Another great score - one of the few from today (or almost today) - that is really great - Batman. But I got the new 2-disc DVD and it does not seem to have the score isolated. Damn!
Anyway, the best things about that movie, despite its occasional story problems, are the production design by Anton Furst, and the incredible score by Elfman. I just re-watched this recently, and couldn't help thinking how it is one of the truly rare film scores recently. Most scores simply do the job technically. But the greatest ones - like Bernard Herrmann, Goldsmith, Korngold, Raksin, a very few others - create "moments" that are pure music, combined with pure cinema. Batman has that, in a few scenes - the Batmobile to batcave scene (sounds a bit ridiculous, I know, but never mind) and the awesome ending, in which a magnificent brass fanfare is heard as everyone on the night street looks upward to the light, and then slowly the orchestra builds to a climax with Batman standing atop the dark city, a brooding but powerful gothic figure. Fantastic! Better than anything else in the film. It is the use of just film images and music in combination - nothing else - to create an emotion. That is a tribute to Tim Burton also, but Elfman did some truly brilliant stuff in that.