Cinema Century 2000
Various Artists
Silva Screen
Whoa! This is a four CD set collecting 20th century film scores equaling about four and a half hours of listening! That’s four, count ‘em four CDs!
Fans of film music, especially overtures, will want this even if only as an historical reference. CD one covers the 1930s through the 1950s, including music from King Kong , The Adventures of Robin Hood , Alexander Nevsky , The Thief of Bagdad , The War of the Worlds , Prince Valiant , and The Vikings . Disc two hits the 1960s, including Breakfast At Tiffany’s , El Cid (go Heston!), the James Bond Theme, and Once Upon a Time in the West . Disc three covers the 1970s and eighties with The Godfather , The Way We Were (hurl!), Papillon , and even the finale from Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Excalibur , The Right Stuff , Lethal Weapon , and Batman . Um, they might have included “Tubular Bells,” from The Exorcist , and some others, OK…. Disc four is the 1990s, which I think is the crappiest decade Hollywood’s had yet, and this album proves it: you get a song from Ghost , one from Basic Instinct , The Prince of Tides , The Bodyguard , Independence Day , and Titanic . OK, so Braveheart ‘s here, too and it was great, but…
Silva Screen Records, 43 West 38th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10018; http://www.silvascreen.com