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Just re watched TLJ. It’s amazing how many Mickey Mousing moments Williams achieve that are so great and have all the advantages of Mickey mousing without the drawbacks.

The Phasma Fight especially is downright remarkable! I attempted to transcribe it to show just how precisely coordinated those brutal orchestral stabs are with the action.

I consider that one of his specialties! Punching up the physical action in a way that isn’t eye-rolling. In a way that sounds relatively natural, musically.

What a dismal thing to say on a John Williams fan-board of all places. So you'd prefer we not have these brand new Star Wars scores by the maestro?

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/kathleen-kennedy-star-wars-royal-honor-cbe/amp Caption: A 'Raiders' reunion: Producer Frank Marshall; Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy; Samantha Winslow, wife of composer John Williams; and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan. Also I noted that Rian Johnson was invited to this shindig... in case anyone doubts that he is still in her good graces...

Just finished listening to my copy, which arrived today. It's a revelation, the sound is spectacular. I've been waiting almost twenty years for this and it does not disappoint one bit.

More Mickey-Mouseing in The Fathiers, than elsewhere in the score! Reminded me of some of Williams' older action scores - particularly Indiana Jones!

I've said it before and I'll say it again- the iron scene is one of Williams most loveable little play-alongs, between the Death Star motif and the youthful main theme that follows. And scenes like the throne room fight and Finn v. Phasma are some of my favourites from that score as well. A New Alliance becomes more and more ridiculously good with each listen.

No, that’s what you’re called!

Just because it features the same characters, doesn’t mean it’s a legit continuation of the same story. It’s a story completely and utterly separate to that of episodes I-VI. It exists purely because the filmmakers could make it. But they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Honestly, Gravity is such a visual film that I can understand you didn't care for it.

You make a lot of great points in your write up, Chen. I think you're absolutely right that a two-film structure could have turned out worse than what we got. At the same time, I think Jackson and co. could definitely have made three better films than the ones we got. They could have even been great! I've said it before and I'll say it again, the biggest problem with this series is not that they turned such a short book into a trilogy. The biggest problems were time constraints and the lack of a finished, internally consistent vision for the series. The filmmakers just needed to pick a tone and stick with it, whether that was lighthearted faithful adaptation, gritty fantasy prequel, or even goofy video gamey actioner.

I dunno, I guess that after a decade and a half of moody Batman music, we'll have a more expansive Batman theme since the days of Elfman/Goldenthal. For some reason, whenever I try to imagine how a Giacchino Batman theme would sound like, the first thing that pops in my head is this:

Back when I was still optimistic.

I love all the Star Trek scores. Although I have always found Star Trek VI to be unique ever since I heard it when it first came out back then.

I hope the plan is to make a CD, like last time.

I doubt it’ll be able to really tie everything together. Provided it doesn’t, the sequel trilogy would have been better off never having been made. Its superfluous.

On paper, sure. In term of narrative, hell no.

That's actually a genuinely interesting question: I always assumed Williams will go out with a bang here, but the real question is what will he do to position this score as a culmination of his entire body of work on this series... My guess is - nothing at all. Williams probably will treat this score as the resolution strictly to his work on The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The thematic throughline to earlier entries will probably be conveyed largely through the Force Theme: Enter Binary Sunset.

Nah, the ewok barbecue party song's the real conclusion.

I agree with this 100%. However, I am viewing this as the true musical conclusion to the series, which is a big deal in its own right.

Same here....

Frodo's story transmutes itself from a Hero's Journey to a tragic hero. But he still doesn't possess the kind of character flaws that the best tragic heroes do: he's just placed in an unfortunate situation. Thorin is much more comparable to characters like Boromir, Isildur and Denethor (in that they all bring the unfortunate situation on themselves) except he's the main character across all three films, not a side-character present in one half of a movie. We do experience The Hobbit trilogy through Bilbo's point of view: he's the audience surrogate. Doesn't make him the protagonist, though. The prologue establishes this very dynamic, whereby Bilbo is telling the story, but the story itself is about Thorin. Its unlike the book, but it works. Gives the trilogy a good structure, too: FILM ONE: Thorin loses his homeland and suffers great personal loses. He sets out heroically to reclaim his homeland, in spite of warnings of what it might do to him. FILM TWO: The closer Thorin gets to reclaiming what he's lost, the more he loses himself. The need to fulfill the quest becomes all-consuming for him, to the point that he's willing to disregard to fate of bystanders like the people of Laketown, and later that of his own kin and companions such as Kili and Bilbo. FILM THREE: Having reclaimed his homeland, Thorin is now at his lowest. He ultimately recovers, but only too late to save himself. Nevertheless, in his dying act he does win a battle, and reconciles with Bilbo. Not what I was getting at, at all, I assure you.

