John Barry's Academy Award-winning score for actor/director Kevin Costner's nouveau western, Dances with Wolves, is nothing short of a modern classic by a film scoring master. Utilising Wagnerian structure, Barry's three main themes recur in magisterial symphonic form. The memorable "John Dunbar" theme alone has become an almost subconscious part of modern life, utilised as Muzak and ...
Manufacturer: Sony Mid-Price
Up at the Villa is very much an old-fashioned movie. It's a romantic drama set in the 1930s, and presented in a way that seems closer to that time than the present. Acting, direction and certainly music all distance themselves from modern Hollywood glamour. Donnagio clearly relishes depicting his native Italy in this manner, and has produced a score of romantic atmospheres conjured by ...
Manufacturer: Varese Sarabande
Manufacturer: Mercury
Manufacturer: Astralwerks
The bad guys in L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi opera are deemed to be a pretty dim, unsavoury bunch--certainly by composer Elia Cmiral, as evidenced by his depiction of their preferred listening in "Psychlos Top 40". This electronic insanity leads nowhere, yet should at least intrigue the ear by the extent to which Cmiral has personally taken on board the chore of programming. Throughout the score there ...
Manufacturer: East West Records
Elegant and eloquent, Howard Shore's score for The Return of the King shies away from excessive epic bombast. The composer weaves into the fabric familiar leitmotifs from the earlier two scores--such as the heroic "Fellowship" theme and the stirring "Rohan" theme--but now they are presented with a reflective sense of finality. Shore's distinctive orchestral palette for the trilogy ...
Manufacturer: Unknown Label
For so many reasons, there couldn't be any composer better suited than Danny Elfman to score a new version of Planet of the Apes. Firstly he comes from a background of explorations in percussion. Hints of that self-education made the best of such works as Mission: Impossible and Men In Black. Now comes the most thunderous, bone-rattling collection of stick bashing in his (and ...
Manufacturer: Sony Classical
John McEntire of Chicago's Tortoise is riding the postrock wave for all it's worth. The soundtrack for director William Ryan's film features a sizable chunk of McEntire's instrumental work as well as contributions from a full-fledged Tortoise, the Sea and Cake, Polvo, Dianogoh, and Bundy K. Brown. Don't expect much in the way of the bands' previous output. This is background music where, and ...
Manufacturer: Hefty
Manufacturer: Decca
