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Greetings, fellow JW fans! My name is Aaron Fullan and I'm a film composer from near the Chicago area. As you know, John Williams' 88th birthday is this weekend (February 8), so I decided to arrange a musical tribute piece in honor of this most special occasion. It's entitled "Skywalkers' Legacy | A Star Wars Symphonic Suite" and it highlights some of my favorite themes from the Star Wars saga. Much to my surprise, John Williams' go-to orchestrator (William Ross) listened to the piece last night and used words/phrases like "quite good", "wonderfully arranged", and "bravo!" in his comments about it! Needless to say, my day/week/month/year was made. I'd love to hear your honest thoughts about it if/when you have a few minutes to listen/watch it! I highly value the opinions and input of my fellow JW fans on this "labor of love." HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you really think about it, the whole concept of a traditional "soundtrack" album is kind of strange, especially if it contains a bunch of unused or alternate material like most of the Star Wars albums do. The word "soundtrack" would indicate that it should be isolated audio from the sound track of the film, hence the name... or preferably, all of the music recorded for a film. Instead what we get basically amounts to a "highlights" album, that just so happens to contain unused material as well for some reason. In my opinion, the concept of a traditional soundtrack presentation is outdated... a product of technological or storage limitations of physical media from past generations. Now that we have digital media with no storage limit, there's no need to continue releasing incomplete scores. But the thing about us humans (and in particular, Americans) is that once we start a tradition, it's near impossible for us to move on from it.

It's interesting I guess. But I tend to agree with this article that the approach is as bad as when people used to "colorize" black and white films. The motion smoothing and cropping of the image to be widescreen are annoying. The second one you posted (which is itself a painstakingly restored version) is much preferable. You can restore and upscale in a way that also preserves the historical context. https://silentlondon.co.uk/2020/02/05/train-in-vain/

Music composed and conducted by John Powell? 🤔

PATHS OF GLORY is, probably, his finest film. ACE IN THE HOLE is brilliant.

Paths of Glory is just as essential!

Any consideration into adding themes from WAR HORSE?

And here, ladies and gentlemen, you have it black on white why wasting your time on this (and probably other) awards is pure nonsense: “Every time that ‘Joker’ ad comes on TV with that weird violin, I’m like, ‘Oh god, turn it off! Turn it off!’ But, I mean, come on, how many Oscars can John Williams and Randy Newman win? I know it’s so stupid to think like that but I’m sort of influenced by that. I might still vote for ‘Joker’ even though I can’t stand the score and haven’t seen the film because it’s the first time a woman would win.” by Anonymous Oscar voter

I like his Spider-man scores more!

Do yourself a favor and see Lonely Are the Brave. Amazing Goldsmith score (my favorite of his feature scores), and quite arguably the best film he ever scored. Really powerful, and my favorite Kirk Douglas performance (also Kirk Douglas's own favorite of all his roles). Both film and score are absolute masterpieces, and my appreciation for the score increased tenfold when I finally saw the film. Also... Gena Rowlands deserves a mention -- not only a truly powerful performance from her as well, but she is absolutely BREATHTAKING in this movie. Yavar

Holy shit, did anybody else see that train flying at them? I threw my phone into a lake and ran away!

But there's no action!

Eh... I might actually be inclined to agree. Or at least I'll go so far as to say I think it's probably my favorite track out of the sequel scores. Can't express just how much I love this one.

Impressive suite @Aaron Fullan! This is the type of medley I was hoping John would compose for the TROS End Credits, but shit happens. Do you plan to finish it off with the themes from TROS over the next few months?

Hollywood is basically all white guilt liberals. Wins like Crash and Green Book only make sense if you know that.

His Angel is gorgeous. The last I heard from him was Dans La Maison, which was a cute, albeit repetitive, little drama score.

New booking for SW:TLJ Toronto, Ontario, Canada May 13th, 14th, and 15th, 2021 Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Steven Reineke, conductor. https://www.tso.ca/concert/star-wars-last-jedi-concert#performance-2599

Work on the Potter box set began in 2016 I believe, maybe even sooner, but then got delayed when Spielberg wanted him to do anniversary editions of ET and CE3K, and IIRC some other projects interrupted as well. I wasn't involved until Feb 2018, at a point where Mike had already assembled HP1 and was working on 2 and 3. So I don't know how long it took him to restore HP1 (since he had to redo every performance edit from scratch using the new transfer of the original tape he had commissioned, it would have taken a while), but IIRC Williams approved Chamber (the last of the 3 we finished) sometime in mid-March or so, so those two didn't take nearly as long. Between the composer approval in March (meaning no more audio work to do) and the November release, there was tons of hours spent on the notes and artwork, and it was all interrupted at times by Cowboys, Dracula, Schindler, and Ryan stuff too. For the SW scores each one is different, and would be months of work to complete all nine, probably a full year. Depends on if he had work on it un-interrupted or would have to do other projects in between as well, and how much time he'd spent restoring audio on the original trilogy. The PT and ST are probably ready to go, just need to be edited and mastered, but each of the OT scores probably requires interesting and different restoration work each.

It's one of the best film scores every written!

I think he conducted Stop Loss and Ferdinand, don't know if only parts of these scores or completly. But most of his blockbuster scores (Solo, Dragon trilogy) were conducted by Gavin Greenaway, Pete Anthony, etc.

Doctor Strange is one of his stronger scores of the past 5 years.

Start with his hammy performance in The Man From Snowy River.

I have never seen a Kirk Douglas performance.. looking at his entire filmography, his Simpsons episode is the only thing he's done I've seen.

The great maestro outdone by a fan. This is what it has come to.

Sure but in the last 15 years, Elfman hasn't churned out a masterpiece like Drag Me To Hell.

