Various Artists: The Oliver Stone Connection

The Oliver Stone Connection follows The Tarantino Connection in a series of CDs featuring prominent directors discussing the music in their work, along with songs and score material from their films. This treatment made sense for Tarantino, whose films have had a profound influence on the way music has been used in films over the last few years. But aside from Trent Reznor's work on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, the soundtracks to Stone's films aren't particularly influential or noteworthy. And while the songs in Tarantino's films tend to forever be associated with the filmmaker, there are very few songs on the disc—outside of the Natural Born Killers tracks—that seem particularly pivotal to his films. Tarantino, conversely, often picks obscure music, but the majority of the songs here—Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire" and Don McLean's "American Pie," for instance—seem almost comically unoriginal. (Stone does deserve credit for using Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" as the not-at-all-obvious backdrop for a scene in Platoon in which soldiers use drugs.) Some of the songs featured here are inextricably linked to memorable film scenes; unfortunately, they're linked to films Stone has nothing to do with. "Brown Eyed Girl," for example, may have been featured in Born On The Fourth Of July, but it was used more memorably during Sleeping With The Enemy's classic Julia Roberts-trying-on-funny-hats montage sequence. In his running commentary, Stone comes off as a mildly addled hippie, as he salutes the "Soul Brother Spirit" of Vietnam and naively gushes about how Trent Reznor is the wildest, most anarchic musician in the world. Stone zealots who absolutely must have Ennio Morricone's theme for U-Turn should enjoy The Oliver Stone Connection, but it's a waste of time for everyone else.