What Is The Last Score You Listened To? (older scores)

[Simon McBride 113]

Prisoner of Askaban

 

Dang good

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

34 minutes ago, publicist said:

As far as hasidic dances go, this one is pretty much unbeatable. It's Cosma's 'Masada'

 

 

 

I remember that film!

[Incanus 5,713]

Secret Weapons Over Normandy by Michael Giacchino

[Naïve Old Fart 9,507]

  Malcolm Clarke's THE SEA DEVILS.

It's the IMAGES of Doctor Who: completely unlistenable, and utterly brilliant.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Images is NOT unlistenable!

[Naïve Old Fart 9,507]

No, but it is utterly brilliant! 

[Incanus 5,713]

Thirteen Days by Trevor Jones

[Kühni 485]

.

[Incanus 5,713]

2 hours ago, Kühni said:

Imma spend all day today to listen to Faleel's 14.5-hours "as-close-to-complete-as-it-is-ever-going-to-get" edits of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I keep discovering things in there that I never even imagined could exist.

 

Nice that you have found time for that. And those scores do keep giving after all these years. Always some detail, small or large that somehow gets illuminated when you listen to this music.

 

Journey by Austin Wintory

[Loert 2,510]

Alan Silvestri - Who Framed Roger Rabbit

 

 

 

Always have fun listening to this! 

[Fancyarcher 350]

Rabbit & Rogue - Danny Elfman - Pretty fantastic ballet from Elfman. Chaotic but also beautiful at the same time. 

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[crocodile 7,990]

 Watership Down by Angela Morley

 

Karol

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Incanus 5,713]

Stalling Around by John Williams

[Brundlefly 2,385]

"Inchon" by Jerry Goldsmith

 

It is like a mixture of Patton, Ennio Morricone, Hellraiser and the Klingon Theme.

 

Pretty underestimated - do you know it? The music seems to be the only noteworthy thing of the film (IMDb rating: 2,7).

[Naïve Old Fart 9,507]

4 hours ago, crocodile said:

 Watership Down by Angela Morley

 

Karol

 

Aah. A lovely score, from a lovely film.

[John 2,032]

Inception - a solid, tense, and entertaining score.

[crocodile 7,990]

And a very nicely put together Zimmer album.

 

Karol

[Faleel 5,340]

King Solomon's Mines

The Shadow - Jerry Goldsmith

[Faleel 5,340]

Rambo: First Blood Part II

[Fancyarcher 350]

10 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

"Inchon" by Jerry Goldsmith

 

It is like a mixture of Patton, Ennio Morricone, Hellraiser and the Klingon Theme.

 

Pretty underestimated - do you know it? The music seems to be the only noteworthy thing of the film (IMDb rating: 2,7).

 

Inchon was years before Hellraiser so that wouldn't it technically be the other way around. Anyway good score, very different from Patton, the recording is of course infamously bad, but that didn't bother me as much as I expected it to.

[Simon McBride 113]

The Lost World

 

This is fun.

 

The Hobbit (2002 video game)

 

I really like this score.

[publicist 4,643]

 

The Book of Henry - Michael Giacchino

 

While the main theme and its harmonic usage is certainly more inspired than Giacchino's blockbuster noodlings (more pianistic Michel Legrand than half-assed pretending with 110 musicians), over its whole (agreeable) length it runs into the common Giacchino problem of increasing banality (it's the not-too-flipped coin side of 'Inside Out'). You perk up when a cue like 'Christina's Dance' suddenly, outrageously, makes something resembling a dramatic musical statement after eternal minutes of insubstantial chord-mongering and dithering piano tinkling (worst: 'Susan for Justice'). 

 

So you're left with 10 minutes of niceness - cue tracks 1,2,3,12,16 - but slim pickens are the norm so why not take those. Let's wait for Desplat to enliven this filmmusical summer with 'Valerian'.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

13 hours ago, Hawmy said:

The Lost World

 

This is fun.

MCA or LLL?

[Simon McBride 113]

3 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

MCA or LLL?

 

Whichever one is on spotify

[crocodile 7,990]

The Happening

Starship Troopers

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

 

Karol

[Bespin 8,480]

45 minutes ago, Hawmy said:

 

Whichever one is on spotify

 

Horrible.

[Will 2,215]

I'm not sure how many of you listened to this score (I haven't), but I just read that Conrad Pope did this particular cue. It is pretty great.

 

 

Apparently it, and E.T., are similar to Howard Hanson's second symphony, which I then checked out. Terrific symphony! 

[Faleel 5,340]

Fellowship of the Ring

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

5 hours ago, Bespin said:

 

Horrible.

 

Why are so many people here so prejudiced against OSTs?

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

It really doesn't make any sense. It seems intended listening experiences arranged by composers are shunned by a bunch of OCD completists that want the music to follow the narrative of the movie.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

And it's possible to like both presentations without the simplistic "one is great, the other is horrible" mentality.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Yeah, I mean. The OST vs. complete debates are really shocking and few people seem to be on the side of the OSTs. It's like tuning into some sort of JWFan equivalent of MSNBC where OSTs are a bunch of Trumps.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Both sides have their extremists. Thor being the one who gets trapped by his own ideology where in most cases he just can't bring himself to admit there's good music that was left off the OST. But there are so many on the other side who can't understand why a composer's intended track order is its own (usually good) experience that's isolated from the constrictions of the film.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

They usually have superior sound with dynamic range, but everyone these days prefers everything louder AKA remastered.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Music for the mobile generation unfortunately has to be bright, loud and compressed to contend with traffic, railway and pedestrian noise. People have forgotten the proper way to listen to music.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Which is?

