Customer Reviews

Universal: The Ultimate Movie Album

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This pricey UK import CD filled a lot of gaps in my music collection and is an excellent overview of notable music of (mostly) recent films. It's difficult to find consistently listenable soundtrack collections like this, by that I mean free from the obligitory Whitney Houston or Celine Dion embarrassments. Usually rights issues prevent comprehensive compilations like this in the US, too. While I enjoy a lot of soundtrack music, there aren't so many complete soundtracks that I would care to own, some examples of exceptions being Ennio Morricone scores and the About a Boy Soundtrack. While certainly most of these tracks are the actual recordings used in their respective films, I noticed that "La mamma morte" from Philadelphia is not the Maria Callas version. There might be other cases like this, I'm not sure. And "Unchained Melody" from Ghost is an orchestral version, not the pop song (but I consider this a plus). This collection seems to focus on the subtle and quirky, yet melodic music of indie films, with less emphasis on the loud sweeping orchestral scores of major Hollywood hits, but of course there are a few like Gladiator and Braveheart, which are welcome here because like I've said, I probably wouldn't listen to the whole score. I love the two Thomas Newman compositions from American Beauty, and it's good to have some music from films by the Cohen Brothers here. My only complaint would have to be the order of the songs. You would think they would avoid jumping back and forth between pop songs, orchestral scores, and quiet music, but it just seems thrown together by random. I would compare this collection to the excellent "Miramax Films Greatest Hits" but the makers of that album knew to group the two pop/rock songs at the end.

The album production is flawless; however, I believe it's scope should have been reduced in favor of presenting longer excerpts of the sound tracks. Listening to these short pieces is like listening to movie trailers.