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When the original recording is better than the re-recording, I prefer the original recording. When the re-recording is better than the original recording, I prefer the re-recording.

I'd love to hear what Howard Shore would do with Star Wars. Is he semi-retired or what? Seems to have really slowed down.

Man, there is some funky instrumentation going on there. The percussion sound I think you're referring to just sounds like a smaller drum to me. I have no idea what to make of the winds from 0:11-0:25, though, particularly whatever instruments enter at about 0:21. Anyone singing Pascal Dusapin's praises wins big points with me. His trombone concerto "Watt" is mind-blowing.

And his 404 Sarah Palin page was just weird. Not to mention his political endorsement announcements. And the TFA review will be dated if Clinton wins. Like, it's Filmtracks, not fucking Politico. No-one reading my reviews would give a shit if I made a not-so-veiled jab at Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten, if I wrote them and published them.

Clemensen and FilmTracks for sure. I mean film music criticism is even a genre of writing because of him. He basically founded it and is the pretty much the last bastion of it in the English speaking media atleast. It is a tragedy that we have this discussion and there's one person we can come up with. Film Music is a very specific genre of music but not lacking for it. I think the classical world kinda turn up their noses at film music but the film music can be just as complex and can transcend the film it was written for. So all in all, very little is written in detail about film music, certainly not to the extent of 1000 words reviews that Clemensen will often devote to scores. And Clemensen is extremely canny, he reviews film music as it should be reviewed - as film music. He's very cognizant of the fact that this music is absolutely not written on its own but was commissioned for a film. As such his discussion often includes thoughts about whether it is appropriate or not or film-serving or not, how does it highlight the story and concepts and so on. For franchises it is true he looks for musical continuity but think about it, we expect a lot of continuity in terms of actors, and sets, and look and costumes and tone from film to film, why not afford the same scrutiny to film music as well. The other 2 - MovieMusik and Movie-Wave are good but don't seem nearly as informed. Clemensen knows his shit. His reviews can often be infuriating but are also often illuminating. I think he absolutely has carved out a place for himself in film music discussion. Google translate is our friend. You can post your articles here and people can read them one way or another.

John Williams is scoring a short film based on Kobe Bryant's athletic career. Anything is possible. I wish you the best in your endeavor!

From what I can gather, the best way of getting in touch with Williams currently is by going and playing the Star Wars theme outside his house. Might be worth a shot.

That line about Desplat constantly taking calls from Disney during dinner was interesting. Doesn't he have an agent?? Either way, it's becoming increasingly clear this wasn't a scheduling conflict; there is obviously production turmoil with this film and they're re-shaping it into a safe property with no risks. There'll be some fascinating interviews with Gareth Edwards in years to come. If you lined up 10 Hollywood executives and said, "We need a traditional John Williams Star Wars score but John doesn't want to do it," at least 9 of them would instantly recommend Giacchino. It's as simple as that.

For me, it's Filmtracks. Yeah, some of Clemmy's judgements and verdicts are baffling, and I get pissy whenever he awkwardly weaves in some antagonistic political commentary toward anyone right-of-centre who is presently running for office in the US. But I really enjoy his analysis and his writing style, and not to mention that he's careful not to act like a fanboy for any composer. However he sometimes has issues when judging franchise scores on their own individual merit and instead falls into the trap of harshly comparing new entries to their predecessors. For example, he writes up The Final Conflict with a lower rating than The Omen because it abandons all existing thematic and motivic material established in the prior scores, but overlooks the reasons Goldsmith often chose that practice when tackling sequels - often they require their own distinctive voice rather than regurgitating what's already been done, and he was a bit self-conscious about being perceived to be repeating himself. Digressing, it's all that controversy and generally well-written reviews that keep me coming back.

The secrets of Harry Potter musical Theme. It's in french, but the Conrad Pope interview is in english. It may have been posted elsewhere, but personaly that's the first time I hear an interview of Mr. Pope.

That's true. Williams produced dull dirge when directed by Lucas on the prequels...oh, wait... Are we letting composers off the hook for coming up with music that is lacking by blaming directors now? Directors can tamper with the music sure and it can end up sounding like an edited mess but uninteresting writing is just that. Desplat was doing a very good impression of a Remote Control style composer with his Potter scores and if replacing him with Giacchino avoids that sound infecting Star Wars I'm all for it.

The short is about basketball. It stands to reason that it will premiere near or at the beginning of the nba season, which is late October (and fall).

