Customer Reviews

Casino: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While admittedly there are terrific songs on this soundtrack, the running order could have been organized better (even if Robbie Robertson did put this collection together). Many times I had to reprogram just to listen to it all the way through, something I didn't have to do with the short but sweet "Goodfellas" soundtrack. And where is Ray Charles's "Stella By Starlight" and Jerry Vale's "Love Me The Way I Love You", two very prominent songs in the movie! It's personal preference to be sure, but that's what this forum is all about, right?

It's still an enjoyable soundtrack as all the other reviewers allude to.

Peace.

When Martin Scorsese put out "GoodFellas", the soundtrack was very good yet very limited because lots of songs were missing. For his next DeNiro-Pesci Mob Film, he had Robbie Robertson organize the music (as he did in Scorsese's "The Color of Money") and the results are very impressive. There is such a good mix of songs that echo scenes from the film. The best example being Jeff Beck's "I Ain't Superstitious". Whenever that comes on I think of that scene where DeNiro catches the guy at the casino cheating. Or when "Matthaus Passion" comes on I think of the scene in the end where they show a montage of casinos exploding. Such a fine film deserves a soundtrack that equals it and that is exactly what this album is. Scorsese knows how to direct and he knows how important the music is as well. This is the finest example of that and it is one of the greatest albums out there. If I could only bring one album on a stranded island this would probably be it.

..i noticed that there are no Rolling Stones songs on this. I'm thinking that if this did include the Stones, instead of paying $32.99 for the soundtrack, we'd all be paying $60 due to the licensing fees involved...

.just a thought.

..also, this cd compilation includes the instrumental version of "The In-Crowd", not the vocal version featured in the movie.

..I'm not complaining, mind you, because this soundtrack still rocks (and rolls)..4 Stars, hands down..

FYI for what it's worth, on my copy, disc1 track4 is "I'll Take You There" by The Staple Singers, and bump everything after up 1 notch, for a total of 16 tracks.

Great choice of background music which helps set the tone and mood of the various scenes of movie. As the movie time line spans a number of years and genres of music, the choices were timely and evocative. The compilation can be used as a backdrop for entertaining guests during dinner party at home or low key gathering of friends. Selections have great variety and represents good cross section of American pop and contemporary music.

From jazzy to rock & roll tunes, this is by far the best song compilation soundtrack I know of, and I have listened to quite a lot of soundtracks in my life.

A stylish movie gets a stylish soundtrack, and while some tunes are missing from this soundtrack, one has to commend the creators of this OST for putting 31 beautiful songs, capping an almost 2 hour listen. It does cost about double the price of regular soundtracks but it's worth every penny.

With Louis Prima, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Fleetwood Mac, Harry Nilsson, B.B. King, Otis Redding and many many other great artists of the golden years, one can have timeless joy every time this compilation goes in the CD player.

While it is a bit pricey, it is thoroughly recommended to anyone who can enjoy some good old jazz and rock & roll. Simply a wonderful collection of songs.

Martin Scorcese may have peaked a while ago with his movies, but his soundtracks are nothing short of fantastic.

He always takes great care to ensure that the scenes in Casino are represented by the most appropriate tune available, and in this case, he was unable to obtain (probably due to money) any of the early stones tunes ('Can't You Hear Me Knockin', 'Gimme Shelter') for this album. That being said, every tune will remind you of the scene you saw it in. By doing so, they actually replace the dialogue at times.

From Dean Martin, Otis Redding, Dinah Washington, Fleetwood Mac, etc., the list is star time all the way, and if nothing else, this is a great music sampler that will inspire people to pick up items from most of the individual artists.

Like most soundtracks produced by Martin Scorsese, the track to the film Casino is incomplete, missing, among others, Ginger Baker's drum jam "Toad" from Wheels of Fire. And, like most good film scores, it helps the listener recreate the film in his or her head while listening. In this way, the score is similar to Scorsese's other outstanding soundtrack from The King Of Comedy, one of the better 1980s techno-pop collecetions that's never come out on CD.

However, unlike most good soundtracks, there's a significant problem with this collection: the succession of the music is nowhere close to what happens in the film, making chronological listening -- like one would do easily when listening to Miklos Rozsa's music from The Green Berets to mentally recreate the progression of the movie -- just about impossible. The sequencing is one issue, with music supporting visuals in the film scattered all over the two-disk collection. However, the second issue is one I also found true with the score from The King of Comedy: most of the music in the movie only lasts 10-20 seconds but you get the whole song on the soundtrack. This is a "good" problem, of course.

