Top retrograde score releases:
1. Alien - Intrada - Ir goes without saying this was sought after, and the requisite clues left at the Intrada message boards couldn't reveal the surprise we all got. One of Goldsmith's best is now finally available for all.
2. A Tie:

Blade Runner 25th Anniversary - Universal - From the package to the unreleased and special new music from Vangelis, this puts the 1994 release into obsoletion. If you love Blade Runner, or even just love ambient texture from the first SciFi film to age like fine wine, this is a release worth owning. Not just as a fan score music, but as a fan of Electonic music, and as a fan of this film. It's a nice experience pariring it with a viewing of the Final Cut. But please take my advice- don't watch the entire 3 1/2 hour making of documentary in one night. You do get the choice of going over it shorter segments. If you do so, you will get the same information without the same drain. Trust me.

Amazing Stories, Vol. 3 - Intrada - It took awhile, but having the original recording of John Williams' score for 'The Mission' from a special period in his career made waiting for this volume worth it. All three volumes are worth owning for fans of film score anyway since they cut a great cross section of work from composers whose works we all appreciate.
3. Bad Boys - LaLaLand - Lalaland Records has, in a short time, knocked quite a few releases out of the park, many worth purchasing, but most especially this one for fans of Mark Mancina. Regardless of the reason it wasn't released in the first place, it's great to have it now with better mastering practices than those I used to rip the isolated score from the DVD.

4. - Godzilla (1998) - LaLaLand Records - Another great release. Debate the film or the score all you want, this is one they overshot the mark on providing something decent for everybody. Hot on the heels of two great David Arnold releases with the expanded Stargate and Casino Royale, one does get a sense of the possibility David Arnold has.

5. Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery, Too! - Film Score Monthly - I'm waiting for volume two, but we'll have to see. Meanwhile, I'm a sucker for classic film releases when they have to do with some of the funniest work from Hollywood's yesteryear. Carl Stalling was a genious; I remember hearing, though unsure of the truth of it, that he was the first to use click tracks in the recording of the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra to record the scores for the Looney Tunes shorts. Scott Bradley was no less a genius, and definitely new how to do the same kind of writing for orchestra, and prehaps the same recording technique. In any case, it's a testament to both composers that playing their work outside of the visuals theywere written for often hearkens back to those visuals instantly. Where this particular release succeeds as the Carl Stalling project volumes fail is that each track is the entire score for each short, rather than excerpts. I can only hope that someday someone will release William Lava's brilliant, though often repetitious music for the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons. Some of that stuff still sticks in my head, even though I'm far from the early 1980's CBS run of the Bugs Bunny Show.

Honorable mention: Tango and Cash. Sorry, I love this movie and this score. I'm a child of the 80's, from which this was most surely a last gasp.

Now, for the best scores of the year - again, from my POV for what it's worth:

1. The Bourne Ultimatum - John Powell ups the ante with each score. While I think the best of the three is The Bourne Supremacy, Ultimatum has a deeper emotional circuit running through it, one that makes it hard to avoid listening. Best track: Waterloo. That sequence is worth owning the film alone. Though Tangiers is a close second (for both the film and the score).

2. Beowulf - Alan Silvestri scores have become few and far between. He's long overdue and it seems he gets the best response when working on a Robert Zemeckis film. Though is motifs and melodies are becoming familiar, he does expand and still creates a chill in the spine when writing heroic works. It's no Back To The Future, but it does rival Judge Dredd, which I think is still among his best, along with Contact and Forest Gump.

3. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - Sadly, there was no Spider Man 3 score album, and up until June, there was very little else for me to listen to besides Pirates of ther Caribbean: At World's End. As good as that was, I found the Fantastic Four sequel to be some of John Ottman's best work. The Silver Surfer theme is memorable and immedaitely hearkens back to his character, one of things I think helps make the film work very well. John Ottman is showing some serious signs of growth. While I liked Superman Returns a lot, this score is more eloquent and more joyful in how it unfolds. It bears repeated listening, and makes a great triple feature listen with X2 and the preceding Fantastic Four film.

4. Superbad - Ok, so I may be going off the deep end, but bottom line: this soundtrack is so much fun to listen to. If you don't like Funk music, than this is definitely a CD to avoid. But Lyle Workman put together a score with authentic Funk musicians who have played with Parliament and George Clinton and did so with such a respect and love for the authenticity that is unparalleled. In recent years I have grown to see Funk music as some of the morst interesting material from a musician's standpoint; it makes you look at playing in a whole new way. Further, if anything, it serves the film as a humorous point - the guys in this film have no hope of being pimp like they hope to be, and yet this music expounds their moments perfectly. It's not necessarily modern, but it keeps the mood light and is as much fun to listen to as the film was to watch.

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - It's Hans Zimmer in full command of a ship that doesn't sink. While it doesn't use as much of the material I would'be liked to hear again, which was the work from The Curse of the Black Pearl, it's really hard to get past the brilliant, yet dissonant work on the multiple Jacks sequence, nor the rousing cue known as "I Don't Think Now Is The Best Time". Please feel free to correct my track title, if I have entered it incorrectly. The only reason I haven't listened to it as often as the other scores I've picked up this year is because it feels less inviting than The Curse of the Black Pearl or as action packed as Dead Man's Chest. It's got the same problem as "Return of The Jedi" - while it is very listenable, and means as much as its predecessors, a listener might as well listen to the whole trilogy at once. By itself, it's missing the momentum of all that came before. But let's face it - any score that can so accurately in music depict the insane mind of Jack Sparrow so well deserves more than an average listen.

Honorable mention on this list would have to go to Live Free or Die Hard. Marco Beltrami didn't mimic Michael Kamen. He went his own way and gave a great action score. I haven't heard 3:10 To Yuma, but I bet it's every bit as well crafted.

Biggest dissapointment of the year: Spider Man 3. A score release should have taken place. I've still no idea what really happened that held up a score release, but it hardly matters. If Godzilla and Tango and Cash proved anything this year, is that while it may take a few years, maybe all one needs is patience and tenacity. Eventually, the score you want will be released, one way or another.

Oh, one last honorable mention. Again, debate if you want about how several themes were used over and over, TransFormers was well worth the purchase and Steve Jablonsky's score was in heavy rotation on my iPod for quite sometime. Come to think of it, Warner Bros. was really very good to score hounds this year. From 300 to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to Transformers, they really did pull off some good score release material and did right by the soundtrack lover this year. Hope they continue to do so with The Dark Knight next year.

And next year, we may be talking about Ramin Djawadi's work on Iron Man or the Batman Theme that Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard flesh out for The Dark Knight - perhaps an Indiana Jones music box set will precede the hopefully rousing work by John Williams for the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Maybe Louis Leterrier will employ a composer for The Incredible Hulk that will erase any memory of the predcessor, we might even be so lucky as to be treated with a touch of cartoonish macabre from Danny Elfman's work to come with Hellboy II: The Golden Army. This is of course, that some great strike doesn't occur, causing a great cataclysm in the Composing community, causing the score for the fourth Indiana Jones film to be composed by the people that brought you the Sex-O-Rama CDs.

Thank god that nightmare is reserved for sarcasm and not to escape into reality.

Happy New Year, everyone. See you in '08! May it be even more entertaining.