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Richard Penna

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Richard Penna last won the day on October 23 2022

Richard Penna had the most liked content!

About Richard Penna

  • Birthday 07/06/1985

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    Dance the night
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    Surrey, UK

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  1. The Rock arrived last week and I had a proper second go through to identify a better curated personal OST. And now that Hook is back in stock, the wait continues for TLW to come back. It can't be rocket science to find a 5 minute window when they have both available..... right?
  2. With the new series of Gladiators in the UK there's been a minor resurgence of interest in the soundtrack of the original 90s series. While I have the first release and found the second one for a sensible price on Discogs, I also recently found there was a 'main theme' CD single which features two tracks from the first CD in instrumental form (without Storm's vocals). Sadly it's not even a case of finding it at a sensible price - it's just not around at all and I have a saved search on Ebay and Discogs to see if one turns up. The odd person puts a rip on YouTube/Soundcloud but somehow manages to compress the fuck out of it in the process (and if they're not doing that deliberately, they don't know what they're doing).
  3. It lends the sequence a bit more of a mythical feel as you're not seeing any real characters except Sauron. The final bit with the one ring is a bit underwhelming though.
  4. I'm 99% sure I was taken to see The Secret Garden at the cinema as a kid but I was nowhere near the age that the music would've left any lasting impression. The track above is pleasant enough and I'll give it a whirl on Spotify (Varese's 30-minuters strike again I see) although if it's essentially just a half hour of flowery piano/string/woodwind material it may not be my thing. Although Doyle did what sounds like a similar sort of thing with All Is True and that's one of my favourite scores.
  5. I'm not into either of these scores so haven't followed the various machinations, but is there a good reason why he co-scored Maverick with Zimmer/Balfe? I.e. a reason that doesn't involve them being able to put Zimmer's name on the cover, but a genuine workload-related reason. I received The Rock yesterday and my read of the liners made it clear that Zimmer/HGW's involvemement was due to better editing technology resulting in the music needing constant changes.
  6. One of my few quibbles with the score is exactly this, and especially with the new section put back in. I get a bit apologistic with these moments because the composer is having to follow the film, but nonetheless it's not a very cohesive battle cue. The other quibble would be that I'm not a massive fan of Rescue Mission. It's a perfectly fine cue but it functions a bit like a prologue that needs music that's not very prologue-like on album. Were I looking to arrange the album for optimum listening I'd actually move this cue somewhere a bit later, and maybe even put Grimmel's Surprise as an opener, which has a much faster and accessible build-up and ends on a similar vibe.
  7. Despite my modern distaste for the Oscars, I realised that as the US has gone forward an hour (a couple of weeks before us) and they're starting it earlier and it's no longer under Sky's captivity (now on a free to air channel) so I might actually see what the first bit is like, and maybe they'll even do best score really early...
  8. I agree that stylistically it doesn't fit at all but I like the verse melody (the chorus being Test Drive) and in general I do like electronically driven songs. Not everyone's thing though, of course. I gave S&S a re-listen after getting this set and I just couldn't find a way into it. If that song has anything to do with the score or film other than a very tenuous cultural link with the band, or some meaning of sticks and stones... I'm not hearing it. It would be like putting Radioactive on a soundtrack album for a family comedy set in Vegas. Yes, the band is from there but what do they have to do with the theme or plot of the film? None of the albums needed a song.
  9. Oh, if loads of cues were revised then the bonus section should be as long as it needs to be to present those variations. My point was that surrounding those alternate takes within often large component cues can result in a very bloated bonus section. If you're looking at it purely as a resource for alternates you find interesting (and swapping out) then it's a good approach. I'm essentially a bit skeptical that when a cue that has (say) 5 revisions, as a composer slighty rethinks their idea, do we really need to hear all of them? This is where I put my trust in a producer to determine where a revision is musically and creatively interesting.
  10. Sure, it very much depends on each case. It's when we're talking about lots of versions of a cue and whether the differences are noticeable enough to warrant presenting (a) all of them and (b) in separate tracks. It's very rare for me to keep bonus sections exactly as they are, simply because even the biggest fan of a score may not find every single cue interesting enough that a subtle variation is worth repeatedly hearing. I ditched a lot of the Sleepy Hollow alternates either because only a few seconds was different or because in some cases there's a good reason Elfman revised them. I suppose in the end you can have an album that plays magnificently, or one that presents all variations of everything. I don't think you can have both even from MM if the sum of revised material is approaching an entire CD. That said, bring on Last Crusade!
  11. I kept the variations of Boston reunion and they work well purely because (and as other have said) they are all very different. That's where I support multiple alternates being included - where you're listening to such musically different approaches that they could easily be different scenes. Where I take issue a bit is including 2/3/4 (etc) versions of one cue in its entirety just to include what can be very minor changes, such as the last 30 seconds of a 5 minute cue. I don't know how playable that is - I'm personally a bigger fan of the 'alternate segment' or 'alternate end' type bonus tracks where you focus on the differences rather than opting to include many minutes of identical material back to back. For example, when Gladiator eventally happens I really hope that the opening track is the film takes of the battle sequence, with the alternate 'lament' section (with Gerrard's vocal) being its own 90 second or so 'alternate end' track, and not the entire 11+ minute track all over again. Given that recording sessions often contain multiple takes of a cue that only have tiny performance-based differences, I'm going to suggest a no doubt extremely debatable view that aside from the final film takes (or intended, for unused ones) of every cue, we don't need literally every variation of every cue a composer wrote. I'd love a FotR Matessino set but I'm sure we don't want every variation of every cue Shore recorded. We have to trust the producer to pick the most different and relevant alternates. I have no doubt that for many here, being given a HDD with literally every single take recorded at the sessions would be a dream, and you'd have fun putting it together into a mega-complete four-CD set, but I wonder if you'd focus so heavily on wanting an ultra deluxe, definitive set, that you'd create something that would actually get a bit repetitive.
  12. Clear hierarchy of the songs for me. Where No One Goes is awesome, Together From Afar is just barely interesting enough to keep, but Sticks and Stones has about as much business being on a soundtrack album as I See Fire (i.e., bugger all). One simple change would make all three at least a passing interest, and only the second one does it - use Powell's theme.
  13. Never seen them Unless you're implying that Gia is 'some other guy' doing a generic score, you're stretching my argument a tad
  14. Is there something specific about Brainstorm that would cause Townson to kibosh an expansion in the first place? Like, is it considered to be a lesser score in Horner's ouvre or a more experimental one? It's clear that he felt a number of scores weren't of a calibre to be released on his precious label, but why this score?
  15. And what I've seen of Robin Hood suggests it was a somewhat pointless film and didn't do Crowe a whole load of good PR for his mocked accent. But I don't really see what harm the existence of that film does, even if marketed as KoH 2. Scott's reputation as a bankable director might be affected for a bit, but for those of us who liked Streitenfeld's score (and I know there are very few of us), we got something good from it. Hence my overall perspective is I don't understand what drives anger in response to a film that doesn't have any immediately evident reason to exist... just don't give them your money. Is it really just people who don't want a director or classic film's reputation tarnished? I have to admit I don't share those concerns because I don't really care what the masses think of my favourite movie. I thought Jurassic World was the biggest pile of shit I'd seen in a while, and plenty of people think JP/// is really stupid, but that doesn't affect opinions of the classic first movie, does it?
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