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Posts posted by Henry B
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I had a dream last night that "Get 'Em R-2!" belonged to a completely different part of the film than we'd originally thought. I synced it up, and everything worked perfectly. Good lord.
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It's a pretty good soundtrack. I like the "A Hero Comes Home" theme.
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I liked this film a lot. I think you just have to tune out the questions and enjoy it as an action/suspense film. Yeah, whatever, nothing made any sense. But it was really fun to watch. Great editing. I liked Streitenfield's score; it actually sounded a lot like Goldsmith's Alien. Lots of creepy effects and broad, spacey harmonies.
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I played the piano score for this show. Really hard. Yeah, the moment comes after a washed up football player and his girlfriend talk about how starved for cash they are. Each of the "fast" sections is supposed to be a parade of chaotic New York art. A circus. I guess by this point in the music the desperate and crazed New Yorkers have completely overtaken the naive tour guide's rosy presentation of the city. Actually, my other role in this show was an assistant to the stage manager, so I never saw what was happening. Who knows?
Anyway... are you sure you're not developing an unhealthy obsession with this little motive?
The first four notes are, of course, all over Christopher Street (do-ti-do-la, displaced as so-fi-so-mi in a lydian mode), but they're such a simple construction that it's hard to say the quote was intentional. It definitely gets a little more sinister sounding in the moment you mentioned, so maybe that was Bernstein saying, "hey, the fast theme I wrote sounds like Dies Irae." He was a very referential composer, of course. But I don't know. -
Are you serious? I'm listening to this album right now!
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You mention integrity. The important point is whether "superficial" details are changed like main plot moments, characters (incidentally, I agree that Faramir's story arc was modified a lot, but it was done to stay faithful to his character - bringing out character traits that only appear as backstory in the book) etc., or whether actual "world facts" are changed. Like the nature of the Nazgul. Or the reasoning and threat of Sauron (him coming out of Barad-dur for a one on one combat with Aragorn would have been a major blow to that).
That's exactly what I'm saying. "World facts" don't matter, only their application to film. I'm sure there's a good reason for what the nature of the Nazgul is, but it doesn't come across in the films. They are ancient kings, twisted by greed and turned into Sauron's servants. That's about all we are told. Whether they became Sauron's servants in ancient times or during The Hobbit just doesn't matter. The manner in which they were - zombified? - doesn't matter. It has absolutely no impact on the story the film is telling. No offense meant at all toward the books. They are classic works that will always be there, and I don't question the intricate construction of Tolkien's world. It is, however, a world that can't ever be adequately conveyed by a film, so why try?
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Once again... why all the worry about details like these when massive changes were made to Lord of the Rings? It's like, "I'm fine that the Lord of the Rings films completely rewrote Faramir's character and resequenced nearly everything from the Battle of Helm's Deep on, but it's inexcusable that the Nazgul are being said to have been created recently in the timeline of the films, rather than centuries before." Jackson has obviously never been out to produce a faithful adaptation of The Hobbit. As with Lord of the Rings, he's taking some very admirable source material, nodding to it, and creating something new. Look at these films stylistically and not clinically. Maybe Fellowship of the Rings sticks pretty close to the source material, but its tone can't be anything like what Tolkien intended. For example, the dramatic prologue giving us the backstory of the rings, although sitting perfectly within the book's "canon," drastically alters audience expectations, as compared to reader expectations. Because we are given information from the onset, the journey of discovery (told through Frodo's eyes in the book) is reduced. The coziness and warmth of the Shire is less assured because when we see it, we've already learned the backstory of Sauron and the Ring. These tones and moods aren't incidental to the plot of the film, they really are the film. All the characters, locations and lore are only tools used by filmmakers to create an emotional experience. They have no integrity. Okay? Tools, nothing more. In the end, I think audiences will remember The Hobbit - fondly or not so much - for the same reasons they remembered Lord of the Rings. Beautiful New Zealand landscapes. Endearing performances from actors like Ian McKellen. The music. The excitement and pace of battle scenes. Heartfelt writing that draws from a rich mythology... but... NOT the mythology itself.
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Star Trek: First Contact - GNP complete release.
I had it in my head for a long time that this was a rough, oppressively action packed sort of score. While that's probably true of the second act, the first and third are full of wonder and adventure. It's much more a spiritual successor to The Final Frontier than I realized. The "First Contact" theme tends toward the sort of bland Americana Goldsmith dealt with often in his later career, but maybe it's the best example of that genre. It's also given lots of spacey wonder in the last few tracks before finally coming into its soft, patriotic sound. I think the use of the "quest" theme from The Final Frontier is curious. Goldsmith was so deliberate about this motive that he put it right into the main title alongside the Courage fanfare. I don't know why... but it works. Joel's contributions are fine and fit right in with his father's work. Anyway - a much more excellent score than I thought. Check it out if you liked Goldsmith's TOS movie scores, of course.
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That's only the closest comparison I could think of. Again, Star Wars is not the only best approach toward filmmaking, thankfully.
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One thing I forgot to mention about the event last night was that we watched the "The Enterprise" scene without any music at all, and people couldn't help laughing. All the silent cuts between Shatner pretending to look at stuff and beautiful but redundant shots of the Enterprise...it was comedy gold, and really summed up for me why I don't like that film.
But... that's because there wasn't music. It's a film that must have been conceived from the ground up with grand, extended musical sequences. Star Wars would be awful without a soundtrack too. How about the tractor beam sequence? It would be about as exciting as pulling your car into a parking garage. And yes, TMP takes its time a lot more than Star Wars does. I'm so glad it does its own thing rather than aping the most popular trends. It's nice that there was enough Star Wars-based pressure from producers to get the film off the ground, but not to shackle it artistically.
