Richard Penna

Now playing: Nightwing. Beautiful score and Varese club album, which I purchased blind entirely based on samples.

I've had degradation too - I got a Jurassic trilogy Blu-ray set a few years ago and TLW now refuses to play, full stop. I can see some colouring on the outside so it's evidently worn or rotted away. Thankfully I have the DVD and it's my least fave of the three by miles so I'm not actually that bothered. I'm finding an urge with my absolute favourites to rip the entire disc to my PC, which is also a mega-convenient way to watch it.

I have the previous release and find it overlong. Chances of my buying an even longer one without samples are zero.

Woah. I tend to give up and settle for DVD at those sorts of prices. I think the only movie I'd kind of like to own on Blu-ray but have never seen a domestic version, is Sphere. I can get the DVD for £1.

If working in a large corporation has taught me anything, some web interface used by the entire company could be in the sole charge of a bunch of grads and someone half competent keeping an eye on them. Also, no one who's actually in charge of the money ever thinks the 'front end' bits are much more than nice-to-haves. It it doesn't actively crash all the time, it must be fine, surely.

I too hope that they've managed to get things arranged with Disney as The 13th Warrior would be a notable expansion for my nostalgic side. I don't think 'scary' needs to mean straight up horror though - just some character or element of it. Unfortunately I don't think Ice Age or I, Robot qualify. Sphere would of course, but that would take a miracle. What about Evolution, if Powell is continuing his expansion quest?

Ah yes... Murray "I upload entire albums to my agent's website with no security, then get angry when fans love my music" Gold.

I keep forgetting about Spidey 3. The annoying thing is that 99% of it has leaked but that 1% contains a really beautiful cue. The whole thing is a mess - we ideally want Young's complete intended score plus whatever Lurie (and Debney?) did. I have to believe that its problems stem more from the studios being twats than Elfman still not allowing a release of material with his themes. I wonder if anyone's told him that we've all got it anyway....

I don't see where any ideas come from about this not being a "blockbuster release" or a big name composer. Goldsmith's Love Field arrived after precisely zero fanfare back in 2021, as did Williams' Presumed Innocent. Similar with the complete Matrix a while back - they all just use the standard clue game. If they do the emoticon thing again it's probably going to take us 20 minutes to guess them. Oh, and just in time for HTTYD 3 to finally grace us with its presence on streaming (everyone has their CD, right? Otherwise Powell will be mad... )

https://www.facebook.com/varesesarabanderecords/posts/pfbid02jfGy7AsdqBdSQYc5M4tnrPJRUSVrXawActEe9KeEC6yVn9i3NhVtUA3qEoHRDUHXl

I want to like stuff like this, but that was just standard trailerised RCP nonsense. Anyone in the RCP sphere could've done that.

Yes! My formative years were the first half of the 00s - probably by 2005 or so my musical direction was established, because I already had an appreciation of synth/electronic music from other interests I had. I'm not sure where my tolerance for modern horror scoring came from but it definitely wasn't during those initial years.

If the last half page or so is any indication, some super judgemental stuff is about to erupt... The only Barry even remotely close my top 50 is Dances With Wolves, and I think it's overlong and tedious outside of my 35 minute album. Unlikely candidate considering the competition. My non-Williams top 10 is going to look something vaguely like this, although not in this order (and I reckon three of these would go if I included Williams). A lot of scores just miss this list and would easily be in a top 20-30. FotR Gladiator Sleepy Hollow The Mummy The Edge Dante's Peak Signs The Village The Horse Whisperer The New World

I'm not sure a drama with a pretty low key chamber-esque score is going to massively benefit from proper surround sound. A DVD my brother has from the BBC from the late 00s has a sequence with a lot of effects, dialogue and some music, but if you separate the 5.1 channels you find that all of the sfx and vocals are mixed entirely in the centre, leaving the music almost entirely isolated in the sides, and the rears just have vague echoes. At that point a TV budget evidently didn't allow for the sorts of mixes you get now.

The UK is uniquely shit at choosing good songs most of the time, as you say finding neither the cheesiness nor the zaniness. I don't really watch the show unless there are significant numbers of songs that I really like (such as last year). But it's still a nice way to get a curated window into current music on the continent and I've gone on to buy full albums from a handful of artists I've discovered.