The Polar Express

Composer(s) : Silvestri, Alan and Ballard, Glen
Year: 2004
Publisher : Warner Brothers
Total time : 46:06

History: The Polar Express is inspired by Chris Van Allsburg's children novel. It's about the story of a boy that in spite of the mock of his friends, he still believe in Santa Claus. One night before christmas, while the children is sleeping, a deafening roar startle him. It's a magical steamtrain. The young boy goes out with his pijama and slipper, and a ticket inspector seems waiting for him, and invites him to travel. "Where?" says the frightened boy. "To the North Pole, of course... This is the Polar Express!"

Records: Director Robert Zemeckis still was experiment with animation in "Who Frammed Roger Rabbit?", but with this film, he is released an advanced version of motion capture technique. This innovate tecnique allows that the actor real action performances drives the emotions and the digital characters movements in a way totally innovative. In the teaser trailer we can see a ticket inspector with the Tom Hanks' features, recieving the astonish boy while we have the same astonish face than the main character.

Precedent Sound: Silvestri-Zemeckis. Nothing more to say. A professional relationship that it is stable from 1.984 with "Romancing the Stone". We had worked together in so succesfully projects like "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Who Frammed Roger Rabbit?", "Forrest Gump" (the unique Oscar nomination until now) or "Cast Away".

First Audition: We have a mix of songs made for the film, classic christmas songs and a little sample of Silvestri's score. The score leaves a good sensation but we miss more minutes from this beautiful instrumental work by Alan Silvestri. We will have to wait to see the movie for to enjoy all the score.

Entering into Subject : The edition has six classical christmas carol songs performed by singers like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. Also, it has six new songs written and composed by Alan Silvestri and the five times Grammy Awards winner, the producer Glen Ballard. There's only two tracks of score.

Among the new songs, the most important is "Believe" performed by Josh Groban, a song version from the main leit-motive theme from score. Also, it's so great the song "Hot Chocolate", a very funny song where a groups of waiter, while sings and dances, are serving chocolate cups to the childrens aboard on the Polar Express, and "The Polar Express", a close christmas song that help us to go inside the magical world of the steamtrain. Both songs are performed by Tom Hanks, who do it very well. Other songs are "Rockin' On Top Of The World" performed by Steven Tyler, Aerosmith vocalist, that perform in the movie an elf. It was a pleasure for him to dress the "motion capture" suite for participate in this film. Also the soundtrack includes the Silvestri compositions "Spirit Of The Season" and "When Christmas Comes To Town" performed by Matthew Hall and Meagan Moore.

From the score itself there's only ten minutes in two musical cues totally orchestral: "Seeing Is Believing" and "Suite From The Polar Express" with a style close to John Williams and his work for "Home Alone", but very beautiful and full of choirs and musical beauty.

At last, a very pleasant CD that makes he will wait with impatience the release of the film. A hard competitor for “The Incredibles” to will becomes the film for this Christmas and why not? the film of the year. Also, it becomes to one of those CDs we hear every Christmas from years to years.

This year, Christmas starts, not when amazon or Harrod's says, it will starts when you listen this wonderful soundtrack.

Juan H. Molinero
English traslation by Julio C. Fdez. (NeotheOne)