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

The way James Horner CDs were mastered in the 90s where the soft parts would be really soft and you'd have to really crank up the hi-fi to hear it, but then it would get loud and the speakers would blow.

[Faleel 5,340]

What does music not sounding muffled have to do with hearing it over a subway?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The labels are scared that people will complain that they can't hear the quiet bits over all the railway noise. So they alienate hi-fi enthusiasts like myself to pander to those who persist in listening to music "on the go".

[DemonStar 57]

Compressed and brickwalled music sounds dreadful to me even on smartphones and iPods, the systems for which it apparently was mastered for. I never liked the loudness of the Jurassic Park 20th anniversary release on home speakers or headphones alike, while the La-La Land release sounds so pleasant and soothing. Sadly there's hardly any new score release these days with proper dynamic range, with rare exceptions like Theodore Shapiro's Captain Underpants album.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

And Thomas Newman's Bond scores are nice and dynamic.

[publicist 4,643]

 

Small Soldiers - Jerry Goldsmith

 

Comfortably anchored in Goldsmith's favoured boisterous-if-familiar late style, this penultimate Joe Dante collaboration score offers some eclectic joys á la 'Gremlins' that rise it two notches above the blunt action whoppers the composer churned out with abandon in the mid-90's. Pushed along by producer Steven Spielberg, the vaguely satirical project concerns itself with toys brought to life, carelessly outfitted with high tech chips by unscrupulous capitalists - though the movie is defeated by the same pragmatism it denounces, with a shallow script paying lip service to apple pie values and white doves while lovingly lingering on the ensuing chaos and destruction caused by a marauding band of commando toys (a particularly wasted element being the handling of the corporation bigwigs).

 

Along with some on-target performances as Phil Hartman's harebrained satellite-dish-crazy neighbour ('I think World War II might be my favourite war!') the music provides one of the few bright spots of the project. Called upon delivering another variation on 'When Johnny comes marching home', Goldsmith infuses his title tune with just the right amount of brawny hyperbole via his patented gung-ho horn fifths. All the expected jaunty suburbianisms from earlier Dante movies take their bow - neutered of more idiosyncratic orchestrations - and the onslaught of pop cultural references allows the composer too stray his creativity beyond piling up dead-serious action and suspense cues. At worst there are straight re-recordings of clichés like 'Ride of the Valkyries' or 'Zarathustra' but in some delightful but sadly often too short moments there are little nods to old horror movies, a great Elfman impersonation (academically altered, so to speak) and a bright Rózaesque fanfare for the heroic derring-do's of a bunch of the good toy brigade. The abundance of thematic writing throughout makes it a breezy and entertaining affair - maybe with a slight regret how few of those elements are unique to this score, or in any way original in Goldsmith's oeuvre but then, that's hardly JG's fault considering what he was working with. These days only John Powell seems a likely candidate to approach such venture with the same successful results.

 

The score's release was one of those pitiful misfires when the high fees of the AFM coupled with Goldsmith's reluctance to release the most cool pieces (why putting out a long finale when you have a lots of mousy cues from lame bonding scenes?) brought us frankly bad product (though Botnick's recorded sound is great). It's really the last big omission of his later scores waiting for the Deluxe treatment. A good 3 out of 5, if you desperately need silly rating systems.

[Brundlefly 2,385]

10 hours ago, Sally Spectra said:

Both sides have their extremists. Thor being the one who gets trapped by his own ideology where in most cases he just can't bring himself to admit there's good music that was left off the OST. But there are so many on the other side who can't understand why a composer's intended track order is its own (usually good) experience that's isolated from the constrictions of the film.

It is really a matter of taste, but of course there are some OSTs that are weirdly compiled (JFK, The Lost World) or lack a certain aspect of the music (Air Force One, The Prisoner of Azkaban), whereas there are some complete scores that tend to be redundant (Powder, Deep Rising) or often interrupt the flow of the music, because of short cues (The 'Burbs, Jurassic Park).

 

However, claiming that one's usual preference is always better, just because, is ignorant.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Believing one's musical presentation to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Small words... from a small being, trying to attack what he doesn't understand.

[Bespin 8,480]

Can it count as a score?

 

Anyway, that's a perfect score for a hot summer night.

 

 

 

[publicist 4,643]

 

Sommersby - Danny Elfman

 

Another one worth revisiting: they still made 'regular' movies back in 1993 - you wouldn't need a magnifying glass to find a good old drama like this playing in theatres. It was the first Elfman score i really liked, together with the zany 'Batman Returns' and it has stayed up there since then. It's very straight-forward, Horner-ish in its theme-driven melodramatics though Elfman of course manages to insert more idiosyncratic folksy elements that are clearly his own (foreshading the likewise excellent 'Big Fish'). The theme, a simple question/answer phrase with a memorable triad at its center is up there with Newman's 'Shawshank Redemption' as one of those defining early-to-mid 90's sound (before 'Braveheart' and 'Titanic' came along).

[Incanus 5,713]

Young Sherlock Holmes by Bruce Broughton