(Cool Jazz) Jazz at the Movies Band - White Heat: Film Noir - 1994, APE (image+.cue), lossless

At times, the heavily arranged performances of the Jazz at the Movies Band ended up being pleasant, if unremarkable, background music. But the outfit could also be intriguing, and 1994's White Heat: Film Noir is arguably their best release. This CD isn't perfect; talented jazzmen like pianist Bill Cunliffe and saxophonist Gary Foster don't have enough room to stretch out and improvise. Nonetheless, anyone who is a fan of '40s and '50s film noir will find a lot to admire about this disc, which contains slightly Ellingtonian arrangements of the themes from black-and-white classics like Laura, The Postman Always Rings Twice, White Heat, and Key Largo. All of these movies are definitive examples of film noir, a genre that got its name from French film critics. Noir is the French word for night, and that wave of '40s and '50s crime thrillers did, in fact, have a dark, shadowy quality -- they were cynical movies that painted a not-so-rosy picture of what some people regard as the "good old days." In the 21st century, the '40s and '50s are often depicted as a simpler, more innocent time, but 1944's disturbing Double Indemnity -- one of the film noir gems that this CD acknowledges -- demonstrates that the "good old days" weren't always so innocent. And it's important to note that '40s and '50s film noir was a major influence on directors Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, both of whom are masters of more modern film noir. One questionable choice for this disc is David Raksin's theme from The Bad and the Beautiful; that 1952 classic, which starred Kirk Douglas as a controversial Hollywood director, isn't really film noir. Nonetheless, the Jazz at the Movies Band offer a tasteful arrangement of Raksin's charming melody. Despite its imperfections and shortcomings, White Heat: Film Noir is an interesting celebration of film noir's golden era.by Alex Henderson

EAC extraction logfile from 23. November 2007, 13:52 for CD
Jazz at the Movies Band / White Heat - Film Noir
Used drive  : PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-750A   Adapter: 2  ID: 1
Read mode   : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache
Read offset correction : 102
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Used output format : Monkey's Audio Lossless Encoder v3.99 DLL
                     Normal Lossless Compression
Other options      :
    Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
    Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
    Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Range status and errors
Selected range
     Filename C:\Jazz at the Movies Band - White Heat - Film Noir.ape
     Peak level 94.4 %
     Range quality 100.0 %
     CRC 0D0E1A36
     Copy OK
No errors occured
End of status report