail” by this very site back in March 2010 upon the occasion of its first release on the Varese Sarabande label, and it was indeed snapped up near-immediately.  But when it comes to a Grusin

Why should La-La Land and Intrada/Disney have all the fun? We've got five new soundtrack catalogue titles for your perusal from Varese Sarabande, Intrada and BSX Records. The wares range from the golden age of film composition (with two heavyweights of the film score world collaborating on a special score restored as a strictly limited title) to an underrated gem of a horror soundtrack from last year. Varese Sarabande released two intriguing limited edition titles for release in the wee hours

La-La Land Records is full of surprises. They teased an amount of titles for the San Diego Comic-Con this year, but announced that four of the potential titles had all fallen victim to various delays. So they announced a three-disc expanded edition of the soundtrack to The Golden Child and, fans assumed, would play it by ear from there. Then, on Friday afternoon, the label shocked the soundtrack world by announcing there was one title coming for Comic-Con that they hadn't even hinted at. And

Had Sweet Smell of Success been the only film score written by Elmer Bernstein in 1957, the composer’s place in the pantheon would have been all but assured.  Yet Bernstein remarkably found time to score four other motion pictures that very same year.  The soundtracks to two of those pictures, Fear Strikes Out and The Tin Star, were reissued earlier this year by Kritzerland.  A third, Drango, was announced on Monday, July 4 as the latest release from the veteran stage and screen specialist