Label Threads The Official Kritzerland Release Thread.

Jay · November 29, 2011

In the midst of, well, I lost count, so many huge releases this week, I thought Kritzerland would take a little break from the soundtrack madness and release its first brand new original Broadway cast recording. Read on, MacDuff - it's really good and it does have a film music connection.
Kritzerland is very proud to present a new Broadway Cast Recording:
THE PEOPLE IN THE PICTURE Original Cast Recording
Book and Lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart | Music by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler
Once the darling of the Yiddish Theatre in pre-war Poland, now a grandmother in New York City, Bubbie has had quite a life. But what will it all mean if she can't pass on her stories to the next generation? Though her granddaughter is enchanted by her tales, her daughter Red will do anything to keep from looking back. A fiercely funny and deeply moving new musical that spans three generations, The People in the Picture celebrates the importance of learning from our past, and the power of laughter.
The "bubbie" of the 1970s and the diva of the 1930s are played by one woman — Donna Murphy, the star of Broadway's Passion, The King and I, Wonderful Town and LoveMusik, who received a 2011 Best Actress (Musical) Tony Award nomination for her performance. Also starring are Alexander Gemignani, Christopher Innvar , Hal Robinson, Lewis J. Stadlen, Joyce Van Patten, Chip Zien, Brad Bradley, Rachel Bress, Jeremy Davis, Emilee Dupre, Maya Goldman, Louis Hobson, Shannon Lewis, Jessica Lea Patty, Andie Mechanic, Megan Reinking, Jeffrey Schecter and Paul Anthony Stewart.
Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company, in association with Tracy Aron, The People In The Picture was directed by Leonard Foglia (Master Class), with musical direction by Paul Gemignani, orchestrations by Michael Starobin and musical staging by Tony Award winner Andy Blankenbuehler (In the Heights).
The People In The Picture has a book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart, the acclaimed novelist, TV writer, and playwright. Dart’s most well known book, Beaches, was turned into a hit movie starring Bette Midler. The music is by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler. Stoller, who as half of Lieber and Stoller, has written many of rock-and-roll’s most iconic songs, including “Hound Dog,” “Kansas City,” “Yakety Yak,” “Stand By Me,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Love Potion #9” and hundreds of others, including Peggy Lee’s brilliant “Is That All There Is.” The smash hit jukebox musical, Smokey Joe’s Café, was based on the Lieber and Stoller catalog. Artie Butler is an immensely talented and successful composer, arranger, and producer. His song “Here’s To Life” has become a standard, thanks to recordings by Shirley Horn and Barbra Streisand. Butler has worked with an incredible number of legendary singers, including Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, Barry Manilow, Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Sammy Davis, Jr., Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Natalie Cole, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as well as composing scores for film and TV.
The original cast recording of The People In The Picture is produced by Steve Epstein. The packaging includes a full color twenty-four-page booklet.
CD is priced at $19.98 plus shipping. CDs will ship the second week of January – however, it is our hope that this will ship before Christmas or the week after. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerla...oplePicture.htm

Jay · December 19, 2011

Kritzerland presents its final two new limited edition CD soundtracks for 2011:
THE RAVEN/AN EVENING OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
Music Composed and Conducted by Les Baxter
and
THE TRIAL
Music and Arrangements by Jean Ledrut
In 1960, Roger Corman made House of Usher, the first of his inspired-by Edgar Allan Poe films, and it was an exploitation sensation, playing to packed houses and packed cars at drive-ins. Knowing a good thing when he saw it, he followed with more inspired-by Poe films, including The Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial, Tales Of Terror, The Raven, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Tomb of Ligeia. These were all stylish horror films, but only one of them was an out-and-out comedy and that was The Raven.
With a screenplay by Richard Matheson and delectable performances by the likes of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff (along with a young Jack Nicholson and a fetching Hazel Court), audiences expecting a horror film instead got a horror comedy, with an emphasis on the latter. It didn’t matter that the emphasis was on the latter, because audiences still flocked to see it.
Adding to the fun of The Raven is the delightful score of Les Baxter, who did several of the Corman/Poe films. Baxter uses electronics as well as conventional orchestra, and the result is a really fun and interesting score that just propels the film along its merry way. His eerie electronica for the opening narration of the Poe poem is really effective, and his music for the battle of the sorcerers is classic Baxter, as his exhilarating music for the wild ride to Scarabus’ castle.
In 1970, AIP produced a low-budget hour-long TV show called An Evening Of Edgar Allan Poe, starring Vincent Price doing solo recitations of four Poe stories: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Sphinx,” “The Cask Of Amontillado,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Naturally, AIP turned to their favorite composer, Les Baxter, and he provided his usual excellent work and some of his most adventurous scoring – a little more atonal than he usually did, but some seriously great music. The show has a brief main and end title theme, and then four complete scores.
For this release, the first ever for this music, only one tape could be found, the second of two reels. However, it was a full reel and contained music from not only the second part of the film but several cues from the first part. Taking our cue from the popularity of the La La Land release of Baxter’s score from X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, which was the same situation – one tape, partial score – we decided that some Raven was better than no Raven, especially as we actually had a lot of music from the film and unlike the partial score to X, none of it was source music. So, with close to twenty-five minutes of original score, it’s actually a pretty good sampling of the film’s music. We also include several of the electronica cues as a bonus. The mono tape was in excellent shape. This music for An Evening Of Edgar Allan Poe was released on CD by Citadel – that release had shrill and unpleasant sound and was in some sort of phony stereo – for this release we present the score from its original mono tapes and in proper order, and include for the first time the main and end title, taken from the DVD release.
THE TRIAL
In 1962, Orson Welles brought The Trial to the screen in what he himself called “the best film I ever made.” Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, The Trial is Welles at his Wellesiest, with brilliant imagery and atmosphere so thick you can cut it with a knife. Filmed in gorgeous black-and-white, featuring a screenplay by Welles, and incredible performances by Anthony Perkins as the persecuted Joseph K., Romy Schneider, Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Akim Tamiroff, and Elsa Martinelli, The Trial truly captures the Kafka spirit while also being uniquely Wellesian. The film is a nightmare of paranoia and persecution, along with unexpected moments of Wellesian humor. It is an astonishing film, where every component comes together to create a world that is bleak, desolate, and ultimately futile.
One of the elements that contributes heavily to the atmosphere and feeling of the film is the score by Jean Ledrut, using both original music and adaptations of Tomaso Albinoni’s stunning and iconic “Adagio in G minor.” Ledrut only scored a handful of films, including Abel Gance’s 1960 film The Battle of Austerlitz. Ledrut’s score relies heavily on variations of the Albinoni “Adagio,” as well as some wonderfully atmospheric original cues. There are several jazz-flavored pieces, as well (played by the great jazz pianist and composer Martial Solal, he of Breathless fame), and it all works splendidly, especially as a listening experience.
The Trial was originally released on both an EP and LP. The latter is one of the rarest of all soundtrack LPs. The CD is mastered from a ¼ inch tape source in excellent condition.
Each release is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping. Go to the item page and click on the link to find out about it. Check out the special combo offers, too.
CD will ship the third week of January – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/raven.htm

http://www.kritzerland.com/trial.htm

scallenger · January 22, 2012

Posted on FSM under the title "How 'bout a Kritzerclew?"

Batman??? lol.

Joe Brausam · January 22, 2012

....maybe somehow they were able to finagle some music from the 60s TV series?

Jay · January 22, 2012

Derrick, that's a poster asking Kritzerland if they will reveal when their next title is / give a clue for what it is.... that isn't a graphic anyone at Kritzerland made.

tharpdevenport · January 22, 2012

Yes, obviously. How that can be confused...

For the record, I had to ask MV about the scores to the '60's series, and sadly, it's not possible at this time.

Jay · January 23, 2012

Well it worked, and Bruce Kimmel has given a clue:

Two releases on one release date, said date to be determined, but definitely this month. One CD has two film scores by one film composer.
One CD has one film score by one composer and something extraordinary with it.

#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal · January 23, 2012

Those are not clues.

Jay · January 23, 2012

Well, let's just say that the CD contains the score from the film and a completely different score from the film. There's no way to be obtuse about it

Jay · January 30, 2012

Kritzerland is proud to announce a new limited edition CD release:
THE MOLLY MAGUIRES
Music Composed and Conducted by Henry Mancini
The Molly Maguires was a big-budget drama from Paramount Pictures, with powerhouse stars, Sean Connery, Richard Harris, and Samantha Eggar, a terrific director, Martin Ritt (Hud, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and many others), and the screenwriter of Fail Safe and John Frankenheimer’s The Train, the great Walter Bernstein. The film takes place in the Pennsylvania coal country in 1876 and is loosely based on the true story of a small band of Irish coal miners/terrorists called The Molly Maguires.
For the film, composer Henry Mancini composed one of his finest scores, filled with lush melodies and expert evocative themes. Whether depicting an early morning at the mines (the astonishing opening cue), or the terrorist activities, or the blossoming love between Eggar and Harris, Mancini’s score is right up there with his greatest, including such masterpieces as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, Days of Wine and Roses, Hatari!, Two For The Road, and many others.
The Molly Maguires was originally issued on LP, and made its CD debut on Bay Cities in the early 1990s. For this new release, we had access to the original multi-track tapes stored in the Paramount vault. We are thrilled to present the entire score as recorded by Mancini, newly mixed in superb sound, and which features several cues that were left off the original album.
When the tapes were pulled for The Molly Maguires, we were delighted to find that the tapes for Charles Strouse’s original score were there – after a disastrous preview, it was decided his score would be replaced. Strouse, most well known for his Broadway musicals, had dabbled in film scoring with Bonnie and Clyde and The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Strouse’s complete score is included on the CD. The music is very interesting, and it’s fascinating to hear Strouse’s completely opposite approach to the one Mancini would ultimately take. There is some truly lovely music here.
The Molly Maguires is limited to 1500 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of March – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

The Henry Mancini Score
Composed, Arranged and Conducted by Henry Mancini
1. Theme from The Molly Maguires (New Day in 1876)
2. The Mollys Strike
3. Main Title
4. Room and Board
5. Sandwiches and Tea
6. Work Montage
7. Pennywhistle Jig
8. A Hard Day’s Work
9. On Your Knees
10. Jamie and Mary
11. Trip to Town
12. Strike Two/Strike Three
13. The Hills of Yesterday
14. There’s More
15. The Mollys Strike Again
16. A Suit for Grandpa
17. Kehoe Lights Up/The Last Strike
18. The End
19. Bonus tracks
20. Fiddle and Fife (film version)
21. A Brew with the Boys (film version)
The Charles Strouse Score
Music Composed by Charles Strouse
22. Sabotage
23. Fuse
24. Work in the Mine
25. Bleak Street/To Find a Room/To Work
26. The Long Walk
27. Window Shopping
28. Truant Picnic-ers
29. The Last Rites
30. The Company Store (Parts I and II)
31. Arson
32. End Title
Additional Bonus tracks by Henry Mancini
33. Fiddle and Fife (album version)
34. A Brew with the Boys (album version)
35. Pennywhistle Jig (album version)

http://www.kritzerla...om/maguires.htm

Kritzerland is happy to announce a new limited edition CD release:
INVASION USA/TORMENTED
Music Composed and Conducted by Albert Glasser
We’re pleased to present a deliriously wonderful double bill of Albert Glasser scores. Invasion USA was made in 1952, when the Commie scare was in full bloom, the film is a nightmare (literally) vision of WHAT COULD HAPPEN HERE. The film is indescribable in its weirdness and exists in a whole other movie universe. It is a completely unique and classic B-movie, featuring a great B-movie cast, including Gerald Mohr, Peggie Castle, and Dan O’Herlihy. The film also has the distinction of having both TV Lois Lanes in the same movie – Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill. Even William Schallert makes a brief, uncredited appearance.
Eight years later would come another wild, weird and wacky movie called Tormented, made by the wonderful Bert I. Gordon. It was a story of death and jazz and love and a nasty female ghost come back to haunt and torment. The cast included Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, and the adorable Susan Gordon (Bert’s daughter). Also making an appearance is Joe Turkel, who did several films for Gordon and who would ultimately give his most memorable performance as bartender Lloyd in the Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining.
Naturally, the perfect person to score these films was Albert Glasser, and he delivered exactly what was expected of him and which no other composer could have delivered in quite the same way. For Invasion USA he created a blaring, driving, crazy-quilt of a score, with screaming, dissonant brass. One simply cannot imagine a more perfect score for the movie. For Tormented, since the film’s leading man is a jazz pianist, Glasser naturally wrote a jazzy score – but this is not your normal jazz, this is TORMENTED jazz – jagged and crazy and somehow perfectly capturing the visuals of the film.
The two scores were mastered from Mr. Glasser’s personal tapes. While there are occasional sound issues, our wonderful mastering engineer, James Nelson, has done Herculean work to make both scores sound as good as they’re ever going to.
Invasion USA/Tormented is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of March – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

