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Amazon has clips for the score already and they are slightly different from the ones in Sony’s site:
Lovely.
You can’t tell much from such brief snippets, but I think The Fall Montage will be my favorite. Can’t wait for this album!
Now, the film, that’s another matter…
Amazon.com seems to enjoy it:
For this live-action adaptation of E.B. White’s beloved bestseller, Danny Elfman has written his loveliest score in ages. There’s no trace of the sardonic, manic pulse that beats beneath so much of his work: here, he proves he can do sweet without doing saccharine. The breezy orchestrations and low-key themes combine to make the score stand out in the kids’ genre, and it’s one many movies for grownups wouldn’t sneeze at either. As such, it’s closer to Joe Hisaishi’s pastoral compositions for the Hayao Miyazaki anime masterpiece My Neighbor Totoro and to Nigel Westlake’s music for Babe than to your average overblown kiddie blockbuster. Yes, there’s the obligatory ballad–in this case “Ordinary Miracle,” cowritten by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and performed by Sarah McLachlan–but it’s rather subtle. Call us sentimental, but we even prefer the less-high-profile vocal track on this CD: Dakota Fanning’s plaintive “Lullaby” in “Lullaby/Escape.”
It seems to me that the filmmakers didn’t realize they’d be outdone by the score to their own movie — speculation, of course. Hell, I’ll try to see it with some friends who’d appreciate it.
Wow, the sweet stuff is truly Elfman’s bread and butter… if you don’t mind me mixing my metaphors. No one quite writes music like this. Lovely stuff.
So I’m listening to the score since yesterday and I must say that it sounds like the weakest Elfman’s effort in years. Yes, it’s all sweet and nice but also very (too) professional. The themes are pretty redundant if you have listen to his scores since 2002 (although the main theme is quite good, something between Victor’s Theme and Factory/Improv for Alto Sax). It’s quite obvious that Elfman didn’t try anything on this film. While I’m sure that the score will work very well within the film (and therefore gain in interest on album), there aren’t great moments enough to keep you alert during the 45 minutes it lasts. “In the Mud” or “The Plan Begins” do what they can to wake you up but there are lost into too many bucolic strings.
I must disagree with John Mullin (on the FSM board), I put this score way below Big Fish, one of Elfman’s most brilliant score considering the challenge it represented. It might sound a little mean but Charlotte’s Web looks like a compilation of Big Fish’s leftovers to me.Thank God the Serenada has been released this year, 2006 would have been quite a poor Elfman year.
So, nothing terrible but certainly not a score I’ll listen for months (even for days).
Of course, this is only my opinion and I’m sure many will like this one !
I’ve been lucky enough to have this score since last Spring, and let me tell you, it grows on you and gets better every day. It’s totally cute, lovely and a pleasure. I love the rural elements mixed with the sentimentality of BLACK BEAUTY. I believe it’s Elfman’s richest, most emotionally pure score in some time. While I’ve loved everything he’s done, CHARLOTTE’S is for me satisfying and touching.
Ryan
Well, I somewhat see what you’re saying in that CHARLOTTE only has a few big themes that it uses again and again. That, however, is the main thing that I really love about it… I find the two key themes (Charlotte’s and Templeton’s) hypnotic and think this score is a long awaited return to one of the things Elfman is best at: theme and varriation. Through the whole album, he’s weaving them in and out of the movie, and the payoff by the end of the album is extrodinary. I challenge anyone not to be weepy during the first few minutes of Wilbur’s Homecoming – it’s quite original and one of the best examples of extended writing that he’s done.
My issue with BIG FISH is that although there are individual cues that I really like (Underwater / Sandra’s Theme, The Growing Montage, etc,) by and large the score CD just isn’t a satisfying listen to me. Jenny’s theme shows up often through the score, but despite some clever uses of it here and there, the whole thing doesn’t stick together in any cohesive way for me. The “main titles” melody never really did much for me either. I think this may have been corrected by a score release lengthier than 39 minutes, but I guess we have no way of knowing the answer to that.
Getting back to CHARLOTTE, though… while I certainly agree that there are more stand-out cues in BIG FISH, this new one really works as a whole much better for me. I agree with Ryan’s statment that it just gets sweeter every day. The first time through, I thought it was pleaseant but nothing special, but as time went on I found myself really thinking about the themes and loving what Elfman pulled off with this one. I’d easily rank it among the best scores he’s written.
Just for frame of refernce, these are the scores I’d generally put on the top teer of his output (in no particular order):
BATMAN RETURNS
BLACK BEAUTY
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
THE FAMILY MAN
HULK
SPIDER-MAN 2
and now CHARLOTTE’S WEBCHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY and RED DRAGON are up there for me too.
I’ll give the score other chances, of course (it’s Danny, you know !).
I know that Elfman’s method is all about variations on one or two main themes (with some real achievements : Spider-Man or Corpse Bride) but in this one, I really feel like the orchestration is repeating itself over and over again. It might be that this is not my favorite type of orchestration; as an instance, I absolutely recognize Black Beauty’s amazing qualities but the score never actually moved me due to the traditional sound of it.
And Elfman’s approach for Charlotte’s Web is close to the one he adopted for the Caroline Thompson movie. So, maybe it’s just a matter of taste.About Big Fish…well, just think of the complete opposite of what you wrote and you have my point of view !
Except for the length of the album of course.Anyway, even if I doubt that the score will become one of my favorites in a near future, it’ll certainly grow on me. I hope I’ll end up finding what you hear in it.
iTunes has two bonus score cues: “Fun Suite” and “Zuckerman’s Speech” if you download the album there.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=206337692&s=143441
Ryan
Got mine Saturday. Listened to it a few times all the way through. It doesn’t sound different enough from Corpse Bride to me (not that I didn’t like Corpse Bride). I wonder if Elfman wasn’t “done” with that style yet, and wanted to do more with it in Web. It’s certainly a very sweet score. “The Plan Begins” cue particularly stuck out for me.
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