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Certainly one of the strongest contenders. End Title from Jaws 2 shouldn't be ignored though.

I just found these 2 Fan filming location documentaries which seem very interesting indeed! (edit: Just watched them both. The first one is better assembled)

I'm not rectangular... so I guess I'll be there

Theme from Sabrina anyone? Ooo Ooo Ooo... Miracle of the Ark!!! No... Marion's Theme! Seriously I keep bouncing around. This thread is going to make my head explode.

what a wishy washy answer. It is not impossible, you simple pick a piece of music that you keep going back too over and over. What harm is there for you to name one, or several is so be it but it's not a difficult or life and death question.

Y'know, Thor should be proud of me...this is one of those soundtracks that I really appreciate more as a whole than as a collection of tracks. And I use the word "soundtrack" intentionally here, because I've only seen the film once, and most of my familiarity with the music is thus through the excellent OST. I tend to listen to this album straight through, or at least in long chunks, rather than as single tracks scattered amongst other shuffled bits of music. That being said, the parts of "Plowing" used in the trailer are just sublime, and I think the music for the dash across no man's land is a really fascinating blend of Williams' normal approach with an almost Zimmer-like style. Argh, it's seriously so hard to pick favorites from this score, though. It really works best as a journey, not as any isolated cue.

That could be nice and give some purpose to Frodo's cameo. I didn't mind it while seeing the film (it seemed to be going somewhere), but in hindsight it was entirely unnecessary. It's pure luck in the book. The film actually does a nice job of making it a little less out of the blue, what with the prophecy of retaking the mountain the dwarves speak of, and various signs indicating it to be true. I watched it yesterday. Some more or less ordered random thoughts: I loved 30% of it. I hated 20%. The rest was somewhere in between. I watched it in 48Hz 3D. The high frame rate didn't bother me at all, and made some camera pans much more comfortable. The 3D had the usual problems, with some action scenes, especially in the woods (with leaves and branches in front of the screen), being rather confusing (the 48Hz didn't help there) and things often looking much smaller than in 2D. But it mostly worked very well. Some friends who came with me hated the 3D and especially the frame rate, but I simply can't follow the reasoning that "too" fluent motions in a film are unrealistic or inappropriate. The first hour or so was fantastic (some friends strongly disagreed). The prologue took me right back to Middle-earth, and the opening chapter of the book was wonderfully handled. Light humour, but rarely out of place. Most of the dwarves remained rather anonymous, but there were more that stood out than in the book. The trolls... mostly very well done. Good idea giving making it Bilbo who is playing for time, without anticipating that sunlight would actually be their rescue (and thus perfectly in character). Here, they wisely skipped the children's story bits like the talking purse. Radagast... some stuff didn't bother me, but they just went too far on too many occasions. And too much of it just doesn't really fit in with the rest of the film, or even make too much sense. His drawing off the Orcs was just ridiculous - the way he was zooming across the landscape reminded me of Terry Gilliam's animations in Flying Circus. The 48Hz movements looked goofy here, but I blame that on the CGI rather than the frame rate. When he had his few serious moments, he was quite good (including the Dol Guldur sequence), but all too often he was a classic example of PJ using comic relief where no relief should be provided. And Saruman's mushroom comment was just out of character. Goblin town... Grotesque, but in a surprisingly successul way - most of the time. I loved the design of the goblin king, and pretty much his personality as well. It gave him more of a children's book quality than the standard goblins in the films, and yet kept him menacing. Fantastic design on some of the other goblins there, too. Unfortunately, that part also had some of the worst comic relief offenders...like Gandalf knocking the head off a goblin, and the king's own behaviour right before his death. Generally, there were instances where the film seemed to try too much to copy FOTR. The big statement of the main theme after Rivendell, with helicopter fly-by shots, was obvious and expected. The appearance of the stone giants would have been cool, had they not been extended into a way too long copy of the Moria staircase scenario. Same with the goblin town escape - yet more swinging bridges, and in the end they run across a narrow bridge and the goblin king (who previously fell off his rock in a much too obvious way) suddenly appears to block Gandalf's path just like the Balrog. Also the ending - see below. Riddles in the Dark... probably the best part in the film, and nearly entirely successful, except for two or three of those cuddly Smeagol bits that already plagued the LOTR films. The audience laughed, the tension was gone. Also, while the idea of splitting Bilbo from the company before goblin town and thus having the Gollum/goblin town escapes play simultaneously wasn't bad, it broke the tension of the Riddles sequence with the cuts to the dwarven spectacle. The ending... I've been a supporter of making two movies out of the short book from the beginning. Partly because of all the appendix material that can and should be in there, and also because so much of the book is superficial - turning it into a movie would require much more character interaction and invented dialogue, and at times they successfully provided that. I might even have been on board with the 3 movie plan, if they hadn't denied it for so long. When they changed their minds at the last minute, I was skeptical, and it seems clear that the three-way split harmed at least this first film. The frying pan chapter went mostly well up to the point where the company is dangling from the tree over the cliff. And I wonder if most of what came after it wasn't simply a desparate last minute addition to give the film a bombast ending. Thorin suddenly charging Azog (in Boromir kamikaze mode no less) came out of the blue, and Bilbo's selfless heroics were too early for the character. Not to mention yet another appearance of Gandalf's magical moth. The whole sequence seemed utterly pointlessly blown out of proportion. Martin Freeman... bloody fantastic. Aside from "I'm going on an adventure", there are several more moments where he practically *is* Ian Holm. And in all his other scenes he gives the character a naturalness that manages to balance the overall scope of the story with the light humour of the Bilbo/dwarf interactions. As for Ian Holm, I was surprised how young they made him look, although his voice can't hide his real age. All the dwarves were fine. I have a soft spot for Balin, much the same way that he has for Bilbo in the book. Ian McKellen... good, but not quite as good as I had hoped. He sometimes seemed to be trying too hard, to overdo his Gandalf the Grey mannerisms. Quite possibly a direct result of him feeling so lost on the green screen set. He still had plenty of wonderful moments of course. Christopher Lee... I'm afraid I can't take him seriously any more, but it seemed too obvious that his films were filmed with him alone back in England, concentrating hard to keep his voice steady. He *was* Saruman in LOTR, here I just saw Lee. In conclusion: A strange mess, with some truly successful parts, but not succeeding as a whole. And it's not the lack of a coherent plot buildup that I have a problem with (the book doesn't have one until the last third), but all the stupid bits they sprinkled throughout the film. Whenever I could ignore them, the movie was at least good, often very good, at times even great. But all too often they were just too much to disregard.