INVASION USA
1. Main Titles / Big City Bar
2. Vince Meets Carla
3. Mr. Ohman / Hypnotic Brandy / Bad News
4. The Enemy is Here!
5. Washington / On the Defense
6. The President Speaks
7. It Can’t Be Happening / Love and War
8. Vince Gives Blood
9. Dam Attack
10. Watery Death
11. I Want You / Red Alert
12. A-Bombs Over New York
13. Fighting Back
14. Carla and Vince Captured / You’re My Woman Now /
15. Back to Reality
16. Be Prepared
TORMENTED
17. Main Titles
18. Opening Narration / The End of Vi
19. The Lighthouse
20. Perfume by Arpege
21. Footsteps by Vi
22. Tormented by Vi
23. Nightmare
24. Vi’s Watch / Who’s in the Lighthouse?
25. Vi’s Hand
26. Mrs. Ellis Talks to the Dead
27. The Photo
28. Girl Talk
29. Vi’s Head
30. Sandy Sees Murder
31. Wedding Jitters
32. Vi at the Wedding
33. Sandy in Danger / Tom’s End / End Titles

http://www.kritzerla...om/invasion.htm

Jay · February 29, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new limited edition soundtrack release:
A MAN AND A WOMAN
Music Composed by Francis Lai
Is there a person anywhere in the world who was around in the 1960s and 1970s who could not instantly recognize the theme from A Man and a Woman? Doubtful, unless you were living under a rock in a cave in Siberia, and even then you’d probably have heard it. In fact, it became one of the most beloved movie themes ever written almost instantly. It was the right theme from the right film at the right time. Upon its release in 1966, A Man and a Woman became a sensation everywhere it played. It became the film to see for anyone who considered that they had a romantic bone in his or her body. The soundtrack recording was as popular as the film, so popular, in fact, that a second soundtrack album was released with the lyrics in English (sung by the same singers as the original French). The film was fresh, unique, and beguiling, and so was its score by Francis Lai. It was the perfect marriage of image and music.
A Man and a Woman was only Lai’s third film score, but it put him on the map and he has not stopped working since, and that includes scoring close to thirty films for director Lelouch. Just a few short years later, in 1970, Lai would win the Oscar for Best Score for Love Story. His music for A Man and a Woman speaks for itself – the melodies are stunningly beautiful. Part and parcel of the score are the wonderful vocals of Pierre Barouh and Nicole Croisille, along with Barouh’s lyrics. The score and songs have been loved by lovers all over the world and with good reason – this is simply some of the most romantic and heartfelt music ever.
A Man and a Woman was originally issued on a United Artists LP. With its extreme popularity, United Artists then issued the English language version. There have been three previous CD issues of the French version – two imports from Europe and a stateside release by DRG. However, all three were issued from sources many generations away from the original album masters, and, shockingly, all three were in mono. We are pleased to finally present the first authentic presentation of A Man and a Woman on CD – in stereo from the original album masters housed in the MGM vaults, in both French and English versions. It’s such a pleasure to hear the score as it was meant to be heard.
A Man and a Woman is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of April – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com

Kritzerland presents is happy to present two great scores on one new limited edition CD:
THE FUZZY PINK NIGHTGOWN
Music Composed and Conducted by Billy May
and
A BREATH OF SCANDAL
Music Composed and Conducted by Alessandro Cicognini
The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown and Jane Russell, a potent combination, especially when Miss Russell dons the title outfit. Released in 1957, The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown was a kidnapping comedy. A movie star, whose film, The Kidnapped Bride, is about to open, is kidnapped and hilarity and love ensue. The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown is a perfectly enjoyable bit of fizzy-fuzzy fluff, thanks to Miss Russell and her co-stars, Ralph Meeker, Keenan Wynn, Fred Clark, Una Merkel, Adolphe Menjou, Benay Venuta, and Milton Frome. While it may not be high art, it’s simply the kind of film they don’t make anymore – a low-budget comedy with nothing on its mind other than entertaining people for a brisk eighty-seven minutes and allowing its sexier than sexy star to wear a fuzzy pink nightgown, albeit in a black-and-white film!
One of the most entertaining things about the film is the score by Billy May. Billy May began as a trumpet player in the Charlie Barnett big band, and by the 1950s he would become one of the greatest arrangers of all time, providing amazing and unique work for such singers as Frank Sinatra (several of his most classic albums), Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Jeri Southern, Keely Smith, Vic Damone, Bobby Darin, Nancy Wilson, Matt Monro, and many, many others, as well as a series of wonderful solo albums on Capitol with his own band. The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown is classic Billy – bluesy, swingin’, lush, and gorgeously melodic. It was his debut film score, and he’d go on to write the music for such films and television programs as Naked City, Seargents Three, Johnny Cool, The Green Hornet, Tony Rome, Batman, The Mod Squad, CHIPS, Emergency, and others.
The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown was originally released on Imperial Records in glorious monophonic sound. This first-ever CD release was mastered from the first-generation album masters housed at Capitol, which was Billy’s home for many years.
Three years later, a very different kind of comedy was released - A Breath of Scandal. Adapted from Ferenc Molnar’s play, Olympia, the film starred Sophia Loren, Maurice Chevalier, Angela Lansbury, and John Gavin. It’s a frothy bubble of a film, filled with seductions and complications, a little singing, a castle to romp about in, a little more singing, all photographed on beautiful sets and outdoor locations in spectacular Technicolor.
What really makes the film a glass of champagne is the delightful and charming score of Alessandro Cicognini. Alessandro Cicognini began scoring films in the mid-1930s, and by the 1950s he was one of Italy’s most prolific film composers, scoring many classic Italian films, such as Miracle in Milan, Umberto D, Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves (all for Vittorio de Sica),The Little World of Don Camillo, Ulysses, Indiscretion of an American Wife, David Lean’s Summertime, The Black Orchid, It Started in Naples and others. The score for A Breath of Scandal is filled with delectable melodies and plenty of swirling waltzes and lush romantic tunes, and Mr. Chevalier’s warbling is as enchanting as ever.
A Breath of Scandal was also originally issued on Imperial Records in stereophonic sound. This first-ever CD release was mastered from the original album masters housed at Capitol.
It’s always fun to unearth two not very well known scores from two very different comedies. I hope you’ll agree that they make a most delightful double bill.
The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown/A Breath of Scandal is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of April – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

Jay · March 19, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new limited edition soundtrack release, two great scores on one CD:
THE BARBARIAN AND THE GEISHA and VIOLENT SATURDAY
Music Composed by Hugo Friedhofer
Based on a story by Ellis St. John, 1958’s The Barbarian and the Geisha recounts the story of Townsend Harris, who arrives in Japan in the 1850s as the first American to serve as Consul-General to Japan, and who was a key figure in opening relations between Japan and America. The film stars John Wayne, and is directed by John Huston. Much of it shot on location, the film is beautiful to look at and features Twentieth Century Fox’s usual top-notch production values.
One of The Barbarian and the Geisha’s strongest elements is its absolutely stunning score by Hugo Friedhofer. By that point, Friedhofer had already written several masterpieces, including The Best Years of Our Lives, The Bishop’s Wife, and, at Fox, such glorious scores as An Affair to Remember, The Boy on a Dolphin, The Rains of Ranchipur, Soldier of Fortune, Seven Cities of Gold, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, Between Heaven and Hell, and, the same year as Barbarian, The Young Lions.
Friedhofer’s score for The Barbarian and the Geisha manages to have Oriental color while remaining tonal in a completely American way. It’s a thing of sublime beauty and one of his best scores. His main theme is heartbreakingly beautiful and is repeated many times throughout the score, and the rest of his music complements and enriches every scene in the film – this is Golden Age movie music the way we remember Golden Age movie music – melodic, dramatic, tender, suspenseful, and evoking a different time and place through orchestral color and knowing how the orchestra can be utilized to also evoke Oriental textures without resorting to triteness.
Violent Saturday, based on the novel by W. L. Heath, was made three years earlier and is a taut and suspenseful film about a small-town robbery. Almost fifty after its release, it’s considered a classic (the DVD was recently released by Twilight Time and is a must-have), with terrific performances from Richard Egan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and the large cast, excellent writing (screenplay by Sidney Boehm, who wrote the screenplay for the noir classic, The Big Heat), and great direction from Richard Fleischer,
Hugo Friedhofer’s score for Violent Saturday is perfection and a textbook example of how and when to use music. All told, the score is only about twenty minutes long, but it’s the perfect amount of music for this film. It does exactly what film music is supposed to do – propels the film, underscores the scenes that need it, and stays out of the way when music would serve no purpose. There are no classic Friedhofer themes to be found – just music that functions sometimes as subtext, sometimes as suspense, and sometimes as violent as the goings on in Violent Saturday.
Both The Barbarian and the Geisha and Violent Saturday had previous CD releases on Intrada, both long out of print and instant sellouts. The Barbarian and the Geisha was a standalone CD and Violent Saturday played second feature to Warlock by Leigh Harline. It’s great to be able to couple the two Friedhofer scores together, and make them available to those who may have missed out on the prior releases, or who’d like to have these two scores together on one CD. This release has been newly-remastered by James Nelson.
The Barbarian and the Geisha/Violent Saturday is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the first week of May – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

And for show music fans - by the writers (separately or together) of Willy Wonka, Doctor Dolittle, etc.
Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition CD release:
THE GOOD OLD BAD OLD DAYS
Original Cast Recording
Music and Lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley
On July 20, 1961, a new musical opened at the Queen’s Theatre in England. The musical was called Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, and was co-written, directed by, and starred Anthony Newley. The show was a smash, went to Broadway and Newley became an instant superstar. From there it was more shows (Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd), films, as writer, director, and actor, sometimes all three at once (Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness, Willy Wonka, Doctor Dolittle), TV (tons of guest shots on every variety show of the era), and concerts all over the world.
In 1971, while on tour doing concert dates, Newley and Bricusse began work on a new original musical entitled It’s a Funny Old World We Live In – But the World’s Not Entirely to Blame, a musical that Bricusse described as “a modst little saga about Man, Life, Death, God and The Devil, with the history of the world thrown in.” The show got as far as pre-production in New York at the end of that year. But then producer James Nederlander got cold feet and pulled out. Original Stop the World West End producer Bernard Delfont came to the rescue and the show, sporting a new title, The Good Old Bad Old Days, was slated for a short tour then a West End opening in December of 1972.
The reviews were lukewarm – some were okay, and some were blistering, however Newley the performer was well received by almost all the reviewers. The show would hang on for nine months. Being a Newley and Bricusse score, of course it abounds with catchy melodies and some genuinely good songs. Listening to the score forty years later, divorced from the show itself, the score is very pleasing to hear, and the performances are wonderful.
The Good Old Bad Old Days was released on LP on EMI in the UK. This is its first CD release.
This release is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98 plus shipping.
CD will ship by the first week of May – however, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visitwww.kritzerland.com.

Jay · April 13, 2012

Kritzerland announced 3 musicals and a book today

http://www.kritzerland.com/stage_2012_intro.htm

http://www.kritzerland.com/albumProducedBy.htm

Jay · May 3, 2012

Latest Kritzerland::

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premier limited edition soundtrack CD:
LADY IN A CAGE
Music Composed and Conducted by Paul Glass
In 1962, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? burst forth on movie screens all over the world. It was a “shocker” and one of the biggest shocks in it was seeing two aging Golden Age screen icons, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, let their hair down and dive into a genre film. Of course, because it was an unexpected smash hit, the floodgates opened and we soon got all manner of imitations, some good, some bad, and some in-between. One of the weirdest and the best came in 1964 when Paramount released Lady in a Cage, starring Academy Award-winner Olivia de Havilland, who’d already done one shocker previously the year before, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. But Lady in a Cage was something wholly other – as nasty as Baby Jane and Charlotte could be, Lady in a Cage was in a whole other universe.
Whoever’s decision it was to hire composer Paul Glass, it was a completely original and inspired choice. Glass’s score for Lady in a Cage is dissonant, creepy, jagged, and perfectly suited to the film. There are no real themes here – just music of unsettling atonality that keeps one on the edge of one’s seat and completely off-balance, much like the film’s heroine. In 1964 it was the polar opposite of most film scores being written but it was absolutely perfect for Lady in a Cage and, for its time, a fairly unique score. Glass went on to write a classic score for Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing and also wrote several terrific scores for the TV series Night Gallery.
Since its release, Lady in a Cage has become something of a cult film. Even now, coming up on almost fifty years, it still manages to be thoroughly creepy and weird, yet somehow completely entertaining and fun.
This CD is mastered from the superb-sounding original three-track scoring session masters housed in the vault at Paramount. We are extremely pleased to present the first Paul Glass film score available on CD.
Lady in a Cage is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of June – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerla...om/ladycage.htm

Jay · May 25, 2012

Latest Kritzerlands:

