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Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen-The Album
Release Date: 2009-06-23
Sales rank: 74
Original soundtrack to the highly anticipated 2009 summer blockbuster. If you thought the first Transformers film was mind-boggling, then prepare yourself for a film that will turn your world upside down! Features tracks from Linkin Park, Green Day, The Fray, Nickelback, Taking Back Sunday, Hoobastank, Cheap Trick and others. |
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Twilight: The Score
Release Date: 2008-12-09
Sales rank: 135
Composed, orchestrated and conducted by the award-winning Carter Burwell, the Twilight score is a must-have companion to the movie experience. Burwell is a renowned composer who is well known for his work on most Coen Brother films, including The Big Lebowski, Fargo, Burn After Reading, plus films including Being John Malkovich, Gods and Monsters, and more. |
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Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film (Amazon.com Exclusive)
Release Date: 2009-05-19
Sales rank: 729
Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film is an in-concert reworking of the musical legend’s historic 1968 gold-certified solo album. Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film was recorded live over two nights at the Hollywood Bowl in November 2008.
Van Morrison first released Astral Weeks when he was only 22. The recording immediately became a critically-acclaimed classic and is still considered one of the greatest albums of the rock era. The fall 2008 shows marked the first time Mr. Morrison ever performed Astral Weeks in one complete concert set. Joining him was an orchestral string section and a band composed of world-class musicians, some of whom played with Van on the original Astral Weeks sessions 40 years ago. During the first half, the artist performed a number of the timeless classics he is famous for while the second half was an awe-inspiring performance of the Astral Weeks album. Among the songs included on the concert DVD are: "Astral Weeks/I Believe I've Transcended", "Beside You", "Slim Slow Slider/ I Start Breaking Down", "Sweet Thing","The Way Young Lovers Do", "Cyprus Avenue / You Came Walking Down", "Ballerina", and "Madame George."
The Astral Weeks DVD also features special bonus songs, including a live version of “Gloria” and unprecedented behind-the-scenes footage as well as a candid conversation with the artist himself talking about the meaning behind Astral Weeks, his decision to revisit the pivotal project, and his impressions of the music business. "The Hollywood Bowl concerts gave me a welcome opportunity to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be", says Mr. Morrison, who amazingly held only one rehearsal prior to the concerts.
To rework Astral Weeks, Mr. Morrison added his signature stretching of songs in a manner unlike any before by creating new sections of songs live on stage.
Unbeknownst to Mr. Morrison at the time he planned the Hollywood Bowl shows, the concerts coincided exactly with the 40th anniversary of the release of Astral Weeks. He took it as a sign this project was destined to be. Astral Weeks broke new ground with its experimental free-flowing arrangements and deeply reflective songs. Mr. Morrison’s motivation to rework the music was to get back to his original signature sound: a blend of jazz, blues, classical and folk unique to Van Morrison.
“I believe I’ve transcended,” Van Morrison sings in an extended, in-the-moment riff towards the end of the title track from his recent live album, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Few would beg to differ, for over the course of this historic concert, Morrison seems to transcend age, time and whatever other affects turn some veteran performers into wan caricatures of their former selves better suited to halls of fame than halls of music. Now, for those who couldn’t be there to go “into the music” under that star-filled Los Angeles sky, Morrison has released a concert film—his first since 1990’s Van Morrison: The Concert—that documents the soulful evening measure for remarkable measure. “It was an alchemical kind of situation,” Morrison has said of the 1968 New York recording sessions that yielded the original Astral Weeks, which, although poorly promoted by Warner Brothers upon its release, now regularly places at the top of critic and reader surveys of the greatest albums of all time. Forty years later, a similar alchemy prevails as Morrison and another group of musicians—some old, some new—come together for Astral Weeks:The Concert Film. Never one to repeat himself or rest on his laurels, Morrison doesn’t merely perform his classic album from cover to cover. He re-imagines it from the ground up, from a reshuffled track list and new orchestrations to a dramatically expanded “Slim Slow Slider,” transformed from a plaintive, three-minute album closer into a wailing, heart-wrenching eight-minute centerpiece. Throughout, from the first pluckings of “Astral Weeks’”s pizzicato bass line to “Madame George’”s stirring invocation to “get on the train,” Morrison stands center stage, singing, grunting, speaking in tongues, strumming his guitar and blowing his harmonica with such passion and vigor that it really is as though he is playing these songs for the very first time. To be born again, indeed. “For me, it’s about going back to the source,” Morrison has said, and thanks to Astral Weeks: The Concert Film audiences can take that journey with him—back to the beginnings of an extraordinary five-decade solo career that has produced more than 30 albums, hundreds of songs and a worldwide popularity that continues to grow with each passing year. Thirty-five years after setting the gold standard for live recordings with the seminal It’s Too Late To Stop Now, with Astral Weeks: The Concert Film Van Morrison once again surpasses himself. --Scott Foundas |
