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It would be damn time Haab got something more than video game Star Wars to score!

I think it's gorgeous. It captures a sense of aching love that is somehow out of reach, which fits the narrative perfectly.

I don't have the energy to wade into the psychological drama of the Haab-Solo thing. The problem with Haab—and this is evident in "Smugglers Run"—is that pleasant melodies surface in his work like whales in the ocean, glimpsed briefly only to disappear under a churn of generic Williams-isms until their next visit. No guarantee he can tell a musical story, even in a given track, much less in a series. It could happen, but I haven't seen that kind of work from him anywhere yet.

And (according to Facebook memories), exactly two years after I acquired it. Fun score. The most Joe Dante score that isn’t a Joe Dante score. I also got the Planet of the Apes set in the same order. And The Swarm. I was clearly in a Jerry scores wildlife mood… some other great titles in that delivery!

I’m glad HZ winning wasn’t broadcast live so I can pretend it never happened.

As I was recently listenning back to Horner's The Journey of Natty Gann (Intrada) I realise that I was not much of a fan of the front cover. So I've decided to remake the artwork...

The Alice suite that he's been using in concerts is the full version of 'Alice's Theme' which then transitions into 2:45 onwards of 'Alice'. The 'Alice' suite is actually another suite for Alice in Wonderland, not Alice Through the Looking Glass. He wrote it for the Royal Albert Hall live-to-projection performance in 2015. At this point, Elfman was writing the score for the sequel, so he recorded that new suite for the secondary material in the first movie and added it to the sequel's CD.

Some essential Sony albums are missing on Spotify. After now also dipping into the Sony Box, I have to say, the Sony Box is sooo much better than the Phillips Box. Also concerning sound and performance.

@JTWfan77 here you go

I have been re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth Saga, from The Silmarillion to The Lord of the Rings, as well as his Letters. I’ve also watched Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings on 4K Blu-Ray (Extended Edition only). I love the works of Tolkien; I greatly admire Tolkien. Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was phenomenal. Now, having seen what Amazon is doing, I am appalled. All they care about is making “another Game of Thrones.” The works of Tolkien are beloved by millions of people all over the world (and for good reason), and the reaction to Amazon’s series is so bad that they actually hired “social media influencers” to pose as “Tolkien super-fans” just to try and get a decent word out. They even dismissed notable Tolkien scholar Dr. Tim Shippey from having any involvement with this. This is disgraceful. I have friends who are white, black and Latino, and they are disgusted by the fact that Amazon is trying to make Tolkien’s world reflect modern-day society, which greatly undercuts Tolkien’s stated intent of creating an immersive mythology within Earth’s ancient history. The problem is NOT diversity; the problem is turning an established and beloved work into something that is intent on deconstructing and subverting rather than honoring or building on Tolkien’s life work and legacy. Not to mention that the entertainment rights to Tolkien’s works are now quite literally divided, with Amazon having the rights to any adaptation of The Hobbit and Appendices and the Saul Zaentz Company owning the rights to The Lord of the Rings (which is licensed to WB). It is unbelievable.

I'm not a Zimmer fanboy, but I do think he has won Oscars for two deserving scores

Yes, in front of an audience full of seat-fillers, before the actual industry folk make their way in from the red carpet.

I’m rewatching WALL•E right now. It’s my favorite Pixar movie and I absolutely love Newman’s score.

Yes, and this is exactly why Burton’s Batman films (and especially his second one) are the best filmed interpretations of the character. They don’t try to shove a square peg into the round hole of real life, as Nolan’s trilogy and Snyder’s godforsaken movies try to do.

A nice selection although there is never too much Williams Star Wars music! The Journey of Natty Gann by James Horner I bought it recently in garage sale and really can't get enough of it. It's a stunning adventurous score and a pure gem from Horner (I know I say that from all his score recently)

Yes indeed and same. Good point. Interesting. I guess I was lucky to find it - entirely by accident when I stayed at a hotel in the area and it just caught my eye while walking along Notting Hill Gate with @ChrisAfonso. There's (or was at least) a nice breakfast place on a corner close by as well. Similar situation in NYC, where @crocodile and I found an excellent used music and film store just before going back to the airport, and when we left and it was raining, we found a find Japanese restaurant right next door. Perhaps there's a correlation between used CDs and food.

Stevens rescored the climactic scene from OUTLAND, and it shows. He's decent, but, and as @JTWfan77 says: "he's no Jerry".

He ain't Jerry and it shows unfortunately. I would have prefered if Jerry had scored the main highlights of the entire show including the thematic material, and let Morton deal with the filler stuff.

Definitely. I decided that it would better divided into episodes as each one makes for a satisfying listen and is a more manageable length. Plus I can use a range of the custom artwork people have created in my library! One issue with tv albums is the length even with the best of them.

