Tora! Tora! Tora! (Limited Edition CD Soundtrack)
Sound:
B Music: B
The FSM
label of Film Score Monthly Magazine has issued a 3,000-only pressing of Jerry
Goldsmith’s soundtrack for Richard Fleischer’s co-directed War epic Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970, with Japanese
filmmakers better explained in the booklet).
The film has been out on DVD for a while and was out on the 12”
LaserDisc format when that was the top video format. I have heard the film in both formats and can
tell you that this PCM 2.0 Stereo CD offers music detail no video version to
date has offered.
Goldsmith,
one of the greatest of all film composers, delivers a multi-faceted score that
still holds its dramatic, military flavor.
His usual experimentation is here, if not as wildly so as other scores
during his brilliant career, but it keeps a level of intensity a film like this
needs, telling two sides of the same story.
There is major use (if any) of electronic instrumentation. This feels warmer and fuller than the current
presentations on video, with nuance coming to mind as the other reason to hear
the score this way. The source has
hardly any distortion and might be what Fox should go back to when they get to
a DTS and/or D-VHS digital High Definition edition of the film.
Besides
another fine FSM booklet, seven bonus tracks accompany the main score’s 14
tracks, making it a fine CD set.
However, like all the FSM CDs, it has been limited to only 3,000
pressings, so go to www.filmscoremonthly.com
for more details and on how to order. As
for the rest of the film, we’ll wait until a new DVD and/or HD version is
issued to comment further.
- Nicholas Sheffo
