When Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks collaborated on the Academy Award-winning Saving Private Ryan, an abiding passion to further honour the young fighting soldiers of WWII was born in both men, resulting in Band of Brothers, an ambitious 10-part mini-series based on historian Stephen Ambrose's account of a 101st Airborne regiment as it fought its way across Europe. In scoring the ...
Manufacturer: Sony Classical
Manufacturer: Universal
Manufacturer: Ace
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: Wea
Given that it's largely credited with reinventing Hollywood--or at least fostering its overweening box office expectations--it's hard to imagine that the genesis of George Lucas' sprawling, multi-billion dollar Star Wars franchise was once considered a risky studio proposition at best. But Lucas himself has wisely singled out the robust, retro-romantic music of composer John Williams as ...
Manufacturer: Sony
Score composer Howard Shore has informed this first instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy with his distinctly modern sensibilities. Revolving loosely around a brief, heroic brass theme, the composer has infused this epic with a powerful rhythmic thrust and a musical range that encompasses centuries (from the Renaissance pastoralism of "Concerning Hobbits" to the fiery, ...
Manufacturer: Warner
Stan Kubrick's 1987 take on Vietnam is a strange disorientating "wriggle" through film genres and human psyche alike, and the movie ends up as a kind of docu-drama road movie where the protagonists are being wasted one by one. The original score is by Abigail Mead. Admittedly she only had to come up with a few, eerie underscore themes, but they do their job, although unaided by images her ...
Manufacturer: EMI
In a musical collection that is as much soundtrack as it is score, Oliver Stone's Platoon is a breakthrough for its ability to embody the extremes of the human condition in Vietnam. While most of the songs by themselves are commonly found as representative of the era, together they become a personality. Smokey Robinson's soulful and heartfelt "Tracks of My Tears" is offset by the down-home ...
Manufacturer: Atlantic
It must have been a hard job enlisting someone to write to music for Young Guns II. There simply aren't many great songwriters capable of overblown rock ballads which keep a straight face long enough to move you. Jon Bon Jovi, though, is not without a certain pedigree in this department: "Livin' On A Prayer", "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and "Wanted Dead Or Alive" are masterpieces of the ...
Manufacturer: Mercury Records Ltd (London)