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The thing that stands out to me is the element of pastiche. I love Williams' style at its purest, but any composer starts to sound limited if they spend too much time in their own head. It's why I love some Bach pieces that are meant as imitations of Vivaldi, for example. So with Jane Eyre, I like that Williams adapts to the period and the geography. Same thing he did much more recently with War Horse, but to a lesser extent.
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The samples for this score sound great. Not sure how I missed its appeal before. Ordered!
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Hmm, yeah, it was those bloody loyalty missions which got on my tits! There was too much of an ensemble for my taste, too many backstorys which I wasn't interested in. But being a bit of a completionist, I had to do 'em all. That's why I much preferred the original - it had a smaller cast of wingmen and so I felt the plot was more focused on getting me to the end, instead of padding the story out. Plus I felt I got far more attached to those fewer personalities than I ever did for any of the support in ME2. There was just too many for me to care about.
ME2 shipped with too many squadmates, and the additional ones from DLC pushed it way over. I did find them very endearing characters, though. Anyway... ME3 has only six squadmates, plus one from DLC. Everybody from ME2 returns, but mostly only in cameo roles, since any of them could have died in ME2 and couldn't really have been made integral to the plot. The ME3 squadmates are very well developed and never ask you to divert from the main mission. Although I was disappointed that
only one of them is truly new; everybody else is a returner from ME1, and EDI takes on a robot body to join you.
Is Kelly in ME3?
Yeah, she doesn't serve on the Normandy though.
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Henry Buck! I'm so please you're not dead!
Anyway, I'll never play ME3 now. The first was masterful, but the bloated and unfocused sequel divorced me from the franchise in one fell swoop. And after the farcical response of the devs after the outcry over the ending (by the spoilt brats), I have no interest in finding out "how it all ends". Bioware should have stuck to their guns, and at least then they'd still have my respect as storytellers.
Hey, Quint! I still read this place regularly; didn't realize how seldom I was posting. I loved ME2, so I can't quite speak to your criticisms. I will say that ME3 is much more plot-centric, retaining all the rich characterizations of ME2's loyalty missions while keeping the focus singular (stop the Reapers, obviously). And some of the sci-fi and RPG elements from ME1 return. The gameplay and direction certainly continues the direction established by ME2, however.
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Mass Effect 3.
Wow. Very, very impressive. It suffers from the same flaws as the first two games, but a lot of tweaks are put into place that make it feel a little smoother and balanced. The scope is huge. Almost everything that was hinted at and promised by the first two games is delivered on. And yeah, the ending is weird, but I think players who feel their choices didn't count weren't paying attention to how much their choices already paid off throughout the course of the game. You can't really expect that there would be dozens of different endings all based completely on who the player saved, killed, united, whatever. It's the buildup to the ending that counts.
I suppose the soundtrack is a little bit of a weak spot. While the first few games also had five composers, lead composer Jack Wall did a great job of managing them and creating unity in sound. They worked as part of one studio. For this game, it seems like Bioware just hired five different composers to fill the different mood needs. Clint Mansell actually contributes very little, though his two compositions at the beginning and end are wonderful. Sam Hulick, the only holdover from Jack Wall's team, brings some needed musical continuity, composing some excellent new material as well. But there's a liberal reuse of tracks from the previous games rather than an intelligent development of their musical material. Example: you'll briefly hear the Sovereign theme from Mass Effect 1, restated exactly, then completely new action material by Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan. So the Reapers lack a leitmotif. Shepard's own theme is only heard once or twice; there's a great track (composed by Sam Hulick) that gives a really climactic, fully delivered version of Shepard's theme. It's great. There isn't enough of that. The soundtrack is too aimless.
At its core, this game succeeded not because of action and spectacle, but because it, and the whole series, appeals to our curiosity, the fascination humans have always had with the infinite unknown of space. (The voice actor chosen for the very end is a wonderful tribute to this curiosity.) And this simple fact makes Mass Effect so much more important than an action spectacle like Transformers. It helps us have faith that there is more to the universe than us.
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He dies at the end of the comic just like he did in the original pilot. So...
The new films take place before the timeframe of TOS....
These comics don't correspond to the TOS timeline. They occur between the two new Star Trek films. I think there was an explanation about Kirk immediately bringing Gary Mitchell onto the Enterprise after becoming captain. So Mitchell is definitely dead by the opening of Star Trek XII.
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And Sauron summoning the spirits of the Nazgûl at his side once he took physical form in Middle Earth takes place nearly 1700 years before. It has nothing to do with the Hobbit.
But is there any thematic problem with this? They're just moving up the timeline and adding a cool horror movie bit about resurrecting corpses.
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Interesting. It looks like Bernstein reused a theme from his rejected score to The Journey of Natty Gann.
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It's possible to play a D on piccolo.
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It's not like a musician all of a sudden wakes up one day, writes out a whole score and publishes it. Composing is something that takes practice in the same way that performing does. So I'm sure Williams did dozens of pieces as a student, if not hundreds. But I wonder if they're really worth hearing.
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If I remember correctly, Luke's theme is stated heroically at the very moment that we see a Naboo soldier shot and killed. Now that's some lousy music editing.
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He dies at the end of the comic just like he did in the original pilot. So...
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"Where No Man Has Gone Before" is being redone in a comic to tie into the movie. So I doubt Gary Mitchell will also feature in the film. Which is good, of course... bring on an original villain.
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I would never leave all my friends and family behind because my partner didn't approve of them. You really need to ask yourself what's most important. Relationships come and go, but careers are so time sensitive. If you don't take the time to pursue this now, you may never make it.
Star Wars Prequel Music Resource (part 2)
in JOHN WILLIAMS
Posted
No, I mean, I synced it up in my dream. To a part of the film that doesn't actually exist.