A boon for film music fans!

For the unfamiliar, isolated score tracks are basically a film’s music score that can be heard while watching the film – free from dialogue and, in most (if not ideal) cases, sound effects.

On the home video front, the feature first popped up on laserdisc, and during the nascent days of DVD, it was ported over, after which it and things like composer commentaries (composers talking about their music between music cues) kind of disappeared, leaving film music fans wondering where all the rare music went.

I’ve blabbed on for years about this feature because it not only gives people the chance to hear a near-complete score, but watch a movie with just the music. It might sound like a funny idea to some, but try it sometime. Check out our catalogue of laserdiscs and DVDs with the feature (updated again!), and if you have one or know someone or can rent one with this special feature, watch a favourite scene, and see how much the music adds to the scene’s impact.

As with recent films, the same goes for classic movies, and over the past few months, Twentieth Century-Fox has gone full steam ahead with a handful of titles, followed by two outright waves of DVDs with bonus music content in May and June.

We’ve already reviewed two of the five Tyrone Power films in their sublime boxed set, and this week we uploaded the remaining titles in the collection: Captain from Castile, Blood and Sand (1941), and The Black Rose (1950). Alongside Son of Fury and Prince of Foxes, Captain from Castile also comes with a music track that’s worth listening to.

For the DVD reviews, check out the linked titles above, and for more info on the bonus music, read my column at Music from the Movies [MFTM], which also covers Jane Eyre (1944) – packed with Bernard Herrmann’s score – Royal Flash (both from Fox), and Aurora Borealis (from Liberation Entertainment/Genius Entertainment), with the latter including Mychael Danna’s music.

We’ll have reviews of those films at KQEK.com shortly, while the second part of the MFTM column will check out the extras on Fox’ second cool wave of titles: Fantastic Voyage, The Neptune Factor, The Sand Pebbles, Von Ryan’s Express, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

We’ve also added two new interviews: Canadian composer Don Macdonald discusses scoring Andrew Currie’s zombie/social satire Fido (now hitting screens, courtesy of Lions Gate), and for fans of Godzilla and Japanese monster movies, we’ve the complete Q&A with Larry Turczynski - a longtime soundtrack collector who built a huge online resource for fans of those hard-to-find import CDs that singularly cost more than taking a family of six to a chi-chi restaurant serving arty-farty food on oversized china PLUS a bottle of chilled Chateau Pompousser.

(The latter interview originally ran in Rue Morgue, and the magazine has kindly allowed the complete Q&A to be published here.)

We’ve also added a quick pair of soundtrack reviews: Dzieci z doliny mtynow, a compilation of Andrzej Korzynski’s TV music from Polish online label Soundtracks.PL; and Dario Marianelli’s lovely I Capture the Castle, from online/CD label MovieScore Media.

Coming next: documentaries, soundtrack reviews, notable horror from Maple/Lions Gate, and a self-serving blog on rare stuff that’ll be up for sale at KQEK.com starting this week because of an upcoming move to a smaller abode, free from toxic mold!


- MRH


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