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premiere limited edition soundtrack CD:
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS
Music Composed and Conducted by Dana Kaproff
“HAVE YOU CHECKED THE CHILDREN?”
With that repeated line of dialogue, audiences seeing When a Stranger Calls in 1979 were put on the edge of their seats in one of the most nail-bitingly suspenseful opening scenes ever put on film. Between that film and Alien, it was a 1979 double whammy of suspense and chills. Oh, it’s easy from today’s perspective to sit in judgment and say, “Oh, it’s not so scary,” much the same way that kids today seeing Psycho don’t think that’s scary. Why? Because these films have been ripped off so many times, and the envelope they were pushing has now been pushed so much further, that the classic chillers of old look positively quaint today. The fact that most new movies look and sound exactly the same makes movies like When a Stranger Calls even more unique – a truly low-budget film ($700,000) that came out of nowhere and went on to be an audience and box-office sensation (grossing over $21 million when that actually meant something). And quaint it wasn’t in 1979.
When a Stranger Calls is sometimes called one of the first slasher films – only it’s not a slasher film at all and there were certainly many that came before – in fact, if you want to talk slashing, Psycho would probably be at the top of the list. When a Stranger Calls has no slashing – what it has is pure suspense – there is literally no gore, just some blood in a flashback, but you never see any violence committed. Gore is easy – suspense, pure suspense, is hard.
When a Stranger Calls began life as a short film called The Sitter, directed by Fred Walton. The Sitter was basically the first act of When a Stranger Calls. After the success of the 1978 John Carpenter film, Halloween, it was decided to expand the short film into a feature, starring Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Coleen Dewhurst, Rachel Roberts, and Tony Beckley. The film was instantly influential and many low-budget copycat films happened for quite some time thereafter, including the same director’s sequel, this one for TV, When a Stranger Calls Again. It was also remade in 2006, but the remake stretches out the original’s opening twenty minutes to feature length – and guess what? It doesn’t work.
When a Stranger Calls was Dana Kaproff’s second film score – his first was for Bert I. Gordon’s Empire of the Ants (released by Kritzerland) – and Kaproff deserves a good deal of the credit for the film’s suspense level. It is simply unthinkable to imagine this film without his score because his score is as much a leading player as any of its cast. It’s relentlessly suspenseful music – there are no pretty themes to lull you and give you security – just dread, pure dread, and then almost psychotic music for those moments when things, well, get out of hand. The score is written for strings, prepared piano, and percussion. It is a superb genre score and a classic.
This is the world premiere release of the soundtrack to When a Stranger Calls. The film, of course, was mono, as is this recording, taken from the original session tapes. We present every note of music Kaproff wrote, in film order, as that’s the way it plays best – like a symphony of dread and terror.
When a Stranger Calls is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the first week of July – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premiere limited edition soundtrack – two great scores on one great CD:
I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE
Music Composed by Victor Young, Franz Waxman, Hugo Friedhofer, Aaron Copland, Hans J. Salter, Roy Webb, Nathan Van Cleave, Daniel Amfitheatrof, Leith Stevens, and others
and
THE ATOMIC CITY
Music Composed and Conducted by Leith Stevens
Bill and Marge – happy as clams, in love and about to be married. He’s affectionate, a dog lover, thoughtful – the perfect man. Until… he’s not. It’s a girl’s worst nightmare – the loving man she just married is suddenly not the man she thought he was. Why is he suddenly no longer affectionate? Why is he not affectionate to the dog? Why is he not affectionate to anything? Stranger still, why are some of the other men in their town behaving the same way? If only she’d seen the poster for this film, she’d have known exactly what was going on – because there’s no mistaking it with a title like I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Made in 1958, I Married a Monster from Outer Space is not as lurid as its title would suggest. It’s actually a very well made, thoughtful, low-budget sci-fi film with an excellent script, which has gathered a loyal following over the years. Starring Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott, the film is a textbook example of how to make a terrific little film on a terrifically low budget.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film is its wonderful score. The film carries no credit for music at all, despite having really effective music and quite a bit of it. The reason for the lack of a music credit is simple: In 1958 there was a musicians’ union strike. And so Hollywood studios had to go outside the United States and Canada to record music for their movies. In certain cases, especially in the case of the very low-budget I Married a Monster from Outer Space, they would re-record selections from existing scores that were owned by the studio’s publishing companies. Therefore, what we have is a score composed by Victor Young, Hugo Friedhofer, Aaron Copland, Franz Waxman, Leith Stevens, Daniel Amfitheatrof, Walter Scharf, Lyn Murray, Nathan Van Cleave, Roy Webb – well, you get the idea. The surprising thing is how well it all works and how seamlessly it all plays. Today, it would be called temp tracking, but back then it was born out of necessity and budget. It’s actually kind of a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, where several of the greatest film composers of all time have music in the same film.
The music, housed in the Paramount vaults, was in mostly excellent condition. A little wow and flutter on a couple of tracks was the only problem and we’ve left it as is because the music is so good and the problems only last for a few seconds.
Our second feature is a tense little low-budget thriller from 1952 called The Atomic City, starring Gene Barry, Lydia Clarke and Nancy Gates. The basic plot is simple: Enemy agents kidnap the son of a nuclear physicist in Los Alamos, New Mexico; their ransom demand isn’t money, however – the bad guys want the physicist to turn over the formula for the H-bomb. Directed by Jerry Hopper, the screenplay was written by Sydney Boehm, a great writer who wrote several great films, including When Worlds Collide, The Big Heat, Union Station, Violent Saturday, The Tall Men, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, Shock Treatment and many others. His screenplay for The Atomic City was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story and Screenplay – very unusual for a low budget programmer in 1952.
The superb music was composed by Leith Stevens. Stevens made his mark in the early 1950s, beginning with two sci-fi scores that became instant classics – Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide. After The Atomic City, he would go on to write great scores to some iconic films, including War of the Worlds and The Wild One. He worked in almost every genre, turning out scores for such films as the noir classic The Hitch-Hiker, Scared Stiff, Private Hell 36, World Without End, Julie, But Not for Me, The Interns, A New Kind of Love and many others, as well as for such classic television fare as The Twilight Zone, Have Gun – Will Travel, Gunsmoke, The Untouchables, Burke’s Law, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and on and on. His music for The Atomic City is greatly responsible for the tense atmosphere and keeping the film an edge-of-the-seat thriller.
The music was thankfully preserved on a set of acetates in excellent condition. These were transferred as carefully and lovingly as possible, and we hope you’ll be pleased with the result.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space/The Atomic City is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the first week of July – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/when_stranger.htm

http://www.kritzerland.com/monster_atomic.htm

BloodBoal · May 25, 2012

This thread is deader than a corpse.

Jay · June 11, 2012

New Kritzerland today:

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premiere limited edition soundtrack CD:
ALL IN A NIGHT’S WORK
Music Composed and Conducted by Andre Previn
Once upon a time in a land called Hollywood, major studios churned out wonderful, frothy, fizzy romantic comedies, one after another. In 1961, Shirley MacLaine was riding high on the success of The Apartment and Dean Martin had become a real leading man after the team of Martin and Lewis had broken up. They’d already appeared together in Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running and Paramount’s production of Career, and because both were terrific comic actors, it was a natural to pair them up in Paramount’s All in a Night’s Work.
All in a Night’s Work was given the lavish, glossy Paramount treatment – everything was top-of-the line – the director was Joseph Anthony (The Rainmaker, The Matchmaker, Career), and the bubbly screenplay was by Edmund Beloin (Visit to a Small Planet, The Sad Sack, Don’t Give Up the Ship), Maurice Richlin (Pillow Talk, Operation Petticoat, Soldier in the Rain, and the classic The Pink Panther), and Sidney Sheldon (Billy Rose’s Jumbo, Pardners). And, in addition to the two leads, a stellar supporting cast – Cliff Robertson, Jack Weston, Charlie Ruggles, Norma Crane, Jerome Cowan, and Gale Gordon.
The plot kicks off in high style when a mysterious woman is seen running from a ritzy Palm Beach hotel room, wearing only a bath towel and not a very large one at that. Since the hotel room’s guest, a New York publishing baron, is found dead in bed, the question is who was that lady and was that lady his mistress? Complications, misunderstandings, mink coats, fancy nightclubs, and, of course, love and a happy ending, and all in glorious Technicolor, set to the romantic, propulsive, and phenomenal music of André Previn.
The main title sets the tone – an upbeat, dynamic, and colorful showpiece for orchestra. That theme recurs again, but it’s the delicious and beautiful love theme that gets most of the attention, in a large number of guises – it’s instantly memorable and works wonderfully throughout the film – as underscore for romance, shopping, cocktails, dinner and dancing, and yes, more romancing, the kind of romance that only happens in the movies with beautiful music underscoring everything. There are other equally excellent themes, and the score is just a constant delight of melody and inspiration.
All in a Night’s Work was transferred from the original session masters housed in the Paramount vaults. The tapes were in excellent condition and in stereo save for two cues that only existed in mono. The first of those is presented in sequence (track two), and the last, the complete finale, is presented in the bonus tracks section, since we had a shorter version of the finale in stereo.
All in a Night’s Work is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the last week of July – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/nightsWork.htm

Jay · June 25, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD – two great scores, one a world-premiere release, on one jam-packed CD:
THE WAYWARD BUS
and
THE ENEMY BELOW
Music Composed by Leigh Harline Conducted by Lionel Newman
John Steinbeck and the movies seemed made for each other. He was blessed to have major directors bring his works to the screen – such greats as John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath), Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata and East of Eden), Alfred Hitchcock (Lifeboat), Lewis Milestone (Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony), and Victor Fleming (Tortilla Flat). It was a homecoming of sorts for The Wayward Bus – Twentieth Century Fox had already done Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Lifeboat, and Viva Zapata, and The Wayward Bus, whose journey to the screen was indeed wayward, ended up at Fox after having floated around elsewhere for several years. Top-billed was Joan Collins as an insecure, hard-drinking, jealous wife, with Rick Jason as her husband, the driver of the titular wayward bus. But it’s really an ensemble picture. Hot off her screen success in The Girl Can’t Help It, Jayne Mansfield turns in a wonderful and touching performance as a stag party gal, and Dan Dailey is also affecting as a salesman who takes an interest in her. Also terrific are Betty Lou Keim and Dolores Michaels – Keim playing an unhappy waitress getting away from her humdrum job, and Michaels as a young woman trying to break free of her strict parents. Also released by Fox in 1957 was the tense and exciting war picture, The Enemy Below. Directed by Dick Powell, The Enemy Below is the story of two boats – an American destroyer and a German U-boat. Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens turn in excellent performances as the two captains engaged in a deadly battle of wits. The taut screenplay was by Wendell Mayes (The Spirit of St. Louis, Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, In Harm’s Way, Von Ryan’s Express, Hotel, The Poseidon Adventure, and Death Wish to name a few), based on the novel by D.A. Rayner, and the film was beautifully shot by Harold Rossen in color and Cinemascope.
The Wayward Bus and The Enemy Below, while polar opposites as films, did share something vital between them – two very different but superb musical scores by Leigh Harline. Harline’s score for The Wayward Bus is filled with the longing and yearning of its characters. You can feel it immediately in the film’s main title music, and it continues in each successive cue – it really gets under the skin of the characters and drama, and it’s filled with plaintive melodies and colors. The music for The Enemy Below is thrilling and memorable. Harline’s scoring choices are interesting – he lets long dialogue sequences play without music, while scoring the action sequences, with his themes clearly defining the American and German boats and their maneuvers. Once the climactic battle begins, Harline lets his music go pretty much non-stop, and it’s simply exhilarating battle music, the kind no one seems to know how to write anymore. This is the world premiere release of The Wayward Bus, in stereo and sounding wonderful, thanks to the usual tender loving care of Nick Redman’s team. We present the complete score as it appears in the film. The Enemy Below was previously released on Intrada (as a standalone score, which quickly sold out). We’ve remastered it for this release, presenting every note of Harline’s score, but omitting the bonus tracks from the Intrada CD, which consisted of a few German drinking songs and some radar blips.
The Wayward Bus/The Enemy Below is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of August – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerla...yward_enemy.htm

Also some news:

I have quite a bit more Golden Age coming and will continue to harbor the hope that there are enough true soundtrack fans who love music from all ages to make doing them worthwhile. On the horizon: Rozsa, Young, North, Duning, and that's all I'm saying.