I have to admit that I haven’t enjoyed his video game scores as much as I hoped. It’s like it’s written by John Williams bot. However, as it’s for (I assume) long sections of game play where they want it to sound like the battle of hoth or whatever for a sustained period without quite resolving then it’s ideal. It has to sound just enough like Star Wars action music and it’s perfect for what it’s for. However if he can take the musical DNA of Star Wars and apply it to proper narrative drama I think he could probably do a decent job.

Everything Everywhere All At Once One of the most bizarre, hilarious and wonderful films I think I’ve ever seen. I need some time to process it but I think it’s one of the best of the last 10 years. Michelle Yeoh is phenomenal in it, as is Jonathan Ke Quan (aka Short Round from ToD, in his first major role in decades). Jamie Lee Curtis is also very well cast. Absurd to the most exquisite degree, and frequently very very funny. It’s very hard to describe, and I went in knowing next to nothing (which I recommend because it’s full of many surprises). But if I had to pinpoint it, it’s like a bunch of kung-fu movies smashed into an episode of Rick and Morty (but nowhere near as insufferable). It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I absolutely loved it and can’t recommend it more. You’ll also never hear Debussy’s ‘Claire de Lune’ quite the same ever again after watching it.

I totally sympathise. I get especially carried away when buying classical online at Presto as most albums are £5 to £7 for a lossless cd quality download and even less for Naxos or if they have a deal on. I usually set myself a limit of £20 but that’s still 4 or 5 albums. Plus all the other stuff… doesn’t help that I had a hard drive failure last year which wasn’t properly backed up (now my library is double backed up!) so I had several months of music to reimport and/or copy from the backup I did have so it all appears as “unplayed” in my iTunes. Think I still have like 2 weeks of solid listening to catch up on! Still, it’s an enjoyable problem to have I guess!

When it all gets too much, just shrug and quote the Tenth Doctor ... 'Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey'.

"We can pay you two thousand now plus fifteen when we reach Milan."

And that's too long as well! In my ideal world, a curated album and complete score would happen on the same day for composers who were interested, and consumers were able to decide when and if to move from one to the other. This may seem like a slightly extreme proposition, but I get a bit tired of album producers deciding that a certain time must pass before it's appropriate for us to hear more music.

I can't wait until 2024 to have the complete scores for the whole trilogy!

Copied from awesome concert thread for those who might not follow that thread but are curious about his new percussion concerto! I meant to write a few more comments just after the concert but I ended up hanging around the stage door for an autograph, but he never came out. Probably got whisked away via a separate entrance. He was indeed in the audience, in fact he was in my row! See photo… Disappointed not to have got an autograph and say hello but then I did meet him after Alice in Wonderland in concert a few years ago and got an autograph and a photo then so I can’t say I’m doing too badly! The percussion concerto was excellent and a world premiere performance. Oddly, the program notes don’t actually say anything about the music beyond that it was written after a chance meeting with Colin Currie who was the superb soloist. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him before performing the world premiere of Michael Torke’s percussion concerto. Elfman’s concerto is broken down into four movements, triangle, DSCH (that’s the four note motif Shostakovich used to use as his calling card and apparently was used by Elfman in his Dolores Claiborne score according to Wikipedia) down and syncopate. Much like his other concert works it’s unmistakably Danny Elfman but with far more interesting development and precision than some of his film music. The scoring is for strings, percussion soloist, piano, celeste and four or five members of the percussion section who were positioned behind the strings so there was some brilliant interplay between them, the soloist and the orchestra. The one thing about a percussion concerto is that it’s very theatrical compared to other instruments as the soloist has to dash round the stage as the wide range of mostly tuned percussion instruments were positioned either side of the conductor (Ludwig Wicki who did a great job with this as well as the other selections he was probably more familiar with… he’s the conductor on the recording of the LOTR symphony). Must be quite a challenge for a percussion soloist over and above the usual stresses of being a soloist. Essentially you have several different solo parts depending on which instrument you’re playing so have to be in the right place as well as playing the right notes! I’m sure there will be a recording at some point but it won’t quite convey the interplay between the soloist and the other percussionists which worked wonderfully well . The Batman suite included (from what I recall - the programme notes by Jeff Bond no less, didn’t say) the opening titles, descent into mystery, waltz to the death, up the cathedral, and from Batman Returns, the music for Catwoman and Penguin, followed by finale from the first movie. There seemed to be a few places with either additional or more prominent choral contributions. I definitely got some chills when the Batman theme bursts through in the main titles, Wicki did a great job of milking those buildups for everything they were worth! I think the “suite” from Alice in Wonderland was the opening track “Alice” from the sequel score which is about half the original Alice track but goes off in a slightly different direction in the middle and a different ending. It’s one of those scores I know the main theme but can never really remember much about the rest of it! Alas there was no encore. I bet my other half a fiver they would play The Simpsons theme as a witty encore, sadly I was disappointed… That was probably the only disappointment, absolutely phenomenal concert.

Yes. It really is. I always consider this score his last proper calling card. The Hog Chase cues are reason enough to offer this guy the next Bond film. The brass writing is simply sublime.

