Richard Penna

For those including me, who hadn't noticed, now streaming in full. I might pick this up eventually as I don't have the OST - it's not a score that needed expansion but if you're in the mood for an hour of quiet, Herrmann-esque psychological music it's probably fine; I've got it on now.

So around 2016 or so! Woah. Really makes me think how many of our most wanted scores are sitting right now completed on servers right now, but have been stuck in legal crap for years.

I'm not one for watching live so I'll get round to these in the next couple of days. I'm optimistic.

I commend the discouragement of pitting scores againt one another (and I agree - I'm hating more and more the playground-esque 'my composer is better than yours!' mentality), but your reasoning here is problematic. Everyone here should be welcome to present their views on which of the two they prefer or think is better, and for some people their musical tastes will result in preferring Batman, while for others it will be TLC. Preferring Batman is not abnormal taste - it's just not the same as yours. In fact, you just said both are great scores, so why ruin that moment of positivity by telling half the board their taste is wrong? In a more extreme case, imagine pitting one of Williams' more minor works against Zimmer's most popular works. Plenty of people's tastes would direct them to prefer the Zimmer score, and that's taste and general musical preferences.

Nah, I think programming an album with all the proper elements would've been fine. Now we know all about his history it's fashionable to accuse him of across the board incompetence, but I don't think that's completely fair. I got the impression that his weird ideas on how to do E.T. were just down to him working in the wrong part of Universal to have access to tapes, but that he still wanted a release to his name.

I thought Incanus was an early praiser of McCreary's RoP work, but tastes do change, especially once the first listen has soaked in. Certainly I think that overall the OST is the best listening experience, but the episode scores have so many other little bits to offer, and I still intend at some point to make an expanded OST which takes some of the better episode moments into that format. I don't love the entire score - it's got some less exciting bits - but having 99% of it to choose the bits I want to listen, long term, is the reason to have this box. I will stand firm on Bear's themes though - every single one he did for RoP is an absolute earworm, completely making up for the lack of a main title theme appearing in the score itself.

Ordinarily I'd say BTTF AINEC, but here's the thing - outside of the clocktower sequence at the end, it's a very inconspicuous score. On the whole the songs have vastly more effect in the film than the score does. A handful of moments are stunningly effective, and most of them are in the latter part of the film, and given The Kiss merges with Earth Angel I think one could easily be forgiven for not remembering any of the score. It's a really good score but it's also massively elevated by the justified love for the film.

Depends how far along the restoration process he got, if he has indeed transferred the tapes. The issue after that is cleaning up, editing, mastering, etc and is Mike/LLL going to invest time and money in that process if they don't have solid backing to release the end product? Sounds unlikely. Having the material safely stored in high definition digital format is surely the only long-term important aspect?

Almost all of this. The 'almost' being I've never understood the Batman score. Elfman's theme is fairly memorable but I don't find it anywhere near as memorable or iconic as everyone else seems to, and I don't remember a note of the score. However, I only really enjoy one Elfman score in full (Sleepy Hollow) so maybe particularly his older style just isn't for me. Also, enough of this "unpopular opinion" bullshit please I love the score to TLC and for me it's the best Indy score by miles. I'd prefer these to be considered as opinions that most in the community wouldn't agree with.

I noticed the implications of that quote too, but I largely came to the conclusion that they were taking a bit of artistic licence with Gandalf's line functioning partly as the conversation with Frodo and partly as plot exposition for the audience. If the film is othewise doing its job of being entertaining and exciting, those moments don't matter, as we transition in the film straight to the Ringwraiths arriving. With this new project, I'd suggest the usual caution against making up an entire theoretical plot, assuming which characters are going to be in it, and deciding the project is doomed before they've officially announced a thing. I say good luck to them. If it turns out to be a great film with another Shore score, great. If it turns out to be as bad as I think the Hobbit films are... well no one is forcing anyone to watch it. (We'll likely get a good score either way)

I think there are only two properly household names right now: Zimmer and Williams. I've heard non-soundtracky people mention Shore, Gia, Powell and Hisaishi, although in terms of mainstream listening from them, only LotR strikes me as a work that will still be listened to (and whatever are Hisaishi's biggest works).

What I heard of Gods of Egypt was dull, dull, dull, probably because te film's a POS. I'd give Beltrami a fair hearing just like any other composer but I don't think his style is right for LotR, and I think he falls into the category of people who respects Shore's work too much to not at least ask him.

Given Last Crusade (and the Ark theme) I'm up for any religious-tinted score where you get exquisite long-lined melodies for various characters. At least for 80s Williams - he excelled at that stuff back then. I don't think he'd write the same sumptuous material now.

That's an interesting one - two fantasy scores but one a bit more piratey, and with a slightly Irish flavour to TP for no real apparent reason. I'd probably give TP to Williams merely because I think Atlantis is a slightly more consistently enjoyable score. TP has the fantastic Jim Saves The Crew but it's amongst a few highlights in a slightly uneven work.

Why Powell? I'd have no issue, but this is Shore's natural territory.