The sleeping giant that is Varese Sarabande’s CD Club awoke for the second time yesterday, announcing four killer soundtracks from the film score vaults for your perusal. Chief among the surprises in this week’s batch was the announcement of a John Williams score from the Universal Pictures film Midway (1976) – a major coup for fans of the Maestro. A gripping World War II drama starring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune and a host of A-list actors, Midway sees Williams in true form, with heroic marches and romantic motifs. Until this…
Friday Feature: “An American Werewolf in London”
In 1941, the werewolf mythology gained an iconic set of lines in the Universal horror classic The Wolf Man: “Even a man who is pure at heart/and says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms/and the autumn moon is bright.” Forty years later, from the same studio, a less delicate line was added to the lycanthrope canon: “I will not be threatened by a walking meat loaf!” Such is the tone of An American Werewolf in London, one of the best horror-comedies of the past few decades. It’s…
Bernstein Bonanza: Intrada Goes On A “Rampage,” It’s “Summer” at Kritzerland, and La-La Land is “Trading Places”
If Elmer Bernstein had only composed the indelible theme to The Magnificent Seven, the composer would have been considered a legend. How lucky for us, then, that Bernstein (1922-2004) wrote the scores for more than 200 films and television shows including Sweet Smell of Success, The Ten Commandments, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Airplane! and Ghostbusters, contributing memorable themes to each. The music of Bernstein has been incredibly well-represented on compact disc this year. Kritzerland has been leading the charge with Drango, Kings Go Forth, The Tin Star, Fear Strikes Out and Men in…
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’: Epic to Release Cirque Soundtrack for “Immortal” Michael Jackson
With so many eyes lately fixated on the manslaughter trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, it’s perhaps appropriate that Epic Records is turning the spotlight back where it belongs for fans of the late Michael Jackson: back on his music. On November 21, the label will release Immortal, the “musical tapestry,” or soundtrack recording, to Cirque du Soleil’s touring production of the same name created by writer and director Jamie King. The most high-profile project to have emerged since Jackson’s 2009 death, Immortal received its premiere in Montreal, Canada last evening. In attendance were…
Perversion! “The First Nudie Musical” Arrives On CD and Blu-Ray
Few disputed the title of 1976’s The First Nudie Musical. And if there’s been a second nudie musical, nobody’s told me about it. But even if a second one does exist, chances are it doesn’t have a fraction of the satirical charm of the film described by the New York Post’s Judith Crist as “the Star Wars of nudie musicals!” In fact, the Paramount Picture sat just beneath the science-fiction behemoth and the James Bond thriller The Spy Who Loved Me during its first week of wide release in 1977. Though The…
To Hollywood…and Glory! “1941” Score Locked and Loaded from La-La Land
The War for Soundtracks rages on, and La-La Land Records’ latest volley is the long-awaited expanded edition of the score to 1941, the 1979 World War II comedy scored by legendary composer John Williams for longtime collaborator, director Steven Spielberg. Take some of the most talented young comedians of the ’70s, put them in a picture written by two of the brightest upstarts in Hollywood and put the world’s hottest young director in charge. Sounds like a formula for success, right? Maybe most of the time…but 1941 isn’t anywhere near conventional. Spielberg’s zany…
Hans Zimmer Roars Back With “Thelma and Louise” From Kritzerland
Last weekend, The Lion King sat atop the box office once more, a potent reminder not only of the 1994 film’s enduring power but of its music. Though Elton John and Tim Rice famously composed its songs, it was Hans Zimmer who picked up an Academy Award for the orchestral score. Zimmer made his first major splash in Hollywood with the score to Barry Levinson’s 1988 film Rain Man, following it up with high profile assignments such as Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Days of Thunder (1990) and Thelma & Louise (1991). This…
Soundtrack Round-Up: Intrada Loads “Guns,” Kritzerland Goes “Nudie” and FSM Goes to Space
Even in the wake of some heartbreaking news in the soundtrack catalogue business, there’s a lot of excellent goings on with some of your favorite soundtrack labels: First up, Intrada announced yesterday just one new CD release, but it’s a big one: the world premiere of Alan Silvestri’s score to 1990’s Young Guns II. The Generation X-friendly Western series, which starred Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips and Emilio Estevez as notorious outlaw Billy the Kid, had a strong pedigree for the sequel’s score in Alan Silvestri (who, ironically, would score two modern…
Release Round-Up: Week of September 20
Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 (Columbia/Legacy) A three-CD/one-DVD collection of live stints from Belgium, Germany, France and Sweden, and the inaugural title in a new series of archival material for Miles. And Joe’s got the review this week! (Official site) DeBarge, Time Will Reveal: The Complete Motown Albums (Hip-o Select/Motown) All four of DeBarge’s classic ’80s R&B LPs on two discs, with a further bonus disc of remixes and rarities. (Hip-o Select) Twisted Sister, Live at the Marquee Club (Rhino Handmade) Go under the blade with this down-and-dirty…
Requiem For A Heavyweight: Film Score Monthly, The Label, Bows Out
Here’s looking at you, kid. Film Score Monthly founder Lukas Kendall sent shockwaves through the film score collectors’ community with a blog post yesterday morning announcing the end of the Film Score Monthly reissue label. Having recently released the label’s 240th and 241st titles (the second volume of music from “Johnny” Williams’ score to 1966’s Not with My Wife, You Don’t! and a Nathan Van Cleave “double feature” of The Space Children and The Colossus of New York), Kendall confirmed plans to bring the curtain down on the label he started roughly 15…
It Moves Us All: “Lion King” Compilation Coming Soon
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. Within the next five years, the company would release two more modern…
Jerry! Jerry! La-La Land Adds Two Goldsmith Expansions (and More!) to Library (UPDATED)
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 running for expansion from the label for awhile. The latter, a…
A Salute to Heroes: Elmer Bernstein’s “Men in War” Rediscovered On CD
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,…
Friday Feature: “Lost Horizon” (1973)
Have you ever dreamed of a place far away from it all? Where the air you breathe is soft and clean, and children play in fields of green? And the sound of guns doesn’t pound in your ears anymore? Hal David’s lyrics expressed a sentiment shared by many of the optimistic generation who hadn’t yet felt their ideals vanquished by the reality of Vietnam and growing dissension under the White House of President Richard M. Nixon. David’s words were captivatingly sung by folk artist Shawn Phillips, signed at the time to the…
Review: “Godspell: 40th Anniversary Celebration”
When Hair ushered in the Age of Aquarius on April 29, 1968, it heralded the arrival of the rock revolution on Broadway. The New York Times‘ influential critic Clive Barnes didn’t mince his words, declaring that the musical was a “long-term joust against Broadway’s world of Sigmund Romberg [the composer of such operettas as The Student Prince]” and more importantly, “the first Broadway musical in some time to have the authentic voice of today rather than the day before yesterday.” And while the songs of the stage once populated the Billboard charts,…
Listen to the Music of the Night: “Phantom” Box Coming to the U.K.
