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http://filmmusicreporter.com/2018/12/24/la-la-land-records-to-release-soundtrack-album-for-foxs-the-orville/

So, no HP for Christmas, but go some other gems to listen to:

With the two Spielberg's at least being very good pictures.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS Not much to add here. It's a seamless continuation of the first score, only that it we thankfully go in medias res early. The bloated operetta tone makes way for chilling, elegant darkness - a most welcome change. The movie is as cloyingly done as the first one - the director, Chris Columbus, never saw a mugshot he didn't like - but thanks to Rowlings piling up the bodies and premonitions, all the big sets and effects have to serve a paranoid green-tinted narrative with child and adult actors looking horrified a lot of the time. Foppish Kenneth Branagh, sadly wasted in the later part of the movie, is the first one of many memorable eccentric teachers coming into the school over the years, and his bumbling tune is one of Williams' most uninspired creations - all the other new themes are simply a delight: it's really as if they put Williams in a time capsule back to the late 80's. Effortlessly written and not overstaying their welcome (an increasing danger with over-elaborate pieces like 'Harry's Wondrous World'), they are maybe the score's most pleasant surprises. It's hard to rate, really, as the compromise of having William Ross shoehorning cut-and-paste jobs of the first score even into crucial scenes robs you of the pleasure having new (and old) themes properly developed - to anyone's surprise, the result wasn't really satisfactory, leading to further confusion when Williams re-wrote parts of these parts, leading to a schizophrenic narrative where the chamber of secrets, the movie's centerpiece, is half represented by a new theme Williams wrote while the other half is filled up with the first movie's philosopher's stone sinister motif. Sadly the whole setup of the horrifying finale in the chamber is a big disappointment, musically, leaving you with only another chaotic action piece next to 8 minutes of tracking (where the appearance of Fawkes The Phoenix practically forces Williams to insert majestic passages of his lilting theme amongst all the clutter). As dreaded Lord Voldemort plays an important part, it is a waste of having especially these parts tracked. All in all it's a good effort, with several action and mood scenes filling enough time to keep you entertained, and it's a first rate job of ensemble playing, recording and mixing. The new LLL release is a hard slog to get through: out with the scissors and editing software. A good selection of 70-80 minutes is to be rescued from it.

Wasn't that in fact his desire though? If I remember correctly, word was that there were negotiations, but they wanted to record in London and Williams wanted to stay in the US. Entirely unofficial info, of course, so it may be wrong, and I don't even remember who I heard it from.

I don't think anyone's begrudging Williams doing whatever he wants in his twilight years.The skepticism mainly comes from the contrast between Williams own statements that he simply loves writing music and will do it for as long as he's able. Of course he can keep tinkering at the piano and also spend time with his loved ones and pursue other interests. Safe to say he's been doing that for a while. And if true, what does "total retirement" mean for someone who has been writing music almost every day for close to 60 plus years? Retirement from scoring movies and conducting? Quite possible. Retirement from music totally - not writing anything at the piano? Unlikely, unless he's pretty much in a coma. Am curious to know the source. If true, I think he/she has broken a significant trust by revealing what would seem to have be a private conversation. Williams deserves better. And if false, Williams deserves better. Either way, if I were Williams or his management, I'd consider not working with that person again.

The Christmas Movie genre for me is reserved for movies that can really only be enjoyed specifically around that holiday. This includes Dr. Seuss's Grinch cartoon from the 60s, Home Alone and of course the remake of Miracle on 34th Street with John Williams. Movies set around Christmas like Die Hard and Batman II can be viewed any time of year.

But since it IS the first official album of its type for the musical source, you have ZERO right to criticize it for length and sequence.

I agree!