Good question. There's a number of things it could be. A smaller timp ike Gnome says A normal size timp "tuned up" Close miking Wooden or even snare drumsticks (Alex North was a big fan of snare sticks on timps)

I found this album a bit of a snooze. Too much futzing with the tempo and what sounded to me like undisciplined picking, but may just be a style of freeform guitar that doesn't appeal to me. But it's great to see another all-Williams cover album by a solo instrumentalist. I still wish Keisuke Wakao would get back in the studio and cover some of JW's recent work, almost all of which would sound amazing in chamber arrangements for oboe.

How do you know? Genuinely curious.

Gia has written some excellent End Credit suites and he'll almost certainly do one for Rogue One. Looking forward to that.

You seem to have strayed into the usual reason given as to why Tom Cruise shouldn't be playing Jack Reacher there at the end.

They look even better in those hacked pics of her. Or, erm, so I was told *cough*.

Yes, especially the extended cut. Its a "your fucked" of a movie, and it is unrelentingly downbeat, but it has a lot to offer in terms of music, photography, and design...oh, and Paul McGann hamming it up - "it wasn't meeeeeee".

It's a flawed masterpiece!

Anyone who thought something other than "film making by committee" was going to happen when Disney bought Lucasfilm was very gullible.

I just don't get fan edits. I mean, sure, I can see why someone would make one but I can't see why anybody would want to watch a fan edit done by a random stranger. I actually rewatched the EE of Unexpected Journey last night and it was lots of fun even if it has a few (I would consider minor) problems. I'll take the worst of PJs Middle-earth over Captian America 25 or Thor 7 any day.

Best-scored shark attack this side of John Williams. Some of our not-so-new talents should watch and lern how to build a sequence through music.

Very nice! What came across was how self-effacing they all are. Can you imagine Goldsmith, Herrmann, Rozsa, Barry, and Horner, in the same room?

I'm no kid, but I'm with Will on this one. I actually think the "simplistic" melody fits the songwriting assignment here. You wouldn't want to write long-lined lyrics to the melody of, say, "Mr. Longbottom Flies." There needs to be some simplicity and even repetition in the melodic lines, or no lyrics would sit neatly on them. And these lyrics do sit mighty nicely. Also, I've heard my fair share of patriotic songs, but this is the only one to name-drop Thomas Paine. Points for that.

Still wondering when we're gonna get to hear that thing.

No one on this forum can help you get your film scored by John Williams. Joe Kraemer might be interested if you're open to other Hollywood composers.

Let's not forget JW has gotten several dozen requests like this every day for the past few decades. Valdez Lopez, learn how to work with your talented composer to get what you want. You MIGHT get a response from his agent when they know about you from the quality of the work they've already seen.

It wasn't BloodBoal that recommended it, it was Nick66 himself, hence why he asked you to let him know what you thought of it if you watched it

@valdezlopez Look at it this way: It can't hurt to try to contact JW. If you do there's a very, very, very slight chance he'll agree to score your film; if you don't there's a 0% chance. I'm rooting for you. Just don't get your hopes up too high.

@Nick66: You asked me to report back when I had watched that fanedit Bloodboal recommended (I think it was him anyway). So here I am after having watched part 1. I can't go into too many details about the visual aspect of all the editing that took place, but the person who watched it with me said he didn't notice anything. As far as he was concerned, he was watching a film no one had tampered with. Story-wise, it's most definitely a vast improvement. Everything goes so much quicker without all the useless rubbish. No Radagast (I did like him, but ultimately he wasn't necessary), no Dol Guldur (so no stupid Galadriel epicness in part 2, yay!), no Tauriel (thank God)... I think that's all the major differences. Part 1 ends with Bard aiming his weapon at the dwarves. It's not a bad ending, but not an 'Oh my God' cliffhanger either. Two things I did not like: they got rid of the entire prologue except for the introduction to Frodo and the 'nasty wet Hobbit hole' bit. That scene never annoyed me. They also got rid of Gollum killing the goblin, also rather unnecessary in my opinion. But, if you want to know whether you should watch this edit or the original, I'd advise anyone to discard the original right away. One possible flaw is the handling of Azog: he's only first mentioned by the Goblin King, so right now we only have unexplained animosity between him and Thorin. As for the music. The editors claimed to have restored unused music. I don't know as much as I should about the rejected/tracked music, but one thing I did notice -- I think this wasn't in the original film at least -- was the inclusion of the Baggins/Took theme in Axe or Sword when Bilbo joins the company. And that worked quite well. Obviously, we sadly don't have the prologue music or the stunning Nazgul choir. (Yes, I liked that music, even though I know it should't be there.) Two things were edited rather badly: the ring music comes in very abruptly when Bilbo first finds it, and there's a rather clumsy transition between Erebor and Overhill because they got rid of the White Council as well. Are these edits unacceptable? Well, they're only a tiny litlte bit worse than the film edits. There's also one statement of Tauuriel's B section for some reason. That's all for now. If you have questions, ask away.

