In the movie business, where hiring the composer is generally one of the last actions in the post-production process, it is common practice for directors to shoot and cut their films to "temp" scores consisting of music they know, often well-known
classical
music, later to be replaced by a newly written score. Some directors even fall in love with their temp scores and use them instead, a famous example being
Stanley Kubrick
with
2001: A Space Odyssey
. But
Woody Allen
, always working on modest budgets for his urban comedies and dramas, has tended to dispense with the idea of a composer from the outset, providing music for his films by rooting around in his own record collection and often coming up with 1920s
jazz
recordings. For his 2006 film,
Scoop
,
Allen
has turned largely to the
realm, setting his story to old warhorses like
Tchaikovsky
's
Swan Lake Ballet Suite
Khachaturian
Sabre Dance
, and
Grieg
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1
, which is the music that takes up this
soundtrack
album, along with a few
Latin
swing
numbers by
Xavier Cugat
and
Lester Lanin
. One reason directors don't do this sort of thing more often is that audiences usually already have associations in their minds with existing music, particularly, say, music for a famous
ballet
. Of course, directors sometimes use those very associations as part of the experience of watching the film, and
may be doing that here. Or maybe he's just saving money. In any case, the
album to
as a listening experience separate from the film comes off as simply some miscellaneous
music with a
rhumba
tossed in here and there. ~ William Ruhlmann