Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist (2005) If Charles Dickens were alive to see Roman Polanski's faithful adaptation of Oliver Twist, he'd probably give it his stamp of approval. David Lean's celebrated 1948 version of the Dickens classic and Carol Reed's Oscar®-winning 1968 musical are more entertaining in some ways, bu...	Emma: Music From The Miramax Motion Picture	Nicholas Nickleby	The Greatest Game Ever Played	Oliver! Film buffs and critics can argue until their faces turn blue about whether this lavish Dickensian musical deserved the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1968, but the movie speaks for itself on grandly entertaining terms. Adapted from Dickens's classic novel, it's one of the most...
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High Quality Music.
I love this album. If you've seen the movie, the soundtrack that goes with it (as well as the movie itself) is phenomenal. If you're like me, a John William's fan, you'll be able to follow the movie through with this soundtrack alone. It is that good. Listening to it on a quiet afternoon or on the airplane, wherever you may be, can totally take you to that place in London back in the 19th century. A lovely album. Must-buy.

A fantastic score
I love this score, and would recommend it to any fans of the recent adaptation of "Oliver Twist" or Rachel Portman. In this score, you are taken into the cruel workhouse, the English countryside and the twisting streets of London. There is not much else I can say about this CD - not just because it is so good that I want the reviewer to hear it for themselves, but because I do not do so well in reviewing CD's - and will simply recommend this CD to fans of the movie or Rachel Portman.

GREAT!
I found this movie absoloutly stunning. It was marvolous. so wonderful, i couldnt even get up to go to the bathroom! i can not even speak of how good it was! BRILLIANT! MAKE ANOTHER ONE! I WILL BUY SO MANY OF THEM! EVERYONE LOVES THEM, ALL OF MY FRIENDS.. WE ALL TLAK AOUT IT AT SCHOOL AND EVERYWHERE WE GO! THIS MOVIE IS THE BEST!!!!!!!!!

Good but somewhat repetitive
I think the soundtracks great, but the same melody seems to be carried out through almost all of the songs. It's great to listen to kind of in the background, but if you want to listen to something to actually LISTEN to it, it's not the most intruiging.

One of Rachel Portman's Best Works
Pay no heed to the reviewer below. Any references found to themes from The Godfather are entirely coincidental (there are MANY three-note themes that sound similar; doesn't mean a thing. . . I mean, it's three notes!!) and, in fact, you could point to Portman's music leaning a bit toward sounding like more like Wojciech Kilar than anyone else and that's quite understandable due to director Roman Polanski's affiliation with that composer for quite some time. What we have in Oliver Twist is pretty much the Rachel Portman we've always known, only now she's reached into unfimiliar territory for many of her listeners: dark, brooding themes and lots of minor key tonal centering. The score features a few notable themes, but only two are central to the score: Oliver's Theme and Fagin's Theme. Both of these themes are juxtaposed against one another effectively to create quite the wonderful English-sounding musical backdrop to Dickens' dark yet quirky character tale. Portman's sensibilities towards strings and winds remain as strong as they ever have been, only this time she relies much more on use of the double basses and lower wind instruments to create carefully brooding textures for the more gloomy sections of the score. Her rhythmic action motifs are repetitive but effective and the simpler portions of the score are exquisitely well done and precisely orchestrated. Overall, this is one of the biggest film score surprises of the year and I heartily recommend it to all Portman fans and especially to film music fans who have been disappointed in the 2005 film score year on the whole. This is a score to be long remembered and one to which Dickens himself would, I believe, give his approval.