I didn't buy the scheduling conflict as well. Suppose you DO have a scheduling conflict: between a SW score and anything else, who would not choose the SW option? If your goal is to let people hear your music and make money out of it, SW is the greatest opportunities for anyone. If the French source is reliable, Desplat has been working on SW for more than one year, so he must have at least sketched a lot of stuff, maybe even the whole score. Apart from any comparison between Desplat and Giacchino or whoever else, what makes me sad is that a great professional such as AD might work for so long and have his score binned, with no immediate chances to let anyone hear it. But again, this has happened in the past to North, Goldsmith, Herrmann, Yared... Independently of the merits of the music (in principle, a score can be rejected simply because it is bad), in such cases they should just allow the rejected composer to publish at least a suite from his score, maybe some time after the movie opening, so that it can be performed by orchestras.

Valdezlopez, I wish you were the Rogue One folks making the request.

Aren't we all, at JWfan, music critics, in one form, or another?

Filmtracks is my favorite. I don't always agree with it (e.g. Clemensen seems to have a habit of dismissing many Williams cues that I absolutely adore as "typical," "generic," or, at best, "very complex") but I always look forward to the reviews.

Without taking any responsibilities, I try to translate with what I know from French and a bit of help from google-translate (maybe some French-speaking people could improve this): Just one month ago, AD declined the offer to work on a French feature movie alluding to his full-time immersion in the project Rogue One. His involvment seemed total, and nothing would let you think that he would leave the project. "In the middle of a working dinner, he would not stop leaving the table to answer to calls coming from Disney from Los Angeles. It was a huge pressure", confides a source close to the case. Desplat's departure seems all the more abrupt and betrays great turmoil backstage: "On a Star Wars, you just don't change composer three months before the film opens with a snap of fingers, it's unbelievable! Complex contracts were binding both parties ... Either Disney fired him, or he is throwing in the towel because he had enough and does not understand what Disney wants, but there was surely some clash." Some rumors, here also insistent, show a shift in Rogue One toward a more "light" tone. This would explain the fatigue of the composer, forced to readjust everything at the last minute. "Writing the score, recording, booking a symphony orchestra ... all this takes time. It is impossible to redo everything from scratch!" they tell us. "Disney is bound to keep some of Desplat's score, he has been working on this project for more than a year, I do not see how they could do otherwise. In any case, it is a huge surprise and they must be very, very late. It would not surprise me if some heads would eventually fall. It smells like a little sabotage. " ...is this correct?

Well, it seems the schedule thing could be bullshit… http://www.lepoint.fr/pop-culture/cinema/star-wars-rogue-one-ce-que-cache-le-depart-brutal-d-alexandre-desplat-16-09-2016-2068991_2923.php The highlight :

One of the worst news ever.....

I like some Giacchino Scores more than some Williams scores. I'd be lying if i said I didn't. Some Williams scores aren't interesting to me. Mainly because of the film they're for I haven't seen or care about. But to say I will declare Rogue One better than TFA, is idiotic before I actually hear it. There is a 99.9% chance that TFA is better than what RO will be. But I never say never. Giacchino may randomly write the greatest score ever written by mankind. Infinitely unlikely, but nothing is impossible.

I think it'll be streets ahead in the "Punny Track Titles" aspect. Could be wrong though.

Desplat's level of craftsmanship and musicality is leagues ahead of Giacchino though. And at least we could have expected something unique to have been brought to the table, while still respectfully grounded in the traditional SW vocabulary we're accustomed to. With Giacchino...yawn.

There was no chance that Desplat's score was going to be in the same league as TFA. There is no chance that Giacchino's score is going to be in the same league as TFA. Doesn't mean it can't be a good score though!

Bullshit! I've officially lost interest in this film. Haven't been this disappointed in a while.