The 1976 one has a lot of hammy performances and the characters are really believable...

Umm, Luke stands up to the Emperor, is beaten down only for this to compell Vader to kill the emperor, dying in the process. The Empire is defeated and the Republic restored. That’s it. Episode IX will probably never be the true conclusion of the series: its the conclusion of a story begun after the conclusion of the series, which is contained within Return of the Jedi.

I thought Zombie Peter Cushing was great in Rogue One.

If I have issues with The Battle of the Five Armies as a concluding piece, they don't have to do with the main storylines: I love the resolution for Thorin, for Bibo, for the company. While some of the lines are cheesy as hell, I do like where Tauriel and her little romance ends: its a classic aspect of all tragic romances that the death of one of the lovers leaves the romance unconsummated. I don't mind the prequel stuff with Legolas, and I like where Bard and the people of Laketown end up. I feel two things are missing: a stronger resolution for Thranduil. I like that he stops being the isolationist (a central theme of the trilogy), but I would have liked it had he managed to patch things up with Thorin just a little bit. I would have had him climbing up Ravenhill just in time to see Thorin's final sacrifice. Establishing more clearly that Erebor is to be restored and repopulated by Thorin's folk. I would put a scene into the denoument where, on their way back, Gandalf and Bilbo encounter Dwarves from the Blue Mountains goint east and asking about Erebor's reclamation and their king. But otherwise? Damn fine filmmaking, in my mind.

They opted to use PayPal only for payments on the newly revised website and unfortunately my country is not on PayPal list therefore I can't place orders from their directly. MV told me the IT guy would work on restoring the old method which allows credit card to work independently but still hasn't..... I merely order from other retailers now. But MV will manually process my orders over the phone so that's not bad.

I beg to differ.

At a bar today I saw a commercial on a TV that indicated a new trailer is debuting Monday during Monday Night Football

Speaking of clear game mechanics, I've diven deep into Prey this past week. Holy crap, this game is _not_ what I was expecting. It's way deeper on pretty much any front, with way more versatility and freedom than I was led to believe around the time of its release. It's a true-blue science fiction game, with some very cool and promising concepts; I have to play more though before I can see if there's going to be a philosophical exploration of them, or if it's just fancy world building excuses for gameplay mechanics. The horror element is way stronger than I thought, too...in both everyday life and especially media, we become very adept at selective attention: as I type this right now in my living room, for example, there are multitudes of objects that I have completely ignored and placed out of mind...dryer sheets, a desk, power cords, etc. With media, presenting a heightened and focused sense of reality, it's even more pronounced: if you have an urgent objective across multiple rooms for example, you're not paying attention to the furniture and the decor etc., you're focused on clearing the rooms. Prey's hook is simple but incredibly effective: what if the threat is all the little things you cast to the periphery of your mind? What would be a standard "flat" room in any other video game is now an intense, deliberate trawl, yourself always on edge and completely paranoid about the cornucopia of minutiae surrounding you at any given moment. You've been in this room before, but that chair, was it always there? Was it always on its side? What was that noise, did it come from that coffee mug? If you hit it, will it shatter and reveal it was what it appeared to be, and leave you vulnerable for the real threat masquerading as the cardboard box right next to it? It's incredibly nervewracking, and I love every second of it so far.

Me! John Williams has been my tether to this series. If he's not involved, I don't watch them (such as Rogue One, especially with the movie boner killer himself behind the notes).

Stories about courage

You're weird. Although my favourite bit of WATERWORLD isn't necessarily the swashbuckling theme (great as that is), but the glorious "Swimming" track. That's JNH's application for doing the AVATAR sequels right there.

Yet nobody noticed the missing teeth in the cover art. Fixed

He has only gotten France’s ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters’ Award thusfar. I guess that counts for something.

Ah ok. Thank you for the information and will remember it for the future.

Indeed, and Incredibles 2 was pretty good too.

Because Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Spider-man: Far From Home are two of the best blockbuster scores he's ever written

Die Hard Karol

Mike Zeroh is known as the clown of Star Wars "news". He's famous online for being a flat-out liar and steals most of his material from shady posts on Reddit. He also has a bunch of bot accounts he's used to harass people who call him out on YouTube. I've gotten into many arguments with him personally on Reddit; he's the kind of person you want to avoid at all cost. He's a massive dick only looking for ad revenue on YouTube.

Unlike most streaming series, this thing will debut its episodes weekly. Here's the dates for S1: Episode 1 – Nov 12 Episode 2 – Nov 15 Episode 3 – Nov 22 Episode 4 – Nov 29 Episode 5 – Dec 6 Episode 6 – Dec 13 Episode 7 – Dec 18 Episode 8 – Dec 27 I really thought they were gonna make a pause between the season for the holidays like most broadcast TVs, but no, the entire season will be streaming on D+ until the end of the year.

