Universal: The Ultimate Movie Album

This pricey UK import CD filled a lot of gaps in my music collection and is an excellent overview of notable music of (mostly) recent films. It's difficult to find consistently listenable soundtrack collections like this, by that I mean free from the obligitory Whitney Houston or Celine Dion embarrassments. Usually rights issues prevent comprehensive compilations like this in the US, too. While I enjoy a lot of soundtrack music, there aren't so many complete soundtracks that I would care to own, some examples of exceptions being Ennio Morricone scores and the About a Boy Soundtrack. While certainly most of these tracks are the actual recordings used in their respective films, I noticed that "La mamma morte" from Philadelphia is not the Maria Callas version. There might be other cases like this, I'm not sure. And "Unchained Melody" from Ghost is an orchestral version, not the pop song (but I consider this a plus). This collection seems to focus on the subtle and quirky, yet melodic...Read more

The album production is flawless; however, I believe it's scope should have been reduced in favor of presenting longer excerpts of the sound tracks. Listening to these short pieces is like listening to movie trailers.