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publicist

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Everything posted by publicist

  1. Probably 90% of this board just don't get that they are part of the problem, not the solution. Pitching more Superman movies, yeah, the silver lining for cinema. Just sayin...
  2. Maybe someone at Fox marketing just forgot to put in the tagline 'See the Miracle now without Glasses!' at the end, y'know...
  3. Not at all! I just watched the trailer, saw the smurfs people don't dig too much and a lot of visual stimulation that for whatever perfection it may offer didn't wow me at all (CGI wonders, what's new?). And the truly *great* Cameron premieres (Abyss certainly not among them) didn't have that question mark: i knew what i was excited for, and i got it. To note: i have no financial interest in this movie or otherwise, i probably would just miss it because Covid effectively killed cinema here and there's just too much other social activity to get back into it, but Dune brought me back one time and i would make the effort to watch Dune 2. My only interest in Avatar 2 is: could it prove me wrong despite massive evidence to the contrary? I remain curious.
  4. But what pleasure you expect when you watch Pocahontas in 2022 and it lacks the 3D gimmick of 2009? 3D was the big selling point of 'Avatar' - we can all talk about empty terms like visionary or making use of state-of-the-art tools, trust me, in my line of work i get stuff like this every second week in pitch presentations, but it's also a 500 million $ investment at least for 2 movies and without a gimmick that you can sell - which the trailers so far have kept secret from us - it remains a big question mark what the big hooplah is (and most people didn't seem too fond of the smurf vibe).
  5. But Thor, you again make a point without really getting it: Cameron's pitch is a movie that sells you a technical marvel and puts (out of necessity) a story on top that - i think we can all agree - is nothing you are supposed to feverishly anticipate without the spectacle gimmick. Now Marvel & Co. have made a cotton industry out of what you describe above as visceral, experience-oriented films and the simple question is: what is Avatar 2 & 3's reason for being? Because it doesn't seem to have that special feature, and since 2009 there around 50-80 visceral, experience-oriented films per year full of eye candy and narratives that are *very* straightforward fighting for an audience. Forget Godard, what's the appeal of this trailer based on the fact above? It doesn't even has 'beloved IP characters' like those comic things.
  6. Forgetting for a moment the personal attachment to certain things, which are of course fair game, i think you hit the nail on the head, even if unintended. 'Spectacle' and dizzling entertainment is Cameron's game and he's been awfully good at it (not always, but more often than others). Like Cecil B. DeMille before him, he makes awful movies that can be great entertainment but his 'artistic' contributions are merely on a technical level. There is nothing beyond to guide his stories, which is why he selects material for suitability to showcase his technical innovations and his movies are remembered for technical marvels, not for any great stimulation on a intellectual level - maybe they inspire you to become a special effect wizard. Which is a long way of saying that 'Dune' had its problems, but was made by a guy who is a thinker and i look forward to part 2 because i expect certain ideas that form and emerge. What's Cameron's pitch? Has he found 5D? Can he make people levitate via his movie screen now? Because this trailer certainly does not pitch deep newfound insights about environment issues or ancient civilizations (and who would've expected that). It looks pathetic, to be honest, because it so transparently has nothing to offer on a technical level and that old adage seems awfully creaky in an age where big movies hardly are anything but sfx shows. Never mind the box office (who's counting beyond Fox and Cameron?), but when i saw 'Avatar' i knew it was crap but i thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 3D is anachronistic by now, so what *is* it that Cameron is trying to sell me here?
  7. Knowing the old Horner score and Franglen's own outings (which may be competent modern scoring but completely irrelevant as contributions to the art of film music), i will slyly add you could read that as a fairly realistic prediction: don't waste any time over this. And i saw the recent trailer, which of course added to that impression.
  8. You forgot the films that are what they are but get lots of dubious flak because the people that went to see them seem to be from Mars - going by their outlandish expectations. What *did* anyone expect from a Roland Emmerich disaster movie about the end of times? I expected watchable crap with a few breathtaking vistas and action scenes to kill a few minutes and i got exactly that. The only minus point would be sometimes horrible CGI (afair) and the bad score.
  9. Fluffy Pemberton pop, estalblished from part 1. His strengths are as always evident, the instrumentation is lively and catchy (Powell light), but the weaknesses too: it is rather a charming numbers revue without any dramaturgical weight or musical depth. This is certainly due to the film at hand, unfortunately, the last real proof that the guy is really good was "Motherless Brooklyn" which is now three years old.
