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publicist

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Posts posted by publicist

  1. 11143923,0giEIOYA8zfL1jMSX76BxNrdxEREOxo

     

    Jeff Bridges is too interesting an actor to pass on this, even if it's in the dreaded 'Homeland' genre. 

     

    Former CIA agent Dan Chase secretly absconded thirty years ago and has lived self-sufficiently and under the radar ever since. But one day his dark past catches up with him when a hit man shows up and tries to kill him. He realizes that the only way he can find peace in the future is to face his past. John Lithgow is his old acquaintance, the FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, and he is in on the hunt. Several women enter the story at various points, and their contributions will make the most crucial difference to the story.

     

    Pitched at the loudness level of current tv storytelling and not particularly innovative in itself (which is to say it's competently made), the story has intriguing turns that rise way above the low-IQ level of something like 'Homeland'.

     

    Veteran actors like Bridges and John Lithgow know important scenes when they are coming, and they (and others) make the most of it (Bridges remains more of a cypher, though). So what remains is that within these limitations, it is a recommendation. I don't know if the decision to make a season 2 out of this material is reason enough to celebrate (or wish they would make formats fitting their stories, not building 5 floors on top of a bungalow, like these additional seasons often feel).

     

     

  2.  

    Now we finally have it, the oft-requested dump of expository filler material to complete 'L. A. Confidential', a move that Goldsmith's wisely compiled 30-minute album eschewed. It's an oddity: a rare case of a really good movie that also catched on with audiences, but the lean material demanded hard-boiled restraint. Goldsmith just hadn't to do a lot, in sharp contrast to the many bad pictures he was scoring.

  3. https://open.spotify.com/album/1w3u4kuJ8SzccCpuiWMNMi?si=CVh3PGGwQlmuJ82qOrrxGg

     

    Pretty good Netflix-Elfman for a mystery drama by Noah Baumbach - a novel adaptation (from the mid-80's) that vacillates between marriage drama, disaster movie, action cracker and paranoia study (the translation from book to movie didn't fly with many critics). The music is really good and in Elfman's somewhat more reflective and measured late style. The 'genre bender' described above can also be made out in the music, but here it has a rather invigorating effect. Next to the usual choir-and-wonder stuff it is especially the 'relationship' scoring where Elfman's reflective writing adds (longer string-and-woodwind cues like 'Duel Lecture' or 'Terribly Sad Moment' may not be musically that exciting, but you can tell there's not a wasted note which is usually sign of someone who really knows what he's doing).

     

     

     

    'The Son' is supposed to be written by Hans Zimmer, but truth to be told, it's completely empty of any of his (or anyone else's) characteristics - it's 20 minutes of wafting (it could be used as background for hospital recovery rooms without offending too many). 

     

    I will point out brevity as a surprising addition for this (maybe) last addition to the Spielberg/Williams catalogue. Taking a backseat to Spielberg's mother's piano fixation (she was a rather virtuoso pianist with  talent), Williams contributes not much more than the occasional sweet, sometimes rhapsodic editorial comment.

     

    There is an underdeveloped (due to its shortness) sense of poignant depth in the scoring of the scenes relating to, i guess, the mother (Mitzi's Dance, Reverie, Reflections, The Letter) - either the movie afforded Williams not more space to musically explore it or Spielberg just didn't want to make a divorce drama, take your pick. 

     

    But with all this out of the way, all you really need to 'get' 'The Fabelman's is the ultimate 'Journey Begins' cue, which encapsulates in Williams's elegant style not only a summation of his own themes plus a short bouncy introduction that surely is to be read as kind of ironic comment on his collaboration with Spielberg (the movie ends right when the kid leaves for Hollywood), but also a short excerpt of a Haydn sonata. Knowing Willliams deep affection for Haydn, Bach & Co., i think the recordings of the classical cues to be worked into the movie might have secured his personal satisfaction in this project (when he says his goal is to preserve the music of the ages, i believe him).

  4. 7 hours ago, thestat said:

    To clarify, the Ice Chase riff destroyed Jerry for me in the mid 1990s. It is so lazy and annoying. I can't imagine what he had to have gone through to produce that.

