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I find Howard Shore's action music in LotR a lot better paced and placed than Williams late action music. I just find that Shore is perfect in placing the right notes at the right time, so consequently I find his music more thoroughly composed; if not in numbers, then certainly emotionally and in terms of how a musical arc is established. A piece like The Siege Of Gondor, particulary the beginning (Ash And Smoke on the OST), may, purely compositionally, not be on par with Williams' complexity, and yet, how it builds, how it is conceived as a piece of dramatic music and how it is placed in the film, it is vastly superior to the last ten years of John Williams action music.

That would be bold! And relevant as well! And it will have a brooding Howard Shore score to accompany all of this! Oh wait... Karol Bowed cymbals depicting mental anguish for the win!

The PS3s shit split ram architecture (512mb in total) has been its downfall. A huge open world game like Skyrim with lots of alpha is seriously ram heavy, hence the save game problems upon release. But almost every single multiformat title has been inferior to the Xbox version due to the same stupid ram restrictions. A more traditional unified ram setup would've eradicated the issue, stupid Sony. This last week has been the hardest, most torturous gaming experience in memory. The vertical wall that is the learning curve on Battlefield 3 PC. Historically I'm a good online fps player, but these Battlefield mouse/keyboard players are in another skill bracket altogether from anything else I've played, including both my time on consoles and my significant experience with pc gaming a few years back. It is all due to one thing: controller aim-assist. We console players think we're great, but turn it off and its almost invisible subtleties of assisted enemy targeting suddenly become glaringly apparent and painfully oppressive - when faced with time served mouse wielding pros. But that's just the way it is with mouse aiming, right? It's known for its swift and precise aiming vs. a controller? Yes it is - but here's the clincher - some games on pc still incorporate a degree of aim-assist alongside mouse control. Turns out the ones I used to play did, dammit! Battlefield is particularly respected by the hardcore because it does not. And adjusting to that extra level of precision against seasoned pros has been hell. Ever notice how your console reticule not only snaps to targets but then follows them? Making the kill almost guaranteed; well on pc it's a different story. One has to RAPIDLY aquire the target completely unaided, BEFORE the pro lines you up first and THEN you have to track the mouse in tiny precise movements along the shootists strafing/sprinting path, burst firing for the clincher. Factor into that a ballistics firing model and bullet-drop (Call of Duty uses the far easier Hitscan model) and you have a recipe for HARD. Sounds easy to a controller player who takes aiming for granted; but it's actually the hardest thing I've had to learn in years of gaming. Getting level with these hardcore pc players has been a fucking nightmare, but finally last night the magic started to happen. Took me a week. The K/D whores would see my 0.72 ratio right now, but the climb back has finally started. Honestly, I very nearly gave up. I stuck with it in the hope I'd finally click with the mechanics and the obvious promise that the game would be incredible from then on. I went back on Xbox Battlefield just to see what it was like and the first thing I realised is this: console fps players are undoubtedly the biggest noobs of all gaming. Playing with aim-assist is like having help from the computer and its comparably really rather lame. I absolutely dominated! Want to get better at console fps? Play the PC version for a few weeks. Not that I've now turned into a pc snob or anything like that, god no. I'll be rejoining the noob rankings in November come the release of Halo 4. A game not without its own skill demands on the player, being that repeated sustained head shots are are what that franchise is all about. (Head shots which are not assisted.) But yeah, I urge anyone to at least try the gruelling sandbox of pc Battlefield, because it's probably the greatest competitive shooter ever made.

I've been meaning to listen to this. I thought it would be heavily laden with synths (like Legend which I thoroughly disliked) but here the synths are nicely balanced with the orchestra and it's does not bombard you with too much noisy strange synth sounds. It's perfectly listenable and one of JG's more beautiful light sounding music.

3 Steps To Success: 1. Grow Up 2. Get a sense and appreciation for musical mastery 3. Read program A Night At The Movies does not mean the "classics" are being played. Catch Me If You Can? Yeah, NOBODY saw that movie ... Star Wars and Indiana Jones are being played to DEATH. Don't blame John Williams for your expectations and idiotic fanboy quibbles. John Williams is a composer, not a theme park attraction.

Fuck I'd love to hear that in a Northern accent!

I dunno, I'm bored of his greatest hits too, but I'd rather have those than an hour of Potter music (with fucking annoying narration, no less). I'd be pretty pissed off if my one and only opportunity to see John Williams in concert was dominated by boring Harry Potter cues. Which begs the question - why didn't these fools check the programme out beforehand?

And to quote Brian Blessed I too would like to ask these whiners:

Hearing guys like Marc Streitenfeld poke around in the dark on a film like Prometheus, while Don Davis doesn't get work is seriously depressing.