No, like my eyes were being gouged out by tiny parasites and then dissolving in my stomach. Motion smoothing should be illegal.

Well, your brain is wrong.

3. My brain thinks it's better than the entirety of TFA and TLJ combined.

Your suite is amazing. I especially like the Anakin segment.

That's a great one! I love "Coronation" and "Hathor's Theme".

Neat arrangements. Well done! I can tell you're quite skilled and you have a ton of passion for the material. If you're looking for critiques: your medley doesn't feel like it has continuous momentum from front to back. It works married to the video but would distract me listening to it on its own. At times feels like the piece starts, then stops, then starts again etc. It has to do with the repetitive change up in the piece dynamics (pretty frequently a piece enters into the medley at a quiet dynamic until it develops into a louder dynamic). It hampers the flow.

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I've always thought this. The composer should get to craft an OST album by whatever method they use, and that should come out when the film does, and be the only way to hear the score out of the gate. Then, around when the film hits home video, release a digital album of the entire score, each cue in its own track in chronological order. Fans of the scores would pay for these archives. The specialty labels can still do nice albums down the road when it becomes affordable to license them.

Of course. Because, you know, who cares? Gee, what a piece of shit that Nation article is. It's ok to celebrate your own friends but not on such rotten tangent that likens all filmmusic B. H. (before Hildur) to Les Baxter bachelor pad LPs. I mean, seriously.

Every single JWFan should listen to the soundtrack for The Last Black Man in San Francisco by Emile Mosseri. Instantly on first listen it became one of my favorite scores of 2019 (which is a short list, but still this is pretty fantastic). Very few modern directors would ask for a score like this. The compositions themselves aren't overly complex but a real musical personality comes through nevertheless, which is so rare. I mean, what other scores these days would have a cue that's just an oboe with piano accompaniment?

It felt more like Rowling didn't have the voice for screenwriting that she does for writing the Potter books. It's about the framing of the story, adapting the story for a visual medium and making sure revelatory twists and turns work cinematically as much as they do on paper. Yet I wouldn't write off CoG, for all its deathly boring sections and things that didn't land as well as Rowling might've hoped, there's still some good moments that shine through that thick smog of bullshit. Depp's Grindelwald was great, Jude Law's Dumbledore too, it's just missing a clear guiding force that gives this franchise any bearing towards a meaningful story. Rowling should've had Kloves on board from the beginning! It's amazing the first

If it's like the TV Academy, you can opt out of receiving physical media and rely only on digital. That's what I do. (I'm in the sound editors branch, so I don't get scores though and never have.) Back when I became a member in 1992, we used to get stacks upon stacks of VHS tapes. DVD's took about a decade after the format was released to displace that. Past few years have almost all been streaming, including, recently, an Apple TV ability to watch the shows.

What for, every year a Williams score would win, even if he didn't write any.

I thought we concluded last time that the sound team created the film version editorially? Although I don't have Jay's superior skills for finding the exact post.

I am probebly the only one here who liked Crimes of Grindelwald. Sure it was not perfect but I find it enjoebole.

At least they’ve got an actual screenwriter working on the 3rd, that’s a positive move. Can’t get over how badly they screwed up number 2.

Which was nominated for best cinematography.

Or his spreadsheet.

Mola Ram When an increasingly unhealthy academic interest in the Hindu goddess Kali Ma develops into a dangerous obsession, Mola eventually takes to online social media where his vitriolic tweets draw the attention of US intelligence monitors, concerned by the zealously bald promises to reenact the betrayal of Shiva - on US soil: vengeance for years of harassment he endured while manning the phones in the AT&T technical support call centre. His final Facebook update before disappearing off the radar was frightening in its intent: "I will rip the heart out of America, beginning with those who only had to restart their routers."

Amber Heard is like Rosamund Pike’s character from Gone Girl.

Desplat phoning it in, like JW, is usually superior to most other film music out there, at least from a technical standpoint. No one really mentions Randy Newman, but I thought Marriage Story had a lovely little score. Suited the film perfectly I thought.

Not many directors are in the market to purchase what Williams is selling. To be completely honest, I doubt very many people are asking JW to score their films. First, he's too expensive. Second, he will take his time. They can't do a hack job with him. They will have to give him the film months in advance in and give him time to write the score. Third, he will not do demos for you? Are you fucking kidding. Williams obviously reached that milestone decades ago but obviously nobody is going to dare ask JW to write demos before he is hired. Fourth, You cannot reject a Williams score. You will have to take what you get. He will make changes for sure but for the most part, he's written what he's written. Fifth, His score will most definitely not be a wallpaper. He is NOT going to give you suites to edit into your film as you want. He's going to honest to god score it with individuals cues for individual music. Sixth, his music will not disappear into the background. It will most definitely make its presence felt and will affect the scenes it is in. Seventh, it will likely be a "bigger" score than these film-makers are used to. There will be multiple themes etc. which will have to be placed right and the score will have to be properly handled. Eight, you will likely hear the score proper on the day you record it. For all the reasons, I think newer film-makers are intimidated. They want gutter trash trailer music garbage soundscape suites that they can demos of, play on set, cut the movie to and then apply in the background as needed. No headache. Who's going to do a spotting session? And wait for the score for months? Without demos? And who's going to do a complex edit of getting the score in and potentially re-editing the movie, and redoing the mix etc. etc. Basically, it is beyond the skill, capability or ambition of these film-makers to actually work John Williams to create a score for their films.

For your interest, here’s the English version of my review of John Williams conducting Wiener Philharmoniker at Musikverein on Saturday 18 January. A once-in-a-lifetime experience – John Williams and the Wiener Philharmoniker at Musikverein