Source: http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=89905&forumID=1&archive=0

Jay · July 12, 2012

Kritzerland is very proud to present a very special limited edition CD release:
FOLLIES
The 1971 Original Broadway Cast Recording
NEWLY REMIXED AND REMASTERED!
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
What more can be said about Follies and its original legendary production? It was stunning, brilliant, shattering, with every element of the show working in perfect harmony, from James Goldman’s caustic, funny, and brutal book, to Stephen Sondheim’s amazing score, filled with heartbreak, remorse, humor, and pastiche that’s so much more than pastiche, to the complex and remarkable direction of Harold Prince and Michael Bennett and the astonishing choreography of Bennett, to the spectacular costumes of Florence Klotz, the evocative lighting by Tharon Musser, and the beyond-perfect set of Boris Aronson. Everybody was at the top of their game and the result was, for many, the greatest musical theater experience of their lives.
The cast album for Follies has always been a love/hate relationship for fans of the show, thanks to the decision not to make it a two LP set, which caused certain songs to be truncated and others not to be recorded at all. But what it did have made it something that, despite the frustrations, meant it would never be bettered – the original cast. No, it didn’t sound all that good (it was, like most cast albums back then, recorded in one day and mixed in one day and in the stores a week later), but those performances, especially from Alexis Smith, Dorothy Collins, Gene Nelson, and John McMartin were, for many, definitive. Since then, there have been several other recordings, all of them quite different, and all much more complete than the original – the London version (with some new songs, and some songs gone), Follies in Concert, the Papermill Playhouse version, and the most recent revival – all have their strengths and joys, all have lots more music, and none are the original.
The mix on the original album was odd, with vocals being occasionally overpowered by a suddenly blaring orchestra, or vocals hard-panned left and right (that’s okay for one line, but to hear an entire solo hard-panned to the left or right is just really strange). Having had great luck with doing new remixes for the cast albums of Promises, Promises and Sugar, we decided to see if Follies’ original session masters were available to us. Happily they were – the original edited eight-track session masters were in perfect condition. Those were transferred into Pro Tools and each song was lovingly remixed from scratch. Gone was the raggedness, and the clarity was astounding, with orchestral and vocal details all sounding crisp and clear, with fantastic depth. While there were no additional takes or material (the songs were shortened or edited prior to recording), we’re hoping that the new mix is reason enough to have this CD. Doing a new mix was basically just a new way of looking at a favorite score and we truly hope that everyone is happy with what we’ve been able to do. It was done out of love and care, to give a new sheen and sparkle to one of the greatest theater scores ever written. Includes a twelve-page, full-color booklet.
This release is limited to 1500 copies only. The price is $19.98 plus shipping.
CD will ship by the last week of August – however, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com

http://www.kritzerland.com/follies.htm

Jay · July 16, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD – two great scores on one CD:
THE FLY
and
RETURN OF THE FLY
Music Composed by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter
“HELP MEEEEE”
The Fly began life as a short story by George Langelaan. Twentieth Century-Fox snapped up the rights and hired James Clavell to write the script, his first screenplay assignment (Clavell would go on to write the screenplays for The Great Escape, 633 Squadron, The Satan Bug, To Sir, With Love, the latter which he also directed – he also become a very successful novelist, turning out such books as King Rat, Tai-Pan, Shogun, and Noble House, all of which became either films or mini-series). Kurt Neumann was in the director chair. He’d already done a couple of sci-fi films, Rocketship X-M and Kronos. Of course, The Fly was both science fiction and horror.
A top-drawer cast was assembled, including young Al Hedison (who would soon change his name to David), Vincent Price, Herbert Marshall, Patricia Owens, and the child actor, Charles Herbert. It was given the Cinemascope and color treatment (shot by veteran cameraman Karl Struss). And it was a smash hit with audiences everywhere, grossing $3,000,000 on a budget of $700,000, in at time when those figures actually meant something.
In those days, sequels were not all that common, but after the success of the first film, Fox decided to do another Fly picture, Return of the Fly, which was rushed into production and released a year later.
The scores to The Fly and Return of the Fly were written by the team of Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter. Beginning with just the kind of bombastic and memorable music you’d want for a movie called The Fly, Sawtell and Shefter immediately introduce the theme for the happy couple at the film’s center, and it establishes immediately the human element of the story, which is so important for any sci-fi or horror film. From there it’s classic Sawtell and Shefter, with the scary music and the human music balancing out each other and creating a symphony of terror and things gone wrong, all in that unbelievably great Fox stereo sound. It’s one of the great sci-fi/horror scores. Return of the Fly is equally strong as a score and it’s not just a rehash of the first score, which is refreshing.
The Fly and Return of the Fly were both previously released in a box set on Percepto Records (which also contained Curse of the Fly, composed by Shefter alone), which has been long out of print and hard to find. For this reissue, we decided to just present the first two films, since they were made only a year apart and were both composed by Sawtell and Shefter. We’ve done some cleanup work and remastered the sound, combined a couple of shorter cues and removed the “Fox Fanfare” since it obviously wasn’t composed by Sawtell and Shefter. Both scores are complete – The Fly in glorious stereo, and the low budget Return of the Fly in glorious mono. So, turn off the lights and bask in the eerie glow of two classic sci-fi/horror scores by the great team of Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter.
The Fly/Return of the Fly is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the last week of August – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/fly.htm

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new world premiere limited edition soundtrack CD:
WALLANDER
Music from the original Swedish TV series
Music Composed and Conducted by Adam Norden
Believe it or not, it didn’t all start with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. No, Nordic crime novels, movies, and TV shows had been around long before. One of the most successful of the Nordic crime authors was Henning Mankell with his series of Wallander books – they were beautifully written and seemed like naturals for movies and TV and so we first got a series of Kurt Wallander movies based on the books that had been written to that point in the 1990s – those starred the wonderful actor Rolf Lassgard. Then the decision came that Wallander would start up again, this time as a TV series (with occasional movie releases), called, simply enough, Wallander. That was great news for Wallander fans. This time we got a new Wallander, Krister Henriksson. As good as Lassgard had been, Henriksson was even better, perfectly embodying the character. The first series consisted of thirteen ninety-minute films and was shot in 2005/2006.
The composer of all series one’s thirteen films was Adam Norden. A prolific composer, he really captured the essence of the films and the characters with his evocative and perfect music. His music is a key element in making those films unique. The scoring usually consists of recurring themes for Kurt and Linda, and the approach to orchestration is usually spare and filled with interesting textures and melodic invention, somehow capturing perfectly the loneliness, the cold, the sordidness of some of the crimes, the despair. Most of the music is contemplative in nature, but there’s some wonderful action music, too, especially in the “Mastermind” film.
While some of the music has been available as downloads only and only outside the United States it has never had a proper CD release. The show now has so many fans, thanks to its being aired in the UK and elsewhere (and now on DVD) that doing a CD release seemed like a no-brainer. The selections as presented here were personally chosen and assembled by Norden (who also contributes to the liner notes) and are from his masters, which he owns.
If you’re a fan of the Wallander films, especially of that brilliant first series, then this will be a lovely souvenir of the music that made that series so memorable. If you haven’t seen the series, the music stands perfectly well on its own and is a wonderful listening experience.
Wallander is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the last week of August – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/wallander.htm

Jay · July 31, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD – two great scores on one CD:
DEAR BRIGITTE
Music Composed by George Duning
and
MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION
Music Composed by Henry Mancini
By 1965, the family comedy film was about to hit rough times because the world was changing and we were entering a more challenging time and the movies, of course, reflected that change. This was especially true of the quirky family comedy about quirky families doing quirky things. In the 1960s, James Stewart, then in his mid-fifties, made two such comedies at Twentieth Century-Fox – Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and Dear Brigitte. Both were directed by Henry Koster and both were likeable and amiable comedies that had warmth, quirkiness, and laughs, all that you really needed back then.
Dear Brigitte, which did not make much noise at the box-office, came at the end of the cycle. The screenplay was by Nunally Johnson and Hal Kanter, adapted from the novel, Erasmus with Freckles by John Haase. The supporting cast could not be more wonderful, with the lovely Glynis Johns, the young Billy Mumy, John Williams, Ed Wynn, cute couple Cindy Carol and Fabian, Jack Kruschen, Alice Pearce and Jessie White. Dear Brigitte has a score that is as delightful as the movie it accompanies, aiding immeasurably in making the film so entertaining.
Duning’s music was always tuneful, always served the films beautifully, and his comedy scores especially were models of what great comedy scores should be and Dear Brigitte is one of his most charming. Right from the main title, with xylophone and banjo leading the way to a classic Duning theme (a three-note motif – many composers like to do this – it’s literally the syllables of the title set to music), you know you’re in good hands. The score is fun, frothy, and classic Duning.
Three years earlier, the Stewart family comedy was Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, which also had a stellar cast, including beautiful Maureen O’Hara, John Saxon, John McGiver, Marie Wilson, Reginald Gardner, and Lauri Peters (fresh from Broadway’s The Sound of Music), and Fabian, along with Michael Burns as Stewart’s young son (and an uncredited appearance by someone named Herb Alpert, playing a trumpet player). The film was a huge hit and is as delightful today as it was then. Once again, it’s a perfect match between film and composer, in this case, Henry Mancini.
In 1962, Mancini would write four great scores in a row for four different studios – Experiment in Terror, Hatari, Days of Wine and Roses, and Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. Each score is completely different and each brilliant in its own way. Mr. Hobbs is the lightest of them – a wonderful compendium of classic Mancini music, from the delightful main theme (in its many guises), to Mancini’s usual great source music tracks, to his deft way with underscoring both comedy and scenes of emotion. As with most Mancini scores of this vintage, there is a surprising amount of dramatic scoring that works beautifully in the film.
Dear Brigitte is making its debut on CD. The tapes were mostly in good shape, but a handful of tracks were beyond repair, so badly damaged that there was no way to include them. Thankfully, thematically all that material is covered in other tracks. We’ve done our best to minimize the wow and flutter present on a couple of tracks, but most of it sounds pretty great in stereo. Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was previously released by Intrada – it sold out and hasn’t been available for years now. The Intrada presentation put all the tracks in strict film order, but because there were quite a few source music tracks in a row, we felt that interrupted the actual score too much, so we’ve switched it up a bit and moved some of the source music cues to the bonus track section. Again, there is a bit of wow and flutter here and there, but we’ve remastered the sound, cleaned up some little sound problems from the previous release, and put a few of the really short tracks together, which, for us, makes for a more seamless listening experience. Any way you listen to it, Dear Brigitte and Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation are smilers – music that just makes you smile, makes you happy, music filled with memorable melodies in a delightful variety of guises and settings, by two great film composers – Henry Mancini and George Duning.
Dear Brigitte/Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the first week of September – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/brigitte_hobbs.htm

Jay · August 6, 2012

Kritzerland is proud to present two new releases – our second Blu-ray release and the soundtrack CD for the award-winning classic short musical film
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Junior High School was born out of a love of musicals. Its creators loved the form, embraced the form, and raised enough money to make a short musical film that is utterly charming and a complete delight from start to finish. David Wechter and Michael Nankin had already directed a critically acclaimed short film called Gravity, which had gotten them noticed. Two years later, just out of college, they joined some other friends, to make another audacious short film – a real musical about a fictional junior high school. This was, of course, long before High School Musical and Glee. In 1978 there was no middle school; there was elementary school, junior high, and high school. The times they were a’changing – the late 1970s and early 1980s were the end of a certain kind of era, and Junior High School reflects that beautifully. There is a sweetness and innocence to the film that’s palpable, even if it includes the classic song, “The Itty-Bitty Titty Committee.”
Made for under $35,000 (the filmmakers raised the money and received a grant from the American Film Institute), the film was shot in one month at John Muir Junior High School in Burbank, California. It was a family affair, with many relatives and friends appearing in the film and working behind the scenes. Kids from all over LA auditioned, and the chosen cast is just so real and perfect, you can’t imagine it being better, although only one of the actors went on to have a significant career – PAULA ABDUL.
The film is beautifully directed and shot (in 16mm), and David Wechter’s tuneful and clever songs are delightful, as is the script. David’s father, the great Julius Wechter, arranged the songs and wrote an original score. Julius, of course, was the leader of the popular Baja Marimba Band. He assembled some amazing players for the soundtrack recording, including several of the infamous Wrecking Crew. They include such luminaries as Bernie Fleischer, Bobby Findley (of the Tijuana Brass), Lou McCreary, Tommy Tedesco, Dave Frishberg (who also appears and sings in the film), Steve Schaefer, and the engineer was the great Larry Levine (pioneer of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound”).
Junior High School won awards in dozens of film festivals and was an immediate sensation, so much so that critic Roger Ebert said, “I think it’s probably impossible not to be charmed out of your socks by Junior High School.” As a direct result of the audience and critical response to the film, Wechter and Nankin were hired by Walt Disney Studios to make a feature – at the ripe old age of twenty-three. That film, Midnight Madness, while not a hit, developed a major cult following that continues to this day.
The Blu-ray has a commentary track, and two retrospective featurettes, Junior High School Reunion and Return to Junior High School as well as Wechter and Nankin’s other short film, Gravity. The CD release has several bonus tracks, including demos from Midnight Madness, Malibu Bikini Shop, and the never made feature version of Junior High School, which was being developed by United Artists.
The CD of Junior High School is limited to 1000 copies only and is priced at $19.98, plus shipping. The Blu-ray is $19.98, plus shipping. CD and Blu-ray will ship the first week of September, however, never fear, we usually get in copies one to five weeks in advance of the official ship date (we’ve been averaging four weeks).

