| The Kid Stays in the Picture |
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Composed by Jeff Danna [Official Site] |
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Orchestrated by Andrew Lockington Produced by Jeff Danna, Emmanuel Chamboredon, Ian Hierons, and Keith Walner Release Date: 2002 |
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The Kid Stays in the Picture is a documentary film about the life of one Robert Evans. This is a name I'm sure not many people my age in today's world would be familiar with. Given the list of influential films that he has been attached to however, this would seem to be an interesting film to check out one day, though given that I don't exactly live in an epitome of artistic expression, I guess I'll have to wait until it's video release. However, the very nature of this film makes for an interesting soundtrack release. Being a documentary, especially about the life of a Hollywood figure, composer Jeff Danna scores the film around a myriad of references and actual musical pieces. It would seem to be quite a task to meld the seemingly unwieldy collection together along with providing original music that fits into the whole scheme, but Danna manages to accomplish it quite well. The first thing that Danna gets right with this project is that he doesn't simply blend in his music with everything else. At the same time, he doesn't try to compete with cues from such composers as Michel Legrand and Irving Berlin. Even though the only original tracks on the CD comprise little more than half of the total cues, he still attempts to provide thematic cohesion amongst the different moods and attitudes between tracks. Given that there are no major abrupt style shifts between tracks, this accomplishment is made all that more interesting. Of course, some of these cues are quite old, and thus the sound quality is noticeably different, but the music lends itself to helping forget that shortcoming. Danna's themes are rather short and aren't played around with anymore than simply adapting them to fit the ever changing mood of the score (which moves from light-bouncy, to darker by the end), but he works them out well for the limited time that he has. There are no big orchestral moments to be had among the original cues, but the ensemble-sounding performances are quite adequate. This is an enjoyable score, and Danna has done a great job with such a difficult project, but at the same time, it's hard to recommend this type of CD to anyone who has not sampled it or at least seen the film. So do both. ***1/2 |
| Track Listing - Total Running Time: 68:58 | |
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