Customer Reviews

Pollock

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

 

 

I bought this soundtrack after seeing Pollock and being completely moved by Jeff Beal's original score. Beal's music captures the manic joy of Pollock's painting, with rhythmic intensity and soaring strings. Beal's lonely jazz trumpet also mirrors Pollock's moments of desperation. Gene Krupa, Billy Holiday and other jazz masters were part of the source music for this film, but this CD represents the amazing original music created for Pollock by Beal and Tom Waits.

This is a great piece of work from Jeff Beal. In his own style he injects a new piece to the puzzle, through his music. His combination of jazz and orchestration creates moments as tangible during the movie as another character. Scenes like the 'breakfast table argument' (if you've seen the film) are given needed levity when the dialogue ends, by the 'head' of the soundtrack. Then finally, from the raspy and hateful voice of Tom Waits, comes the line "On our anniversary, there will be someone where you used to be," from "The World Keeps Turning," which he wrote expressly the film. -- A great tune from a true master, and an aptly cynical contribution to the Valentine's Day release of the disc! Definitely a piece to have, and to begin a collection of Jeff Beals works.

I got hold of this soundtrack after seeing the film. I'm a big fan of Jackson Pollock's art and this soundtrack seems to be most fitting. It has both inspiring uplifting moments and reflective sentimental moods, both of which are done well. The title theme is a modern classic, an addictive weave of melody and rhythm. It also has what I'd call "paint tin" percussion sounds in it. If you see the movie, then the tune is likely to stick in your head. The only track that I did not enjoy was "the world keeps turning". To me, this seemed out of place and broke the momentum of an otherwise brilliant CD. Overall, this soundtrack is a very fitting tribute to Jackson Pollock.

Amazing film. Best to come down the pike in years. Ice Storm rates a close second. The film offers a cinematic splendor of colour and grace. Each segement is filmed with such care and remains a seamless masterpiece. Acting on all counts again stellar, nice to see Bud Cort again. Val Kilmer perhaps misplaced for his beauty too vivid for this picture. A portrait of american alcoholism, a raw display of the crushing effects of inner turmoil derived from too much talent, too clear a vision and abscence of self love. Ed Harris is a taught and sofisticated man wrapped inside a shadow of doubt which makes him familiar to many of us and therefore likeable as we see him stumble thru life's most primitive dilemas. I learned about Pollock too and his yearnings to be appriciated and complete adoration of his art and his own process of creating it. There is a line in the film when he is being asked a question by a life reporter about the "meaning" of modern art to which he replies (and I paraphrase): "If people just left their stuff at home and saw the painting for what they are they might enjoy them, I mean you don't pull your hair out when you see a beautiful bed of roses, do you?" Please see this film and revel in Tom Waits The World Keeps Turning.

This is one of the best film soundtracks I've heard recently, evocative of Philip Glass by way of Aaron Copland. Ed Harris's choice of this music for his film biography of Jackson Pollock was astute and somewhat counterintuitive. One might have expected jazz of the forties and early fifties, Pollock's most productive and unfortunately final period, but the composer has gone for music reflective of Pollock's upbringing and his early apprenticeship with the painter Thomas Hart Benton, with open and melodic strings and intricate rhythms.

i love this cd,it was composed beatifully,i really wanted more of it.

I disagree with my colleague about the music. It was rather bland and not very vibrant in fact. I think that they should have used a Gene Krupa track along with some free jazz music which "borrows" some of its ideas from the abstract expressionistic mood. it would have been more disorienting and superior to the "in-motion techno" like stuff the movie features.

I would have chosen pieces from Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Don Cherry for the Pollock soundtrack. He would have dug it.

The initial tune is nice and catchy, but the rest of the tracks are not that much different, with the exception of some unusual varaiety.

Would of paid 1/4 of the price, for just having the initial track.

The music is good, but I expected something a bit more ecclectic.

The tracks seem to report the same style, over and over.

The composer is unique, but far from genius.

I think that greater variety would of made the music more amicable.