Finishing duties with HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN A recent visit to the Royal Albert Hall for (my first) live movie/concert performance misled me regarding the score's true worth: its precise, often deliberately toned-down approach was dwarfed by the movie's elaborate sound effects - the whole idea seems more of an expensive marketing stunt anyway. LLL's recent expansion now makes you appreciate not only the fresh start the series got with its third installment, but also the considerable effort it must have taken Williams to abandon the well-trodden road he took for the leaden, show-value oriented first two Potters. Gone is the relentless operetta overscoring, substituted now by a gnarly, mischievous, often dissonant thriller approach still playful enough to conjure the wizarding world of Harry Potter, but doing so in a more idiosyncratic way (even the newfound minimalisms of 'A. I.' make a cameo). Director Alfonso Cuarón's musical aesthetics certainly are a far cry from the leisure old-school style of Chris Columbus, and he thankfully bonded enough with the composer to convince him to largely abandon the wealth of material he created for this series, as a result unleashing one of the high points of fantasy scoring of the 2000's. Given the quintessential englishness of this series, it's a bit surprising that it took three movies to reflect the islands musical heritage: an inconsistency even Williams might have noticed, as he not only employs medieval melodies here, but also quite a band of mediaval (folk and court) instruments playing them. The mix is delightful and with all the wacky additions (atonal bebop in 'The Knight Bus' or the shawm fanfare for Sir Cardogan) play well against the omnipresent mischievous motto theme of the movie, 'Something Wicked this Way comes', and the sinister music for the elaborate conspiracies involving metamorphosing rats, deadly dementors and time travels. The old album, well-intentioned as it may have been, was quite a disservice for the varied tapestries Williams creates here: due to less dense scoring, there are a lot of short cues in addition to some fanciful alternates that would have required a much more deft hand combining those into a good representation - the second half of the movie, where important story points coalesce is woefully underrepresented on the old release. The true worth of Williams' contributions can only be valued now, with the long Time Past modeled on the beat of a ticking clock sequence intact, or the textural interesting strings flirrings of The Three Broomsticks, or the modernist/aleatoric cues for the more frightening moments reminiscent of CEOTK (the choral alternates are a beaut) - or even the short Britten-esque carol A Winter's Spell. But even in short cues like 'The Executioner' you feel a playfulness that the album would feel less without it. If there's one thing this release is proof of is that Williams post-80's career could have used a few more Cuarons (at least we had Stone, Annaud, John Singleton and Barry Levinson) in lieu of George Lucas, Chris Columbus or Indy IV-Spielberg.

Your new nickname?

It give us this message: Do violent things onto others, BEFORE they onto you. 😀

What a stunning set. Worth the price and wait 😍

Hmm, not appreciated enough by whom? Both MR and WotW are two of Cruises top-grossing movies, I think, excluding the MI movies. Unless you mean the scores? But I think even the scores are rather highly regarded by JW fans these days! Two of the best (scored) scenes from each movie:

Just a public service announcement for Williams fans in Oregon: Oregon Public Broadcasting will premiere the "Great Performances" episode featuring Highwood's Ghost on Sunday, December 30th at noon. This is instead of the PBS premiere on Friday, December 28th. I've got my recorder set!

Who cares, why does it matter, we don't need music from every- -reads "composed by Bruce Broughton"- GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME

Fantastic news! I'd like to think my tweet to MacFarlane and LLL (liked by the latter) helped a bit https://twitter.com/Laserschwert_/status/926054270801195008?s=17

Now even me mum says JWFan's version of things don't add up, so what I'm really tryna say is...I believe ya.

Gee, i don't need any kind of 'trustworthy source' to confirm the retirement plans of a man almost 90.

He won't retire until he gets his 6th Oscar.

Well, depends on what he's retiring from. A goodbye to his conducting career wouldn't surprise me at all, especially after whatever he was dealing with in October. I will be both awestruck and slightly exasperated if he's still conducting IX. A retirement from film scoring would be sad but it takes a lot of physical and mental endurance, time, focus, tolerance for bullshit, etc and he must have good reasons if he's even gonna start saying no to Spielberg. I'm grateful for his work this decade and if he's up for one last big swing, that's more than I could ask for. If he decides he's not going to be writing music of any sort to share with the likes of us, then I can only assume he has more important things on his mind that will need his full attention. A huge THANK YOU and all the best to him in that case.

You are correct. Incorrect!

Yes!

I don’t know what this show is, but I’m a simple man. I see Bruce Broughton, I click “Buy”.

I love TLW. It recalls Goldsmith at his most badass. Williams abandoned the sugary melodic themes that people on this forum seem to be obsessed with and signature twinkly swashbuckling style in favor of a more brooding atmospheric approach. Buh-bye comfort zone. Even the brief renditions of themes from the first score somehow sound cooler, excepting the silly sped-up theme at the end. The suspenseful and pounding action packed stuff that make up the majority of the score has a threatening nature. It's a great action/adventure score and one of the only times his music ever sounded like this. It's also one of the few JW scores I can have playing in public situations and not feel pretentious or like a bit of a sissy.

I didn't use to capitalize everything but I could never quite work out which 'conjunctions' should be capitalized and which not, like 'in', 'on', etc. I just ended up doing them all. Feels right to me.

I need to have some sort of fad/quirk to cover up my complete lack of personality. Karol

It was a great year for him! Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, Attack of the Clones...even if you're not a fan of any one of those, it's hard to deny that they feature some top writing from him, with at least a few musical setpieces that sing to even the most jaded listeners.

