Wav to Music Score

Christine, based on Stephen King's novel about an unusual kind of car repossession, was taken by John Carpenter from book to screen in a blazingly short time. Rather than bypassing his usual methods, as he did with The Thing, Carpenter once again chose to do the score. The original soundtrack released from the movie was a brief affair indeed, offering up a small selection of rock & roll tunes used in the movie, plus a short selection ("Christine Attacks," here with the subtitle "Plymouth Fury") from Carpenter's score. As it is, this Tangerine Dream-influenced, mechanically pounding number is probably the best thing in the score, highly visual, threatening, and relentless. As with the best of Carpenter's work, it's enough to haunt your dreams for a few days – a property shared by the scores for Halloween and The Fog (both on Varese Sarabande).

Reynold da Silva's Silva Screen Records has been constructing a series of "essential" collections of major film composers' scores usually by making new recordings of portions of those scores or compiling recordings previously made for other projects, most often employing the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. For this Michel Legrand album, the label has actually enlisted Legrand as conductor of the Flemish Radio Orchestra (whose contributions are not noted until you examine the CD booklet), with a few additional jazz musicians, plus Legrand himself on piano and (during the extended suite from The Go-Between) harpsichord. Still, these are new recordings, made in December 2004, and should not be confused with actual soundtrack recordings. Legrand oversees excerpts from some of his most popular scores, leaning heavily on the major themes, such as "I Will Wait for You" from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, "Theme from Summer of '42," and "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair.