Leaderboard

THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS - Jerry Goldsmith Big, old-fashioned adventure movie that lay on screenwriter William Goldman's desk for 20 years before finally reaching the screen - part thriller, part travelogue it's the kind of movie that seems to belong to a different era and its 1996 incarnation had for a variety of unplanned reason the unlikely Val Kilmer in the lead as british bridge builder and the also formidably miscast producer Michael Douglas as Big White Hunter (he volunteered after other, more sensible casting choices fell through). So while the movie is far from perfect, the dedicated craftmanlike direction by Stephen Hopkins makes the most of it, with big postcard moments of the african savannah that are effectively engineered in tandem with thrilling setpieces of a horrific, ongoing hunt for dangerous, insane maneaters slaughtering hundreds of Kilmer's african bridge workers for no apparent reason. James Newton Howard was the composer of choice who fell through due to scheduling conflicts, a twist of fate that brought veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith on the scene who jumped at the chance: big male outdoor adventure, Africa, lots of hunts, suspense and 'drama' (as much drama as Val Kilmer having perfunctory flashbacks of his pregnant wife back home could possibly muster) - a match made in heaven. It's the kind of score that younger soundtrack fans mostly embraced, having no problems with Goldsmith's then-glossy and polished orchestration, his unabashedly broad thematic writing and his creative chance-taking with sampled african voices that he pitched and bended to his own delight. Older fans eternally hooked on Goldsmith's brilliant 60's and 70's works maybe didn't 'stay away in droves' but kind of dismissed it as another simplistic modern score that couldn't hold a candle to the raptures of yesteryear - a bit like the fat beerdrinking middle-aged guy feeling fully entitled to lecture and badmouth world-class athletes on their performance while having not left his couch since decades. This is not to say it's a perfect score but it is damn well a testament why Goldsmith was one of the most sought-after composer up to his untimely demise: while the score is sleek and modern - in a way his peers never could manage - it's also very strict in its construction as only Goldsmith could do - not an ounce of fat on it - and complementing it with the one ingenious touch - the sampled vocals - that i think captured the composer's imagination. It would be too easy to dismiss these as artificial timesavers and a poor substitute for a 'real' chorus. I think the cumulated effect of the electronic effects on GATD is tremendous, building an unique atmosphere that includes posh ethnic chic but also a terrible savage and steely dread, a sound that really hadn't a precedent in 1996 (Big deal, some would say;). The least of all is the big jubilant main theme that sees Goldsmith trying to bolster the movie with some imperial David Lean swagger that is pleasant enough but doesn't seem really connected to anything in the movie proper (people have complained that the bouncy woodwind jig that runs underneath is seems awfully tacky as 'irish' ingredient - which seems on par with Kilmer's performance then, of course - but it fares better if you just think of it as ingenious african piece). The jig with its flexible half-tone steps is of course ideally suited for Goldsmith's precise style so that's really the main character theme for the rest of the movie while the big horn theme only appears in three key scenes, seeming a bit overblown for the occasion. Dispending with his core material for most of the movie, Goldsmith then depends on three musical ideas that are the real heart of the score, one being a huge, detached fanfare built of blocky horn chords that seems a bit clumsy but actually blends in with the wide african steppe rather well (it doubles as a character theme for Michael Douglas who turns up later in the movie, so its purpose is rather nebulous except that it always turns up with huge vistas), the other one a dreamy reflective tune mostly on flutes or pipy synth as in the end of THE BRIDGE, and finally the brutal, growling brass for the lions that either menaces as they are approaching or ferociously attacking...when they attack, naturally. The suspense material derived from this is enriched with all kinds of ideas, like distant bird calls, metallic sounding-scratches and so on, musically illustrating the mad lions and their terror. It's really quite full of little inventive vignettes. To finalize this before noon approaches, the 2-CD Intrada is to me a godsend: while the old Hollywood Records album did a good job of condensing the score into a nice 38-minute (custom Goldsmith length) package, there was so much rewritten, differently mixed and missing altogether that only this release finally unleashes all the fun Goldsmith obviously had with especially the moodier and more dramatic material: cues like 'Stand Off', 'The Thicket' (or 'Prepare for Battle' in a different edit in the main program) or 'The Cave' and several shorter cues let the score breath and develop instead of just interrupting the more sunny travelogue material as on the original album. The sound really knocks you off your feet: a perfect blend of orchestra, ethnic percussion and synth that sounds alive and really huge. It's a lasting example of Goldsmith key virtues even of his later days: perfect craftmanship paired with a pragmatic curiosity for experiment and a keen ear for the future.

Listen to 1:40 on! Headbangin' This is maybe something JWFan could recognize as worthy.

Good for you. I would never want to listen to only two artists for the rest of my life. Interstellar

I sure hope not! His Looper score was awful. I sure hope that Kennedy knows better than to let the director hire his cousin over John Williams (or Michael Giacchino).

I'm not 33 and I stopped listening to much new film scores around 2 years ago. I just came to the conclusion that film music peaked with Williams' Star Wars, and Shore's Middle-Earth saga. Nothing will ever come close to it again, so why waste time with vastly inferior stuff that some people call "amazing", like the snoozefest that is Interstellar. Williams and Shore have given me all the film music I will ever need.

Listening to both Lincoln and The Book Thief this surprisingly ugly and rainy (almost autumn-like) May morning. Karol

Speaking of chiptune Bach & Co, while Star Wars was the one work that single-handedly turned me, there had been years and years of formative music that prepared me for it, even if I mostly only started appreciating it consciously afterwards. One of the first video games I played was this:

CONGO is really small potatoes, comparably. It was a quickie written in a few weeks under less-than ideal conditions (they re-edited the movie up to the last minute), it lacks concept and has hardly any through-composed sequences. But you know, in the end none of these big adventure movies ever had a bad Goldsmith score. It was just his forte.

I was always more of a fan of Congo, but I'll give this one another go.

The Natural

For me, it was a compilation of the "Four Seasons" by Vivaldi, "Toccata and Fugue in d minor" by Bach, "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" by Mozart, and shortly afterwards I discovered Beethoven's symphonies nos. 9, 5 and 6. Then, I started to listen sistematically to everything I could find from these composers. And then, I moved on to all the rest.

Beethoven Symphony 6. I was about 4 years old or something. I never developed into a full scale classical lover, only liking select pieces, but I'm pretty sure it laid the ground work for film music and JW

Because he's a JW fan.

One brush to rule them all, One brush to find them, One brush to bring them all, in shrubberies to bind them!

There is only one Lord Of The Brush, only one who can bend it to his will, and he does not share bristles!

Why did they use that take. You know, the worst one?

Credibility lost!

With the discussion going on the thread, I'd really like to hear some more work from you guys. This used to be a pretty active thread back in the day, but no one posts here anymore, which is a shame. Here's a suite (and by suite, I mean a shoddily edited collection of cues) from a short film I scored recently. https://soundcloud.com/k-k-8/dachshund-suite It's nothing much, especially compared to you heavy-weights, but hey, if it gets some of you more shy folk to post more of your works, then it got the job done!