AFAIK we're still waiting with bated breath for Jason's spreadsheet.

If Star Wars IX and Indy 5 are John's final two film scores, few fans could ask for much more after such a celebrated career. The reality is Spielberg spent way too long sitting on his hands after Munich (1 film in 6 years, a mediocre one at that) and robbed us of at least 3-4 scores while Williams was at his modern peak.

You know I heard, the composer may retire. I've been asked to give you this small token of our appreciation. Courtesy of Mr. William Ross.

I don't believe there's any truth to this rumour, but even if it should turn out to be true (always a possibility), I find that I wouldn't feel devastated, or even angry. Just a sort of resigned melancholy for an era past, and immense gratitude for the music that JW gave us....

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith At one point during Star Wars III, Padme asks Anakin to hold her like he used to before all of the politics, plotting and war. The former Queen who had liberated her people with aggressive negotiations two movies earlier just wants to settle down with her husband and raise a family. But this war is far from over and the stakes are higher than ever for our cast of heroes and villains on both sides. We catch up with them in a twenty minute self-contained adventure. Warring factions clash above the Republic's metropolis and Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker return to save the day. A climactic swordfight right at the start of the movie sees the end of the last movie's villain, the late Christopher Lee in little more than a cameo. Anakin's skills have increased, his anger has made him more powerful and the elusive dark lord disguised as a friendly politician has taken notice. We're brought up to speed with the new hairstyles and cybernetic head honcho. Anakin is once again at odds; with the Jedi, the Sith and especially himself. Lucas knew exactly what it would take for a good man to turn to the side of evil and had already laid the first stones on his road to Hell. The way to make a character that was previously a hammy villain in a robot suit a tragic sympathetic hero [His unmasking to reveal a guy resembling Mr. Freeze from the old Batman TV show and subsequent death in Return of the Jedi were not particularly effective] was to have him say his goodbyes to the light for love. This time around, Hayden and Natalie are surprisingly not monotone. With blow-dried locks, Christensen wields his laser sword aggressively and emotes even more masterfully. The digital camera loves him. The ever dependable Ewan looks like Kiefer Sutherland in Disney's Three Musketeers. Without a doubt, Ian McDiarmid steals the show. He's fantastic as Anakin's manipulative buddy in the first half of the movie. But when the ghoulish makeup is eventually applied and the wardrobe becomes strictly black, he lets his hair down and hams it up to maximum levels. It wouldn't be Star Wars without clunky patented Lucas sayings and Sith's became as memorable as the old trilogy's in many ways. Lucas has compared the Star Wars series to silent films and the marriage of visuals and music in Sith is perfected in three scenes which feature little to no dialogue. The first is a montage where military troops turn on their former Jedi commanders. The second is the duel between Obi-Wan and the renamed Darth Vader while simultaneously Yoda confronts the Emperor, complete with a ludicrous game of space frisbee. Hanging over a great precipice presumably gloating while Yoda plummets to the floor of space congress, Palpatine channels Jack Nicholson as the Joker when he's dangling from the helicopter at the end of Batman. The third sequence is the climax where destinies are set in motion and Williams really outdoes himself. And with that, the George Lucas Saturday matinee popcorn space opera saga is complete.

No matter how tenuous the connection to Star Trek, LaLaLand will release it!

Absolutely. Just as an example of how thorough he is: we all know that when he works on an adapted film, he diligently reads the source material. But looking at production material from The Hobbit you'll see that he's actually reading The Annotated Hobbit, so he has the biggest possible background on the work. Now that's being involved! I've been listening to this interview. I knew the Shire theme was written early on (as was Frodo's theme, per Shore, but that doesn't quite count) but I didn't know it was - as Jackson recalls it - before shooting began. That's awesome!

Just relax, folks. Williams will keep on chuggin' untill he himself, or his official representatives, say otherwise.

I, too, initially thought this was just a rehash of JW's own proclamations that he would retire from Star Wars. But I reconfirmed with my source, and (ungendered pronoun 'they') said it was not just about Star Wars. I don't doubt that Williams will happily score Star Wars IX and Indy 5 if everything lines up, as is his announced plan. I am Wizarding News, who reported on what the source told us, yes. A little background: We are one of the oldest Harry Potter fan sites on the internet (16 years now!). J.K. Rowling endorsed us as one her favorites, and we've reported exclusives before. (The biggest of which was breaking the story that Universal was developing the Wizarding World theme park all the way back in 2007.) On a personal level, I played trumpet myself for over 10 years, drum major'ed my school's marching band, and am a HUGE John Williams fan to boot. I would like nothing more for him to keep scoring films indefinitely. I'm very sorry if anyone was offended.

