Taken from Soundtrackmag.com:

MEGA MOVIES, TELARC RECORDS latest CD of film Music featuring Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops.

Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops return to soundtracks in a big way with "Mega Movies." Due in stores on May 30, this new release combines the appeal of Hollywood's biggest action adventure movies with spectacular sound effects.

Mega Movies features Godzilla's ear-splitting roar, a simulated bee attack made with six mics (for music from THE X-FILES), the UCLA Fencing Club in action from THE MASK OF ZORRO), the excruciating sound of a ship being cut open (to recreate the TITANIC'S moment of impact), and more. The liner notes include a sound effects text written by Telarc's SFX wizard, Michael Bishop the man behind the bees, the swordfights, and the icebergs. Over the years, his sound effects, included on many Cincinnati Pops recordings, have given a special character to those CDs, delighting listeners with their realism.

This latest CD features music from THE MUMMY, THE MASK OF ZORRO, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE ROCK. CONTACT, AIR FORCE ONE, STAR WARS: PHANTOM MENACE, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, THE PRINCE OF EGYPT THE X-FILES, A BUG'S LIFE, ELIZABETH, GODZILLA, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, TITANIC, and ARMAGEDDON.

Either way, there are several performances on the Symphonic Star Trek disc that are cool, most noteably the Star Trek: Voyager theme... cool arrangement. The "fluff" is easy enough to skip past.

=D Jeron

BTW, the "War of the Worlds" track is on "Fantastic Journey" which also features such treasures as "The Exlporeres," "The Last Starfighter," "The Beastmaster and Black Hole," as well as a phenominal "Batman" suite which dominates a multitude of tracks and does great justice to Elfman's score. It's an over-all great disc and is one of his nicer ones. Also the fourth instalment in his sci-fi series, the first three being Star Tracks I & II and Time Warp.

I've been following his career since I was in middle school and I found that Kunzel's works to be the best as far as compilation CD's go. Telarc does a great job at creating clear sound using all digital sources. Many of the tracks come out nicer than the original version, and that's VERY hard to do.

The sound effects aren't THAT bad..remember the great Warp Drive effects on Star Tracks II, as well as Nimoy's classic Dialogue in the "Star Trek II" suite? I found that quite moving.

This new one sounds great. I really love Kunzel's CDs. My two favorites are probably Chiller (poor film selection but fabulous performances of Danse Macabre and Night on Bald Mountain) and Beautiful Hollywood.

I will go as far to say that not all of the sound effects are bad, but there are a few we could do without. On Symphonic Star Trek, for instance, I love the whales but the Borg dialogue is really, REALLY bad.

But the orchestra's fabulous performance always more than makes up for it, IMHO. I think Kunzel's version of the Star Trek 4 theme is ten times better than the original.

I'll really be loking forward to this one.

Thanks for the info!

And I like the sound effects. they're cool. For one thing, they're just plain fun. At least they aren't part of the music itself. Second, they usually sound great with a few exceptions. Thirdly, sometimes they are a great transitional tool if listening to the disc straight through -- gets me in the right mind set for the score coming up.

I love these Kunzel discs, personally. The only thing I don't like is that they are frustrating to use if you put them in a multiple cd changer. Nothing like getting a screeching, burping dinosaur effect followed by the theme to "Schindler's List".

And, I was playing the Star Trek disc once in my car and thought I blew a gasket when that Genesis planet exploded.

But, this new one does seem to have some potential, especially if it has music from David Arnold's score to "Godzilla".

and of course the easiest way to remedy that is to get the Decca version.

the point about FX is that they were not included as a part of the music, but separated.