http://www.kritzerland.com/jhs_intro.htm

And the third release is not soundtrack-related at all, but it is a reissue of a Bay Cities title and it IS terrific.
Kritzerland is proud to present a new, limited edition CD
LAZY DAYS JULIUS WECHTER AND THE BAJA MARIMBAS
Julius Wechter and the Baja Marimba band were one of A&M Records’ most popular artists. Their records were fun, tuneful, and unique and a perfect compliment to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. At the end of the 1980s, Julius assembled some amazing musicians and created the Baja Marimbas – basically to just have fun and to keep the music alive. This recording, originally done on the Bay Cities label and titled New Deal, was their one and only album. It has been out of print for almost two decades and we are thrilled to make it available once again to Baja fans everywhere.
It has been remastered with tender loving care and sounds better than ever. We’ve also included with a few great bonus tracks making their CD debut. This Baja Marimbas is leaner than the Baja Marimba Band, but it is no less wonderful – the music is infectious and amazing, with great players doing both standards and originals. Hear such great tunes as “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” “But Not for Me,” “Lazy Days,” “Pavanne,” “Baja Noce,” and others. Bonus tracks include, “Nine on a Match,” “Green Bird,” “Alone Again, Naturally,” the theme from “Deep Throat,” and a commercial for the Santa Anita Race track.
Lazy Days is like a trip back in time to an era when music could just be fun – fun, beautifully performed, and with melodies you can actually hum and tunes you can actually tap your feet to.
Lazy Days is limited to 1000 copies only and is priced at $17.98, plus shipping.
Also be sure to check out Julius Wechter’s great work (both score and arrangements) on his son David Wechter’s (with Michael Nankin) award-winning short film, Junior High School, which has a new Blu-ray and CD release right here at Kritzerland.
CD will ship the first week of September, however, never fear, we usually get in copies one to five weeks in advance of the official ship date (we’ve been averaging four weeks).

http://www.kritzerland.com/bajas.htm

Jay · August 16, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a world premiere limited edition soundtrack release:
THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS
Music Composed and Conducted by Miklós Rózsa
It was 1946 and film noir was everywhere, from low budget quickies to major studio releases. Of course, the studios didn’t realize they were making films noir, since that term had just been coined by French film critic Nino Frank. The noirs of 1946 included: The Killers, The Blue Dahlia, The Big Sleep, Gilda, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Stranger, The Dark Mirror, The Black Angel and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers was an “A” picture from Paramount, produced by Hal B. Wallis. It featured a terrific cast, including Barbara Stanwyck (who’d been in the classic noir Double Indemnity two years prior), Van Heflin, smoky-voiced Lizabeth Scott, Judith Anderson and, in his film debut, a young actor named Kirk Douglas. It’s a terrific picture with wonderful dialogue, elegant direction and great performances – it’s noir, it’s melodrama, and the whole film crackles with electricity. And perfectly capturing every mood, every character and every situation is the classic score by Miklós Rózsa.
The music for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is almost a second cousin to Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend, filled with the incredible Rózsa sound of that era. No one did this kind of thing better than Rózsa – he seemed to have a real affinity for these darker tales. The main title is everything a classic main title should be: It draws you in right from those great Rózsa-esque opening chords, introduces its beautiful main theme and then segues directly into the first cue for the young runaways. From there, Rózsa’s music weaves its magic, perfectly capturing the film’s moods, situations and characters as they travel their dark roads.
The surviving music from Martha Ivers was taken from a set of incredible-sounding acetates preserved in the Paramount vaults. It’s almost fifty minutes of prime Rózsa and it’s nearly most of the score, with only a handful of missing cues. Only two tracks had material that was beyond repair – one of those tracks was only twenty-four seconds long and the material contained therein was well represented elsewhere. For the other track, through careful editing, we were able to save ninety percent of it and again, the material that wasn’t salvageable was represented elsewhere in the other cues.
Miklós Rózsa is in the pantheon of greats, and it’s really gratifying to bring one of his classic noir scores to CD.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the third week of September – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/ivers.htm

Jay · August 27, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present a world premiere limited edition soundtrack release:
STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND
Music Composed and Conducted by Victor Young
In 1955, Paramount Pictures released the second film in their new VistaVision format –Strategic Air Command. With its extraordinary aerial footage and location shooting, VistaVision would really come into its own. The film was, in a word, breathtaking. Add to that a great cast headed by James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Lovejoy, Barry Sullivan and Harry Morgan, the great cameraman William H. Daniels, a terrific screenplay by Valentine Davies (book and film of Miracle on 34th Street, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, The Benny Goodman Story, The Glenn Miller Story) and Beirne Lay Jr., and great direction by Anthony Mann (many great noirs, an incredible run of western films starring James Stewart, and the magnificent El Cid), and you had a recipe for success. Strategic Air Command was the sixth-highest grossing picture of 1955. The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther raved, “Never, in many years of looking at Air Force and aviation films, have we seen the familiar wide blue yonder so wide or so magnificently displayed as it is in the VistaVision process used to project Strategic Air Command. But above all, there are those airplanes, the roaring engines, the cluttered cockpits, the clouds and sky. These are the things that make your eyes bug out and your heart leap with wonder and pride.”
And one of the primary reasons the heart leaps with wonder and pride is the film’s stunning musical score by Victor Young. Young’s body of work is astonishing, and includes such great scores as Golden Boy, Reap the Wild Wind, The Glass Key, The Palm Beach Story, The Uninvited, The Great Moment, Ministry of Fear, Love Letters, To Each His Own, Golden Earrings, The Big Clock, State of the Union, The Paleface, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Samson and Delilah, Gun Crazy, Bright Leaf, Rio Grande, Scaramouche, The Quiet Man, Shane, Three Coins in the Fountain, Johnny Guitar, The Country Girl, Around the World in Eighty Days, and that is only the very tip of the Victor Young iceberg.
Young’s score for Strategic Air Command is one of his greats. It has everything you’d want in a score – a rousing main title march, beautiful and emotional music for the drama, and, above all, some of the greatest “flying” music ever written for the screen. Young’s scoring of the flying scenes virtually turns those sequences into ballets of flight, a sky symphony of enduring beauty.
This is the world premiere release of Strategic Air Command. The music masters were mono (the film was also mono, but its original engagements used the Perspecta soundtrack, a kind of fake stereo) and mostly in very good condition, housed in the Paramount vaults. A couple of tracks only existed on acetates (which we cleaned up as best we could), and a handful were too damaged to use at all. There have not been nearly enough Victor Young scores released on CD, and we’re especially thrilled to bring out this particular example, as it presents all of Young’s strengths as a film composer and a brilliant melodist. They don’t come much better.
Strategic Air Command is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of October – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/sac.htm

BloodBoal · August 27, 2012

airmanjerm · August 27, 2012

I saw this and was excited, it's a movie I've enjoyed for some time.

Also, I wonder about the personnel in the recording. At the time, the Air Force Band at March AF Base in Southern CA was made up of lots of guys who were also session players in LA. That band was ALSO known as The SAC Band (that is, the "Strategic Air Command Band").

I wonder if there was any "brilliant idea" way back then to get the guys from the SAC Band involved on the recording session, just for whatever reason, since a lot of them played in film scoring sessions anyway. If so, that would have/could have involved a short timer named Johnny Williams.

Interesting possibility. Either way, look forward to this one. Always thought it was a wonderful score.

Jay · September 10, 2012

Kritzerland is pleased to present for the first time complete and in stereo, a new limited edition soundtrack release:
DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
Music Composed and Conducted by Alfred Newman
David and Bathsheba was 20th Century-Fox’s initial entry in the Biblical-spectacular trend of the late 1940s and early ’50s. Released in August 1951, David and Bathsheba received five Academy Award nominations and became – at $7 million in domestic box-office rentals – not only the biggest moneymaker in Fox history to that time, but also the top box-office film for any studio that year. Starring Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, and a large cast of supporting players, David and Bathsheba, with a script by Phillip Dunne and direction by Henry King, was, as producer Darryl F. Zanuck put it, “an honest, sincere Biblical story dealing with one of the greatest characters of all time,” but also added the all-important “Plus, it is a violent, sexy love story that involves illegitimacy and even murder.” Of course, one of the key components of the film was Alfred Newman’s stunning score.
Alfred Newman, then eleven years into his twenty-year tenure at Fox, had already won four Academy Awards and another twenty-four nominations for his dramatic scores, songs and music direction. Newman took more than forty-five studio hours, spread over thirteen days (mostly between late April and late May 1951), to record the entire score. The orchestra at its height contained sixty-eight players. And what he delivered was one of his all-time masterpieces, filled with melody, memorable themes, drama, pageantry, and emotion. The Hollywood Reporter noted that “Alfred Newman’s score develops in intensity in the same fashion as the story, rising to powerful crescendos that sweep the action to its conclusion.” Among Alfred Newman’s many scores for religious pictures – including The Song of Bernadette, The Robe and The Greatest Story Ever Told – the music of David and Bathsheba ranks as one of his finest.
David and Bathsheba was previously released on CD by Intrada, running a bit over fifty-five minutes and from the then available best sources, which were optical mono tracks mixed in with transcription discs. They did include one tantalizing stereo track at the end of their presentation and their CD sold out in just a few months. But sometimes miracles happen and the complete tracks, in stereo, were found in a vault they should not have been in – they were mis-labeled. Those tracks, in superb condition, were lovingly transferred and aligned resulting in a breathtaking stereo presentation, perhaps one of the best-sounding recordings of any score of this vintage and seventy-eight minutes in length. It is, in a word, spectacular. For fans of biblical film music, music of the Golden Age of film scoring, and one of the greatest film composers of all time, the CD is a must.
David and Bathsheba is limited to 1500 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the third week of October – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/davidbath.htm

TheTennisBallKid · September 10, 2012

More Newman is always good. I'm not familiar with this one, so I'll have to check the samples out.

Sexy cover.

Jay · October 9, 2012

Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition soundtrack – three great scores on one 2-CD set at a 1-CD price:
THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR/SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD/THE BLUE ANGEL
Music Composed by Hugo Friedhofer
Hugo Friedhofer could do anything. From noirs, to romance, to fantasy, to drama, to lighter fare, he simply was one of the greatest film composers in history. His work for Twentieth Century Fox was especially impressive and from the mid-1950s to the end of that decade he would deliver one incredible score after another in just about every genre.
The Rains of Ranchipur came out in 1955 and starred Lana Turner, Richard Burton, Fred MacMurray, and Michael Rennie. The director was Jean Negulesco, who’d directed many films for Fox, including Titanic, How to Marry a Millionaire, Three Coins in the Fountain, Daddy Long Legs, Boy on a Dolphin, to name a few. Beautifully photographed in Cinemascope and color, the film had Oscar-nominated special effects, and a stunningly beautiful Hugo Friedhofer score, filled with glorious themes, some exotic, some heartbreaking, some majestic – a true Friedhofer classic. Ranchipur had only about thirteen minutes of its music previously released, in stereo, due to the deterioration of the original mag tracks – that was really all that could be salvaged. Since that release, other sources showed up, and while those were mono, it is finally possible to present almost the entire score complete – all that’s missing is about seven minutes of cues that are thematically covered in other cues.
Also from 1955, Seven Cities of Gold was yet another colorful Fox Cinemascope film, this one a historical adventure film starring Anthony Quinn, Richard Egan and Michael Rennie. The film’s tagline basically said it all: “This is the story of the making… and the forging… of California… when men chose gold or God… the sword of the Cross.” Once again, Hugo Friedhofer provided a score that perfectly captured the drama, the characters, and the flavor of the film. Spanish rhythms, grand themes, and fantastic orchestral colors are the order of the day. Seven Cities of Gold was previously released on Varese Sarabande and has been out of print for some time. For this release, Mike Matessino has completely remixed the score and found two short unreleased cues – the resulting sound is spectacular in that incredible Fox stereo.
Four years later, Fox remade Josef von Sternberg’s classic film, The Blue Angel. Obviously it’s not the Dietrich/von Sternberg film – this time The Blue Angel got the Cinemascope and color treatment, with Edward Dmytryk at the helm. It starred Curt Jurgens and May Britt, who both turn in wonderful performances. Since some of the film takes place in a cabaret nightclub, the film has a few musical numbers, and includes the great song, “Falling in Love Again” by Frederick Hollander with English lyrics by Sammy Lerner (used in the original film of The Blue Angel). Friedhofer’s actual score is brief (eighteen minutes) and we’ve included all of it. Naturally, he interpolates “Falling in Love Again,” but there’s also classic Friedhofer scoring and it’s just his usual great work. This is the film score’s world premiere release.
The Rains of Ranchipur/Seven Cities of Gold/The Blue Angel is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the third week of November – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/ranchipur.htm

Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD for a brand new sci-fi musical film:
THE GHASTLY LOVE OF JOHNNY X
Music Composed by Ego Plum
Songs by Scott Martin
What is The Ghastly Love of Johnny X? Is it science fiction? Is it a musical? Is it homage? Yes, yes, and yes. but above all it’s a completely unique, weird, wild, and wacky movie, from the unique, weird, wild, and wacky imagination of filmmaker Paul Bunnell. Shot in gorgeous black-and-white scope, it’s not an easy film to describe and it’s best just to see it as soon as you possibly can (it’s currently making the rounds of many film festivals). It’s clever, funny, quirky, with an occasional dash of David Lynchian weirdness, and it’s sort of unlike any other film you’ve seen. And any movie that has Kevin McCarthy AND Paul Williams is worth catching.
Composer Ego Plum has come up with a fantastic score – big, orchestral, and immensely entertaining. Occasionally channeling the ghosts of Bernard Herrmann (especially The Day the Earth Stood Still), John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Franz Waxman (especially The Bride of Frankenstein), Plum’s score is infectious, melodic, and grand fun, and despite the occasional homages, wildly original. Big orchestra, choir, the ubiquitous theremin sound, a twangy guitar, all of it – a classic sci-fi genre score. Add to that clever and catchy songs (six of ‘em) by composer/lyricist Scott Martin (and orchestrated by Plum) and you have one incredibly entertaining seventy-minute CD.
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X – resistance is futile.
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the third week of November – however, never fear, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/johnnyX.htm

Wojo · October 9, 2012

Occasionally channeling the ghosts of Bernard Herrmann (especially The Day the Earth Stood Still), John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Franz Waxman (especially The Bride of Frankenstein), Plum’s score is infectious, melodic, and grand fun, and despite the occasional homages, wildly original.
http://www.kritzerland.com/johnnyX.htm

Really???