Frankly though, that's the part that's most upsetting to me. I'm not saying these guys are deliberately trying to put one over people, but I hope they would have enough self-awareness to see from a lot of people's perspective how disingenuous and opportunistic it looks to post such a thing from their platform, with the gall to use words such as "confirmed" explicitly in their post.

Yes and as others have said I think it would obviously apply to his film work only unless there is some physical impediment to his continuing at all. For any concerned or saddened at the idea I have lately discovered the profound importance in valuing the simple existence of a thing rather than its permanence or impermanence. A simple lesson but one which many of us still need to learn the hard way it seems.

But this is very far from being journalism. If a real journalist receives some important inside news about, say, the government actions, and he publishes them because it's an issue of general concern and interest, and by doing this he forces the government to give an official statement about that issue, then of course anonymous sources are useful. The thing we are talking about here, is nothing more than gossip about a person who should have the right to decide what to say publicly about his future plans, and when. The government's action should have no privacy (in principle) and answers should always be given to people who have elected them, while a person's privacy should always be guaranteed. There is a huge difference.

Sorry, but anonymous sources are an actual thing in journalism and it isn’t wrong at all to use them.

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (Philosopher's, from here on) At 2.5 hours, it's less a soundtrack release than a toolbox for Potter (or Williams) fans to build their own entry into the wizardring world of Harry Potter. And probably better off that way, as the film soundtrack tends to highlight the weaknesses of director Chris Columbus' club-footed ersatz-Spielberg style (a staple of the 'Home Alone' movies). In Columbus's hands, the whole idea of a muggle and a wizard world goes right out of the window: everything is overdone in a plush, overdecorated Dickensian storybook style and the comic buffonery of the early scenes doesn't feel much different from a visit to a troll bank or the eccentric wizard school personal. And it's especially in that crucial first quarter where Williams is the final nail in the movie's coffin, with an endless supply of bumbling menace and whimsical, prancing celeste/woodwind runs right out of his old Nutcracker playbook leavened with the macabre shadings of the omnipresent main theme (drawn from Hook and Home Alone, but based on classical repertoire, like Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre or Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain). After that heavy bit of telegraphing and editorializing - with Columbus's camera lovingly holding every shot 5 seconds longer than it needs to be - the score picks up when we finally arriving at Hogwarts. Here the music thankfully gets more varied, and betrays a harmonically more adventurous drive more in line with the maestro's later works. Among the many gifts that the soundtrack album only fleetingly granted us are a floating women's chorus (i. e. in Introduction To Quidditch), the cute school song, more of the spooky/ghostly christmas and library music, the murky, dissonant Dark Forest/Chess Game material and the sinister Stone motif, probably the biggest imprint for the movie series next to the main theme (it's the one motif next to the theme flexible enough that it could have worked for Voldemort's threat right to the end). The movie aside - and the score's familiarity - one thing that needs to be acknowledged is the splendor of it all: even more than in Williams' more celebrated earlier works, the first Potter is an exercise in the fine art of orchestration. It's as if Williams pulled out all stops here and did his best Prokoviev/Tchaikovski/Britten etc. impression (it's much less childish than, say, Hook). In that sense, Potter I is a real textbook example of this style, done in a more sophisticated way than the 70's/80's (it's a far cry from the rough and tumble Star Wars). So given its origin it must be said that as orchestral work it's remarkable, as music for film less so. In that context, it's remarkable how much discipline Cuaron demands - and gets - from the composer only 3 years after. No rousing finishs and orchestral showpieces for their own sake, no bloated overscoring - ironically making for a work that's harder to digest but imho richer as a listening experience. Still, HPPS still rates a pretty high 4/5 in my book. It's virtues are too many to concentrate on the flaws.

If he won't score indy 5 they can already cancel he film please

Yep, would have fit a Christmas movie for sure. I guess it fits the goofiness of the film.

Loving it. My dream 3CD issue. Woo hoo!!!

Score. You guys can have your "diverse styles and abstract impressionism", I'll take my elongated suites of orchestral warmth!

Fixed!

I nominate Lorne Balfe for Fallout.

Don't remember him so how good can it be?

Agreed. Like you said I'm sure it's not her fault, but Jodie just isn't the Doctor. She backs down when threatened, keeps apologising for everything and yeah has no presence whatsoever, which is just fundamentally not the character of the Doctor. The stories are also dull and they definitely have a villain problem (i.e. they're all either terrible or just plain boring). My plan is to try and get through the rest of series 11, but if there's no major improvement by the finale - I'm out. Time to rewatch Tennant's era and reminisce about the good old days.