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The Book Thief is a lovely and intimate score. I would think of it more as a hidden gem than a “middling” score.

That is correct!

Learning to play a theme from The Book Thief on piano a few years back (Five years ago tomorrow!) really increased my appreciation for that theme and for the score in general.

You can just imagine the outrage if this sophisticated ping pong of rape drama, societal satire and character study would have been made in Hollywood today. But Paul Verhoeven has always been the master of the ambiguous which is not in vogue right now and in his old adage he's probably better than ever - less flashier, but as extreme. Verhoeven didn't find an american actress for 'Elle', none of Hollywood's female stars wanted to play a middle-aged woman who is raped but not only refrains from reporting it, she actively refuses to be a victim. She checks for HIV at lunch, buys pepper spray and only a few days later tells her ex-husband and business associate between champagne and appetizer that she has been abused. Which is of course an invitation to outrage, how a movie could dare to play down the traumatic violence of a rape. In fact, at the first portrayal of the rape (it cold-starts the movie) is irritating. But the attack will be shown two more times, and each time it's filmed a bit differently, reflecting Huppert's changing reflection of reality. But this movie goes much further, not only with a tangled web of interpersonal relations but deft satire of modern bonhomie, french in this incarnation. I was intrigued how the movie would resolve this and came away chuckling. 'Elle' reveals the shallowness of the old accusations of misogyny against Verhoeven (whose weary worldview more than anything exposes weaknesses of both sexes, male more so): none of the male protagonists amount to much, they all hide behind offensively displayed masculinity - and sexuality - but in reality suffer from of self-doubt and weakness. All the more fitting that at the end of the film, it is two women that go together into the horizon, leaving the men behind (matter-of-factly and figuratively). That Verhoeven is able to 'hide' this pointed satire in a deliberately exaggerated thriller construction is 'Elle's claim to fame: only through its sharpened depiction the movie is able to expose the ill cracks of relationships in modern western society - and there are a myriad of interesting images going on, on top of it. As such, it was a refreshing change of pace to the behavioral codes attached to such things in many tv shows and dramas. As Verhoeven is 81 years now, i sincerely hope there's another one or two movies in him.

I've always loved this track from "The Book Thief"! It's a perfect example of JW's mastery at musically telling a story... This cue starts out sounding uncertain, sad, melacholic, and generally negative (a bit reminiscent of A.I.!), but halfway through (at 0:43) it changes suddenly and dramatically to sounding bright, hopeful, joyful, and generally positive. Another one of JW's brilliant moments! I remember being very impressed by this when I heard it for the first time...

This score is gold, people!

For Hans Zimmer, "finalized"? More like "fartalized"! And "orchestrators"? ...More like "no-rchestrators"! Hoo, boy, I'm gonna congratulate myself by masturbating onto my John Debney collection. They're orchestral so I love them!

THE POST was a terrific movie! Understandably far from Spielberg's best, and yet just as far from his worst. The crazy thing to me about it is that people can say, "Oh, it wasn't all that great. Mediocre showing on Steven's part", and yet it's still a better film than 95% of directors will ever make.

Twelve Choruses (from Ben-Hur and King of Kings) by Miklós Rózsa Cinema Serenade by John Williams, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Itzhak Perlman Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age by John Williams, Boston Pops Orchestra and Itzhak Perlman The Fury by John Williams

I like Book Thief a lot I like BFG better than initially, and I would love to hear the complete score I don't listen to The Post much

The Post is a solid movie/score!

Yeah unlike Powell's last score...

Could we please bash Cursed Child and not JNH? He's amazing!

Ah, the one that got away... I too was reminiscing about this the other day. I still wish this had been legit, even if that string run is a little too far into the realm of Imperial pastiche. In a film that provided appallingly few opportunities for great new character/setpiece themes from the Maestro, a proper First Order theme is the one real missed opportunity in the score.