Jay · October 9, 2012

Yea, that's pretty bad

Richard P · October 9, 2012

That is a rather chilling statement to read.

Jay · October 18, 2012

Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition soundtrack:
THE GEISHA BOY
Music Composed by Walter Scharf
The comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was born in 1946. The duo quickly became a hugely popular act. At Paramount they did a string of successful comedies, which, along with their films and nightclub appearances, made them the hottest comedy team working – until 1956, that is, when Dean Martin ended the partnership. Jerry Lewis stayed at Paramount and became one of their biggest stars with his first solo feature, The Delicate Delinquent (1957). That was followed by Rock-a-Bye Baby and The Geisha Boy – both directed by the great Frank Tashlin (Lewis had yet to make his directorial debut – that would happen a couple of years later with The Bellboy). The Geisha Boy is one of Lewis’s best films. It has everything, from gorgeous photography (in Technicolor and VistaVision) to huge laughs (there are sequences in the film that are fall-out-of-your-chair funny) to truly touching sequences that never become too maudlin.
Tying all of the film’s elements perfectly together is the tuneful and great score by Walter Scharf. Scharf became Lewis’s go-to composer. Their relationship lasted for years, resulting in great scores for The Sad Sack, Rock-a-Bye Baby, The Bellboy, Cinderfella, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, It’s Only Money, and, of course, The Nutty Professor. During his long and distinguished career, Scharf received ten Oscar nominations, mostly for his arranging work on such classics as Funny Girl and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But his original scores for non-Lewis films were terrific and include Ben, Walking Tall, Where Love Has Gone, If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, Pocketful of Miracles, as well as a host of TV scoring for such classic shows as The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, The Love Boat and many, many others.
Scharf was one of the great composers of comedy films. He knew what to score and what to leave unscored, and he had the uncanny ability to give frivolity and lightness some unexpected depth. The Geisha Boy is a seriously gorgeous score with a memorable main theme and beautiful variations on it that capture every mood and emotion, making the comedy even funnier and the pathos even more touching. Comedy scoring is an art, and Scharf was as good an artist at it as anyone.
The Geisha Boy had an LP release on Jubilee Records. That LP version is presented here in its entirety, from the original stereo album masters. The original session scoring tapes for the film were missing material, but we include here everything that was on them – between them and the album master, it’s pretty much everything complete.
Walter Scharf is seriously underrepresented on CD, and it’s a treat to be able to issue the first CD release of one of his classic Jerry Lewis films – in fact, the first CD release of any of the classic Golden Age Jerry Lewis films. Here’s to many more.
The Geisha Boy is limited to 1500 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CDs are in stock and will ship within a day or two. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/geisha.htm

Jay · December 21, 2012

Kritzerland is proud to present a world premiere limited edition soundtrack release – two great scores on one great CD:
HUD
Music Composed and Conducted by Elmer Bernstein
and
THE LONELY MAN
Music Composed and Conducted by Nathan Van Cleave
THE MAN WITH THE BARBED WIRE SOUL
Based on the 1961 novel Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment), Hud featured a powerhouse cast – including Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal and Brandon de Wilde. With a great screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., direction by Martin Ritt, and striking black-and-white photography by the brilliant James Wong Howe, Hud leaps off the screen from first frame to last. Bosley Crowther’s review in The New York Times was typical, trumpeting Hud as the year’s “most powerful film.” The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three – for Best Supporting Actress (the superb Patricia Neal), Best Supporting Actor (Melvyn Douglas) and Best Cinematography (James Wong Howe).
Elmer Bernstein’s score for Hud runs approximately six minutes, making it one of the shortest film scores ever. But what a six minutes it is – in fact, it’s perfection and just right for the film. Bernstein recorded his six minutes twice: once with a 12-piece ensemble, and then, a week later, re-orchestrated (by Bob Bain) for three guitars. Presumably the revision was at Ritt’s request for a smaller and even more intimate sound – which really was the right choice. The music is sparse, yes, but it’s potent every time it appears. There’s also some source music in the film – car radios, jukeboxes, records.
For this first ever release of the score to Hud, we present not only the film version of the score, but also the alternate version scored for chamber orchestra, as well as some source music cues. It was a wonderful discovery to find it on the session masters housed in the Paramount vaults, and the tapes were in excellent condition.
In looking for something to pair with Hud, we found a truly beautiful score by Nathan Van Cleave for the 1957 western The Lonely Man. Starring Jack Palance and Anthony Perkins (with a great supporting cast of character actors including Elisha Cook Jr., Robert Middleton, Neville Brand, Claude Akins and Lee Van Cleef), The Lonely Man is a stark and somber western about a former gunslinger and his attempts to do something for the son who hates him and from whom he’s been estranged for years. Well directed by Henry Levin (April Love, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Where the Boys Are, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm) and stunningly photographed in VistaVision and black-and-white by Lionel Lindon, The Lonely Man may not be well known today, but it’s a solid film and one well worth seeking out.
Nathan Van Cleave’s score is a major discovery, as you’ll hear on this CD. Van Cleave had been at Paramount for years, orchestrating some of their biggest hits. But he was also an expert composer, and over the years he turned in wonderful scores for such films as The Colossus of New York, The Space Children and Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and provided music for such classic TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, Perry Mason and I Spy.
For The Lonely Man, Van Cleave came up with a beautiful main theme, for which Jack Brooks provided lyrics; Tennessee Ernie Ford sings the song in the film. The score has real depth and its secondary themes are dramatic, elegiac and poignant, giving the film a strong spine. The Lonely Man is a world premiere release on CD and is presented complete from tapes housed in the Paramount vaults. A few cues were taken from the music stem. We hope you’ll enjoy discovering this really terrific music.
Hud/The Lonely Man is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CDs will ship the second week of February. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visitwww.kritzerland.com.

Kritzerland is proud to present a world premiere limited edition soundtrack release – two great scores on one great CD:
HOT SPELL
Music Composed and Conducted by Alex North
and
THE MATCHMAKER
Music Composed and Conducted by Adolph Deutsch
How many women star in their first movie at age fifty-four – and win an Oscar for doing so? Well, that’s what happened to Shirley Booth when she made her film debut for Paramount, reprising her Tony Award-winning role in William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba. Booth had already had a hugely successful theatre career and stage work is what she preferred, making only a total of five films before going on to become a TV star in the hit series Hazel. She made her final two films in 1958 and both of them are represented on this world premiere CD release.
Hot Spell had a powerhouse cast; in addition to Booth, the film starred Anthony Quinn, Shirley MacLaine, Earl Holliman and Eileen Heckart. The film’s screenplay by James Poe is clearly in Tennessee Williams and William Inge territory. Booth has a field day with her role – delusional, flighty, and eternally optimistic in the face of the drama around her. Quinn is powerful in his role as someone who doesn’t want to be clung to and whose mid-life crisis results in tragedy for everyone. MacLaine was wonderfully fresh and unique at this point in her career – there wasn’t anyone else quite like her working in movies – and Holliman and Heckart both shine.
The score for Hot Spell was by the brilliant Alex North. By that point in his career, North had been composing for Hollywood films since 1951, when he came out swinging with three incredible scores – The 13th Letter, A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman (he received Oscar nominations for both Streetcar and Salesman). North’s Hot Spell score is all yearning, delusion and heartbreak. His music brilliantly illuminates the drama and the characters – their hopes, their dreams, their heartaches. Thanks to North and the actors (as well as the excellent writing and directing), what could have easily devolved into a melodramatic potboiler becomes a compelling character-driven drama.
Shirley Booth’s other star turn that year was the polar opposite of Hot Spell: the delightful film adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s popular stage success, The Matchmaker. Paramount brought it to the screen, starring Booth as Dolly Gallagher Levi, Paul Ford as Horace Vandergelder, Anthony Perkins as Cornelius, Shirley MacLaine as Irene, and Robert Morse reprising his stage role as Barnaby. The screenplay was by the great John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much) and the film was directed by Joseph Anthony, who, the year before, had brought the play The Rainmaker to the screen for Paramount. Of course, it would be just a few years later when The Matchmaker would undergo yet another transformation, this time being turned into a big, splashy hit Broadway musical, Hello, Dolly!
Helping the fun immeasurably is the score by Adolph Deutsch, which captures the homespun Americana beautifully. His music includes quotes from traditional music of the era (“Buffalo Gals”), but is also filled with his own wonderful, melodic themes. Deutsch wittily underscores the monologues of various characters delivered straight to the camera, or budding love, and Dolly’s machinations to bring everyone together in blissful happiness – including her own. Adolph Deutsch was a really unsung film composer, especially considering the large number of huge hit films he worked on. Although his name is not that well known today, he wrote some absolutely stellar scores during his long career, including the music for such all-time classics as They Drive by Night, High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, The Mask of Dimitrios, Father of the Bride, Tea and Sympathy, Some Like it Hot and The Apartment.
So, two great Golden Age scores – one steamy and tragic, one charming and delightful – by two great composers: Alex North and Adolph Deutsch.
Hot Spell/The Matchmaker is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CDs will ship the second week of February. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visitwww.kritzerland.com.

IF YOU’VE GOT A TASTE FOR TERROR… TAKE CARRIE TO THE PROM
Kritzerland is proud to present a very special limited edition soundtrack CD – an Encore Edition for:
CARRIE
Music Composed and Conducted by Pino Donaggio
In 1976, director Brian De Palma had already established a reputation as a cult director of such films as Greetings, Hi, Mom, and more importantly, Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, and Obsession. But it was his film of Stephen King’s classic, best-selling first novel, Carrie, that would catapult him into major director status. Many directors have tackled Stephen King, including King himself, all to varying degrees of success, but Carrie is the film that leads the pack.
De Palma got everything right – the casting (an amazing group of actors, including Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, William Katt, John Travolta, Nancy Allen, P.J. Soles, and Betty Buckley), the adaptation by Lawrence D. Cohen, the art direction (Jack Fisk and Bill Kenney), camerawork (Mario Tosi), editing (Paul Hirsch) – everything just came together magically and perfectly. The film works so well because there is not only great horror (as to be expected), but also a large helping of emotion and pathos (thanks to Sissy Spacek’s affecting and brilliant performance as Carrie). There is a depth to the characterizations that elevate the film way beyond a simple scary movie. The film also has a sly sense of humor and it’s just fun in a way horror films seldom are – thrills, chills, laughs, and one of the most amazing jump-out-of-your seat scares in the history of cinema.
Horror films are rarely nominated for Academy Awards, but Carrie was one of the exceptions with Sissy Spacek getting a Best Actress nod and Piper Laurie getting one for Best Supporting Actress. Over the years, the film has never lost on iota of its popularity, thanks to numerous releases on every home video format, most recently on Blu-ray.
Of all the decisions De Palma made, one of the most important was choosing Pino Donaggio as composer. De Palma had used Bernard Herrmann on two of his films – Sisters and Obsession, but Herrmann had passed away in 1975. In 1976, Donaggio only had one major film to his credit, but his score to that film was masterful – Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. However De Palma came to choose Donaggio, it was a perfect marriage of composer and film. Donaggio’s score hits all the right notes – he brings out every emotion and all the subtext, with great suspense and horror music, plaintive and yearning music for the character of Carrie, two songs for the prom sequence (with lyrics by Merritt Malloy) that help make that sequence so magical and memorable, and light and infectious music for the calisthenics sequence and the scene at the tux shop. It is, in fact, a perfect score, a masterpiece of film scoring, with unforgettable themes that capture every nuance of the film.
United Artists released the soundtrack album on LP. It was an odd presentation in that almost all of the music was from the film’s second half, save for the main title sequence (which was repeated verbatim at the end of the album). The album ran thirty-five minutes. That LP was released twice on CD – first by Ryko (with dialogue snippets included to pad out the running time), and then by Varese Sarabande (with the dialogue snippets gone). Ryko used the album master, and the Varese was a clone of the Ryko release (the pop songs used in the film were not available to them or to us).
For this very special Encore Edition, we are pleased to present what was CD 1 of our previous 2-CD release (the second CD was simply the third release of the LP tracks and we are not including that disc in this 1-CD release) – the complete score to Carrie – every note of great music, in film order, remixed from the original sixteen track session tapes housed in the MGM vaults. We also found two instrumentals of the songs, which we’ve included as bonus tracks.
This release is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of February – however, preorders placed directly through Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks earlier (we’ve been averaging four weeks early).

http://www.kritzerland.com/hud_lonely.htm

http://www.kritzerland.com/hot_match.htm

http://www.kritzerland.com/carrie.htm

Koray Savas · December 21, 2012

Nice to see Carrie available again, I know a few people here missed out on it.

