Past the Popcorn provides South King Media with exclusive reviews of Theatrical and Home Video entertainment. We aim to dig just a little deeper than the surface of what we watch.

I know what you’re thinking: “The what????

I know because I was thinking exactly the same thing when I saw the announcement for this Blu-ray / DVD / LP release. And I really should be telling you about Christmas movies right now… but am so stoked about The Morricone Duel that I have to tell you about it instead.

The Morricone Duel is a concert film of the The Danish National Symphony performing seminal tracks from Morricone’s body of work. (They do sprinkle in tunes from a few other composers of note, but this is really the Morricone Show.) The symphonic concert is billed as “the most dangerous concert ever.” Ha!

The Danish National live performance of Morricone first crossed my radar a few months ago via a link somebody posted on Facebook. It was, of course, the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly–an incredibly difficult piece to pull off live. I soon discovered that the Danish National had a whole treasure trove of symphonic performances of film scores, including several pieces from Morricone.

Theirs is not the only orchestra to go all-in with film score performances, or even of key Morricone tracks like the themes from The Good and Once Upon a Time in the West–but they are unique in their emphasis on Morricone, and on video.

The release of this collection on Blu-ray and DVD this week, with an LP also available, kind of seals the deal. The Danish National wins the Morricone Duel!

You can order it now from Amazon. It would be great if this whole thing could be streamed somewhere… but you’re gonna need a disc player for this Christmas gift.

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