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Rock Of Ages: Original Broadway Cast Recording
Release Date: 2009-07-07
Sales rank: 82
Rock Of Ages is a Tony nominated smash hit musical comedy currently running on Broadway and starring American Idol's Constantine Maroulis and Amy Spanger. In 1987 on the Sunset Strip, a small-town girl met a big-city dreamer - and in L.A.'s most legendary rock club, they fell in love to the greatest songs of the '80s. It's a hilarious feel-good love story told through the hit songs (including several medleys / live mash-ups) of iconic rockers Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Pat Benatar, Whitesnake, and many more. The album was mixed by Michael Barbiero (Appetite For Destruction, ...And Justice For All). |
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Slumdog Millionaire
Release Date: 2008-12-21
Sales rank: 197
In composing the music for acclaimed director Danny Boyle's intoxicating new film Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman has conjured the sound of a city, fusing the frenetic scramble of daily life in Mumbai, India into beautiful fugues that ride upon the dust clouds kicked up by its everyday people. From the movie's first frames --- with children racing through alleyways, knocking over merchants and pottery, police kicking loose clay roof tiles, disrupted birds fluttering from gutters -- we hear the sound of their commotion made manifest in "O... Saya." It's a rumbling hybrid of Bollywood and hip-hop, a brand new collaboration between Rahman and M.I.A. It's the kind of cinematic moment where image and sound coexist. And that's only the first five minutes. Filmed in the streets and slums of Mumbai, India, Boyle needed just the right music to compliment the film's cinema verité urban realism. He turned to internationally renowned composer A.R. Rahman (a huge star in South Asia--selling more than 100 million albums worldwide and 200 million cassettes--Rahman is one of the world's top 25 all-time top selling recording artists.) The film's score is central to the propulsive modern grit that pervades the story, but is also a nod to classic Bollywood productions where the music is front and center. And loud. Says Rahman, "We wanted it edgy, upfront. Danny wanted it loud." M.I.A.'s appreciation for Bollywood music led her to record much of last year's Kala inside A.R. Rahman's studio in India, although the two had never worked together until now. Referring to him in URB magazine as "the Indian Timbaland," M.I.A. obviously jumped at the chance to work on "O... Saya" with the famed composer. Rahman says, "She's a real powerhouse. Somebody played me her CD and I thought, `Who is this girl? She came here and knew all my work, had followed my work for ages. I said, `Cut the crap, this "my idol" crap. You have to teach me.'" M.I.A. crops up again, later in the film, with the remix of her worldwide hit "Paper Planes" seemingly made for Slumdog, as the lyrics pronounce, "Sometimes I feel like sitting on trains..." while a light blue locomotive chugs and hurls its way through India, young boys perched up top in the sepia sunlight scoping out for a scrap of food. Other songs on the soundtrack include "Gangsta Blues," featuring hip-hop artist BlaaZe, which flutters with the rhythms of a film projector, capturing a bit of the madness of crowds as they disperse in a thousand directions to escape the claustrophobia of back alleys. And nothing quite prepares you for the triumphant climax, the overarching ode to joy that is "Jai Ho," closing out the film in a rousing sing-a-long that's had film audiences burst into spontaneous applause. As Rahman told Variety, "The energy of the film takes you through a roller coaster, and that's one of the main inspirations for the whole music." |
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Jersey Boys (2005 Original Broadway Cast Recording)
Release Date: 2005-11-01
Sales rank: 50
