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1) CAPTAIN NEMO AND THE UNDERWATER CITY (1500 Edition)

(c) 2009 Screen Archives


Price: $19.95

What is it?: Few outside of my Saturday matinee generation remember that Robert Ryan piloted the Nautilus alongside such other movie captains as James Mason, Herbert Lom and Omar Sharif, the wonder and danger of their deep telegraphed here through Angela Morley’s wondrously thematic score.

Why should you buy it?: Though best known for her pastoral soundtrack to the animated WATERSHIP DOWN, Morley’s work for CAPTAIN NEMO stands as another towering entry in fantasy scoring. While The Captain has usually been depicted in brooding musical terms, Morley captures Nemo’s world with the most buoyant, classically lush melodies this side of Claude Debussy’s “La Mer.” Yet Morley doesn’t neglect to fulfill the cliffhanging thrills of the giant manta ray Mobula as she conjures the ocean’s beauty in a way far deeper than you’d expect from a “kid’’s movie.

Extra Special: If Morley’s magical score is enough to inspire you to also see this long-lost treasure, you can find NEMO in the waters of the new on-demand archive at WarnerBros.com- though it’ll cost you nearly Neptune’s trident to acquire that CITY.  

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2) THE ESCAPIST

(c) 2009 Movies Score Media

Price: $17.95

What is it?: A puzzle box of a British prison escape flick gets an criminally complex score by Benjamin Wallfisch, whose cool music swings from techno to conventional orchestra and eccentric percussion to reflect the film’s time-shifting edits with captivating finesse.

Why should you buy it?: Imagine those trash can dudes from Stomp busting out of stir, and you’ll get a sense of THE ESCAPIST’s playful sense of bizarre metal beats. Yet Wallfisch’s approach is never less than suspenseful as it tunnels between delicately beautiful orchestrations to hellzapoppin’ percussion. There hasn’t been quite an intriguingly bizarre “crime” score like this in a while, a striking approach that will hopefully let this intriguing composer break into the soundtrack big house.

Extra Special: While this CD’s packaging doesn’t include a nail file and chisel, you can almost imagine that Wallfisch was banging away with them here.

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3) LAND OF THE LOST

(c) 2009 Varese Sarabande

Price: $13.99

What is it?: After STAR TREK and UP, Michael Giacchino concludes his Summer score Trifecta for this guiltily enjoyable, in-your-face take on the classic Sid and Marty Krofft TV show.

Why should you buy it?: Well, not every score (or film) can live up to Giacchino’s first two entries, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t charm to be found with the composer’s salute to one of the favorite Saturday morning kiddie shows (even if this new LOST is mostly filled with double age-digit humor). Fashioning his LAND in the tribal-percussive tradition of Jerry Goldsmith’s PLANET OF THE APES, Giacchino gets a lot of playful mileage from rampaging dino action runs, wee-ooo electronics for the villainous Sleestacks, and outrightly goofy noodlings for Will Ferrell’s non sequiturs- all of which make this LAND into a fun landing spot for any number of musical styles.

Extra Special: Jimmie Haskell’s classic country sci-fi theme roars to life again, amped up with a bunch of clever variations that go from Williams-esque adventure to Will Ferrell strumming away briefly on a banjo.

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4) PUBLIC ENEMIES

(c) 2009 Decca

Price: $14.99

What is it?: After blasting out some violently powerful modernism for Michael Mann’s HEAT, composer Elliot Goldenthal joins a Prohibition-era rogues gallery for the director.

Why should you buy it?: Taking a necessary, stylistic step back for another mythic crime opera results in a less experimental score than one would expect from one of Hollywood’s more Avant-garde composers. Yet Goldenthal’s music is no less powerful as his somber, subtly Americana music paints a grim portrait of life on the lam for Dillinger and his pals. Goldenthal also goes for fateful piano and brass, giving a Morricone-like quality to this doomed gunslinger, with John’s final fate played out with the kind of windingly powerful, symphonic statement that fits well into Goldenthal’s other “big build” scoring for his other historical biopic scores to COBB and MICHAEL COLLINS.

Extra Special: Goldenthal’s fans will probably be disappointed that there isn’t more score here, though at least ENEMIES’ period-specific source music is similarly entrancing, especially the bluegrass stylings of Otis Taylor and Diana Krall’s sultry take on “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Billlie Holiday also abounds, with crime swing of “Chicago Shake” nicely provided by Bruce Fowler’s Big Band.

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5) THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER

(c) 2009 Screen Archives

Price: $19.95

What is it?: After their knockout, re-performed restorations of such classic scores as CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE and SHE, the Tribute Label takes on another Erich Wolfgang Korngold masterpiece from the days when film music was unabashedly bold. When it was, well, music.

Why should you buy it?: Conductor William Stromberg and score reconstructions John Morgan and Anna Bonn once again make the Moscow Symphony Orchestra sound just like an orchestra on the old studio lot’s recording stage. And they’ve picked a particularly rewarding score to do it with PAUPER, its tale of royal mistaken identities as robustly performed as you’d expect from the composer behind other historical adventures like THE SEA HAWK and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. Yet PAUPER turns out to be somehow less bombastic and more playful than you’d expect from Korngold, with a theme that at times sounds like the stuff that would latter accompany another strapping lad named Harry Potter. And when it comes to the Korngold’s way with the romantic swashbuckle, the Muscovites accomplish orchestral derring-do that the composer would no doubt approve of.

