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Rating:  -
I will play this every Christmas for years to come. The seller was also very quick in getting the order out.
Rating: -
This Christmas movie, along with the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is amongst my favorite things of all time. I love Christmas and have a special fondness for the memories of my 1960's era childhood. I try to watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" when it comes on TV each year, but the last few years I have missed it. So this year I decided to buy it and share it with my two year old nephew and hope that he would love it as much as I do. The voice of the Grinch, by Boris Karloff, is perfect and the songs are wonderful (I also purchased the music CD soundtrack). The animation is hilarious, especially the facial expressions that the Grinch makes. So this year I brought out the DVD and tried to put it in the machine because I couldn't bear to watch Spongebob Squarepants one more time. My nephew is very fond of watching Spongebob over and over and I thought he might scream if I tried to put on "my" movie. But he and grandma and I watched it together and we explained who all the players were and what was going on. He loved it! He especially enjoyed the part where the Who's were shown playing with all of their wacky musical instruments. Now my nephew realizes that there is more to life than Spongebob and that you cannot keep Christmas from coming.
Rating: -
I've been a fan of the TV show for years, but didn't even know this disc existed until last year. I immediately bought it, and I love it.
It claims to be the soundtrack for the 1966 TV special of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I see some reviewers say it is different. I've only noticed one difference. Whether it is note for note exactly the same or not doesn't matter to me. It's still a great disc.
It only has 5 tracks. The first is Boris Karloff reading the story. It sounds remarkably like the TV special. It even has the songs edited into the story. The only change I noticed is here. Boris does all the narration, including Cindy Lou Who.
The other four tracks are the songs from the special by themselves. "Welcome Christmas" gets two tracks, with the second being a longer reprise. That track has additional words and an instrumental bridge. "Trim Up the Tree" is just as nonsensical as in the special.
Which brings us to "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." I love this song in the special, and it is preserved exactly as it is here, including Thurl Ravenscroft wonderful voice. It's one of my favorite parts of the special, and I love having it here. I'll confess, I often listen to it two or three times in a row.
So if you are a fan of the TV show and love the songs, you'll be glad you got this CD.
Rating: -
Here it is FORTY years after its premiere---and the "Grinch" soundtrack stands as one of the last of a great musical tradition that extends all the way from the 30's: completely scored in a colorful, very "legit" technical manner, based on a thorough grounding in classic song-writing and background scoring/orchestration. And this cd presents it all in bright, clean and detailed sound.
What is puzzling and fascinating is this: considering that the production of "How the Grinch..." in 1966 was apparently not an especially lavish one, how is it that the soundtrack exists in TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT VERSIONS, each with its own similar but different background music, and each with DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT arrangements of the three songs??
It's too bad that all of the major musical figures---Albert Hague (composer), Eugene Poddany (the guy who did the intense work of scoring the whole thing TWICE) and Thurl Ravenscroft (singer of "You're a Mean One..")---have all passed on; as institutional memory goes, we may never know why the work was scored and recorded one way for the film and another completely different way for the MGM soundtrack album. I can see some cutting and patching together of the film soundtrack and an EXPANSION of the songs for the LP---that would be logical---but an ENTIRELY new score?
I know I sound like a broken (LP) record, but I will continue to wonder about this. In any case, the 21-minute version of the soundtrack contained on this cd is great. And I must say that Boris KArloff's narration is absolutely BRILLIANT; it's so easy to take it for granted, since we all know it practically by heart. But take the time to really listen to Karloff's reading---the subtlety, the nuance, the pacing---the amazing RANGE of sound and vocal color--and the sensitivity of "the Grinch's small heart grew 3 sizes that day"......GREAT stuff!
And to think, Karloff could pull off this tour de force barely a year or so before his own death. (You will notice a frequent change in the audio
quality of the narration--sometimes with much low rumble and surface noise; sounds like it was assembled from a variety of audio sources).
The cd also contains the songs themselves WITHOUT narration as additional tracks---so you can really enjoy the tunes and lyrics of Hague and Suess AND the fabulous work of Mr. Poddany.
Yes, the CHORAL work is quite different from the TV version too. The women's voices are really pretty raw in this soundtrack version (Thurl says they only used 4 women total in the session), but at least you don't have to put up with that raucous, out-of-tune kiddie chorus which was looped over the adult voices in the TV soundtrack.
All-in-all a delight, and a great tribute to the talent of the people who created and performed it.
Rating: -
This is the album version of the classic television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It is not exactly the same as the TV show. Boris Karloff's narration is still here, but the background music is different. None of the sound effects from the cartoon are included. Boris Karloff speaks Cindy Lou Who's dialogue himself, while on television those lines were done by June Foray. And the songs seems to be slightly different than they were on televison. These changes were no doubt made for the betterment of the album, since listening to an album is a different experience than watching TV. This is a wonderful listening experience. It chokes me up every time when the Grich learns the true meaning of Christmas and turns good (hope I didn't spoil the ending for you). The CD also includes the four songs from the show separate from the main story, although of course they are also within the story itself.
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