Ry Cooder's name has helped bring attention to this session, but it's the veteran Cuban son musicians who make this album really special. Reminiscent of Ellington in its scope and sense of hushed romanticism, Buena Vista Social Club is that rare meld of quietude and intensity; while the players sound laid-back, they're putting forth very alive music, a reminder that aging doesn't mean ...
Back in the Golden Age of the Hollywood epic, composer Miklós Rózsa lavished much scholarly research on his scores for Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), El Cid (1961) and others, gracing those movies with music that had as its wellspring authentic (or at least authentic-sounding) melodies from the period. For Ridley Scott's revival of the Roman epic, Gladiator, Hans ...
Top Gun (1986) must be counted one of the most influential movies of the 1980s. It propelled Tom Cruise to superstar status, and jetted director Tony (True Romance, 1994; Enemy of the State, 1998) Scott's career into the stratosphere. It also allowed producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to perfect their multiplex-friendly blockbuster formula of join-the-dots plot, ...
No matter whether or not you think Sylvester Stallone should have gone back to the Rocky trough one more time, this soundtrack is fun because it's basically a collection of music from all the past movies in the saga, ending with Three 6 Mafia's rap contribution to Rocky Balboa, "It's a Fight." The CD starts off with Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky)," which remains so totally ...