     

    That's an easy one: it was a short alert GoldsmithTM motif that would cut through a barrage of sound effects and effectively sold the typical action beats of the 90's (note that it is often used a the beginning of transitions to big locations). For super-economic Goldsmith, it was clear that he would use it in much more widespread fashion as narrative device, because that's how he approached scoring.

     

    It worked really best in 'Air Force One', all the others could have done without it. To claim 'Ice Chase' is boring as fuck in light of what action music has become in the last 25 years is ridiculous, though.

  5. 1 hour ago, GerateWohl said:

    And the assumption that a composer with the background and experience of Williams actually makes up his mind about how to support the story and even the story telling musically and not just thinks "Oh, what a lovely picture, I will just write some pretty music to it." is as fair as yours, I would say.

     

    It was not *his* decision, anyway. Eventually, all this semantic beating-around-the-bush just conceals the simple fact that this very short and rather inconspicuous score doesn't invite much discussion. 

     

    To frame it in a bigger context, Spielberg's movie feels like something that would be a perfect fit for one of the current streaming providers (whatever he may preach about communal experiences), and the music is like a last whisper of Old Hollywood, namely what modern viewing habits allow to remain of it. Which is neither good nor bad, just a statement that the editorializing scoring approach Spielberg brought back into the mainstream and which allowed composers a big playground (and this board to exist) is on the verge of extinction. I can live with that, but i'm also surprised that i feel more urge to make myself familiar with a Marvel score (Wakanda Forever) than with a Spielberg/Williams one. Go figure! ;)

  6. 1 hour ago, crocodile said:

    It's the type of cheesy fun only Cruise and James Cameron can get away with.

     

    The phrasing suggest others don't, but i don't think that is the case. Cruise (here and elsewhere) is the only one who still knows how to make a mid-size blockbuster that not only rouses, but also scores a few points by hinting that the dumb jocks of the original movie gained some wisdom after 1986. What i'm saying is that TP:M is remarkable in its avoidance of all the possible missteps.

     

    As for Cameron, only god knows. And we, in a few weeks.

  7. Don't even remember those movies (filmic cannon fodder), as far as Williams goes (who had the unenviable legacy duties):

     

    - all the concert pieces (not that there were many)

    - a handful of cues per film, i. e. the finale from 'Force Awakens', 'Ach-To island', 'Canto Bight' and 'The Fathiers' from the second and actually quite a few ones from the most awful of the films by far, 'RoS', starting with the desert chase cue (naturally hardly in the movie) and ending with the more sentimental final farewells

     

    Apart from that i'm afraid Williams musical grammar has become so separated from modern cinema mores that there were few moments where movie(s) and score really clicked. 

     

  8.  

    Devoted fans of 'classic' narrative Hollywood may turn away, but Goransson's second Black Panther outing is actually more interesting than the first. The fusion of ethnic music styles, vocals and percussion, with the (occasional) demands of action film scoring makes for an eclectic but engaging listen.

     

    And eclecticism is the motto of the day: like Zimmer's 'Power of One', 'Lion King' (partly) or 'Black Hawk Dawn' (i even spotted some of Marco Beltrami's 'Soul Surfer' Maori vocalizing), Goransson uses the movie more as a springboard for ethno-musical world-building than for addressing specific narrative developments, and even when those turn up, they are the weakest part of the score.

     

    The result is too long (rule of thumb here: the longer the cue, the lesser it is), but when the gazillions of elements coalesce into their own kind of pop (like in 'Wakanda Forever' or 'Vengeance has consumed us), the score sizzles. And for a Marvel sequel score, that's quite a feat. 

     

  9. 3 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

    At listening to the first piece The Fabelmans I thought, If Williams ever wrote such a simple piece before. And listening again to this theme with its children's song like simplicity and the impressionistic chords it reminds me rather of Hook. And I guess this makes perfect sense, as The Fabelmans is a coming of age story about a boy who is not necessarily aiming to grow up in a traditional way. The grow up type is his father. But the theme appearence in the movie is called Mother and Son. And for the son is becoming a filmmaker probably rather about keeping the child inside you alive with all its fantasy, spirit and imagination. So, the melody is simple, like a melody that you might come up with If you tried to compose your first music piece. But it also has some maturity reflected in the chords, which are not that simple. So this young talented amateur spirit of someone starting to explore an art form like music or filmmaking is perfectly caught in this little piano piece that opens the album. So, Spielberg's young passion for film making and music are well reflected in this piece.