I remember that too! I don’t think Sleepers interested me much at the time but it’s certainly grown on me but I remember being amazed at how epic and grandiose that cue was at the concert. It certainly sounded much more impressive live than it does on CD (even more so than the usual extra buzz you get from a live performance). As to the original question, given that Journey to the Island is basically the reason why I love film music there’s pretty much no contest. The only real issue is that it comes to a quiet and slightly ominous conclusion which isn’t necessarily ideal for a concert. I don’t quite know how you’d rework the ending. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, not everything needs an epic conclusion (Jaws theme concert arrangement, I’m looking at you…).

I enjoy his videos a lot, but the main thing I get from it is how "structurally sound and logical" scripts have actually very little to do with how much I enjoy a movie. Batman Returns is all vibes and it is glorious.

Yep.

Gordy is working on JFO 2 at Abbey Road https://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=330795&title=OF-THEE-ICING

Sunday mood! Howard Shore - The Last Mimzy OST Thomas Newman - WALL-E (FYC) John Powell - HTTYD OST (my Deluxe CD is now in Chicago, it's coming, it's coming!) Howard Shore - Hugo OST

Jillian Bell is hilarious. Check out "22 Jump Street" for her best comedic work, or "Brittany Runs a Marathon" and "Sword of Trust" for good drama/comedy films featuring her

JW: How much for the little man? How much for the children? MM: What? JW: Your men. I want to buy your men. The little man, your sons... sell them to me. Sell me your children!

I got the new set for the re-rec anyway. But I should give the full score at least one proverbial spin in its new incarnation.

That is a great haul, Tom.

@Tom Guernsey Your description of Alice in Wonderland suite sounds an awful lot like the suite he did for the sequel. Hopefully, every concert work Elfman writes gets released. That's where he's at these days! Karol

The last time Horner innovated was 1992, when brought Pärt and Glass into the film music fold.

Great cover.😍 I'm sure someone will suggest more changes😵

I hope some of his other animated movies will fill this long wait. It would be pretty great to get his collabs with Harry Gregson-Williams (Chicken Run and Shrek) espacially since the first one is getting a sequel next year...

The brief conversation between Annie and Dean in the diner before the farmer show's him his tractor, the giants dream coming through on Dean's TV were added and an advert for Tomorrowland replaced a cereal one that was in the theatrical cut.

With how much we complain about the legalities of music royalties screwing over potential releases, I am a bit confused by some of the issues mentioned here. No wonder someone said any other label pulling this move would cause a riot, because this is bordering on entitled territory almost. Have we forgotten that each movie was distributed by a different studio initially? I get the feeling that might play a part in proceedings if the rights holders of each film also have to have a say. Granted, this might be poor reasoning if Back Lot is in charge of both sequel scores currently (plus all of the films are in Universal's hands now, so they probably would be the only point of contact legally). But since they were the ones to release 3 originally, might that have its own legal technicalities involved? I am remembering LLL saying that they couldn't really do a Rogue Nation expansion until a certain amount of time passed, so could something similar apply here? Also, since those type of releases have many approvals to go through prior to coming out, couldn't that also be at play here? Plus, since we know Powell sometimes does answer questions on social media, can't we just ask him why the spaced apart releases? Can't really hurt to try with how seemingly open he is about some things. In any case, given the hell many post 2005 scores are officially in atm, 4-5 years after the original album release is a godsend. If we're gonna ponder about the lengthy release window, at least exhaust every possible excuse someone can have before deciding Powell and crew are purely responsible for these moves. (Of course, I should clarify that I also think these legal holdbacks are incredibly damaging to the preservation and release of expanded film scores. I just couldn't help but get the impression that we are blaming the smaller companies more in this instance than the giant corporations that decide on what strings get pulled. So I write all this as a means of wanting to understand where some of you come from, as well as having some of my own words corrected if I made any mistakes.)

With HTTYD 2 out of the way, the Bourne trilogy is now at the top of my Powell wishlist.

I was there too and my initial reaction is that I prefer it to the violin concerto (which I like very much!). It followed the same broad structure of his violin concerto (1st and 4th movements are more classical, in the 2nd movement he allows himself to get a bit silly at times and the 3rd movement is more sombre). I think the shorter runtime helped the whole thing feel more assured. As someone who is still quite new to the classical scene, I was taken by how entertaining it was, which I'm sure is what he's going for. The audience reaction and the chat I heard afterwards seemed to be very positive. It'll be hard to hear Batman on CD again after that performance, though. It'd be nice to have a recording of that suite at some point (along with many of the other Elfman/Burton suites). Here's a video of Currie talking about the concerto.

A week or so ago via Gordy Haab's Facebook. Still could be anything but the timing is interesting

That's rather unfair to AVATAR. Or -- especially -- my alltime favourite Horner score THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS.

SLEEPERS is an underrated masterpiece. 'nuff said.

It's one of Spielberg's very best films.

And a pitch perfect continuation of the story in Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future.