Extra Special: Tribute Film Classics once again provides lavish packaging that details the process of how they restore Hollywood’s golden scores to their shining glory. Thankfully, these liner notes are easier to fit back into the jewel case than some Tribute CD’s of yore.

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Also for Your Consideration

• DRACULA A.D. 1972: The Prince of Darkness meets the sound of Shagadelia in this devilishly groovy score by Mike Vickers. A former member of the 60’s rock band Manfred Mann, Vickers’ funky talents left an indelible musical bite on Hammer Horror, beginning with a black mass ceremony that would be one of the more one insane rock-terror cues until Goblin’s SUSPIRIA dropped in on the slaughter party. Then Dracula himself emerges to put the bite on mod England, enticing victims with a brassy swagger that turns him into an undead James Bond- only with way more supernatural groove than 007. In the annals of the period’s pop-rock movie scores, A.D. 1972 is right up there with the likes of SHAFT and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, a soundtrack as much a movie score as it is a wild jam session of the era’s best jazzy excesses.
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• THE INFORMERS: Even if you weren’t some beautiful young thing indulging in an early 80’s fiesta of blow and flesh, you’ll definitely hear the decade’s decadent vibe with Lakeshore’s one-two issue of this underrated film’s score and song CD’s. In pop land, INFORMERS offers such great Reagan-era acts as Simple Minds, Wang Chung, and Pat Benatar, with the standout being 7Ray’s “In A Scarlett Sky,” a gorgeously haunting anthem to doomed romance with spot-on keyboard work. Christopher Young’s score CD works by going its own way with a smoky, dark approach that sings with the ennui of the LA wasteland, his chamber jazz approach suiting the soul-crushing hedonism like a cigarette to an ashtray.
  
• LOST: SEASON 4: Whether it’s dinosaurs or black mist monsters, Michael Giacchino just can’t seem to get off the darned time-lost island. And judging by the striking work he does for this series, LOST fans probably hope he won’t ever escape. But as those darn characters keep trying to, Giacchino keeps pace with them with a thematic mix of the weirdly exotic and intimately traditional, then makes his musical approach seem new with each season. Credit album producer (and Varese Sarabande head) Robert Townson for sifting through oodles of noteworthy tunes, grabbing the best of them to create a real flow with the over 70 minutes of score here. It’s scoring that begins with the more intimate, thematic stuff and steadily turns to action adrenalin, offbeat melodies whose mystery keeps revealing new directions for Giacchino with each opening of the LOST plot hatch.
  
• MY SISTER’S KEEPER: From the SEX AND THE CITY movie to THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, few male composers know how to hear the company of women like Aaron Zigman, who’s back with his NOTEBOOK director Nick Cassavettes for another emotionally powerful score. And it’s SISTER’s tale of family togetherness in the face of cancer that sees Zigman going to another tenderly dramatic plateau, his somber, yet beautiful themes once again opening the tear ducts with a subtle pull as opposed to a mawkish tug. It’s the kind of talent that makes SISTER into the kind of score that honestly makes you reach for the handkerchiefs while remembering the soulful melodies through the sobs.
  
• NO-DO: After delivering a truly terrifying horror score for the equally chilling ABANDONED, Spanish composer Alfons Conde steps closer to becoming the most intense string-driven composer since Howard Shore with the SILENCE OF LAMBS-like intensity he gives to NO-DO (i.e. THE BECKONING). Continuing his country’s obsession with ghostly kids after THE OTHERS and THE ORPHANAGE, Conde conjures the spirit of spectral tykes and their unhinged parents with scarily dense walls of strings and voices, creating a score that achieves the level of an eerie tone poem as much as it succeeds in delivering the jolting goods for the Spanish ghost kid genre.
  
• THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE: Having given thrilling mojo to Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott for MAN ON FIRE and DÉJÀ VU, Harry Gregson-William takes his techno percussion vibe into the NYC subway for a film and score that have little in common with the original movie’s jazzy rawness, but everything to do with today’s action beat ethos. It’s a track that Williams was one of the first composers to lay out, and he stays on it firmly here with a simmering, suspenseful miasma of hard-ass rock, melodic strings and a drive that never stops- music that plows through the Scott’s frenetic stylism like a train on fire.
  
• WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?: Though they’d team for two of the 80’s best techno thrillers with WAR GAMES and BLUE THUNDER, composer Arthur Rubinstein and director John Badham’s first collaboration was for this far more “human” film, whose biggest battle is a paralyzed artist’s fight to die on his own terms. Always a composer with a bold symphonic sound, Rubinstein’s work here is a striking mix of brassy, Baroquely classical melody and more experimental sound, music that conveys the passion, and rage that lies within the hero’s immobile body. It’s music that literally moves where he can’t, creating a score for a bed-bound drama that’s just as dramatically explosive as the music he’d latter provide for computers gone wrong.
  
  Find these soundtracks at these .com’s: Amazon, Buysoundtrax, Intrada, iTunes. Moviemusic, Screen Archives and Varese Sarabande
   

 

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