    Haven't seen the movie yet, but this is how the music makes sense to me in context of the story.

     

    I don't know what kind of up and coming composer would try to come up with a piece like *that* as his*her first piece. Except if your only frame of reference is unassuming Hollywood movies. 

  10. 6 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

    I cannot say, that the normal underscore in the movies is so outstanding like Williams'. But his themes, especially his main themes... Brillant. 

     

    I find especially both the underscore and the themes - americanized Brahms - much more sophisticated than Williams' own scores of that time (middlebrow stuff like 'Far and Away'). Williams came around a few years later (when he started to feature prominent players from the classical world, especially in 'Tibet', which is the first Williams where i noticed the concertant approach, though this was mostly the concert suite).

     

    Either way, Bernstein was the most-rejected film music composer, so a case could be made that his more idiosyncratic style didn't do him mich good after his prime (he chose many interesting movies like 'The Grifter', 'The Field' etc., also rather uncommon for such a famous guy).

  11. 2 hours ago, ocelot said:

    Nope, already said, same for me, I was like, really? When he could have delved into Old Hollywood as the basis of why Spielberg fell in love with movies and really harkened back to the golden age of hollywood, instead he goes into simple, yes beautiful and cute piano piece with strings nd harp and celeste.... No real journey in the whole score.

     

    But that wasn't up to Williams. It's just a few nice and unassuming melodies bracketing Spielberg's late stroll through memory lane, and hey, why not? It may not add up to more than, say, 'Pete'n'Tillie', but you could interpret it as a mutual agreement that a little sweet and direct piece is what you take away from it all (life, i mean, not the movie).

     

    This is not an uncommon sentiment for old people, when all the sturm and drang has vanished.

     

     

  12. 14 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

    Before that, dramas were rather durm and strang instead of delicate and sensitive. It reminds me that it’s astounding that Elmer never won a best score Oscar. Definitely robbed. Several times. 

     

    I don't think that's true (think of Copland's scores like 'Red Pony'), but this might be the first with a main title sequence framing a story in such a way. Neither Robert Mulligan nor Bernstein pushed for that scene (it came by accident), but it lifted the movie to another level, because it could have been also a Greg Peck courtroom movie, after all.

  13. 10 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

    Funnily enough I listened to the opening suite track this week as a random Morricone and forgot about that dialogue. It is indeed rather intrusive and a shame as the music is especially wonderful. Will give the full thing a listen soon. 

     

    It's an ancient complaint, though in this case the label 'dialogue' is of course reductive. What Morricone weaves in here is slices of sicilian life (human sounds, of a village waking up, peasant greeting shouts etc.) and it's actually more interesting this way as a programmatic piece of music. If you take that away, you are left with good but typical Morricone (we've heard variations of it a million times by now).

     

     

  14. 7 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

    If it makes a billion it cannot possibly be underwhelming. If it beats Black Panther and Top Gun to the biggest film of the year, who in their right mind could call it a box office disappointment?

     

    Probably those who invested in it - depending on what they invested and what percentage they get of the gross. The finer points of Hollywood dealmaking makes me suspect that it is impossible to beat TG:M, because it's just a - by today's standards - little action movie that Cruise has set up with his business acumen, which seems to me much more impressive. I mean, who would've bet on that?
     

    1 minute ago, mstrox said:

    At least when this one tanks, Cameron can dump the rest of the sequels on Disney+.

     

    Right between 'Herbie Goes Bananas' and 'The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes'!

  15. It's obviously slight, but in a in an elegantly measured, thoughtful way, compare that to the boring, editorializing approach of The Book Thief. The organic inclusion of classic music is a cute way of acknowledging the impact of 'serious' music on Spielberg's life, which is of course the chief reason he approached the music of his movies as he did.

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