Donner's film hardly portrays the definitive Superman. Hell, the whole "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" stuff is from the old tv show, not the comics. Superman has been a character for almost seventy-five years and has gone through a lot of development, and gasp, a lot of questioning why he has this power and why he can't be normal like everyone else. In case you forgot, Donner de-powered him in Superman 2, so he had Superman literally choosing to not be Superman anymore. This film is showing why he chooses to become the man that everyone loves. The scene with Jonathan probably is setting up Clark's dual identity, as that "maybe" is clearly the beginning of a larger conversation. The Donner movies showed a very narrow view of Superman and unfortunately have left many believing that this is all that he is. Hell, even Lois and Clark did a better job of showing the conflict between the man and the suit. I love the original film and it does a great job of showing Golden Age Superman, but this film looks like it can be the more definitive view of the character.

The Ballroom Scene from Witches of Eastwick has to be close to the top of my list. I can find many more, but that one I didn't even have to think about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggFWbJ7Q0Mg

Wonderful choice I would say another piece for cello and orchestra, that one being the final movement, "Song", from his Cello Concerto.

The American Collection theme, composed in 2000.

Hey guys, Thought you may enjoy hearing/seeing this live rehearsal of "Fanfare for Fenway" by our Ceremonial Brass group. If any of you musician-types plan to be at the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic next week in Chicago, they'll be doing it live. If you're interested, let me know and I'll look up the time/date/location. (It'll be free of course.) Keep in mind this is just rehearsal, recorded with a video camera...