Yes! And it gets you so pumped for the score when listening to it away from the film as well. But that whole arrangement is brilliant, especially during the dancing sequence. It's quite easy to dismiss that track as just Cole Porter's song and under-estimate Williams' involvement in it, but the fact is that Williams arranged the whole thing for orchestra, and it's so colourful, so playful, so upbeat yet so elegant that it's hard to imagine anybody could do a better job for that sequence. I love to look at the sheet music of that cue for inspiration, as it's brimming with so many cool ideas. As for my favourite Indy short segments...there are so, so many. The score I'm least familiar with is The Last Crusade; at least the middle part. But I'll keep it to the first film at least. This one starts with a creepy jungle vibe. I love the aleatoric part of "The Idol Temple" (0:00 - 1:33) - that opening piano cluster sounds just like opening the door to some gigantic, ancient room. And I especially like that sting at 1:20, with the bizarre clarinet. Those notes fit so perfectly, for some reason. I like the very opening notes in "Flight from Peru", as well as the whole Indy fanfare at 1:23. It feels like the whole sequence with the pizzicato strings is a build-up to that point, and it really works. And the trilling woodwind from 1:32 is like being in those rollercoasters which launch forward very fast at the beginning, and where your head is thrown back because of the force. It suits the whole take-off sequence perfectly. My next favourite moment comes during the masterpiece that is "The Map Room: Dawn". Well, it is hard to pick a best part of it because the whole thing is so integrated. But I really love the whole build-up with the choir from 2:09, till the powerful "tinkly" chord at 2:58. When I saw the Live to Projection concert of this score, and the orchestra landed on that chord, it felt as if all the air in the hall had turned into brilliant shards of glass. It is because at that point, Williams suddenly introduces a triangle, glockenspiel, xylophone, two harps, and piano on top of the music. It doesn't come across so well on the album, but when played live...it's really quite something! Love the garbled sounds heard at the beginning of "The Well of the Souls" (0:00 - 0:53). Terrifying! Now, "Uncovering the Ark"...the whole section between 3:11 and 4:24 is great. First we hear something which sounds like screaming in the background (violins trilling + choir). And then the Ark theme comes in at 3:26 in the horns, but it is transposed down from how we always heard it up till that point, which gives it a really menacing character, sort of like hearing an army approaching from a distance. This notion of transposing themes is nothing new, but the way Williams employs it here is very effective I think. We hear the Ark theme again at 4:50, against whirling strings, a sort of forshadowing of what's to come... "The Fist Fight/The Flying Wing" and "Desert Chase" are fantastic tracks of course, but they don't really have short moments. Although 3:55 - 4:02 of Desert Chase is definitely hair-raising against the shot of the soldier falling into a chasm... I'm pretty confident that 0:38 - 1:03 of "Ride to the Nazi Hideout" is the best variation of the Raiders March in the whole franchise. Even better than anything in the concert version. "The Miracle of the Ark" - this probably has the most famous soundtrack moment in the franchise! I'm talking about 3:31 of course. You don't really hear it in the film, but the horn rip at 3:44 is bone-chilling. I also like the ending, from 5:47. An open chord; indicative of a resolution, but not totally.

I always imagined that Han Solo and the Princess would work really well in a jazz setting (I could imagine a pianist or saxophonist playing it as a solo). But I had something more upbeat in mind than that video, something more like 152-156 bpm, with the whole bass and hi-hat thing, and with the tom-toms and offbeat crash cymbal coming in at around 0:46 in the concert version. But (clearly from the description above) I'm no jazzist so I wouldn't know how to go about arranging the whole thing. Anybody know what I'm getting at or am I just talking a load of crap?

There's been a goldmine of behind the scenes footage pop up on YouTube from their Birmingham shoot. Anyone with an interest in filmmaking will get a kick out of this footage. Lots of practical effects and old-school techniques on display here. Also, Spielberg's embraced digital filmmaking: they're using drones to film parts of this chase sequence! Can't wait to see how Williams scores a high-octane, dystopian, futuristic-yet-retro chase sequence. I'm envisioning shades of Anderton's Great Escape with less percussion and more synth. Most exciting is that this is the first Spielberg/Williams collaboration since Munich or War of the Worlds where I have no idea how Williams will approach the score. Compare that to most of their recent collaborations (The BFG, Lincoln, War Horse, Tintin and KOTCS) which mostly met our expectations. EDIT: Didn't realise The BFG was shot digitally! Kamisnki says that was just because of the extensive VFX, but I'm assuming RPO will be just as intensive?

S07E01: He trains Sam. Gets killed. In dying breath makes Sam Grand, Grand, Grand Maester of all Westeros. Scene. Credits. Cue Beastie Boys "Pass the Mic." Written By: Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman Directed By: JJ Abrams