Beyond is fun! It find a good balance between Trekishness as exemplified by the original show (you know, explore and get along) and exciting blockbuster action movie. The characters are likable and had great interaction. There are a few Trek-film clichés I don’t like (villain out for revenge, doomsday weapon, Enterprise gets destroyed) and which are not even handled particularly well for what they are. However, overall it is enjoyable and has heart; it doesn’t feel like the previous two, which were trying a little too hard to reinvent what Trek was. It was more restrained in scope. But, to be fair, Star Trek 2009’s Star Wars-like visual and storytelling excess also makes it much more stark and memorable. The biggest and coolest new plot element that Beyond had was that they discovered an old ship, the Franklin, which had crashed on the planet, and were able to get her flying again. In the end, they get the Enterprise-A, which has a much nicer design than the 2009 Enterprise they’d been using, i think.

Actually Herb Spencer is writing all these new Star Wars scores.... FROM HELL

I noticed this 1990 Boston Globe interview references a poster for the symphony in his living room:

Listening to Telegraph Road by Dire Straits for the first time ever. I have now lived.

Thanks. Agree with everything written there, but I don’t see why that makes it so great *in comparison* to his other post-2005 output. This is a bit off-topic, but I remember you saying in another thread that you listened to TLJ just 2 or 3 times - is it really enough to form such a strong opinion on it? For me, the score has been on repeat for the past 1,5 years and I still can’t get enough of it. The OST album is not an ideal presentation, I will admit that.

Sounds more like a damn tease. And dramatically unnecessary if it has no pay-off.

Could you elaborate on that? I agree it’s a fantastic score, but musically it can’t compare to the richness of the Star Wars sequel scores.

Or the time for traveling that is never mentioned, as all those guys like JG, JW and JH recorded for decades in the UK far away from Hollywood, with jetlag and so on. A someone who travels often i can relate to this additional burden quite well.

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How did she destroy Pottermore? @Holko I haven't visited it in a while, at least not since Crimes of Grindelwald.

The spotting sessions were done in late October/early November 1979. The score was recorded in late December 1979. So, he wrote the score in a couple of months. From what I can remember... Attack of the clones: October 2001-January 2002. Minority Report: February 2002-May 2002 (if I'm not mistaken) Chamber of Secrets: May 2002-July 2002 (recorded in September, possibly Williams continued working until then) Catch me if you can: I'm not sure about this one, but I'd say from July/August 2002-September/October 2002. The "problem" was that he had to start writing "Catch me if you can" before September (when Chamber of Secrets had to be recorded) to meet the deadline. About Star Wars, Williams started writing in early January 1977 and recorded in early March 1977. So about 8 weeks. I'd say, depending on the project, Williams writes a score in about 2-4 months. Knowing that he writes about 2 minutes a day, working about 6 days a week, that means he will need about 10 weeks to write a 2 hour score. Add to that a few days for the spotting sessions, and a couple of weeks for the recording sessions. Plus, the time he needs to create the themes BEFORE he can start writing the actual score.

War Horse is his best score of the decade. Lincoln second. I really like The Post. The Last Jedi is just a phoned in greatest hits compilation. What’s new just isn’t very good and it’s mostly recycled material. That’s probably not his fault though. I have listened to BFG and Book Thief several times and can’t recall anything from either.

The biggest problem with the films and their relationship to the source material is that they're too dependent on the novels! What I mean there is they assume the viewer has acquired knowledge from the novels, so the filmmakers felt pretty laid back about cherry picking some of JKR's plot set-ups, but forgetting to give them a pay-off. Sometimes it'd happen the other way around and we'd get a pay-off that had no set-up! But no worries, the audience members have each read the novels 468 times anyway, so who cares? Why should the movies stand on their own? They're just supplementary fan art to the novels, so we don't need to do this properly.

Surely they can just have Emma Watson in blackface?

Hear hear! In some way I'm glad the films after 3 (4?) go so far away from the books, makes them way easier to ignore and forget when rereading the books and go back mentally to what I first imagined 10+ years ago. I had that exact same experience with The Hobbit, actually, images not from the movies but from my first read in 2012 came flooding back, it was great.