OK, I finally have some time to write down a few thoughts on the concert. I attended Saturday night's performance (Dec. 8th), but preceded with the Gala dinner. The dinner was really quite nice, and the tables were labeled with each hit film scored by our beloved maestro. I was at the Harry Potter table, and there were also tables for Star Wars, Jaws, Jurassic Park, and E.T. All the hits, all the time! I happened to sit next to the Chief Operating Officer of the San Diego Symphony. We had quite a nice conversation about music and its role emotionally. While he could not seem to admit directly that he was a fan of John Williams' music, he did assert that he longs for a by-gone age of film music by greats such as Bernard Herrmann and Alex North. When I told him that John Williams had scored Hitchcock's last film, The Family Plot, he didn't believe me at first. He checked his sources (iPhone), and suddenly was quite interested in my viewpoints. Funny thing. That was when he asked me if I had ever met John Williams. "No," I said, "I have never even imagined that such a thing would even be possible." He then asked me if I would like to after the concert.... Hmmm... meet my biggest idol of all time? Nah, I'll pass... kidding of course, I readily accepted. That was a wonderfully personal experience that I won't share here. As for the concert, it absolutely opened beautifully! Close Encounters was stunning, nearly perfect! I really thought the Cello Concerto was fantastic, as I had never heard it live before. Moser, the soloist, I thought had some definite skill, but it seemed as though he hadn't taken on the concept of the piece, but instead focused on the technical wizardry of it. It seemed like he was busy trying to be amazing the whole time, but he really could have paced himself better. His interpretation seemed a bit anticlimactic because of this. Elegy for Cello was a different story. Moser clearly had a conceptual handle on this one. Beautiful. During intermission, I attended a short party, where the CEO of the Symphony felt he needed to assure everyone that the second half of the concert would be much "easier on the ears". What an odd thing to say to your own benefactors. Incidentally, I found out that the program itself was completely John Williams' idea, and that he had explicitly insisted that he be able to perform the Cello Concerto. This was in exchange for completely donating his time. What a nice man! The second half of the concert was a really great program! I was especially excited for Adventures on Earth, as I had heard the entire cue to screen at the Hollywood Bowl. Here was a chance to hear the concert version! The real shining star ended up being the Far & Away Suite, a rare treat, and a very underrated score. I enjoyed every minute of that. The Harry Potter selections were really great as well, especially the middle one, which featured only the woodwinds. This, I think rivaled the Far & Away Suite for my favorite part of the concert! I do agree that the Theme to Schindler's List was quite rushed, although I thought it was rushed all the way to the end, instead of just in the beginning. Despite all of this wonderful music, the entire second half was plagued by a problem that I just could not get over. The execution in the brass section, namely the trumpets, was like a ball and chain. It seemed that anything requiring the trumpets to stay on task at what would be a brisker tempo was just too much for them, as pieces had a tendency to slow to a crawl. This was especially true for Adventures on Earth, as well as for the Raiders' March and even the two Star Wars pieces in the encore. I am aware that there is a delay between the front and rear of the orchestra, but the tempos actually suffered quite a bit. Personally, I thought the french horns were spot on. I was sitting in the grand tier, which is a pretty decent place to hear, so I'm told. When I went backstage later, I wanted to find the trumpet players and slap them all. Maestro's tempo, not yours! The concert arrangement of "Malice Toward None" from Lincoln was really well done, and a perfect first encore. I enjoyed the principal cellist's playing even more than Moser's from the previous half. I cannot seem to remember what was different about this arrangement vs. the film score, as I am not completely familiar with Lincoln yet. Rest assured, it seemed much more tightly woven into a package, as concert arrangements often do. When the concert was over, I went backstage to meet John Williams. I won't talk about what happened, as that is personal. However, I can tell you all that although he was very tired from the performance, he seems to be in very good shape, and just as thoughtful as ever. He definitely doesn't seem like someone who just celebrated his 80th birthday. So, here's to many more scores from our most beloved, the best of the best!

Great thread, I was thinking about starting one along these lines myself! I've been listening to The Hobbit score almost non-stop lately, and I can recommend three tracks from it that would be great to work out to: Warg-Scouts Brass Buttons Out of the Frying Pan Other good ones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex8TDzQYUes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRiQItyoOQ

This is more about sound design than music. All those things above were done by Ben Burtt and Charles L. Campbell for the movie, not by the music department nor John. The Skywalker sound company had dozens of synths and other toys (like the ARP 2600), large mixing and equipment. Sampling was also not in it's infancy in 1982. It's been widely used in music in the 70's disco era and in electroacoustic since the 50's (which is closer to sound design than music)

I recall a synthesizer being used in Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi.

I have played on an electronic organ since 1974, so I guess, Hollywood will have had access to one, too, at the time. The organ on the CD even sounds a bit similar like the one I had.

L.A musicians are pricing themselves out of the market! Its as simple as that. Theres an economic crisis, even in Hollywood. if people can get the same thing for cheaper, they will! Its perfectly logical. You certainly cant say London session players are inferior. The LA guys must either adapt or starve....

I've wondered about this too. Especially with the organ. I guess he really had an organ in there with the orchestra? It was '82, so like Alex said, even if there was some very rudimentary synth happening, it wouldn't be the sampled kind, that could replicate real instruments. At least that's my take on it.