Indeed. Fuck acoustics, I've seen Williams twice and heard all the pieces a million times. If I had the chance to go to this concert, I would have gone for the front seats immediately; that's what I did for the JW concert in Boston in 2014 and it's one of my best concert experiences ever. I vividly remember giving a thums up to Williams at the end, and he gave me a thumbs up in return!

What a way for Williams to make an entry into the 2020s! Peak of TROS music excitement / finishing the saga and all of that, and right afterwards a historically significant concert with the VPO.

Here's some inside information (inside Vienna that is; I don't have any direct ties to the Musikverein itself, other than being a regular visitor): I don't know if the original two concerts ever sold out. If they did, they did so very late. Tickets were available for months. They obviously did really poor promotion on this. Obviously the best seats in each category were gone very quickly, but you could still get plenty of decent tickets in I think all or most price ranges much later. Not sure if those were all available right away or if they got released as a separate contingent after a while. Personally, I queued in front of the ticket office at I think 4:30 in the morning, and I was alone their until I got joined by another person about an hour later. The others arrived not before 7 or later, and I think we were about 10 people when the office opened. Of course there were many online and phone orders as well, so picking the very best seats was still a bit of a race. Still, I wouldn't risk anything; more people might be interested this time (or not). I'll be queuing early again, though probably not quite as early. As far as I remember, a membership can be booked online now, and as soon as that's activated, you can automatically access the membership exclusive dates on the website (if you're logged in). I don't know if the membership has to be processed manually, and if they're fully staffed on weekends, so if in doubt, perhaps better get one right away (it's Friday just an hour after noon right now) or early on Monday (CEST). Booking a seat online (or at the box office) uses the hall layout posted above. You can either pick a category and let the system assign you the "best" seat, or pick one manually. The interface is a bit wonky (the new website design that was introduced about 2 years ago didn't improve much and made some things worse), so best play around with it with another concert before to get the hang of it. The categories vary, and I haven't been able to figure out exactly which seats belong to which category in general, but you can use other concerts as a rough guide. The best and most expensive seats are in the rear half of the Cercle, I think - probably some of the boxes, too, but I'm not a big fan of most of them. The further back you sit, the more reverb you're likely to get (also depends on the seat though, I think the boxes are a bit different in sound), so on the "cheaper" seats on the balcony and gallery, you get a glorious sound but not necessarily very detailed acoustics. For everyone asking if I could pick them up a ticket: I'm sorry, but I first have to coordinate with all the people I got tickets for last time, and with my other friends who are also booking tickets online. It's 4 tickets per membership, so for the first two days every person can only get a total of 8 tickets. We had to plan out purchases very carefully to make sure all of us got all the tickets they wanted (I'll be going twice again, once with the best ticket I can get and the second time probably with a cheaper one). There were leftovers, so if you want to risk it, and aren't picky regarding which seat you get, I can probably let you know what's left once we've fully supplied our immediate circles of friends. It's certainly worded in such a way that he'll at least conduct a part of the concert (so more than was promised for Tanglewood earlier this year, where he still ended up conducting the final third). I do remember we had similar speculations last time, and in the end he was clearly supposed to conduct the whole affair himself (he was the only conductor listed right before the cancellation). I would imagine there will be a backup conductor, and I wouldn't be surprised if they go ahead without Williams should he not feel up to it, but I'd expect unless he falls ill again, unless his overall condition isn't as good as last year, there's a good chance he'll do the full concerts himself. I'll only really believe it when he shows up on stage anyway. Last year I started believing this was really going to happen about two weeks before the concert, and look where that got us.

I think they work if they're just cool. The fight in the original Star Wars is a character/story device and it's ridiculous. It's also a crappy showdown given the history between Darth and Ben and compared to all the other fights in the six movies. They don't even appear to have been trained to handle those weapons. At one point, Alec Guiness spins around and it's the dumbest thing in any of the fights.

Lincoln is a movie that has really benefited from multiple viewings. SPR might have a much bigger impact on first viewing, but I find Lincoln more rewarding in the long run. And the score is a treasure chest of riches

I'm still grateful you let our episode on Jane Eyre go for almost an hour! Sorry I wasn't able to join you on Family Plot, as that's another real favorite of mine (top 10 Williams for sure)! Hope Jens has the time to join you again sometime. Keep up the good work and best wishes from me and The Goldsmith Odyssey! Yavar

There's a bunch of Williams scores from the 80's and 90's that only have a few highlights and mostly subdued underscore. Presumed Innocent, The River, Rosewood,Sleepers,Amistad,Angela's Ashes,SPR... I think this will be along those lines. I expect the Finale and End Credits to be the "keepers". Then he's write a concert piece not on the c.d. But it's true , we should treat every new Williams score as though it could be the last one