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Well, she didn't write the script for this thing, it's authorised fanfiction and it's trash. I always wondered how much these actors are a fan of the universe, didn't they have enough clout and money to bitch about the script and threaten leaving production, or couldn't they say "fuck this idea, get another Ron/Harry, you did onstage" now?

Winter Soldier definitely has a cogent story and at least tries to have some character development, which is probably why it's higher rated than the rest of the bunch. Yes, those films feel like contained stories within their respective films without needing to view them through the larger tapestry of something like the MCU (which operates more like a fast food joint). You watch the Raimi films and can see his signature style all over them, and Nolan's Batman series feels like it was made with one visionary figurehead. Whereas the MCU is a patchwork of bland cinematography and the occasional flashes of colour and style.

I found myself falling asleep to Scorsese's The Aviator. Transylmania was one I turned off five minutes in... it was aggressively NOT funny. I dare you guys to sit through more than 10 minutes of that dreck. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a film I tapped out of 10 minutes in. A generic buddy comedy reunion with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart? It didn't work and I was getting bored.

1. The Book Thief 2. The BFG 3. The Post

Just three examples (excluding any from the end credits suite)... 7:10-7:55 here: 1:31-2:00 here: This whole cue:

The number of Emma Watson fans outnumbers the outrage mob! It's funny how people will shit on Rowling for her retroactive additions to the series (through Pottermore and Twitter) but have little to no problem when she suggests Hermione could be black. When Rowling revealed Dumbledore was gay, people were outraged - 'Where's he gay in the books?', 'You can't say that and not have it be a prominent part of the books!' Somehow ironically shooting themselves in the feet believing one's sexuality is meant to define their character. This is what happens when you let open the floodgates for these entitled fans, just like in the Star Wars fandom, who believe they are now the proprietors of the franchise - it only gives them more to take ownership of. Rowling has nothing to apologise for.

I hear it. I'm not really sure if that's intentional or incidental, but I certainly never made that connection before. Well hidden and an excellent find from @PoggoAOTS! If I recall correctly, that little bit underscores something to do with the Imperial viper droids. Not really sure how the droid motif applies to them unless it's connotations are being interpreted broadly here by Powell as a riff for droids in general. I always thought it was more of a C-3PO and R2 thing. I could be wrong about the part in the film though, because I remember there being some interesting music in the film version that's not on the OST that plays as the crew trip the sensor and the droids are activated. I cannot remember precisely where this bit fits in.

Hermione will need to be recast. How about Tessa Thompson or Zendaya?

It isn't really fair to include a porno IMO. Those aren't made to be "quality cinema" or anything

Well, it is possible to turn a movie off after 5 minutes and also not talk trash about it

The one HP film I might refuse to see. I heard a lot about the book (and play) and it sounds completely terrible. Sorry, but I draw the line at Voldemort having a kid. I'd look forward to the score though if it would be composed by JNH.

I really hope this isn’t true. I wish JK Rowling would just leave HP alone now. This means they will have to recast Snape, which sucks, because that is Alan Rickman’s role.

One purpose of this thread is to make me (and others, who feel similarly) more enthusiastic about these 3 JW scores and make us go back to them. So which are your favourite The BFG score moments? Which stand out, in your opinion? The score is okay, quite good, but yeah, I also dislike the movie. What a waste of talent (Williams, Spielberg, and Hanks - couldn't care less about Streep)! Such a self-serving, hypocritical, and somewhat obnoxious movie...

This is indeed an awesome moment. The great thing about JW scores is that, even if they happen to be mediocre overall, they still contain many snippets of brilliance that might be reminiscent of his classics. This particular moment has shades of Close Encounters, I think. By God it does!

I like how Beyond attempts to confront the darker aspects to the Federation and Starfleet, and how it made the villain a disaffected soldier who became inhuman and bent on revenge. The story itself feels Trekkian, and wouldn't feel out of place in TOS or TNG.

Love it, hopefully this score will get the recognition it deserves come awards time.

I love little moments like these. They could be the basis for an entire overarching theme in 90% of movie scores, but for Williams they are, as you say, almost throwaway moments.

I thought his Steve Jobs score was pretty good as well. Had some inspired moments.