Customer Reviews

A.I. - Artificial Intelligence: Original Motion Picture Score

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've seen A.I. four times now, and am still astounded by its haunting brilliance. I was also blown away by John Williams' gorgeous, minimalist-influenced score. However, the CD is confusingly ordered as well as including tracks not in the film, and others that were misleadingly named.

Here is the correct order for a chronological A.I. album.

6, 4, 2, 7, 10, 1, 3, 11, 8, 12, 9

Track 10, is a bit confusing. The first portion of the track is actually the film version of "Abandoned in the Woods." If you want, you can chop it off and put it in its correct place. Track 2 is actually a concert arrangement of "Abandoned in The Woods." It can be put at the end of the album.

Tracks 5 and 13 are vocal versions of Monica's theme. They are never played in the film.

Also, a couple of track names don't reflect the scenes in the film where that music appears, so I came up with these replacements-

1) Where The Lions Weep/I'm David

3) Replicas/The Plunge -- "Replicas" only describes the first half.

6) Pending -- "Cybertronics" is a misleading title, this music is actually from the scene at the CRYOGENICS facility where Martin is frozen.

8) Ice Planet/Back Home/The Blue Fairy -- I found the original title vague, and it didn't describe the final two thirds of the music.

Hope this helps other music-lovers out there who were confused by the organization of the album, and didn't want to be blindly skipping around tracks.

If you want all the original A.I. music commercially available, get "What About Us?" written by Ministry for the Flesh Fair scene. It's on the album "Greatest Fits" and goes between tracks 7 & 10.

As a great fan of the music of John Williams, I was eager to get my hands on this CD. The movie was an incredible effort by Steven Spielberg, and I was very nervous about the John Williams score. After all the man has composed music to over 75 films. But after buying this CD, I quickly realized that it not only matched Spielberg's film, but actually rose above it. There are echoes of E.T., Schindler's List, and Star Wars, but it manages to step out of the shadow of Williams' previous scores to stand on its own.

Almost every track on this score is excellent. "The Mecha World" is a powerful opening, with brassy fanfares and scherzo-esque rhythms--a truly wonderful piece. "Abandoned in the Woods" is a fast-paced, but tragic and foreboding piece that echoes the sad scene in which it takes place. "Replicas" is a quiet, dissonant track that is far different than much of the composer's work. "Hide and Seek" is another wonderful little tune--playful, with a fairy tale quality. "The Moon Rising" is a rousing action piece that is both fast and incredibly exciting, while "The Search for the Blue Fairy" is another hauntingly beautiful, magical piece. "The Reunion" is a sweeping conclusion to the tale, pulling together the major themes into one bittersweet track. The end title track, "Where Dreams Are Born" is one of John Williams' greatest recent acheivements that uses the film's main heart-breaking, haunting melody to its fullest. This is music that almost makes you want to cry.

The theme used in "The Reunion" and "Where Dreams Are Born" is also utilized in the beautiful love ballad "For Always", two versions of which are included here.

Overall, this score is wonderful--haunting, tragic, subdued, and very beautiful. It's amazing that John Williams can keep coming up with these fantastic themes and creating a "visual" musical world. Definitely buy this soundtrack, it will become one of your favorites--especially if you're a John Williams/Steven Spielberg fan or if you just love film music. This is music that stretches beyond the framework of music, and becomes a stepping stone to the world of dreams itself.

An incredible effort by Mr. Williams. Haunting, touching, enegmatic, exhilirating and heartfelt.

I really enjoyed the score while watching the film, but now that I've heard it on it's own, it's full power has been revealed to me. I especially like the Abandoned In The Woods and Stored Memories cues. Also impressive is the original song 'For Always' which appers twice on the soundtrack (first sung by Lara Fabian and then later on as a duet with Lara Fabian and Josh Gorban), but nowhere in the film. I was a bit nervous about hearing this song, but it captures a feeling of the movie terrificaly and I find myself listening to it more than the score itself at times.

It seems that most of the score has been included, but I thnk there is a bit that didn't make it onto the disc which is a shame. Also the tracks aren't in chronological order.

