Sorry for the delay, but I have had a little travel to deal with the past week.  That and a lot of class prep and writing to get to.  So, though there is a bit of a delay, here are the 5 "best" CDs that came in last month, and there were plenty of good things so this is a reduced list!

First off, no surprise, is Goldsmith's Alien.  Probably one of his finest works and worth a re-visit after the abysmal latest installment.  Each of the films in the Alien franchise have been fairly lucky though Brian Tyler's score for the latest sequel is a lot of fun to listen to, one wishes the film could have been better.  Then again, who ever thought this odd sci-fi thriller would still be getting commentary over 30 years later!

Varese's release of North By Northwest in a re-recording by Joel McNeely, is a pretty good contemporary take on this score, though seemingly redundant to the nearly complete original soundtrack.  The suggestion that more is to come though can only mean some great stuff is on the horizon.

As with Alien, so with John Williams' score for Images, his "strangest" score we are supposed to believe, but if you listen to this score what you realize is that Williams was adapting his concert artistic language to film music here.  It is a fascinating score to listen to as a whole and its appearance on CD, taken from a promo LP is a clean transfer that fills out, and nearly completes the composer's score catalogue from the 1970s.

Towards the end of the month, Film Score Monthly released a wonderful 2-disc set of Korngold's scores.  King's Row is really one of the composer's finest efforts and listening to it here one is constantly fascinated at how Korngold maintained such clear musical arcs in his music.  There is more nuance in his conducting of this music and that for The Sea Wolf that aids in realizing his gifts on the podium.  So this is both a musical testament and one that allows us the rare opportunity to hear the composer conduct his own music.

Finally, Dario Marianelli's Atonement, while similar to his nominated score for Pride and Prejudice, moves into that very small field of good to great scores from 2007.  It's Golden Globe nomination is a nice nod to the composer and we can hope that at some point we can hear a bit more from him that allows him to experiment and develop his talent.

I am not quite sure how it happened, but I now seem to be truly "electronicized" (if that is a word).  After a decade of having only one email (and at most two), I now have a personal email, 3 different emails, plus a facebook "inbox" and a MySpace inbox.  I also manage two other blogs in addition to this one.  I certainly hope my writing improves with all these opportunities!

It's that pre-test prep week for me so there has been less time to share many musical insights here.  Plus a pile of new discs arrived for review this week. 

A couple of things to note though for film music fans.  Intrada, which must have had something wonderful happen to have a year like they have had so far, just announced a limited edition of Monsignor.  This is one of those CDs, like The Witches of Eastwick, that has disappeared and never returned on re-issue.  Williams' score will be a welcome change to fans of his music who have heard little on CD from the maestro this year.  It's not going to be earth-shattering, but it is a big release for fans, and a limited one at that.  Now if we could just get Spacecamp....

Also, Film Score Monthly is announcing a two-disc set of Franz Waxman's awesome score for The Silver Chalice.  Music from this score appeared in the Varese Waxman surveys a few years ago (those are four discs worth seeking out).  This disc will in every respect remove the need for one that surfaced in Europe several years ago (often looked upon as a bootleg--but it's due to some of the greater wiggle room on copyright).

Movie Score Media has also returned to making hard-copy CD releases of their material after a beginning of download-only releases.  Dario Marianelli's score for the unseen 2005 film Beyond the Gates (aka Shooting Dogs) is a brief, but amazing score for a film dealing with the genocide in Rwanda.  It is a deeply moving score that continues to illustrate the composer's talent and is worth a few bucks.

Finally, the other day I finally bought a copy of the old Varese Star Wars Trilogy recording with the Utah Symphony (mostly because I was filling in my obsessive need for completeness).  I always passed over this disc for any number of reasons, but always wondered why it has remained in the catalog for so long.  Well, it remains in the catalog because it is one of the finest Williams Star Wars recordings you can find and I am glad to have now made it my latest guilty pleasure.

Speaking of which, another private label has just released a compilation disc of Sam Spence's music for NFL films which he provided from the mid-1960's through the following decade.  It's called Our Man In Munich and is one heck of a groovy album.  If you are fans of the movie jazz of the 1960s, John Barry, or Barry Gray, this is a great disc to add to your collection.