As for the contents, Scorsese et al have scrupulously selected music from the popular, rock, jazz and blues fields that presage and support the timespan of the film, from the 1970s through the 1980s. Starting with 1950s hits like Les Ford and Mary Ford's 1951 hit "How High the Moon" and Clarence "Frogman" Henry's 1956 classic "Ain't Got No Home," the music ebbs forward through Les McCann and Eddie Harris's 1969 jazz hit "Compared to What", B.B. King's 1970 version of "The Thrill Is Gone," Fleetwood Mac's 1976 hit "Go Your Own Way" and rolls into the 1980s with Devo's version of The Rolling Stones hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

After seeing it in the theater upon its 1991 release, Casino has become one of my favorite films, perhaps the only film I will watch whenever it airs on dish. I have a failing for criminal movies and like the Scorses idiom, but it took me about 50 viewings to figure out one of the principal reasons I like it so much is the outastanding music that supports the story. The jazz and popular selections, in particular, support the over the top emotions that dominate the story that describes a bookie turned casino manager (Robert DeNiro), his drug addict wife (Stone) and distraught family life, and his criminal sidekick (Joe Pesci.)

A bit of history on the story and its music: Nicholas Pileggi began his script on a 1980 newspaper story of domestic strife between a casino manager and his wife, a former topless dancer. While former gangster Henry Hill testified that just about every scene of that other Pileggi-Scorsese epic about crime, GoodFellas, was true, its questionable how true the story is in Casino. Lots of critics dislike the film, saying it is overlong (almost 3 hours), too detailed, too violent and with cardboard characterizations of the leading figures (even though Sharon Stone won an Oscar for her role.)

There may be validity to some of those claims but no one can deny the effectiveness and fun value of the film's soundtrack, replete with popular jazz and vocals and finishing with the final chorus from J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, music that concludes the passion story of Christ's ridicule, trial, crucifixion, ascent to heaven, return to earth to see his disciples, and return to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. While the metaphor doesn't apply to the end of the era characterized by the new Las Vegas in the film, the music is another over the top example of the storytelling Scorses uses in Casino.

With the few criticisms noted earlier about poor placement of the tunes, this is a memorable film score that should find a place in anyone's library that collects good film music. The production is not particularly high tech, however. When I played it on my somewhat oddly put together 5.1 stereo, only the center speaker produced much music. This often happens with mono or old stereo, which I assume to be the source for much of the music here.

maybe not the moment to talk about a french music composer - who's dead anyway - yet Casino has been on pbs tonite again and the Theme of Camille has been employed at least a couple of times, in the desert and towards the end credits; the music was written for this early 6oies movie by suiss director Godard and is part of national memory in France, Piccoli and Bardot starring as well as Fritz Lang; Delerue only wrote a few pieces for this movie that cab be found entirely on technically pretty perfect reissues; I didn't remember until I've seen the movie tonite again.

Martin Scorsese soundtracks. What a subject. Martin Scorsese perfectly uses a song to heighten a scene and in some instances the song actually becomes memorable BECAUSE of the scene. For example, in GoodFellas when Jimmy Conway is kicking Billy Batts while Donovan's "Atlantis" is playing or when the Rolling Stones' "Monkey Man" is playing while the helicopter is chasing Henry Hill. In his very good movie Casino, there are also a couple of instances where you think of a scene and the song makes it memorable. I remember "Nights in White Satin" while Ginger and Nicky are complaining about Sam and how he "changed" and the memorable "House of the Rising Sun" while the mob is being run down and Ginger dies from a drug overdose. I could go on but I won't. The three stars is because of how the songs don't tie into each other at all. This soundtrack is all over the place and doesn't really capture the essence of the movie in my opinion. 70's rock mixed in with Italian-American big band pop from the 50's do not go together well if you ask me. This is NOT one of the best soundtracks of the 90's. Hey, I am very open-minded about music but I don't want to hear "Go Your Own Way" on the same album with "Love is Strange". Scorsese perfectly uses these songs in Casino but on the soundtrack it becomes way too much of a hodgepodge with no cohesiveness whatsoever. C