Next to THE ROCKETEER this wonderful score is on top of my whish list of expanded Horner scores. Like COCOON it combines catchy swing cues with delicate emotional cues. I`ve never seen the movie but there has to be more score. The 1990 Varese CD only features 4 Horner cues.
4 cues only but fairly long... I have seen the movie perhaps 15 years ago, but considering it's mostly dialogue based drama, it isn't scored wall to wall.
Just the score in the film, about 75 to 78 minutes. About 49 minutes of score on the Hollywood Records release (that's minus the two songs). The film is a 108 minutes, so it's practically wall-to-wall.
Add to that any un-used score, alternates, and hopefully the fantastic trailer music by Christopher Page (as pointed out in another thread here), and you're looking at a 2CD set. But I suspect there's a good deal or un-used/alternate material with the inordinate number of orchestrators (they're not all listed on IMDb; see the CD liner notes); that's just not something Horner normally does and it suggests to me problems like, perhaps: edits that necessitated changes in score, late in the game; new scenes added late; cues requested to be re-written, bring forth a quick turn-around period needing more orchestrators; and anything else I didn't think of.
On of the less.. prominent Horner scores, but that doesn't mean it's less enjoyable. As a matter of fact, I think the score benefits from a smaller scale of the film. With scores like this, Searching For Bobby Fisher and The Spitfire Grill for example, I think Horner was able to write more natural scores.
It's not Bobby Fischer good, that's for sure. Kinda forgettable aside from the big band track, really.
I agree that Bobby is a really good Horner score, somewhat spare and stripped out of the usual orchestral pomp that Horner loves. But a really excellent score throughout, melodic, good musical color, and some interesting work building a musical tempo up slowly in the tracks. Beyond that, it also serves the movie itself very nicely. It shows the skills of Horner.
The rest of Once Around reminds me of Horner's score to Dad, in that those are the only two Horner scores where I can't remember anything about them at all. Listening to it now, it's perfectly pleasant. Almost Land Before Time in a way. Man, even his weaker orchestral scores from back then have so much feeling in them, whereas now they're just paint-by-numbers blahfests. A shame. Here:
Not much of a memorable score but it's nice and gentle. It does't play as much of a role as his music for Dad the year before (and that's a score I still can't decide on). Once Around is a great movie though, one of my favorites, no matter how the music was used. There was more focus on Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon than any other accompaniment.
It would be cool to get an expansion, but I'd rather get one of his unreleased scores like I Love You to Death. Haven't seen the movie but I'm told the music is pretty good!
I`ve always wondered how the working relationship was between director Lasse Hallström and composer James Horner. They did not work again after this. Actually this is Hallström`s first Hollywood movie and his second was scored by Swedish composer Björn Isfält (and Alan Parker) so that makes me wonder if not the choice of Horner to this one might have been the producer(s) choice and not Hallström himself. Hallström has done films with Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, Rachel Portman, Christopher Young and Deborah Lurie. Actually he have made more than one films each with those composers but only one with Horner.
