In the “sign me up now, please” category today is a recently announced boxed set of Danny Elfman’s music collaborations with filmmaker Tim Burton. I first heard about the limited edition set via the New York Times in a piece that went up on the Arts Beat blog yesterday. It featured a video with Burton and Elfman discussing the monumental “Batman” score — talk about grabbing my attention.
Anyone who knows me knows what role that 1989 superhero extravaganza played in my film-going youth. But the idea that there might be some extra, never-before-heard material waiting in a vault somewhere? Giddiness. Pure giddiness.
But it’s not just “Batman” stuff. The set celebrates “the 25th anniversary of the ingenious collaboration” between the two singular artists, reads a press release that went out today. “[The] numbered box set of 1000…collects expansions of the 13 original scores that Elfman has composed for Burton’s iconic films” and is “a newly produced library of 16 CDs each packaged with artwork by Burton, adding up to more than 19 hours of music.” Wow.