/ Soundtracks

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

La-La Land Records released its newest titles yesterday featuring some A-list composers - all the while, as always, amid speculation for their next releases at the San Diego Comic-Con. This week's releases were Bad Girls by Jerry Goldsmith and The Sender by Trevor Jones. Bad Girls, a Western about a quartet of prostitutes (Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore, Mary Stuart Masterson and Madeline Stowe) on the run in Texas after a justifiable homicide and subsequent jailbreak. The score boasted the

When Frank Sinatra won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for 1953’s From Here to Eternity, it was the “comeback” story of the year.  As Sinatra was earning plaudits in Hollywood, he was also beginning the most significant chapter of his recording career at Capitol Records, recording his Capitol debut Songs for Young Lovers in November 1953.  After his triumph as Maggio in From Here, Sinatra’s Hollywood career was riding high, as he embarked on a number of high-profile dramatic films. 

Intrada has two very interesting catalogue soundtrack titles up for order today - but it's their plans for later in the month that have film score fans dizzy with anticipation. Today brings another set of scores from Basil Pouledoris in Cherry 2000 (1987), a sci-fi cult classic with Melanie Griffith as a sexy automaton of the future, and The House of God (1984), a barely-seen 1984 adaptation of the satirical medical novel of the same name. While Cherry 2000 will be familiar to fans of

2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? was far from a commercial sure bet.  Joel and Ethan Coen’s film reset Homer’s Odyssey to 1937 Mississippi, set to a score of period folk music.  Yet it defied the odds, garnering critical praise, Oscar nominations for its screenplay and cinematography, and perhaps most surprisingly, the biggest-selling soundtrack of the last decade.  Universal has just announced that a 2-CD expansion of the original soundtrack will be released on August 16 including 13 songs