Recounting the rich history and reliving the timeless sounds of the phenomenal Frankie Vallie & The 4 Seasons, the new Broadway musical Jersey Boys answers the musical-and philosophical question, "How did four would-be wise guys from Newark, NJ, become one of the greatest chart-topping successes in pop music history?" Jersey Boys celebrates legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi who, as the 4 seasons, wrote their own songs, invented their own identity, and sold 175 million records worldwide-all before they were 30. Although it squarely falls in the "jukebox musical" category, Jersey Boys doesn¹t try to integrate its songs in an artificial plotline. The show tells the story of the early-1960s group the Four Seasons, and the musical numbers tend to be introduced in context, as when songwriter Bob Gaudio comes up with a tune, or the quartet performs a show. This allows Jersey Boys to flow better than some of ill-fated peers, and the actors can shine without having to bend backward to accommodate an inane book. The show's most (only) daring move is to start with a hip-hop-tinged French-language version of "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)," an actual hit in France in 2000. After that it's all VH1-biopic territory, but it's done with so much flair, taste and energy that the ride's a fun one. The Four Seasons had enough hits ("Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Rag Doll," etc.) to easily fill an evening at the theater, so it's left to the cast to do right by them. And it does, particularly John Lloyd Young as the band¹s star lead, Frankie Valli. Young hits all the falsetto notes and brings real freshness to the part. His "Can¹t Take My Eyes Off You," a second-act peak, is signed, sealed and delivered with a star's acumen. --Elisabeth Vincentelli |
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Once: Music from the Motion Picture
Release Date: 2007-05-22
Sales rank: 151
Even those allergic to musicals may be won over by Once, a tender-hearted Irish romance with songs by Czech Republic–born Markéta Irglová and Frames frontman Glen Hansard. (The film's director, John Carney, actually used to play bass in the group.) The trick here is that Irglová and Hansard also play the leads; because their characters are shown busking, writing music, or rehearsing, the songs are smoothly integrated in the film. The overall acoustic mood won't surprise fans of the Frames--some tracks ("Say It to Me," "When Your Mind's Made Up") have even popped up on the band's albums, though the arrangements are more pared-down here, befitting the scruffy, street-musician setting. Being the lesser-known entity, Irglová feels like a revelation; she sounds a bit like a folkie Björk on "If You Want Me," and her song "The Hill" is downright heartbreaking. Irglová and Hansard had already made the 2006 album The Swell Seasontogether, so their collaboration here feels really organic--they sound particularly good together on the title track, for instance. Now that's the kind of magic you want from musicals. --Elisabeth Vincentelli |
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Star Trek
Release Date: 2009-05-05
Sales rank: 244
Original soundtrack to the highly anticipated 2009 motion picture. From producer/director J.J. Abrams (Lost, Mission: Impossible: III, and Fringe) comes a new vision of the greatest space adventure of all time, Star Trek, featuring a young, new crew venturing boldly where no one has gone before. Starring Chris Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Simon Pegg as Scotty, with Eric Bana, Winona Ryder and Leonard Nimoy. Michael Giacchino, who has served as J.J. Abrams' musical lieutenant on all his projects, follows the extraordinarily rich musical legacy of Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith, and James Horner, as he boards the Enterprise for her maiden voyage. |
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Music for the Motion Picture Into the Wild
Release Date: 2007-09-18
Sales rank: 177
track listing and sequence subject to changeTaking a break from his day job fronting rock heavyweight Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder immerses himself into the big-screen story of a young man who gives all his money to charity and hitchhikes to a new life--and his eventual death--in the wilds of Alaska. Prompted by the film's creator, Sean Penn, to contribute to the musical score, the Seattle musician tackled the entire project, playing every instrument on the soundtrack's nine original and two cover songs. Vedder contemplates the traveler "setting forth in the universe" in the opener "Setting Forth," then tracks in the remaining songs the realizations and disillusionments that follow. A wish comes true in banjo-plucked "No Ceiling" to "up and disappear," while affluence is questioned on the hard-rocking "Far Behind," with Vedder singing, "Empty pockets will/Allow a greater sense of wealth." No song in the album's first half exceeds two-and-a-half minutes, remedied by Vedder's pertinent five-minute stamp on the remake of Indio's "Hard Sun," complete with eerie backing vocals by Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker. The songwriter puts wealth on the hot seat in "Society," questioning, "If less is more/How you keepin' score?" The darkly sung folk song bookends the reticent declaration "Guaranteed," wonderfully delivered and quietly strummed, in which the prodigal Vedder wraps the journey in one line: "Leave it to me as I find a way to be/Consider me a satellite forever orbiting." (The record is packaged like a hardcover book, with vivid photography and lyrics.) --Scott Holter |
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Romeo + Juliet (10th Anniversary Edition)
Release Date: 2007-02-06
Sales rank: 15466
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