Jump to content

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


Ollie

Recommended Posts

There are three views of Giacchino on JW Fan. The first loves Giacchino's scores, or at least likes a few of them fairly well. The second doesn't like Giacchino for the most part, some more than others, and calls him stupid names like "putz" and "hack". The third are all the strange folk who never actually post about music.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Revisited Desplat's The Imitation Game after a visit to the Churchill War Rooms inspired me to skim through the film again.

 

Desplat was a natural for this score, requiring a rhythmic approach to represent the decrypting machine in action. My one niggle is the bizarre album ordering with the chronology all over the place. I thought a favourite cue was missing until Saturday because it's in a track neither named nor placed correctly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A.I. - Artificial Intelligence by John Williams: Still staggeringly beautiful. It is also still amazing to me how the Maestro managed to write this and HPPS in the same year, two different ends of musical spectrum yet both so wonderful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Incanus said:

A.I. - Artificial Intelligence by John Williams: Still staggeringly beautiful. It is also still amazing to me how the Maestro managed to write this and HPPS in the same year, two different ends of musical spectrum yet both so wonderful.

 

What amazes me is how LLL managed to pack three scratchy discs in my A.I. set.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Perhaps they both used a defective batch of humans to do their packaging.

I bet they are missing teeth too! At least when you are through with them. Am I right?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Conan the Barbarian (Prometheus/Tadlow re-recording) by Basil Poledouris: Well this is just great!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rebecca by Franz Waxman

A great score indeed.  Waxman had a lot of remarkable stuff up his sleeve.  "Rebecca's Room" is a masterpiece of mood, some striking orchestrations.  "The Fire and Epilogue is really stirring, tight and dramatic.  Great highlights throughout. 

  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Star Trek Into Darkness by Michael Giacchino

Nothing spectacular, but no real problems with it. A lot of general action music and mood-building, but not a very complex score. It fit the part of a quick listen while doing some work.

 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes by Michael Giacchino

Essentially the best word to describe this score is, well, primitive. It hit all the right notes in terms of building a musical playground for each cue to do it's own thing with, all the while staying within the same realm of the style. Listening in succession with Star Trek, I preferred this album.

 

Lincoln by John Williams

A great addition and a perfect example of Williams Americana. The patriotism evoked by With Malice Toward None is one of the peaks, and the colonial folk cues add a period-hinting level to the album. The Petersen House and Finale is a good culmination of the material. The piano solo is a lovely touch to close the album.

 

The Empire Strikes Back (2 Disc Special Edition) by John Williams

Started on Sunday while watching the snow fall out the window. Finished with Disc 2 on Monday when I got home. Superb.

 

Some notes:

-Main Title and the Ice Planet Hoth is a splendid opener, with the main title meshing into the introduction of new themes and old material. The droid motif is a lovely minor melody.

-The Imperial March soars in Aboard the Executor

-The Battle of Hoth is an intrinsically and colourfulluy orchestrated. The incorporation of two grand pianos is my particular favourite.

-The Asteroid Field is still a highlight.

-Arrival on Dagobah illustrates the mysterious swampy environment of the planet.

-Yoda's theme is given a variety of variations, from playful to wise.

-The Mynock Cave has a great main idea.

-Attacking a Star Destroyer employs a splendid fanfare and introduces a low-registered idea connected to Boba Fett.

-The choral introduction of Cloud City is whimsical and almost utopian.

-Lando's Palace is a very confident and "bouncy" (looking for a word...) marche miniature.

-Betrayal at Bespin, Deal with the Dark Lord, Carbon Freeze, Darth Vader's Trap, Departure of Boba Fett, Clash of Lightsabers make up a great passage in this score, filled with thematic storytelling.

-Rebel Fleet/End Title closes the album, compiling the episode's themes with the closing fanfare.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Empire of the Sun

Two listens in two days. There's no other way to put it: a masterpiece for a masterpiece.

Disc 2 happens to feature most or all of the key moods, themes and settings of the score, so it makes for a great shortened album if you have less than an hour but want to listen anyway!

I'm the slightest bit miffed about the different solo take of Suo Gan (when Jim salutes the pilots) and the 3-second gorgeous harp run lead-in to Cadillac not being included, but only because I hear them in the film and like them, not because the LLL set is not perfect as it is or feels like it's missing something. Titus is the man, and Mike goes deeper than usual into the score's concept than usual - though in this case, there definitely is a lot to go into deeply.

 

I'll now isolate it to picture to see for myself what works how - not sure if I should share and present it in the iso score thread, wouldn't parts of it ruin the whole concept?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Holko said:

I'm the slightest bit miffed about the different solo take of Suo Gan (when Jim salutes the pilots)

 

Huh.  I never noticed that was different.  TIL.

