The Family Stone


Colosseum (4005939671228)
Varèse Sarabande (0030206671223)
Movie | Released: 2006 | Format: CD, Download
 

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# Track   Duration
1.The Family Stone Waltz1:39
2.Millie's Famous Brownies1:39
3.They're Here!0:51
4.Seperate Bedrooms0:38
5.Hi1:09
6.Dawn0:38
7.She's Going To The Inn0:48
8.Who Else Knows?1:00
9.Is That Her?0:55
10.What Seems To Be The Problem Here, Ma'am?0:48
11.Coffee Or Something1:43
12.A Big Red Shovel1:38
13.Sybil & Kelly0:41
14.Just Stockings0:37
15.Try It On3:04
16.You And Me, Kid0:56
17.Trepak (Cossack Dance) - Tchaikovsky1:09
18.Global Warming1:28
19.It's Snowing5:10
20.A Very Good Tree3:56
21.Main Theme (Alternate)1:44
22.Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Instrumental)2:42
23.The Family Stone (Suite)9:06
 43:58
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The Family Stone - 05/10 - Review of Oscar Flores, submitted at (English)
Over the last few years, Michael Giacchino has certainly proven that he is an extremely talented composer, particularly considering his outstanding music for the Medal of Honor video game series and for the film The Incredibles. In 2005, Giacchino had the opportunity to work with Thomas Bezucha on his film The Family Stone. Even though some people enjoyed this movie, for the most part this movie was a major disappointment — and I’m not talking about its somewhat good box office performance. The movie portrays most of the characters as simply too unsympathetic, which make them unlikable to most viewers. Moreover, the unrealistic drama combined with the weak humor proves, once again, that romantic comedies are a tough film genre. Composer Michael Giacchino had the opportunity to offer a Christmas-appropriate score that would help this film immensely. However, much like the film, the score is, undeniably, a disappointment.

The first track, “The Stone Family Waltz”, is a magnificent little piece of music. Giacchino uses the orchestra’s full range, comes up with great combinations of instruments, and introduces a great little melody that will resurface at times throughout the rest of the score. Some fragments are reminiscent of Maurice Jarre’s scores, while others are simply original, enjoyable, and very appropriate for the Christmas season.

One can’t help but notice some influence of Bruce Broughton’s work on Giacchino. Many tracks, including “Millies Famous Brownies”, use an instrumentation very similar to the one found in Eloise at Christmastime. However, in most tracks, Giacchino still uses very light orchestrations that make the score sound weak. For instance, both “They’re Here!” and “Separate Bedrooms” employ very simple arrangements of pizzicato strings and woodwinds that alternate at distinct times with short phrases here and there that never make full use of the sonic space. Unfortunately, there are more of these short pieces that are nothing more than underdeveloped accompaniments.

Once in a while we do hear very interesting short phrases and motifs that are quite pleasing. It is a shame that most tracks are under a minute in duration; it almost feels as if the music was simply there to accentuate short dramatic moments in the narrative, while having no real emotional or musical connection to the movie.

Tracks like “Coffee or Something” and “A Big Red Shovel”, among others, make very limited use of the piano. We don’t hear any interesting progressions, melodies, or even phrases — the notes are just there with no real emotional force behind them. In some parts, individual piano notes are heard with no accompaniment at all. Moreover, the notes are spaced out anywhere from 2 to 4 seconds; the result is a very disappointing listening experience.

“Try it on” and “Global Warming” explore more musical possibilities with better arrangements that utilize the motifs presented earlier in the soundtrack. But don’t get your hopes up, ultimately these tracks fail miserably at creating a musical piece that shines by itself. “You and Me, Kid”, on the other hand, has to be the weakest of all the pieces in this soundtrack. Believe it or not, this cue has no more than 20 notes (excluding harmonies) played within a minute or so. You can do the math and discover what that means in terms of musical enjoyment.

If you’ve been asleep during tracks 2-16, “Trepak (Cossack Dance) from The Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky will do the trick and wake you up. Nevertheless, I simply cannot accept the fact that one of the best tracks in the entire soundtrack is not Giacchino’s work.

“Main Theme” is a brilliant variation of “The Stone Family Waltz”, making it one of the few outstanding tracks in this soundtrack. Admittedly, “The Family Stone Suite,” is nowhere close to being an enjoyable track. It feels like previous pieces of music were just glued together so that they could come up with a nine-minute track.

Aside from the brilliant main title theme — which deserves a 10/10 in my opinion — and Giacchino’s beautiful arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” the score is as weak as they come. As much as I admire Michael Giacchino’s work, I have to say that this is his most disappointing work so far. Well, let’s not blame Giacchino entirely for this end result; the movie is certainly very monotonous, and not even the beautiful presence of Rachel McAdams makes me want to watch this movie again. Well, I simply cannot emphasize enough how enjoyable the main title is; however, in the end, Giacchino leaves us wondering why he didn’t spend more time with his orchestrations and individual themes, which could have made this a great score.
The Family Stone - 07/10 - Review of Tom Daish, submitted at (English)
The Family Stone has been described as 'A grisly, manipulative, mawkish, and thoroughly phony film' (Guardian) and 'One of the best movies I saw all year' (Internet Movie Database). Quite. It's easy to forget that, far from being a sitcom star breaking into movies, Sarah Jessica Parker was in some fairly big films before and during Sex and the City. Then again, taking the role of an uptight New Yorker doesn't seem much of a stretch (even if on TV she was fun and sassy). Along for the ride is Michael Giacchino in what seems like his millionth assignment appearing roughly the same time and while it doesn't exactly stretch him technically, is a nice enough frothy frolic.
The Stone Family Waltz is a bit of a red herring as, far from setting the tone of the score, hits us with a grandiose theme that seems from another film entirely. However, done with such gusto, it draws in the listener from the outset. The tone calms down into more traditional romantic (ish) comedy scoring for Millie's Famous Brownies. Although set around Christmas, Giacchino thoughtfully refrains from smacking this fact around the listener's head; sure, there's some delicate plinking - Separate Bedrooms, for example - but largely devoid of too much overt festive jollity. Only the inclusion of the Trepak from The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky (although I have no idea exactly what Jennifer Hammond did by way of 'arrangement') and the instrumental (with tune omitted, so you could karaoke to it, I guess) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas gives the game away entirely.

In a pleasing piece of production, the Alternate Main Theme gets an airing; instead of a bouncing waltz, it's a bouncing, playful march and every bit as good as its eventual replacement. A nine minute suite, bringing all the ideas to a close, rounds out the album. True, The Family Stone breaks no new ground, but the film genre is hardly one that inspires great invention, thus tunefulness and lack of unwanted sentiment is as much as one could hope for. On these counts, Giacchino duly delivers and adds another genre he can tackle with consummate skill. Delightful.
Trailer:



This soundtrack trailer contains music of:

Right Back Were We Started From, Maxine Nightingale (song(s))
The Nutcracker, Pjotr Iljitsj Tsjaikovski (song(s))
To Die For (1995), Danny Elfman (Movie)




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