January 6, 2010

  • Best of December: New to the "Collection"

    With the holidays behind us a bit, I am catching up with a few "best of" lists.  I'll start with my picks of "new" discs added into my personal library last month.  The pickings were slim so I only have 4 choices this time.  I have not picked up Avatar yet though Horner's score is a strong one and likely an Oscar contender.  I found Zimmer's score for Holmes plain annoying in the film but it probably will play well by itself.

    Big news in December came from limited and special release labels.  Intrada wins hands down with its 2-disc set of Back to the Future.  This "holy grail" of 1980s film music fans gets royal treatmant from the label and apparently is still available.  Silvestri fans likely already have their copy.

    La-La Land's "gifts" were a complete release of Goldsmith's Innerspace with fantastic sound for this other odd sci-fi film with a great score.  And they released a 2-disc set of Howard's The Fugitive.  The latter is a stellar reissue of the original album remastered and with fixes to sonic imaging as well as including a complete presentation of music for the film.  You really get to appreciate the music from both these films which also include good booklet annotations as well. 

    Varese Sarabande's own "club" selections were a bit less overwhelming but finally we got a legitimate release of Goldsmith's Freud.  The sound is fascinating and the experiments that the composer tries out are always fascinating while he always seems to maintain a little connection to previous dramatic scoring.  A superb limited release with just a few copies remaining last I looked.