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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Truly Effective Score - For Film And For Fans, 5 Aug 2003
Film score composers of the past had only to worry about one thing - whether their scores support the movie effectively. Today, their job has been made complicated by the fact that there are film score enthusiasts round the world collecting film scores (even of movies they've never seen before) so they also have to make sure their scores are listenable on their own.I've never read the novels of Frank Herbert's Dune before, and neither have I watched any of the film adaptations, including this one - Children Of Dune. I have, however, played the computer game before, and through that and other sources I sort of knew a bit about what Dune is about and how the atmosphere of the stories would be like, and I think 2003's most striking newcomer Brian Tyler has composed an effective score for the Children Of Dune mini-series, thus fulfilling his primary task. Though a sci-fi fantasy, it is unique in that its background setting are deserts (hence Dune, hence Arrakis the desert planet), and as such this score is unique and much of the score is "desert music", or more accurately, Middle-Eastern or North African type of music where drums and vocals are used. Having never seen the mini-series before, I keep getting a mental picture of a lonely man walking across a vast desert. There are a couple of main themes; the first one is a heroic theme and starts off with "Summon The Worms" and later reprised at "The Jihad". The same theme appears in a more melancholic form in tracks such as "Dune Messiah". Another theme is most notably represented by "Inama Nushif", described by many as another Now We Are Free from Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard's Gladiator. In fact, you will find that the score resembles the North African part of the Gladiator score, when instruments such as the duduk is used. Most of the score is slow, with mellow vocals accompanied by strings or bass underscores. But occasionally things are enlivened a bit when percussions take over and become the main component (such as "My Skin Is Not My Own", my personal favourite) or the reprisal of the heroic main theme. As you would have deduced by now, in general the album is comprised of a lot of Arabic percussion and humming vocals with some strings (sometimes rapid, sometimes slow) and woodwind, creating a very exotic (even ethnic) feel to the score. Being someone who likes to listen to ethnically different scores (anything that doesn't sound Western) and also having collected dozens of scores, I can honestly say that Brian Tyler also accomplished his second task - to make a film score enjoyable to fans. So much that I eagerly await the release of the Children Of Dune DVD - even though I never did liked fantasy stories. Interestingly, you might hear bits of other scores lurking among the tracks. For example, a bit of Klaus Badelt's The Time Machine appeared for a moment in "The Arrival Of Lady Jessica", while the downhill underscore in James Horner's Titanic was heard in "I Have Only Now" and "Trap The Worm". It's not really annoying - just amusing. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional.
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~ Graeme Revell
~ Michael Giacchino
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DVD ~ Ian McNeice
~ Judith Farmer
~ Toto