Two decades after The Beatles ushered in the first British Invasion, the Brits were back. This time, they had their sights set on Broadway, traditionally home to one of America’s great indigenous art forms, the musical. The British Invasion of the 1980s saw the work of American musical theatre legends like Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Cy Coleman and John Kander and Fred Ebb take a seeming back seat to lavish spectaculars imported from London, often with iconic logos and some kind of special effect sure to keep the tourists talking: Cats (a…
Review: John Barry, “The Black Hole: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”
When John Barry won two 1967 Academy Awards for his work on Born Free, the trophies were a vindication. Over the initial objections of his director, Barry envisioned his score to reflect a “Disneyesque kind of movie, lovely family entertainment” and fought for the dramatic integrity of that sound. Twelve years later, Barry actually got his chance to score a Walt Disney Productions motion picture. One of many science-fiction epics produced in the wake of Star Wars, Disney’s The Black Hole was unusual in any number of respects. Among them, it explored…
It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter: “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” Arrives On CD, Plus Rare Goldsmith “Explorers”
Not even a holiday can slow down the folks at Intrada. On Monday, Labor Day, the Intrada team announced its two latest releases, both of which will begin shipping on Wednesday, September 7. The Intrada Special Collection welcomes Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Joe Dante’s 1985 The Explorers, while the Walt Disney Records/Intrada co-branded line brings Paul J. Smith’s score to the 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to CD. The very first film adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic undersea fable dates back to 1907 (!), but of tens of film and…
Release Round-Up: Week of September 6
John Coltrane, The Impulse! Albums Volume 4 (Hip-o Select/Verve) Five discs encompass five of Coltrane’s posthumous releases for the venerable jazz label. (Hip-o Select) Frank Sinatra & Count Basie, The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings (Concord) All 20 of the legendary performers’ tunes together on one disc. (Concord) Various Artists, Godspell: 40th Anniversary Celebration (Sony Masterworks) Just in time for the new Broadway revival, a two-for-one deal: the original 1971 cast album and 1973 film soundtrack. (Official revival site) Various Artists, Where the Boys Are: The Songs of Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield (Ace) The latest in…
Someday, Somehow, Someone’s Gotta Play
La-La Land Records has a one-man army for their latest film score reissue: James Horner, for his score to the hit action film Commando. Unless you’ve been living in a particularly nonviolent box these past 26 years, Commando was one of the first major starring vehicles for bodybuilder/actor/future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, Schwarzenegger was certainly in the national consciousness in two killer sci-fi/fantasy roles, as the title characters in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Terminator (1984). But Commando was special because it was the first picture to create the actor’s now-exhaustively-familiar archetype: a thinly-characterized…
A(nother) Man and a Woman: Vintage Francis Lai Coming From Kritzerland
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…
Soundtrack Round-Up: La-La Land Goes “Commando,” Intrada Goes “Galactica”
Another pair of great stories for catalogue film score fans from around the way – another great sci-fi release from Intrada and a surprise expansion from La-La Land Records! Intrada’s first in a series of archival titles devoted to Stu Phillips’ score for the original Battlestar Galactica television show, released earlier this year, was a considerable hit. Naturally, the label was ready to partner with Universal on more volumes, and the second was released Monday – a nice companion piece to the label’s other great sci-fi soundtrack, Disney’s The Black Hole. The second…
Intrada, Disney Reach a “Hole” New World!
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 for future releases in the Walt Disney Records/Intrada…
FSM Releases Vintage Bernstein, Williams from the Vaults
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 Airplane! With Santini, an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel about a Marine pilot…
Spin the Black Circle: “PJ20” Soundtrack to Feature Live Cuts, Unreleased Demos
Last week, Joe reported that the double-disc soundtrack to Pearl Jam’s upcoming documentary would be released on September 20. Thanks to our friends at Ultimate Classic Rock, we now have a track list to go with the set. The double-disc set, tied to the band’s new Cameron Crowe-directed film chronicling the band’s two decades together, is primarily comprised of live cuts from the band’s history, from early performances in Seattle before the release of the group’s landmark debut Ten to current arena-fillers around the world. Additionally, nine unreleased demos and outtakes will…
