Before you continues with this review, I strongly suggest you to read the old review first if you don't have the 1st edition already. In this review, I will not restate much about the features that is the same as the 1st edition (For example, how the soundtracks are rated, quality of the reviews). Didier C. Deutsch remains as the editor of this new edition. The old edition states that it has more than 2000 reviews while this edition states that it has more than 3000 reviews. So, you can imagine many new reviews has been added (this edition is a lot heavier and thicker). Although I am not sure, I don't think they have added many (if there is any) soundtracks released prior to 1996, when the 1st edition published. A few things have been improved in this edition other than the expansion of the review entries. First of all, each entry doesn't have its track list any more. Track lists are useful but not to a lot of people. So by deleting the track lists, the guide is more compact and can include more reviews in a smaller volume. However, I think that they should have kept the track lists for the compilation CDs. It is important to know what selections are in different compilation albums.

The second improvement of the guide is the organization. In the 1st edition, the reviews are separated into 4 sections: motion picture soundtracks, Broadway and screen musicals, television soundtracks, and compilation soundtracks. In this new edition, the first three sections are merged into one big section. It is a lot more convenience for people to search the reviews. You don't have to decide which section it should be in before you look for it. It's just simply clearer. So what about the compilation section? It is truncated. In the first edition, they had a hard time in organizing the section as there are two many "types" of compilation soundtracks out there. In this edition, it just has reviews for the "composer oriented" compilations. For the others, they simply have a bone rating.

For the indices, many indices from the 1st edition are gone. There are just five now: five-bone album index, composer index, conductor index, lyricist index, and series index. The last index is new and probably very useless for score fans. The index is for searching artists who appears in other MusicHound music guides. The guide also features a brand new forward from Lukas Kendall, the editor of the magazine Film Score Monthly. Also, it features an article by Julia Michels, which describes the process of how a song soundtrack is put together. There are also "10 Essential Scores" lists for 16 major composers (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, Max Steiner....). However, it seems impossible to me that one can pick just 10 "essential" scores from the maestros.

In general, this new edition is as exciting as the first one. It's an extremely useful reference guide both for the veteran or new film music fans. If you don't have the first one already, I strongly recommend you to buy this guide. For those who have the old one already, if you think you have been following closely to the new releases in the past few years, the guide may not be so essential to you. But again, it's always nice to have a good up to date reference book like this.

When I first got this guide, I was having a hard time to put it down for at least two weeks. Flipping back and forth to see what they have to say about you favorite (or non favorite) soundtracks, or to see if certain soundtracks should be in your want list. After thinking it was not quite organized to read their reviews randomly, I decided to read all of the reviews, from A to Z, during my Christmas vacation. I know it may sound a little bit strange because no one READS a reference book. (Maybe there are people out there who READS dictionaries and encyclopedia.) And I did finish reading all of the reviews for motion picture soundtracks.

The whole book is nicely arranged. There are three major sections: the introductory section, the reviews sections(the juice!!), and the index section. The introductory section includes a foreword by Lukas Kendall, the editor of Film Score Monthly, introduction by Didier C. Deutsch, the editor of this guide, and the credits. The review section is divided into four subsections: motion picture soundtracks (489 pages), Broadway and screen musicals (150 pages), television soundtracks (42 pages), and compilation soundtracks (143 pages). In the index section, it includes index of title, five-bone (they use bones instead of stars :) ), composer, producer, orchestrator, conductor, performer, and song title. The last two indexes are mainly for song compilation soundtracks.

"See, the thing I love about film music is that it is not a single 'type' of music. It's this weird subset that affects movies in fascinating and profound ways, and often stands on its own as a unique listening experience." - Lukas Kendall

In the introduction, Mr. Deutsch gave a brief history of film music industry, how song compilation soundtracks started to appear in the market and how the perspectives on score soundtracks have changed. At the end of the introduction, he points out the key point of this guide:

"All of [the reviewers] have their own specialty, all of them view music in a different, personal optic, and all of them have very strong likes and dislikes. But ever when they express conflicting opinions, their intentions are solidly honest, and what ties them all is their abiding love of film music. They made this book much more interesting and lively .....Finally, there is you, the buyers and readers, attracted by the topics raised in this book, and no doubt interested to some degree in what we all have to say about some of your favorite film soundtracks. You may not always share our conclusions and that's your unalienable right. But ultimately you are also part of our community, because if you bought this book in the first place, it's certainly because you are interested in film music as a whole. So welcome to our world, welcome to your world."

When I first read the motion picture soundtracks reviews section, I am surprised that other than film score albums, many other songs compilation soundtracks are reviewed too. It is really a nice thing since those compilation albums take a major role in soundtracks market nowadays. In each review entry, it includes album notes (composer, orchestrator, music editor, producer, musicians, and all that), complete track listings and running time of each track, released year and record company, written review and of course the "five bones" scale rating. Other than regular releases, many others hard to find or limited edition soundtracks are reviewed too, for example, Krull, Body Heat, The Witches of Eastwick, The Boy Who Could Fly, Raggedy Man and many more. Not that we could get our hands on those easily, but it is certainly nice to have them to make this guide more complete. Also, the track listings are really useful - no more "30 min" surprise any more.

For the reviews, most of them are written by Mr. Deutsch. The others are written by ten other people, including Jeff Bond and Lukas Kendall. As a result, there are many inconsistency in the reviews, just as Mr. Deutsch points out. For example, if a Goldsmith's score is reviewed by J. Bond, it is likely to be good since Bond is a big time Goldsmith fan. Also, he will compare scores to Goldsmith's Capricorn One from time to time. While others will have different opinion on Goldsmith's work.

In the reviews, other than just reviewing the soundtracks sometimes, the movies got reviewed too. Sometimes the reviewers forgot to review the soundtracks while reviewing the movies! For the ratings, there are inconsistency too. For example, one soundtrack will get a low rating because of its short running time, while sometimes the running does not affect the rating sometimes. Also, some ratings are quite questionable. For example, four bones for Williams' Schindler's List, three and a half bones for Return of the Jedi, three and a half for Horner's Rocketeer and five bones for The Lost World. Also, Mr. Deutsch seems very generous on the ratings, most of the soundtracks that he reviewed got a four bones. However, that's what make this book "much more interesting and lively."

For the index section, other than the stand title and composer index, I find others extremely useful too. Especially the song and performer index. It is because there is no database on the Internet that can let you search which song is in which soundtrack or Jimi Hendrix's songs have appeared on which soundtracks. The orchestrator index is a very useful one too.

In conclusion, this a very nice, informative and useful guide for soundtracks fans. It has reviews of over 2,000 soundtracks. It is definitely an essential guide to get.

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