Jay · April 29, 2013

Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD release and the world-premiere of the complete score to:
THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG

Music Composed by George Duning

The World of Suzie Wong began life as a novel by British author Richard Mason. The book, published first in England and then in the United States, proved very popular. It led to a stage adaptation by Paul Osborn, which opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater on October 14, 1958, and ran for over a year. Because of the success of both novel and play, Paramount brought The World of Suzie Wong to the screen in 1960, starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. The film version was beautifully directed by Richard Quine, its story set against stunningly photographed locations (Geoffrey Unsworth was the cameraman) and played out against the gorgeous musical score of George Duning.

Duning and director Richard Quine had already worked together several times – beginning with Quine’s first film, The Sunny Side of the Street, and continuing with My Sister Eileen, Full of Life, Operation Mad Ball, Bell, Book and Candle, It Happened to Jane and Strangers When We Meet. Duning had an innate musical sense of what made Quine’s films tick, and their collaboration together produced some unique and wonderful film scores, of which Suzie Wong is a classic example. It is filled with Duning’s incredible gift for melody, starting with his stunning main theme and working its way through some of the best dramatic scoring Duning ever did, right up there with Picnic. James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn also wrote a song for the film called “Suzie Wong (The Cloud Song),” and Duning uses that as a secondary theme throughout the score. There is some source music, mostly heard coming from the bar in the Namkok Hotel – a lot of those cues are Duning originals, but he sprinkles in some classic standards, too. The score has a lot of variety and perfectly blends the picturesque visuals with the human drama, capturing every emotion and every scene perfectly. In a career filled with classic scores, Suzie Wong is one of Duning’s finest achievements.

The World of Suzie Wong had a soundtrack release on RCA Records back in 1960. Side A of the album basically had the main title and then a lot of the Duning source music, while Side B had some of the score cues – the album ran around thirty-five minutes. For this release, we have Duning’s entire score, which we’ve put in film order because it plays so beautifully that way. We’ve kept all the Duning source music cues in the film sequence because they’re really part of the fabric of his score. In the bonus section, we’ve put the source music cues that aren’t by Duning, along with the LP version of the main title and a few other alternates and odds and ends, all totaling seventy-eight minutes of film music heaven. For the transfers, we went from the original three-track album masters as well as the original scoring masters, all in glorious stereo sound.

The World of Suzie Wong is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.

CD will ship the second week of June, but preorders placed at Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks early (we’ve been averaging four weeks). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

NOTE: The first orders placed at Kritzerland will receive Suzie Wong's CD booklet signed by the film's star - MISS NANCY KWAN! We don't know exactly how many she'll sign but we will reserve them in strict order as the orders come in.

http://www.kritzerland.com/suzie_wong.htm

Jay · April 30, 2013

Bruce Kimmel has incredible things to say about this score

Since the day I got into Paramount I've been after this score. It's taken a long time, but it finally happened and the result is incredible, a seventy-eight minute CD that is a Kritzerland Holy Grail, and one of Mr. Duning's supreme achievements, for me second only to Picnic. The previous CD was only an import from RCA Spain and was horrid and, of course, only the album presentation running around thirty-five minutes, over half of which was source music. This release has every note of the score, all the source music (very much a part of the fabric of the film), but only the Duning source music used within the score presentation because it never really sounds like source music and it's classic Duning, with the source music by others all presented at the end along with a couple of alternates. It is a Kritzerland dream come true to do it and it's also one of Lukas Kendall's favorites, who was very involved in this release.

I'm listening to it for the tenth time as a finished master and it is so indescribably beautiful.

http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=95680

For those who have the RCA Spain and are hesitating - the sound on the RCA Spain is horrifying - shrill and ugly and hugely distorted. This is an interesting thing about the actual recording, which was done in London. It was recorded too hot - guess no one caught it as they were doing it, but the entire session had distortion right on the session masters. You can hear it on the original LP, you can hear it in the film itself, and it's a 1000 times worse on the RCA Spain because it's from a sub-master many generations away. We had all the original tapes to work with - the session masters, the three-track album masters, etc. We sent them to Chris Malone who worked some rather unbelievable audio restoration magic and I don't know what exactly that entailed I can only tell you the result is pretty astonishing - and all done without sacrificing one iota of clarity or high end. He deserves huge kudos. Lukas was very involved in this one - he loves this score, and he was hugely pleased with what he heard from Chris, and then as mastered by James Nelson.

http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=95976

Jay · May 25, 2013

Bruce Kimmel has revealed on FSM that the next Kritzerland CD (coming Monday) is a 2CD set containing Michael Small's scores to Black Widow, The Driver, and Star Chamber, at a 1CD price

http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pageID=1&threadID=96272&archive=0

All 3 were previously released by Intrada in 2006

Jay · May 28, 2013

Kritzerland is proud to present a limited edition soundtrack CD release – three complete great film scores in one two-CD set, for the price of one CD:
BLACK WIDOW, THE STAR CHAMBER and THE DRIVER

Music Composed and Conducted by Michael Small

The Driver. The Star Chamber. Black Widow. Three very different films from one studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, directed by three very different filmmakers, connected by one very gifted composer – Michael Small.

Michael Small began his film music journey in 1969. However, Small’s breakthrough film happened two years later when Alan Pakula hired him to score his first film as a director, Klute. The marriage of director and composer on Klute was absolute perfection and Small’s score was unique, original, and immediately put him in demand. From there, he went on to write incredible scores for some classic 1970s films, including Pakula’s Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing and The Parallax View, The Stepford Wives, Night Moves, The Drowning Pool, Marathon Man, and Audrey Rose, with each score unique, original, and filled with the Michael Small sound, which was unlike any other composer working back then. In the midst of all that wonderful work, he wrote three of his finest scores, and those are the three scores represented in this two-CD set: The Driver (1978), The Star Chamber (1983), and Black Widow (1987), for directors Walter Hill, Peter Hyams, and Bob Rafelson. They are a perfect neo-noir musical trilogy.

Black Widow is a terrific thriller starring Theresa Russell and Debra Winger. The acting is superb, the photography of Conrad Hall is amazing, as always, and the production design of Gene Callahan is stunning. Michael Small’s score is as entrancing, captivating, alluring, and dangerous as the Black Widow of the title. It has all the hallmarks of a classic Michael Small score and is one of his best.

The Star Chamber, directed by Peter Hyams and featuring a stellar cast, including Michael Douglas, Hal Holbrook, Yaphet Kotto, and Sharon Gless, became kind of a cult film thanks to cable TV and home video and is generally well thought of today. Once again, Michael Small provides a terrific score, beginning with its classic Small main title, majestic-yet-ominous, strings, woodwinds and piano doing an uneasy dance against a steady rhythmic pulse, a perfect beginning for the music and drama to follow.

Walter Hill’s The Driver is a quintessential 1970s movie – it looks, smells, feels and sounds like the 1970s. If anyone is unsure of this, the fact that Quentin Tarantino has referenced it in two films and thinks it’s one of the coolest movies ever made cements its reputation and is probably one of the key reasons the film has just been remade. The cast couldn’t be better – Ryan O’Neal as the The Driver, Bruce Dern as The Detective determined to catch “the cowboy who’s never been caught,” and beautiful Isabelle Adjani as The Player. And Michael Small as The Composer.

Small’s score for The Driver is, like the film, lean, cool, stylish and, yes, unique. Small uses electronics sparingly amidst the strings, reeds, and brass, and plays off The Detective’s line about The Driver being “the cowboy who’s never been caught,” with the use of a twangy country-western guitar that occasionally insinuates itself into the music.

All three scores were previously released by Intrada – Black Widow as a standalone and The Star Chamber and The Driver together on one CD. For this release, all three have been remastered by Mike Matessino, carefully removing numerous small dropouts and ticks and pops, most especially on The Driver. Black Widow and The Star Chamber are in stereo, while The Driver is in mono. With The Star Chamber and The Driver about to make their debut on Blu-ray, we thought the timing was perfect to make these three large Small scores available again in a two-CD value-for-money set. If you have never heard this music, you owe it to yourselves to grab this – there has never really been anyone quite like Michael Small.

BLACK WIDOW/THE STAR CHAMBER/THE DRIVER is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.

CD will ship the first week of July, but preorders placed at Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks early (we’ve been averaging four weeks). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

Jay · June 6, 2013

Kritzerland is proud to present a limited edition soundtrack CD release – three great film scores on one great CD:
ELEPHANT WALK/BOTANY BAY/STALAG 17 - FRANZ WAXMAN AT PARAMOUNT

Music Composed and Conducted by Franz Waxman

Franz Waxman at Paramount. One great composer, one great studio, and an astonishing batch of scores. If Waxman had written only Sunset Blvd. and A Place in the Sun for Paramount he would have been assured his place in the pantheon of great film composers. But he wrote many other fantastic scores for the studio as well, including Sorry, Wrong Number, Alias Nick Beal, Rope of Sand, The Furies, Dark City, Come Back, Little Sheba, Rear Window, Career, and the three scores we’re offering on this world premiere CD release: Elephant Walk, Botany Bay, and Stalag 17. The films are as different as can be, but Franz Waxman brings his musical genius to each. For all three scores we present all of the surviving musical cues.

We begin our triple bill with Elephant Walk, a Paramount picture from 1954 starring Elizabeth Taylor, which featured an outstanding score by Franz Waxman. Right from the first chords of the “Prelude,” its lush theme transporting us immediately into the world of the film, we know we are in the safe and brilliant hands of a composer at the top of his game. What follows demonstrates Waxman’s usual adeptness at capturing mood, incident and characters, including his splendid dramatic action cue for the film’s climactic “Elephant Stampede.” While it’s a shame that the entire score hasn’t survived, the cues presented here – in beautiful-sounding stereo – are an excellent representation of Waxman’s contribution to the film.

Next up is the 1953 Paramount film Botany Bay, starring Alan Ladd, James Mason, Patricia Medina, Cedric Hardwicke, and Murray Matheson. Waxman’s “Prelude and Foreword” sets the tone of the film and its tale. From there he provides a textbook on film scoring, with adventure and drama on the high seas, with heroes and villains, with drama and suspense – all with the classic Waxman sound. Happily, the majority of the score cues have survived for Botany Bay – close to forty minutes of music, all in crisp, clear mono sound.

Stalag 17, the last of our Waxman triple bill, began life as a stage play. In 1953, it was brought to the screen by Paramount Pictures and director Billy Wilder. The film starred William Holden, who won an Oscar for his performance. Stalag 17 is one of the great prisoner-of-war films, right up there with The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai, both of which came later. For the film, Franz Waxman came up with a brief but perfect score, utilizing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” as its basis. Otherwise, it’s percussion and brief bits of scoring that work wonderfully well in the film. Again, Waxman’s innate approach to material and his knowing when music is necessary and when it isn’t is what made him one of the greatest film composers in the history of movies. The main title, with its propulsive drums and treatment of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” is the perfect start to the film. We present the surviving tracks in mono, as they were recorded.

ELEPHANT WALK/BOTANY BAY/STALAG 17 – FRANZ WAXAN AT PARAMOUNT is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.

CD will ship the last week of July, but preorders placed at Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks early (we’ve been averaging four weeks). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/waxmanTrio.htm

Jay · June 17, 2013

Kritzerland is proud to present a world premiere limited edition soundtrack CD release – two great film scores on one great CD:
THE FAR HORIZONS

Music Composed and Conducted by Hans J. Salter

and

SECRET OF THE INCAS

Music Composed and Conducted by David Buttolph

Two movies from the Golden Age, both starring Charlton Heston, a double bill in the old style – well-made pictures designed solely to entertain.

The Far Horizons holds the distinction of being the only major motion picture made about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Based on a fictional novel by Delia Gould Emmons, the film combined fact and fiction in its depiction of the two-year expedition. Heston played Lt. William Clark; co-starring as Captain Meriwether Lewis was Fred MacMurray. The director was Rudolph Mate, and the film was shot in gorgeous Technicolor and Paramount’s then-new widescreen process, VistaVision, by Daniel Fapp. And it has a terrific score by Hans J. Salter.