 

3 hours ago, Holko said:

and the 3-second gorgeou harp run lead-in to Cadillac not being included,

 

That is indeed a bummer.  If I was helping him out back then, i would have suggested sneaking it after the final track as an easter egg.

 

3 hours ago, Holko said:

I'll now isolate it to picture to see for myself what works how - not sure if I should share and present it in the iso score thread, wouldn't parts of it ruin the whole concept?

 

Please do!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Jay said:

Huh.  I never noticed that was different.  TIL.

The solo is quite different, with a faster and more clear tempo, not as flowing as the album one. A bit more proud I think. Then it flows into the album take with the full choir until the plane is shot down. Since Suo Gan is the only main melody or identifiable part of the score not represented in some form on Disc 2, it could've been put there instead of in front of Cadillac, if that was a problem.

 

12 minutes ago, Jay said:

Please do!

 

Well, all right then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Memoirs of a Geisha by John Williams

Sayuri's theme is a very beautiful centre piece for the score. As a whole, however, it's not quite my style and is not one of my favourites, but I still can like it to a fair degree.

 

Coco by Michael Giacchino

Maybe I'm just tired, but I almost fell asleep. I'm probably tired, yes. But this score didn't make it any easier! It has a very Hispanic influence and uses the guitarron as one of the main instruments. Not too interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stepmom? Not at all. It has that sort of warm fuzzy and cozy feel to it.

 

The Last Airbender on the other hand is the last great JNH/Shyamalan collaboration. If only the OST had the actual chorus, it would be improved quite a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, crocodile said:

:music: The Wind and the Lion...and The Mummy

 

Karol

Well I would certainly watch that mash-up remake!

 

The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey by Howard Shore

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Schindler's List (LLL)

Only two weeks ago I wouldn't have thought I'd ever want to own this. I'm very glad I do now. This is damn good. All anyone would've had to do to hook me was force me to start Schindler's Workforce. Theme for Recorder is gorgeous. As are other pieces. I probably will listen to Disc 2 more than 1 in the near future, it's less heavy.

 

While listening to the OST for the first time a week and a half ago, only one thing came into mind. Not death camp atrocities, not burning bodies, not heroicised personal transformations. Only this memorial:

800px-Shoes_Danube_Promenade_IMGP1297.jp

 

Shoes on the bank of the Danube. 60 metal shoes of the era below the Parliament in Budapest to memorialise hundreds, maybe thousands of Jews and other nontolerable persons shot into the Danube in late '44 to mid '45 (stripped of their valuable footwear first), after transport to deathcamps became more difficult (though boy, were the fucking animals in their element when the supply lines were available!). They have no memory or martyrdom glory, nobody shudders when they hear the name of the place of their suffering (as with Auschwitz for example), they only have this understated, but great memorial. Any day you visit it (especially in summer, tourist season), you can find a handful, or on better days dozens of candles and wreaths there, flowers put into the shoes - the most touching I've seen is bubblegum in a little girl's tiny shoes. So this is what listening to it for the first time automatically invoked for me, maybe because having visited it about 5 times, it's the closest I've gotten to that era and those horrors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Black Panther 

Composed by Ludwig Goransson

For Your Consideration Album

2018

 

Well, this score may finally have started growing on me. There's no question that Waterfall Fight is and always was the highlight of the score, but I'm generally excited every time I hear the hero theme. It's so, well, heroic! Now I understand that the percussion and vocalist textures of this score may not be for everyone, but a good sampler of purely orchestral, by the sounds of things, would be the track Ancestral Plane. Nonetheless, do listen to Waterfall Fight. So many awesome melodies woven in around the choir and the drums. I have high hopes for Goransson's work on The Mandalorian, because he has proven capable of writing good themes.

 

On the basis of winning awards, Black Panther will win best score, especially now that the other contender, First Man, is not on the list.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:music: Welcome to Marwen. 2018 was a very good year for Silvestri. Aside from the two essential expansions, there were three major works. First the very solid Ready Player One (with relatively few not-so-good bits), then Avengers: Infinity War which was an improvement over its predecessor (the first film, I mean). This is probably the best out of those three - in fact it's probably better than the other two combined. It's just more colourful and fun.

 

Karol

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Murder On The Orient Express by Richard Rodney Bennett

Great score.  Classical and tight.  Nice balance of mood and thematic material.  Kind of a throwback score in spots.  

 

Mary, Queen Of Scots by John Barry

Brilliant score.  Ahead of its time in spots.  Mary's Theme is very nice, but the fanfare material is what really drew me in.  Barry seems very careful not to over-score the picture.  His writing seems precise, even sparse at times.  The result sounds remarkably fresh.

 

Somewhere In Time by John Barry

This score is done in a more vintage style.  But, the craftsmanship is here is superb.  No wasted notes, really. Lovely indeed.     

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lost the Final Season: The Last Episodes by Michael Giacchino

 

Memoirs of a Geisha by John Williams

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.