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John Barry's DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) - 2CD Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition from La La Land 2015


Jay

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1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I find the earlier expanded release to have a sufficient duration, on the verge of being overlong, so unless there's some major highlights on the 2 CD set I'll skip it.

 

Ditto.

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  • 1 year later...
2 hours ago, Bellosh said:

I ordered a copy but the case came cracked. :unsure:  Is LLL good at replacing them?  Give me a new case? a new cd?

 

Last time I asked for a new case, they ignored me.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

This is a very good release. Took me 5 years to get it but the recent expansion of (often Barry-like) Legends of the Fall made me want to revisit this. There's way more variety to the complete score than I expected. Some interesting alternate versions too. The sound quality is very good too. Very happy with this, much better than the original album that I never liked.

 

Karol

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I agree with Karol

 

This is one of my favorite expanded releases of the past decade.  It was a score I didn't grow up with, never really checked out in the past, but happened to see the film again shortly before this was announced and noticed how good the music was, and immediately fell in love with this album when I got it.  Absolutely fantastic score, and a superb release of it.

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The original album gives you an impression that all it is playing the same 2-3 themes for an hour. And as a collection of most important moments in the score it did a decent enough job but because there are some non-theme-driven minor cues on this expanded set you get a bit of a break. Oddly, the score is now 2.5 times longer and yet it doesn't feel as repetitive. The material breathes more and is still completely listenable.

 

Karol

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I read that this 2-CD release contains all the music that was composed for the extended cut. Does the original release or the expanded release from 2004 contain any music from the extended cut or are they strictly theatrical cut only?

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10 hours ago, BobbyDigital said:

I read that this 2-CD release contains all the music that was composed for the extended cut. Does the original release or the expanded release from 2004 contain any music from the extended cut or are they strictly theatrical cut only?

 

Where did you read that? I wasn't aware that any music was written for the extended cut.

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They didn't record new music for the extended cut of the film, they just used music already recorded from before

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8 hours ago, A. A. Ron said:

 

Where did you read that? I wasn't aware that any music was written for the extended cut.


I mean music that was composed for the 4-hour cut before it was shortened for its theatrical release. I just assumed John Barry composed the entire score while watching the longer cut and I was wondering if any of the music in the previous releases of the score featured music that’s heard in the extended cut but not the theatrical cut.

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The long cut was crafted anew after the film was a hit. All those extra scenes were cut before Barry scored the film

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  • 1 year later...

A quick visit to soundtrack collector reveals the chaos of releases of this score. I have a 53-minute, 18-track release that I found in HMV many years ago, and even that is overlong for me.

 

But I've never seen the film, so it's really a Thor approach for me. Nice to see the whole thing available though.

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26 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

There's three versions:

 

Sony OST

Sony expanded

LLLR further expanded

I have the OST since day one when the movie came out and also feel that is all I need. But in which ever form, the score is gorgeous.

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23 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

I have the OST since day one when the movie came out and also feel that is all I need. But in which ever form, the score is gorgeous.

 

The are expansions, and there are fucking great sounding essential expansions.

 

Dances with the Wolves belongs to the second category.

 

It was nominated in 2016 by IMFCA in the "Best Archival Release of an Existing Score - Re-Release".

 

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That first Sony expansion frankly kinda sucked. It did several things wrong IIRC and purported on the packaging to be the complete score when it wasn’t remotely true! The truly complete and definitive LLL blew it out of the water in every way.

 

It’s one of those situations where the previous release feels more tiresome and repetitive than the complete score. Those who got the Quartet edition of Goldsmith’s The Russia House will know what I’m talking about: everyone said the previous album was already too long, one of the few instances when Goldsmith put out too lengthy of an album rather than too short an album. But then the complete score restored several different cues which broke up the monotony of the score, and all of a sudden an even longer listening experience became more enjoyable!

 

The previous Dances With Wolves expansion left off some excellent cues which provided variety to the score and added a lot of cues which were more similar to the ones on the original album. The LLL feels much better balanced, and IMO this is one of the few Barry scores (if not the only one) which could sustain this length, because very atypically for him he provided around a DOZEN different themes for this score. Barry doesn’t vary his material remotely as much as say Goldsmith, which is why some of his scores come off as repetitive. But when there are four (or more!) times as many themes as he usually provides, that helps a lot.

 

Yavar

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2 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

The previous Dancesc With Wolves expansion left off some excellent cues which provided variety to the score and added a lot of cues which were more similar to the ones on the original album. The LLL feels much better balanced

 

YES!

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9 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

The Sony expansion is indeed great.

The only reason I mention this is so folks who miss out ( or, can't afford) the LLL,don't slit their wrists.

The easily obtainable Sony release gives a lot of value!

On 19/06/2020 at 6:58 PM, Jay said:

The long cut was crafted anew after the film was a hit. All those extra scenes were cut before Barry scored the film

And some of the scenes are great and really enrich the narrative!

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  • 3 weeks later...
4 minutes ago, Hedji said:

For whatever reason, I really haven't given this score much attention lately, even though I bought the soundtrack and loved the film 30 years ago.

 

Never got the Sony expansion.

 

Just received this LLL edition, and Oh My God.  It just makes you want to fall in love with movies and their music all over again.

 

To anyone reading this who hasn't ordered yet, make it a priority.  Don't let this go out of print without owning it.  Take my word for it.

 

I agree with Hedji 100%.  This is a must-have release.

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I would loved to have heard what Poledouris would have written for this. But a handful of his western scores (Quigley Down Under, Lonesome Dove etc) can give us an idea at least. But Barry’s score here is truly a masterwork.  
 

I also imagine a Poledouris cue like “The Leaving/The Search” from Conan the Barbarian fitting in nicely. Such a breathtakingly beautiful and pastoral cue for an admittedly hokey 80s sword & sorcery flick.

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I am honestly so upset over Poledouris' losing out on this that I still have never listened to Dances With Wolves in isolation. I just... don't want to like it? It's perverse. I'm loyal to an imaginary score that doesn't exist. Angry loyal. I don't know why I care so much, it's not Barry's fault.

 

It just feels like a betrayal to Basil Poledouris to gush over it. So I never have.

 

I know, I'm disturbed.

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10 hours ago, blondheim said:

I am honestly so upset over Poledouris' losing out on this that I still have never listened to Dances With Wolves in isolation. I just... don't want to like it? It's perverse. I'm loyal to an imaginary score that doesn't exist. Angry loyal. I don't know why I care so much, it's not Barry's fault.

 

It just feels like a betrayal to Basil Poledouris to gush over it. So I never have.

 

I know, I'm disturbed.

 

I have to admire your discipline and loyalty.  It's too bad there isn't even a rejected score to compare, because it's always fun to play "What If?'  But I actually get resisting a certain composer just because.  I'm sort of the same way with James Newton Howard and John Powell for no good reason.  Sometimes it's hard to get out of our own dogmatic way.

 

You never know where the music will take you, though.  I've got a handful of Barry on my shelves, and am now wanting more because of this.  I'm convinced some of my inclination towards Barry's mellow composition has to do with aging and the occasional need for soothing pastoral music.

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10 hours ago, blondheim said:

I know, I'm disturbed.

#He's disturbed, he's disturbed, he's the most disturbed, like, he's psychology disturbed#.

 

Poledouris was meant to score DANCES WITH WOLVES? I never knew that!

How did he come to be connected with the film, and why did he not score it?

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According to the liner notes, Costner liked his work on the TV series Lonesome Dove. But Poledouris bowed out to keep a promise to his friend John Milius. It doesn’t say what film Milius was working on, but Flight of the Intruder was 1991, so it was probably that. 

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