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In the late 50s early 60s, I saw three epics on the telly that left a life long impression; "The Egyptian" "Helen Of Troy" & "Land Of The Pharaohs" - I suppose becouse the setting was so different from West London! You mean you don't have pyramids in West London? Shameful! But we had the Marquee Club, where I saw Cream & Jimi Hendrix - Oh God! .....that was so long ago.
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Posted: |
Jan 5, 2008 - 9:25 PM
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By: |
MMM
(Member)
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"You know...anyone who complains what these releases cost to buy should see what it costs to make them." Amen to that. If there was a marketplace of 10,000 or more customers for film music CDs, then labels could charge a little less knowing they'd be able to break even or (gasp!) make a little profit on them, but when you have a market ceiling of just a very few thousand customers (if all goes your way), charging less money could almost guarantee you'd be taking a loss on the release. If FSM or another label chose this route, you'd see them all getting out of the business virtually overnight, because there simply wouldn't be a way to make back their costs. This is a niche market, and the quantity sold affects both the cost of production and the price of the item. Boy, could we get great printing and pressing discounts if we had 50,000 booklets printed and 50,000 CDs pressed rather than just a few thousand.
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Posted: |
Jan 6, 2008 - 1:09 AM
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By: |
shicorp
(Member)
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If FSM or another label chose this route, you'd see them all getting out of the business virtually overnight, because there simply wouldn't be a way to make back their costs. This is a niche market, and the quantity sold affects both the cost of production and the price of the item. Boy, could we get great printing and pressing discounts if we had 50,000 booklets printed and 50,000 CDs pressed rather than just a few thousand. It's pretty annoying to see how much love and care goes into these film score re-issues, which - as you said - have only a limited public and therefore only make minimum profit, while virtually nobody seems to puts any effort into mass market product, which brings adequate revenues. We should be thankful to no end to those people who spend their leisure time for us film score collectors...
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Posted: |
Jan 6, 2008 - 8:07 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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You never mentioned LAND OF THE PHARAOHS before? Why the sudden interest? Let's see, so you can bring up the topic that you want any other recording that suits you besides this one. I like Tiomkin and I won't rule out that I will get this score some day, when finances, space and will allow. For that, it's important to get an overview of which releases are out there. If there is no sufficient alternative to this FSM release, then I'd go for that. If there was, however (that would be closer to my listening preference), then I'd go for that. This is information that the FSM advert usually contains, so I don't have to ask. This time, there wasn't. Is that so hard to understand? Why do you care about my motivation to post in this thread anyway? What is it to you?
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There were at least three bootlegs of Land of the Pharaohs in circulation. To be fair, these are allegedly legal in Europe due to different copyright laws, but they were obviously produced by someone ripping off the tracks whose opinion of mastering is that it is an Enhanced Interrogation Technique. There is more to producing a soundtrack master than just lining up the cues in show order. In the case of Pharaohs there was a fair amount of unused music and a great number of overlays (for example in the Pharaoh's Procession and Sudanese Dance cues). Mr. Bootleg Guy has to take his best guess (if that). I, on the other hand, proudly endured the mildewed smell of 50-year-old paperwork and scores that are archived at Warner Bros., in the Warner Bros. Archives at USC, and in the Dimitri Tiomkin Collection at USC. That is the only way to find out the take choices that Tiomkin and his colleagues intended, and to place properly the unheard music. Also wisely stored at Warner Bros. is the timing notes that Tiomkin himself used to compose the music, with breakdowns to a third of a second. That lets us tell you, in the liner notes, what all the unreleased music was recorded for. I am very grateful to the staff and curators of these institutions (and in the case of WB, a functioning music clearance office constantly working on present-day movies, TV shows and new media) for being totally awesome in digging up all the paperwork that I psychotically request (and re-request when I missed something the first time). So I don't think people here need much convincing, but you get a lot more than peace of mind when you buy the official CD and not the boot. Thanks, everyone, for your warm reception of this project. Lukas As a collector who happens to have all three of these aforementioned bootleg releases, I can say I am still avidly looking forward to this legitimate one. Lukas has had access to the records at Warner Brothers, which as he pointed out, have the exact timings of each piece of each cue, of immeasurable value, especially since it's a Tiomkin score. Tiomkin was fond of improvising at the podium during recording sessions, tweaking various components of the orchestra, to achieve exactly what he wanted. Interestingly, the one cue which none of the three boots is able to reproduce is the one cue I was looking forward to most: the pyramid building sequence. Each bootleg has some of the component parts of this undertaking, but none of them has it all put together. Some of the cues, such as an a capella male choral piece, are interesting in their own right, but not one of these releases has the whole piece in a shape even remotely resembling the sequence as heard in the film. There are also a lot of other extended cues, not heard in the film, for sequences which must have been longer as originally conceived. Lukas is bending over backwards to make allowances for these bootlegs. Frankly, all three of them were released during the 90's, a period when this music was most decidedly NOT in the public domain. In fact, for those of you who are interested, I acquired all three of them from our own Screen Archives Entertainment, which handled such things back then. Shows you how far we've all come since then... Kudos to everyone involved with this release. The great epic scores of the 50's had only spotty releases of their music scores at the time. You were lucky if you could find a recording of the "love theme" on some kind of anthology, many of which I still have. LAND OF THE PHARAOHS is an incredible score, and I am so glad it has finally been released in the form it truly deserves. Enjoy!
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Hello again, SHICORP -- Can YOU tell ME about this Hitchcock compilation? In the meantime, the CD I mentioned was copyright 2000, made in Italy, published by S.I.A.E., on the Hitland label, catalog# HG 004. Its title is either "HOLLYWOOD GREATS" or "GREETINGS FROM HOLLYWOOD," depending on which part of the packaging you're looking at. ("GREETINGS FROM HOLLYWOOD" is on the spine.) Tiomkin tracks are HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, LAND OF THE PHARAOHS, HIGH NOON and DUEL IN THE SUN. The rest are vocals by Jolson, Bing, Dan Dailey, Dooley Wilson et al. Oh yes, on the label it says: Distributed by Hitland sri Via Mecenate, 78/A-20138 Milano Italy Tel.+39 02 58014131 R.A. FAX.+39 02 58014290-58011246
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In common with the majority of Warner Bros Region 1 back catalogue DVD titles, LAND OF THE PHARAOHS is encoded to play on region 1, 2 and 4 players. Unfortunately my query was in relation to the sub-thread on the forthcoming El Cid release. In answer to the other person who queried whether I have a multi-region DVD player, yes I do. However, I hate to mention this, but I believe that Region 2 DVDs are higher resolution that Region 1 DVDs since PAL encoded DVDs have more lines than their NTSC counterparts. Recently I've bought the new special editions of Sandpebbles and Von Ryan's Express (as region 1 since region 2 versions don't exist). Both are very nice but I can see the slight grain due to the NTSC->PAL conversion. I would just prefer Region 2 if I can get it. So I repeat my question, does anyone know if there's to be a Region 2 of the Miriam Collection (which includes El Cid). I've browsed around the internet but found nothing to imply other than a region 1 only release.
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... my query was in relation to the sub-thread on the forthcoming El Cid release. So I repeat my question, does anyone know if there's to be a Region 2 of the Miriam Collection (which includes El Cid). I've browsed around the internet but found nothing to imply other than a region 1 only release. The Weinstein Corporation, which is releasing EL CID on the Miriam label, only have the distribution rights for North America, so there will be no corresponding region 2 release.
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Thanks, Shicorp, I do indeed have the Hitch but somehow with all those riches hadn't noticed the Tiomkin LP connection. Happy days! PJ
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