YoYoMama

I agree with the poll results

Rey S K Y W O H K A H

Wow I really like this, thanks for the recommendation. Wow the first track's theme is quite similar to Rescuer's Down Under

I listen to a lot of vintage stuff, have a soft spot for 50's and 60's exotica like Les Baxter (who once sued JW for copyright stuff if I'm not mistaken), I also listen to a lot of Jazz Funk, Hip Hop jazz fusion stuff, also recently got into a band called Jellyfish which sound like a 90's version of the Beatles, whom I also really enjoy. I also love world music: African Jazz and gospel, the Red Army Choir, Japanese Jazz from the 70's.

Yep, 100% masterfully produced samples.

It's been awhile since I've heard a really good video game soundtrack. Alien Isolation had an excellent score that teased the Alien motifs quite nicely particularly the slow staccato flute stabs. The Uncharted games have excellent fully orchestrated scores that hold up well. The main theme is catchy and fun to hum. Red Dead 2 had a great score that was ambient in the most perfect way. Micro motifs that were memorable but didn't get annoying over time. Most of the time video game scores are a little too ambient for me, which is fine and usually necessary but not worth listening to in isolation. I still think my favorite scores are by Giacchino, and to this day I still feel like his orchestration was a lot more interesting than it is now. For some reason his scores are a lot more dry and flaky nowadays, whereas Medal of Honor and Secret Weapons Over Normandy are rich and full of life. I wonder if he went from having a few dedicated orchestrators to doing most of it himself, because his voice has definitely changed over the years and not necessarily for the better IMO.

I still firmly believe that the scene in which Kylo accesses her memories and recites what he sees back to her in TLJ is actually a massive red herring. He only can see what she thinks she knows about herself. It's not like he has an all knowing crystal ball because his only source of reference was what was in her mind. It may be true that she was raised by drunk idiots, and that she believes those people are her parents, but couldn't there be more to the story that she doesn't know about herself? Maybe she thought those people were actually her parents, but what if they stole her from her real parents and raised her to the age that she could be properly sold into slavery for good money? What if her real parents had no choice? Maybe they were being hunted and it was a drastic last resort to keep her alive? Also, I like the idea of a big revelation happening in IX that completely flips the whole sequel trilogy on it's head. Why? Because when that sort of thing happens all of the sudden the movies you are so used to watching can be viewed again with completely fresh eyes. Now I'm not saying that she's a Kenobi or whatever, which I honestly wouldn't mind because her current trajectory and arc in the story is thinly veiled at best, but even if it's something along the lines of her real parents having intricate involvement in the story would be just fine as well. The problem with Rey is not so much that she is overpowered, I'm fine with that honestly, it's that everything happening around her is more interesting than her own story. Being a nobody who achieves great things is a nice message on the surface, but when she serves as merely a periscope to view the story and nothing much more aside from defeating the bad guy it's not very interesting. I still think that she should have been defeated in TFA by Kylo and only gotten away by the skin of her teeth, because it would have created a bigger drive to become what she needs to be. I also hate how she acted like she knew everything in TLJ and would argue with Luke, the most powerful and experienced Jedi alive at that point. Luke did kind of the same thing, but not to the point of being a complete contrarian and making Yoda look like a duffus. And finally, every time she wields a lightsaber she looks like a total dork. Please work on that LFL.

It plays like a score, but I know what you mean. Technically a concert album for sure. I never could figure out if it was intended to be a score for the video game or not, and if last minute they decided they wanted more cues from ESB in the game or that SOTE wasn't "Star Warsy" enough. I love the fact that it ended up being a standalone album, a musical adventure with no direct ties to anything. It's a movie that exists purely in your mind. I can't think of the last time something like that was done.

I just got done watching Blade Runner 2049. It's up there with ESB as one of the best sequels ever made.

Hey all been awhile since I posted. I've been listening to the McNeely's "Shadows of the Empire" score on repeat lately. Don't know what it is, but I'm enthralled by this score. It's weirdly a standalone Star Wars piece, as not much of it was used in the video game. Love how McNeely put his own spin on a Star Wars score that doesn't mimic William's style too often and goes in different directions, unlike other Star Wars composes *cough Gordy Haab cough cough* I've also been listening to the "Rescuers Down Under" score by Bruce Broughton, because for some reason I find the theme to be ultra comforting, but it's also one of the best examples of a multi stage piece that loops into and builds on itself beautifully.

On my first listen. Adventures of Han is good JW material, maybe a little directionless but still very good. Holy fuck is John Powell frenetic. I love some of his orchestrations but I HATE the generic percussion loops that are all over the score. The rythym in the second track is ripped directly from Horner's Avatar score, which worked because of the tribal imagery, but here it makes the score feel very generic because it's so overused to create tension nowadays. Want a good example of how to use percussion to create tension? Duel of the Fates. There's almost zero percussion in it except at really poignant moments, because it relies almost solely on real tones to create the tension. Aside from that, I really like how the score sounds like a classic hollywood score at times. Some of the softer moments are quite nice (when Powell slows the fuck down for a second) The throwbacks are a nice welcome, but when you place them toe to toe with the new music it makes the new music sound VERY generic. Powell for the love of god get your hand out of the percussionist's panties please. I give the score a solid B-

I'm really quite excited to hear a new Star Wars score recorded with the LSO at Abbey Road studios. As much as I like the scores for the ST, the mix is so dry compared to previous incarnations. I think it had a lot to do with the room it was recorded in. Plus, something about the brass didn't seem to pop as much as should have.

Unfortunately all I've seen so far is very similar criticisms to Empire, mostly nitpicks that are blown out of proportion, a lot of it focusing on "what could have been" rather than what's there, or malcontent with characters not living up to people's own ridiculous standards, not answering questions that really don't need to be answered because they were built up in the heads of fans rather than the movies themselves. The only valid criticisms I've seen is the Canto Bight stuff, but even then that's only 10% of the movie. Rian trolled people hard with this movie, and the fans fell for it which I find pretty brilliant. You can tell this is what happened because hardcore fans are foaming at the mouth over the minor details while general audiences seem to be blown away by it.

In *retrospect* that's how people see it, but at the time ESB was largely polarizing. A lot of people couldn't really stomach Yoda at first, or the fact that it ended on such a sour note where the hero gets his ass kicked and completely fails in the end, where Han Solo failed massively and got frozen in carbonite which lead to questions about whether or not he'd even return for the next one. My dad mentioned to me that a lot of his friends "swore off" Star Wars after ESB because it was so cold and dissimilar to ANH, and what he told me today is that the fan reaction to TLJ feels *exactly* like an echo of 1980. As an example you can read this NYT review from 1980 (a very fun read btw) that feels *very* similar to what people are saying about this movie: http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/061580empire.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/empirestrikesbackmartin.htm

Congratulations all you idiotic morons, now because of the massive fan backlash to this movie LFL and Disney are going to respond by making the most formulaic, safe, bullshit Star Wars movies for the next 40 years. Fuck the the fans. The completely vain, whiny criticisms of this movie are absolutely laughable, hold zero weight, and are only going to turn Star Wars into a completely uninteresting franchise. They're never going to take risks ever again. Fucking ridiculous.