Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

It's a good month for film score collectors. Not only will John Williams's score CD for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones arrive in stores on April 23, but one week earlier two of what have been the most eagerly sought-after scores of recent memory arrive. They are Alan Silvestri's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Bruce Broughton's The Rescuers Down Under. Wonderful news, on all three releases. I have already heard enough positive buzz on the new Star Wars score that I am almost as excited about it as I am the film itself.

Also, there is a new column on film music on AICN, written by Dan Goldwasser (the gent behind Soundtrack.net). This is to be a biweekly feature, although in the past regular features on AICN have turned out to not be so regular.

Finally, I have been listening to Miklos Rozsa's remarkable score to King of Kings for a little more than a week now (since it was delivered two days before Easter, a feat of timing that had me wondering if Divinity was involved). I'm not the biggest fan of those large-scale Biblical epics of the 50s and 60s, but they sported some of the most amazing film music ever created -- witness Ben Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and even The Ten Commandments (far from my favorite film). Rozsa was a towering genius, quite possibly the greatest composer of film music of all time, and King of Kings is first-rate Rozsa.