Soundtracks

Johnny Mathis, Robert Goulet and Engelbert Humperdinck sang it.  Ella Fitzgerald sang it.  Claudine Longet even sang it in its original French!  The song was “A Man and a Woman,” or “Un Homme et une Femme,” from the 1966 film of the same name.  The Francis Lai composition was a favorite of pop singers and jazz musicians alike, and was quite ubiquitous; as Kritzerland’s Bruce Kimmel asks, “Is there a person anywhere in the world who was around in the 1960s and 1970s who could not instantly recognize the theme from A…

Intrada’s two newest archival soundtrack releases take listeners from the deepest reaches of Arthurian legend to space (the final frontier). First up, it’s an unlimited, expanded pressing of Cliff Eidelman’s score to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The sixth Trek film has several notable “lasts” to its credit: the last to feature the original series’ cast its entirety (1995’s Generations and the 2009 series reboot featured several of the major players), the second and last film in the series by Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer and the last Trek project…

As the above image shows, it’s finally true: La-La Land Records is releasing an expanded edition of John Williams’ stirring score to Steven Spielberg’s 1991 adventure film Hook, a modern updating of the Peter Pan mythology, on March 27. In my excitement last night, I sent an e-mail to the LLL staff thanking them for putting this release together; Joe rather brilliantly suggested that the letter would find a good audience among our dear readers, who no doubt know the feeling of excitement when beloved music is released from the vaults. We’ll be…

It’s one of those rare weeks when more than one soundtrack reissue label puts out titles within days of each other, so there are four new and expanded sets to enjoy. Intrada has released two scores on CD for the first time. The first, Gil Melle’s score to 1980’s Borderline, is noted for its blend of traditional orchestral arrangements and mixing along with free-form, jazz-based music that took advantage of the full field of stereo sound. The film, a fictionalized account of U.S. border guards starring Charles Bronson and a young Ed Harris,…

A victim of the blacklist, director Martin Ritt (The Front, The Great White Hope and Norma Rae) felt passionately about using film to explore relevant social issues.  So it would have been no surprise that he was taken with the story of the Molly Maguires, the Irish-American coal miners who formed a secret society (some might say, of terrorists) to fight their oppressive employers in 19th century Pennsylvania.  Ritt enlisted an all-star cast including Sean Connery (still in his James Bond period) and Richard Harris for his 1970 Paramount Pictures epic.  Initially signed…

The music catalogue world is celebrating one of Hollywood’s truest living legends with two, count ’em, two, compilations next month. Whether you’re a die-hard film score collector or a mere appreciator of good movie music, John Williams has made a mark on your consciousness. His list of credits spans decades, first as a Juilliard-trained pianist working under the greatest batons in Tinseltown (that’s him plunking the low notes in Henry Mancini’s iconic Peter Gunn theme), then a light, jazzy composer and arranger of some renown (this period saw his first Oscar nod, for…

As Star Wars fans count down to a theatrical reissue of the chronological beginning of the six-film series, new fans will get a chance to rediscover its musical merits, thanks to a new reissue from Sony Classical. The year 1999 was a monumental year for fans of George Lucas’ Star Wars series. After years of discussions and planning, that May saw the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the first of a new prequel trilogy that explained how Lucas’ mythological galaxy fell into the turmoil depicted in the classic Star…

La-La Land Records continues their history with Gotham City’s Caped Crusader on CD today, with the release of the complete score to 1995’s Batman Forever. The third Bat-film sees Batman – the vigilante alter-ego of millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer) – square off against not one but two villains: Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Tommy Lee Jones), the former district attorney whose facial disfiguration leads to a dual personality, and Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey), a disgraced employee of Wayne Enterprises who invents a brain-wave-stealing device as the brain-teaser-obsessed Riddler. But Batman doesn’t go…