  10. Though Sand Storm should have been included. Another puzzling omission.
  11. That would actually the last release i would accuse of depriving us of great music (there wasn't much music in the movie and it was more of the sneaking-around variety). I remember sitting in the cinema between 1994 and 1997 crying when i heard the outstanding set pieces that were left off 'Chain Reaction', 'First Knight', 'The Shadow' (the list goes on) that practically begged from the screen 'Release me!'. Instead he bestowed us at least 15-20 minutes of non-descript suspense and atmospherical stuff (hands up who would've chosen 'Assassins' over 'Be Safe' or 'Who am I' over 'Fight Like a Man' or 'The Mirrors'). It was like a curse. There was a big promo campaign for 'Mulan' showcasing the 'Huns Attack' sequence, me and some friends who were also into the hobby back then had practically wet trousers in anticipation of this brilliant two-minute cue, but what did JG do? He called a cue 'The Huns Attack' and joined a lighter separate cue from long before that scene and added the second part of the ensuing avalanche sequence. We were convinced that this practice was fully intended, Goldsmith giving us personally the finger saying 'You really wanted that cue, eh? Though luck!' In retrospect i really think he was choosing a selection of cues that reflected the narrative of the movie, it never seemed to occur to him that there were probably not more than 5 people in total wanting stripped-down background music for a scene of Keanu Reeves trying to retrieve a fax.
  12. I may offend fans of this movie/score (which seems to affect especially americans, i found the movie rather hard to sit through), but when push comes to shove, 'The Place where Dreams come true' is the only cue i need from that and it also has a satisfying narrative throughline which the rest lacks. Apart from that it's Horner in his wishy-washy new age mode and here and there the mellow main theme pops up, but it's really a much overrated score, imho.
  13. It's such a non-issue, only the 2% with dog hearing seem to pick it up and the - as Roger rightly says - source is something put together outside the proper Goldsmith recording (i don't even want to know how much paperwork and extra tape stuff all of this entails).
  14. I get the basics, for sure, but since Morrison was featured on many JW scores, not least in the BotF concert pieces, i don't think that's what i'm confusing for sound (the BPO suite does sound rather impersonal). Somehow they got a perfectly rich, resonant one for the OST, which i'm sure only users of good headphone equipment really get (it gets lost on speakers). It's a kind of deep, middle-centered sound of the instrument that just seems to fill or take up more space than usual, for the lack of a better expression.
  15. I don't think it had to do with recording facilities (they were living there and for *just* recording music once in a while you could hop on a plane). I think both spent at least 1 or 2 years of their life there, which makes the Anglophile angle the more logical conclusion. Probably had also something to do with the studio system in Hollywood dying around that time, which opened schedules quite a bit, i imagine (Fox even closed down, more or less, for a year or so).
  16. But many were not bad in retrospect, after listening to the 90 minute versions, that is. Except you were Goldsmith and insisted on cutting lots of exciting cues for meager sneaking around stuff, just to balance the cd exactly like the movie (why?).
  17. I will say, i have no idea how it was done, but regarding recording the trumpet, to this day i never heard a more perfect trumpet sound than on the original recording of 'Born on the Fourth of July'. It sounds so full and rich, i don't know why no one could quite catch that sound again (it stuck with me even as a youngster, when i was into SW and stuff, that it was more exceptional).
  18. Use Audition. The pupil and teacher edition is cloud-based and comes cheap...and if you order it via the US website, it doesn't require proof you are either.
  19. I could imagine that the beefed-up running time pushing it to 2 or even 3 cd's - for a price - could attract some naysayers. But since the attraction of these releases is exactly that kind of bloat, it's also a futile argument. And i understand the labels totally: 90% of your customers crave the bloat and it gives you a slight edge in profits (which are slim), who's going to argue? But going by a purely musical perspective, i'd rather invest in the software. I bet there's no one on this board who couldn't put together a better 8-minute suite from AFO, the Mummy or Hollow Man.
  20. At least the speed many Deluxe release show up on Spotify these days allows for a good inspection beyond tinny samples. Shipping costs have soared beyond the reasonable, it's now costing as much as the cd. I'm not starving, i just find it obscene to pay upwards 35€ two cds.
  21. We all have our vices. Though i'm speaking from the lone perspective of someone who would never get another physical release if i wasn't forced to do so. I'd gladly pay the price (minus the horrendous shipping costs) for a digital download, since even loading the cd in my external drive seems a chore - it happens so rarely the thing sometimes seems to give up just by the lack of practice.
  22. Interestingly, between the late 60's and early 70's Williams (and Goldsmith too) spent longer periods of their life in the UK. There is little known about the Why's, but it must have been the place to be for musicians back then.
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