Alice in Wonderland

Much has been written over the years about the creative partnership between director Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman. It now stretches back 25 years and encompasses such successful and well regarded films as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as the animated classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. Despite it having been repeated ad nauseum to the point that it's almost a cliché, theirs is one of the most enduring and fruitful composer/director collaborations in cinema today; the two men complement each other intellectually and stylistically, and clearly Burton's visual style brings out the best in Elfman's music. Alice in Wonderland is a prime example of this.

Burton's take on the classic Lewis Carroll tale is an unusual one; he has explicitly stated that it is not a sequel, or a remake, or even a proper re-imagining, but instead...Read more

Another midnight download and well worth it, for me Danny Elfman is at his best when he's scoring for fantasy and the score for Alice showcases this to perfection.

What struck me immediately about Elfman's work here is the clarity of direction. I mean the atmosphere is so spot on which is exactly what I was hoping for. There is a such a strong narrative quality to the music that you can visualize where each piece would fit in the movie.

I will say that the Alice score is extremely centric. Alice's theme is the force that drives the entire score and it shows up everywhere but thankfully Elfman uses the theme skillfully so that it never becomes monotonous. Another interesting aspect of the album is that there is minimal pauses between cues so that each piece sort of fades into the next without jarring stops. I can't really think of another composer who could of created a world so absolutely in tune with what I imagine when I think of Alice in Wonderland...Read more

With Tim Burton directing, it was always a given that Danny Elfman would be scoring the film, and he seizes the opportunity to write a large-scale and surprisingly classical fantasy adventure score. In many ways, the music is a culmination of everything Elfman has done over the past decades: the intricate rhythms of Charlie, the percussive force of Apes, the gothic grandeur of Batman, choral work similar to Edward and lyrics that recall Serenade Schizophrana.

Elfman is able to weave these elements together into a cohesive and extremely enjoyable whole, anchored by a terrific theme. "Alice's Theme" is far and away the highlight of the album, woven deeply into every track and reprised in multiple variations, many of which went modified or unused in the final cut. As such, the album is almost like a concert suite, expertly arranged to be cohesive and listenable. Any Elfman fan, film score fan, or enthusiast of bold orchestral music owes it to themselves to give this a spin...Read more