Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Batman Forever (or perhaps not?)

Moving down the line in soundtrack CDs, I come to Batman Forever. Now take a moment to remember what you thought the first time you saw this movie. Was it in the theaters? Or later, on VHS? Or perhaps only recently, on a NetFlix DVD? Very cartoony, in fact, not far away from the campy style of Batman from the 60s. Very much a contrast to Batman Begins.

Anyway, about the music. Not my favorite. I believe I received the CD with a VHS copy of the movie as part of the birthday gift. I'm going to try to do this review by what is memorable. Songs 1-7, I mostly like. After that, I tend to lose interest in listening. It begins with a U2 song that's fairly good. Next is "Where are you now?" by Brandy (do remember her? Whatever happened to her?). Of course, Seal croons the "A Kiss from a Rose," which was/is my favorite song on the album. Tracks 5-7 are sung by female artists and I can tell you that after listening to Track 5 "The Hunter Gets Captured By the Prey," I end up singing it for a bit. And that is all that I care for on this soundtrack CD. So while Amazon users gave it an average 4.5 stars, I can only give it 2 stars.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Driving thru Soundtracks

Since my car still plays CDs, I've decided to do a drive thru of my soundtracks. I will be progressing alphabetically through them. To start off, I began with Anastasia (an animated non-Disney movie that came out in the 1990s). I thought it was a decent film (Disney does better artwork, no doubt) but at the time I really liked the song, "Once Upon A December." I believe this is what motivated me to buy the soundtrack on CD. So I expected that I would play about 2-3 times and then done with it. But not so much. Turns out I very much enjoyed the soundtrack, all of it. I have no special skills with music, playing it or explaining it, but I believe this music was well-written, well-played, and well-sung. Even the evil bad dude Rasputin's song, "In the Dark of the Night" gets me bouncing around and singing along. After the movie's musical numbers, a couple of pop artists join the mix. My favorite being Richard Marx dueting with Donna Lewis on "At the Beginning." The also last 6 songs are the actual orchestra music from the movie. Within these you can hear Angela Lansbury (aka Jessica B. Fletcher) sing a tiny bit of "Once Upon A December." Finally, it ends with a Spanish version of "Journey to the Past," which is fine for me.

Anyhoo, I agree with a majority of the Amazon reviewers in giving this soundtrack 5 stars (out of 5). Splendid.