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Had no particular interest in this but I must say all the positive WOM I'm hearing is piquing my interest. Might see if I can arrange an afternoon out.

X-Men 3: The Final Stand The most frustrating of the X-Men films so far. The two main stores (The Dark Phoenix and The Cure) aren't integrated well at all. There are a who bunch of new mutants, but only Beast, an impressively blue Kesley Grammar is memorable. Magneto now get a whole band of mutants, but none of them are as interesting as Mystique The Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix plot gets a lot of exposition in the first part of the film, but after she, in a rather impressive scene destroys Xavier, the character is reduced to standing alongside Magneto until the very very end of the film. (It's obvious the writers had no idea what to do with this character.) The cure plot actually has some interesting scenes, but it ends in a climactic battle done according to Ebert's Idiot Plot Syndrome. Both Magneto and Jean Grey are more powerful then any mutant or human in that battle field. We just saw Ian McKellen dump The Golden Gate Bridge onto Alcatraz. He virtually does nothing in the battle. Jean Grey does even less, until she unleashed....because the plot suddenly shifts gear to her story again (you can actually hear a clunk). The Cure story live also never gets resolved. There's a destructive war. Which the humans seem to win...and everything is dandy? Is that because all who opposed to the cure are destroyed? The film raises questions about identity and personal choice and never comes close to actually addressing them. However the action scenes before the big war are impressively mounted, the acting is decent (apart from Vinnie Jones). The special effects are a huge step up from the first two, which look strangely crude now. and John Powell's score really lifts some of this material. There was a good movie buried here. But none of the material is wrapped up in any satisfying way.

The discussion on the missing JW scores our respective collections prompted me to add these long overdue discs to my collection: The Reivers The Cowboys

Yes, me too. The Japanese just have a better sense for tradition.

Luke, I'm with you in that I want all the theatrical versions of cues on CD. But there's no way that will happen. I was really excited about the rarities when it was going to be a DVD, where you could go through menus and listen to multiple versions of every cue, follow its process from original version to CR version I was less excited when I found out it was going to a be a 2CD set. But still, I figured that 160 minutes ought to be enough for everything really important. Some minor things would be omitted but I was pretty sure it'd make most everyone very happy. But now that it's just one CD as a bonus with Doug's book, I just don't see how 79 minutes can contain everything we all want. I think I read once there was like 8 versions of the Prologue recording.... it wouldn't surprise me if what we get on TRA is a suite of some sections of various different versions I'm still as excited for Doug's book as always, and am thankful we are getting any music at all instead of no release. It's just a shame that the powers that be decided to only give us 1 CD's worth of rarities, and include it in a sleeve inside a book. Would have been cool if it was a 2- or 3-CD release in packaging that matched the CR's of the 3 movies.