Andy Dursin


Debel (my hero) found this at filmscoremonthly.com
Sony Classical's THE MASK OF ZORRO makes for an ideal soundtrack album, running 74:40, as seemingly all of James Horner's recent film scores have on CD. Again, this is a gorgeous work, and only the staunchest of film-music plagiarism curmudgeons are going to carp about such-and-such passage of ALIENS being rehashed here and there (ok, and maybe Khan's theme is there, too, but I could really care less about this exhausted-beyond-belief debate). One intriguing note about the film's song, "I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You"--there's a beautiful orchestral introduction to the song in the movie print, and there seemed to be more prominent strings in the film version mix as well. The album's version is pretty much identical after that intro, where a more commercial "pop" opening is included, obviously to appeal to radio listeners and station managers. Jim Steinman, he of Meatloaf "Bat Out of Hell" fame, produced the ballad, and it's a terrific tune (if nothing else, at least we've finally arrived at a point where a lot of movie songs are now love themes originating from the actual orchestral scores. Beats the old "drag in Giorgio Moroder to pen the pop single" mentality). But it's Horner's score that listeners should eat up, and it's one of his best.

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