/ Soundtracks

Walt Disney Records builds upon the excitement of the forthcoming Blu-Ray release (and 3-D theatrical reissue) of the studio's classic The Lion King by releasing a new compilation, available now, in honor of the timeless film. Anyone with a shred of doubt in The Walt Disney Company's ability to turn out great animated features after Disney's passing in 1966 had their fears allayed in 1989, with the release of The Little Mermaid, a high watermark of animated storytelling and musical scoring.

UPDATE (9/13): The order links and track lists for the new reissues are after the jump. Original post: Intrada's recent expanded reissue of Jerry Goldsmith's score to Explorers was just the tip of the iceberg for fans of the composer: La-La Land's release slate for this week will feature not one buttwo scores from the pen of the venerable film score maestro. The scores to Sleeping with the Enemy and Forever Young have been high on fans' wish lists for some time - the latter has been in the

When he was 35, it was a very good year. The “he” is Elmer Bernstein, the year is 1957.  The prolific composer managed to create five unique scores for five motion pictures that year – Sweet Smell of Success, Men in War, Fear Strikes Out, The Tin Star, and Drango.  The Kritzerland label has already brought the last three of those titles to CD over the past months, and now Men in War is on the docket, too!  (Not that Mr. Bernstein has been ignored elsewhere.  A film of a later vintage, 1979’s

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