Saturday, November 04, 2006

It is time to get geeky: The Ten Commandments.

Not the classic one with "So it is written, so it shall be done," but the recent TV version from the folks who used to be called Hallmark Entertainment (and who used to be reliable, but after Dinotopia... well), with Sayid from Lost, Salman Rushdie's missus, Sydney Bristow's sister and Omar Sharif. Since we haven't had any Bank Holidays for a while it hasn't turned up on British TV yet, but it's only a matter of time before it arrives on Sky One or Hallmark or whatever.
But Randy Edelman's music turned up a lot sooner, on Varese Sarabande, and it's... lacklustre. Hallmark (okay, RHI) projects generally have fine music (Anne Dudley's The 10th Kingdom, Michael Convertino's Snow White, Trevor Jones' Gulliver's Travels and Dinotopia, etc) and Biblical tales are traditionally a gift for composers - The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Prince of Egypt, The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth... even Bugtime Adventures has a catchy theme song. Plus Elmer Bernstein's music for The Ten Commandments is so stirring that anything done since then for the story of Moses can't really be expected to automatically be on the same level.
Be that as it may, it's still unmemorable. Maybe Edelman's brief was to keep from going for the epic approach, but other than a solo violin theme (heard best in the last track) in that respect it's not exactly The Passion of the Christ. I'll give it another listen and maybe update this entry, but Edelman's done far better for TV, let alone film. As Ashley Tisdale would say, not Jessica Alba-tastic.
1. The Ten Commandments, Main Title (1:59)
2. Desert Passage (3:59)
3. The Greatest Sorrow (1:09)
4. Return To Egypt (1:54)
5. Moses Starts A New Life (2:18)
6. Chosen Ones (1:19)
7. The Burning Bush (3:27)
8. Lost And Found (1:19)
9. Call To War At The Red Sea (2:22)
10. Destruction Of The Calf (1:41)
11. Purification (:59)
12. Palace Farewell (2:27)
13. Becoming A Family (2:33)
14. A Bond That Never Breaks (2:19)
15. The Secret Prince Is Born (2:12)
16. No Miracles Today (1:58)
17. Nothing Stays The Same (2:31)
18. Passover (2:21)
19. Murder And Escape (2:01)
20. The Promised Land (1:38)
21. Trouble In The Old City (2:04)
22. Ascending The Heights (1:40)
23. In Front Of The Pyramids (1:28)
24. A True Gift (Shaya) (1:44)

1 comment:

Cindylover1969 said...

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either...