John Williams continues in the fine tradition of his previous work. This sondtrack is finely balanced, with delicate medleys, haunting themes, and some lullaby pieces that are almost enough to make one weep. Contrary to many of his previous works (Star Wars, Superman, et al,) Mr. Williams avoided writing loud, brassy fanfares that would have deeply conflicted with the dark, pensive nature of this film.
Several tracks stand out in this masterpiece. The twin versions of "For Always," one featuring Lara Fabian and the other featuring Josh Groban in a duet with Ms. Fabian are wonderfully pure. In solo form, Lara's voice is wonderfully smooth and has a subtle almost untrained quality that lends a genuineness to her singing. In the duet, Mr. Groban's silky smooth baritone perfectly offsets Lara's clear soprano. The penultimate song, titled "The Reunion" is a stunning, gorgeous lullaby of a piece that features a plaintive, almost childish piano theme. The simplicity is subtlely complex as the theme winds through an entire emotional range, from triumphant happiness to simple joy to black despair, and finally back into an almost heartbreaking lullaby.
Mr. Williams has displayed a wide variety of musical styles in this soundtrack. For fans of his that are desiring a "Star Wars" fanfare and overpowering orchestral pieces, this soundtrack is not for you. I personally prefer this collection to most of his other works.

This is a wonderful score. It features Josh Groban, Lara Fabian, and of course the master... John Williams.

I would definately say this is one of his best. It reminds me of some of the other Spielberg collaboration scores. Mainly, Empire of the Sun, and War of the Worlds. Lots of the score is wonderful emotional underscoring. It's very complex, and full of interesting scales and keys. Of course, there is plenty of gorgeous thematic material to make the score complete. Honestly, I have never heard a bad John Williams score. Come to think of it, I've never heard one that was less than brilliant and amazing. Really, give this a listen.

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The missing songs are:

- Fred Astaire: Cheek to Cheek
- Richard Strauss: Suite du chevalier à la rose, opus 59
- Stubby Kaye & Johnny Silver: Guys and Dolls
- Dick Powell: I Only Have Eyes for You
- Ministry: Dead Practice
- Ministry: What About Us
- Henri Salvador: Le loup, la biche et le chevalier (une chanson douce).

John Williams is always superb listening, but the plus on this one is the duet "For Always" featuring Josh Groban & Lara Fabian (which wasn't performed in the movie). Williams' powerful yet sensitive compositions give life to the A.I. who would be a boy and sweeps one through the full emotional range, exhilarating & exhausting at once. Yet it is the Groban/Fabian duet that even now, a year since I first heard it, rivets and leaves me breathless! A shame it wasn't released as a single.

The movie has been lost to obscurity. The soundtrack sort of followed it.

Spielberg felt obligated to complete Stanley Kubrick's last unfinished project, and it's Spielbrick as a result. Styles are mixed here to an extent that it's a muddle and very disappointing.

Then we bring in John Williams, a master of film music. He's trying hard here, you can tell. But, like the film, the music can't quite figure out where it's been and where it's going.

Sour grapes from me: the most spine-tingling musical moment in the movie is dropped from the soundtrack album.

In the film, the traveling duo hitchhike their way into Rouge City. Williams decides to blend his "usual stuff" with a brief passage from "Der Rosenkavalier," and the fusion moment is incredibly powerful. The metaphor: all human achievement will ultimately come to just pleasuring ourselves. Thousands of years from now, the legacy of our civilization and culture comes to nothing but a wonderful ironic waltz.

Like der Rosenkavalier warned us, all is vanity. And it is to laugh.

I love this soundtrack. After becoming a fan of John Williams, I had to buy all of his music. This isn't my favorite, but it's definetly better than his new "Harry Potter" soundtrack. My absolute favorite track is "Search for the Blue Fairy." It combines ethereal voices with very emotional music... Definetly something new for Williams. "Where Dreams are Born" and "Monicas theme" are both very beautiful and hold the listener spellbound. Go and buy this soundtrack, you won't regret it!

I've now seen "A.I." twice, and personally, some parts of Williams' score work better than others. Too many times does the music sound like traditional Williams ("E.T." in particular), as it stands in sharp contrast to the more experimental, haunting works in both the film and soundtrack. The soundtrack is an excellent sampling of the latter experimentation. When I first heard the Ambient "Cybertronics," it cried out as an obvious- but stellar- tribute to Kubrick's use of Khachaturian's "Gayane Ballet Suite" in another sci-fi mind-workout, "2001: A Space Odyssey." "The Moon Rising" is an exciting bit of adventure writing, as is "The Mecha World." "Abandoned in the Woods"- when listened to separately from the film- is more than just traditional Williams, but not nearly as abstract or brilliant as "Hide and Seek," an ode to the visionary musical possibilities sci-fi provides. Most haunting and moving, though, are the latter pieces- "Stored Memories and Monica's Theme," "Where Dreams are Born," and "The Search for the Blue Fairy" all hold the listener spellbound, in particular during the ethereal vocal interludes and powerful piano theme that is the basis of the "Titanic"-esque ballad included on the soundtrack, "For Always." Overall, not perfect, but still a minor masterpiece from Williams and Spielberg.