For a composer whose name is rarely included among the top composers for film, Hans J. Salter scored an amazing number of beloved horror and sci-fi films, including Man Made Monster, The Black Cat, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Son of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, The Mole People and The Incredible Shrinking Man, but he was equally at home in every genre and wrote great scores for such diverse films as Hold That Ghost, Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, Magnificent Doll, The Reckless Moment, Against All Flags, The Black Shield of Falworth, Autumn Leaves, Hold Back the Night, Come September, If a Man Answers, and Bedtime Story, to name but a few from his extraordinarily prolific career. And he also scored a number of western and adventure films, including Bend of the River, The Far Country, Man Without a Star, Wichita and many others.

His score for The Far Horizons is a majestic beauty, with a wonderful main theme that gets plenty of variations, along with some great dramatic scoring. For this CD, we present all the surviving cues, which thankfully constitute most of the score. It’s movie music in the grand tradition – full-bodied, emotional, and filled with melody. The score is presented in mono.

Here’s the plot for Secret of the Incas: A legend says that the Inca Empire was destroyed by the gods when a starburst of gold and jewels was stolen from the Temple of the Sun many centuries ago. The legend continues that the empire will be reborn once the treasure is returned. Now, an adventurer is seeking the treasure, as is his nemesis. The adventurer wears a brown leather jacket, a fedora, tan pants, and an over-the-shoulder bag and revolver. Sound familiar? Can we say Indiana Jones? But this was 1954, and the adventurer was Harry Steele, played by Charlton Heston. Secret of the Incas was definitely an inspiration for the Indiana Jones series. It was and is a fun picture. Shot on location in Peru at Cuzco and Machu Picchu (the first major Hollywood film to shoot at those locations), with a great cast that, in addition to Heston, included Thomas Mitchell, Robert Young, Nicole Mauray, and the then very popular exotic singer, Yma Sumac. Helping to make it so much fun is the film’s musical score by David Buttolph.

Like Hans J. Salter, David Buttolph is a bit of an unsung film composer. Buttolph, over the course of his extremely prolific career, scored hundreds of films, including some pretty great movies such as This Gun for Hire, The House on 92nd Street, Somewhere in the Night, 13 Rue Madeleine, The Brasher Doubloon, Kiss of Death, The Enforcer, House of Wax, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Phantom of the Rue Morgue, Long John Silver, The Lone Ranger, The Horse Soldiers, and PT 109. He also moved into television scoring, working on such series as Laramie, Wagon Train and The Virginian.

Buttolph’s score for Secret of the Incas is exotic and adventure-filled like the film. Because of Yma Sumac’s involvement, it was decided to use a piece of music that was from one of her albums, specifically “High Andes” by Moises Vivanco, which Buttolph uses sparingly. Otherwise, Buttolph has memorable themes of his own, underscoring all the adventure, romance and thrills. For this CD we present all the surviving film cues in glorious stereo sound.

THE FAR HORIZONS/SECRET OF THE INCAS is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.

CD will ship the first week of August, but preorders placed at Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks early (we’ve been averaging four weeks). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/horizons_incas.htm

ManofDestiny · July 12, 2013

http://www.moviemusic.com/soundtrack/M08931/missouri-breaks/

Just notice this while visiting moviemusic.com. Looks like a must have to me, but I am not familiar with this score. Before blind buy, can anyone tell me what kind of score it is? The style? How you rate it?

Damn. It is now oop everywhere. I've just notice this one this morning and try to place my order in a second! Looks like it is a really good score.

Jay · July 12, 2013

http://www.moviemusic.com/soundtrack/M08931/missouri-breaks/
Just notice this while visiting moviemusic.com. Looks like a must have to me, but I am not familiar with this score. Before blind buy, can anyone tell me what kind of score it is? The style? How you rate it?
Damn. It is now oop everywhere. I've just notice this one this morning and try to place my order in a second! Looks like it is a really good score.

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23178

Jay · September 23, 2013

Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition CD release, the first release of the complete score to:
RISING SUN
Music Composed and Conducted by Toru Takemitsu
Rising Sun, Michael Crichton’s 1992 follow up to his blockbuster novel Jurassic Park, was a detective thriller with a difference – one examining Japanese/American relations or, as Newsweek called it, “A paranoid polemic masquerading as a murder mystery.” Twentieth Century-Fox snapped up the movie rights instantly. Crichton co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Backes and the film’s director, Philip Kaufman. Cast in the two leading roles were Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. As with the novel, critics were divided on the film, and, as with the novel, rather vehemently so. The critics who didn’t like the film really didn’t like it, but there were plenty who did. Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers found flaws but noted, “The flaws don’t cripple what is a fiercely funny, exciting and provocative detective story about the crime of corporate culture – crimes that transcend race and geography.” The Washington Post said, “A thoroughly gratifying prestige thriller, thanks to riveting suspense and two brilliant stars.” The film performed reasonably well at the box office and spent ten weeks on the top ten box office chart.
With two great star performances, and a great supporting cast, the film is sleek and looks great thanks to the brilliant cinematography of Michael Chapman. One of the smartest decisions director Kaufman made was hiring the incredible Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu. It was a bold choice and a choice that really paid off. Takemitsu composed unique scores for some classic Japanese films, including Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, The Face of Another, Double Suicide, and others. In 1970 he scored director Akira Kurosawa’s film, Dodes’ku-den, turning in a score of great warmth and melody that made Kurosawa’s beguiling film even more beguiling. His second score for Kurosawa, Ran, was a true masterpiece of film scoring, a symphonic work of tremendous power and beauty. Rising Sun would be his first and only American film scoring assignment.
Takemitsu wrote a very long score for the film, but in the end several incredible cues went unused and the music that was used was occasionally truncated and moved around. A CD release of the score did not present it in the best light, with a short running time and several pieces not by Takemitsu. The general impression was that Takemitsu’s score just wasn’t that interesting. We’re hoping that this first-ever complete CD release will change that view because hearing the score as Takemitsu wrote it is an entirely different experience – an addictive, mesmerizing neo-noir tone poem of exquisite orchestral color and sounds (including wonderful use of the Ondes Martinot), with a great main theme that weaves itself in and out of the score like wisps of smoke. It is a major rediscovery and one that would hopefully put the music’s reputation firmly where it belongs – as one of the best and most interesting scores of the 1990s. The previous CD release had only about twenty-six minutes of Takemitsu’s score. This release adds over forty minutes of score cues and the score is presented as it was meant to be heard in the film.
Rising Sun is limited to 1000 copies only and is priced at $19.98, plus shipping.
CDs are in stock and will ship the day after the announcement. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

01 Taiko Drum Opening (Performed by Seiichi Tanaka and the San Francisco Taiko Dojo)
02 Board Meeting
03 Drive to Connor’s Loft
04 Girl on Table
05 Web Meets Connor
06 Crime Scene
07 Body Examined
08 Arrival at Apartment
09 Checking out the Apartment
10 Driving
11 Eddie Revealed on Disc
12 Looking at the Disc
13 Chase
14 Golf Course
15 So Eddie Witnessed the Murder
16 Yakuza Pursuit
17 Car in Alley
18 Security Room
19 Web’s Confession
20 Eddie’s Alive
21 The Hall
22 Eddie’s Showdown
23 Mystery Figure Revealed
24 Senator Morton Gets Faxed
25 Interrogation
26 Nakamoto Steps
27 Cemented
28 Always Leave the Cage Door Open
29 Credits

Source Music
30 Don’t Fence Me In (Cole Porter)
31 Single Petal of a Rose (Duke Ellington)
32 Medley (Credits – short version)
33 Tsunami (Performed by Seiichi Tanaka and the San Francisco Taiko Dojo)

http://www.kritzerland.com/rising_sun.htm

http://www.moviemusic.com/soundtrack/M09059/rising-sun/

http://www.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/25910/

Koray Savas · September 23, 2013

Wow, never knew he did an American film. May have to pick this one up.

Romão · September 23, 2013

I have the original album and it is indeed short on Takemitsu's music (though I'm quite fond of the Taiko drums source cues). But the central of this score (or love theme, or whatever), is absolutely stunning, and was only featured in a couple of tracks of the original album. If this cd does contain indeed more variations of that theme and similar music, I'm game

scallenger · April 23, 2014

On FSM, user "haineshisway" (is that Bruce Kimmel?) posted this about RETURN TO OZ and another David Shire release coming from Kritzerland:

Return to Oz will always hold a special place in my heart - not only is it a brilliant score, it was the first Bay Cities soundtrack release and how I became friends with David. He was one of the greats (and still is) and how producers stopped using him is criminal.

But, never fear, Kritzerland is on the job - and a world premiere Shire is coming. Meanwhile, I have some copies of Return to Oz somewhere if anyone is interested.

WOW! I can't wait for the new release of RETURN TO OZ. And while the original album IS an awesome listening experience, I hope it gets expanded with at least some bonus tracks. There were still a few good bits missing. But even a remastered straight reissue would be worth getting.

This is one of my favorite scores of all time.

Marian Schedenig · April 23, 2014

Awesome news!

crocodile · April 23, 2014

Definitely looking forward to it. Shire is always worth investigating.

Karol

Jay · May 19, 2014

Kritzerland is proud to present a new world premiere limited edition release:
PATERNITY
Music Composed and Conducted by David Shire
Paternity was a 1981 Burt Reynolds comedy – back then he was at the apex of his popularity, and regularly split his focus between drama and comedy. In addition to Reynolds, first time director David Steinberg assembled a wonderful cast – Beverly D’Angelo, Lauren Hutton, Norman Fell, Paul Dooley, Elizabeth Ashley and Juanita Moore. The film’s poster and ad campaign were fun – a big image of Reynolds with the tag line, “He wants you to have his baby.” The film received middle-of-the-road reviews and did only decently at the box office. But as with so many films of that era, it found a new and appreciative audience on TV, cable and home video, with people discovering the film was charming, funny, and endearing. And one of the reasons for that is the wonderful score by David Shire.
By 1981, David Shire was likewise well-established and in-demand – as a composer for film and TV. He had already written several classic scores (including The Conversation, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Farewell, My Lovely, The Hindenburg, All the President’s Men, Norma Rae and others) and in 1980 he’d received his first two Academy Award nominations – both in the Best Song category –for The Promise and for Norma Rae (the latter of which took the prize).
In Paternity, Shire’s gift for melody is evident from the first notes of the main title, which introduces the film’s two main themes – “Love’s Gonna Find You” and “Baby Talk.” There are several variations of each throughout the film (in addition to some beautifully arranged source music cues), resulting in a score of great charm, beauty and fun.
With this CD we happily present the world premiere of the complete score. At the time of the film’s release, Shire prepared an album master that never saw the light of day. To that master, we’ve added the few cues he didn’t include (for time reasons, as usual in the days of LPs), plus some bonus tracks – all in beautifully recorded stereo.
Paternity is limited to 1000 copies only and is priced at $19.98, plus shipping.
CDs will ship by the last week of June, but we’ve been averaging three to five weeks early in terms of shipping ahead of the official ship date. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/paternity.htm

Kritzerland is proud to present a new world premiere limited edition release – two great scores on one CD:
NO DOWN PAYMENT and THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER
Music Composed and Conducted by Leigh Harline
The Twentieth Century Fox film No Down Payment takes a look at life in California suburbia circa 1957, both its surface and its underbelly. No Down Payment was Martin Ritt’s second movie directorial effort – he assembled a great cast, including Joanne Woodward, Sheree North, Tony Randall (in an atypical unsympathetic role), Jeffrey Hunter, Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Rush and Pat Hingle. The screenplay was credited to Philip Yordan, even though it was actually written by then-blacklisted writer Ben Maddow. The movie is a beautifully acted slice of post World War II drama, well directed by Ritt and wonderfully scored by composer Leigh Harline.
Beginning with a bustling main title filled with the promise of suburban living, it introduces us to the world of Sunrise Hills. But soon Harline begins introducing undercurrents into his score, undercurrents that will soon turn from idyllic to dramatic. It’s a superb score from a master composer who really understood the film medium.
Two years later, Fox released The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker. Directed by Fox regular Henry Levin and shot in Cinemascope by Milton Krasner, the film starred Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Charles Coburn, Jill St. John, Ron Ely, David Nelson, Larry Gates and Richard Deacon. Once again, Leigh Harline was the composer. For Pennypacker, Harline created a delightful and tuneful score, never pandering to the comedy and helping to give the film a dramatic underpinning. It’s a charming score and a Harline highlight from a career filled with wonderful scores, including
Pickup on South Street, Broken Lance, Black Widow, House of Bamboo, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, Good Morning, Miss Dove, The Bottom of the Bottle, 23 Paces to Baker Street, The Wayward Bus and many others.
This is the world premiere release of these two Harline scores. They have been restored from the original elements in the Fox vault and both are in that great Fox stereo. While every effort has been made to make this release as good as possible, there are a handful of cues with minor damage, but nothing that would warrant leaving them off the CD.
No Down Payment/The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker is limited to 1000 copies only and is priced at $19.98, plus shipping.
CDs will ship by the last week of June, but we’ve been averaging three to five weeks early in terms of shipping ahead of the official ship date. To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.

http://www.kritzerland.com/noDownPayt.htm

Label Threads The Official Kritzerland Release Thread.

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