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It's the part where Lisl travels to Shanghai and has an awesome fist fight with an assassin in the midst of ... wait a minute ...

Jason is the reason why Nintendo keeps repackaging the old Zelda games instead of making new ones

Very Cool.

Doesn't sound distorted to me. Is that flautando? Are we sure it isn't con sord sul pont? To me it sounds like the strings are being manipulated with a band-pass filter from the console (lo-pass + hi-pass). Whatever it it is, it's something Doug could really enlighten us on once the NDAs pass.

No Karol. Even the smallest indignant person full of sense of entitlement can change the course of the future. Wow, I'd be surprised if I was. Its been out for like 10 days in the US I think. Anyways, I can provide some context to the score for those who care: The theme at 0:06 of "One Small Fact" seems to be for Death The theme from Stepmom is for Liesel's and Max's relationship The motif around 1:08 of "Learning to Read" seems to be one for books/reading/writing Williams keeps writing beautifully clear themes that so very precisely communicate the story even without visuals. This is one of his main strengths as a musical storyteller.

Well I'm so glad to hear this again (even though its a mock up) after almost 12 years. I was singing Tenor in the extra chorus of Covent Garden at the time in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. Between stage rehearsals Terry Edwards came up to me and asked if I would like to sing in the two AOTC sessions which were due the following week. I nearly fainted. I had done a couple of gigs with London Voices before this and the most recent had been a recording of a Symphonic Jazz Cantata by Dave Brubeck called "The Gates of Justice" which we recorded at Abbey Road. I turned up at Abbey Road and the entire day was one of utter enchantment for me. It is this one deleted passage of underscore which dazzled me the most. Williams recorded the entire thing three or four times in front of me and I got to hear those gigantic orchestral chords over and over again. At the time I described the effect as a "massive orchestral blowout" and I really looked forward to hearing it on the official soundtrack album. Chris Chrusher sent me an advance promo of the AOTC soundtrack album a few months later and I was very disappointed to hear the Imperial March used as replacement. I thought this was a cheap and inappropriate cop-out. Much like the entire wretched movie itself. Will this legendary portion ever see the light of day on CD? If it had been me I would have left any statement of the Imperial March right to the end of ROTS when Anakin/Vader is on the operating table. I would have commisioned Williams to transform the Imperial March into a gigantic choral statement. Can you imagine a 60 piece choir of the calibre of London Voices singing the Imperial March as an illustrative index of Vader's magnitude? Sadly even such a grandiloquent statement could not have saved the rushed botched job of Vader's incarnation. There was relatively little to do for us in the chorus that day so most of us were trying to contort our heads up to catch snippets of what was happening on the gigantic screen above our heads. I remember seeing huge bars rolling across the screen which acted as a click track in time with the music. Also I was mildly horrified to see images of a computer generated Yoda (the CGI image wasnt entirely fleshed out at this stage) doing somersaults with a tiny light sabre. Oh please! Utterly dreadful. I was moving house at the time of the premiere of AOTC and I almost missed my chance to see the cast and crew showing at Leicester Sq because the tickets had been sent to my previous address. Luckily I intercepted my mail and was able to attend. I went with my good friend Richard Voice and we sat through this largely interminable gadbage dressed up as a Star Wars movie. It was just an orgy of not very good CGI. We were both well versed with the soundtrack for TPM and were both equally dismayed to hear snippets of the TPM score used as genuine underscore. One of the main qualities of the Star Wars movies was the music and this aberration and butchering of Williams music was a benchmark which set AOTC apart from all the other movies. Incidentally does anyone know if Williams wrote an original set of cues for the scenes which were ultimately scored with rehashed snippets from the score of TPM? Or was the ratatouille of jumbled up snippets the first and only choice? What a mess! This was one of the best paid singing jobs I ever did and I still have the Lucasfilm invoice to prove it. In between the two sessions I bravely walked over to Mr Williams who was standing at the podium poring over his gigantic printed score which had "STAR WARS II" written in big bold letters on the front page. I introduced myself and by this time I was physically shaking. I told him the story he's probably heard a thousand times...that as an 8 year old in Glasgow I was significantly influenced by his vast orchestral frescoes so much so that I eventually made classical music my career and thus went on to study opera at the RCM. I distinctly remember saying "Mr Williams! Your music will last for hundreds and hundreds of years!" To which he retorted "Yes but will we still be around in hundreds of years?". What I remember about him in those brief moments was his deportment and incredible graces. I had my photo taken with him and it hangs on my living room wall. It was a perfect day in many respects except for one thing. In my stupour I forgot to shake maestro Williams hand!