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Alternate title: The Abominable Attacking Fin!

I didn't know about TOY STORY 3. Is that a kind of elaborate prank Pixar's pulling on us or what? What's next in line? JAWS IV??* *paging Lorraine Gary....

I have staunch faith in the indestructable fanboy-wrath ignited by minor presentation anomlies in any complete release. Thus, heated discussions about pitches off by 0,01% or 10 seconds of unreleased filler will stay with us and help to let those cold winter evenings fly by.

You almost feel how the director is seized by flipchart-wielding business people...

I think it wouldn't be that big of a stretch to imagine Warner licensing HARRY POTTER scores for smaller labels, at least not for the three Williams ones. They should have moved most album copies since 2004, re-releasing them complete wouldn't interest any casual buyer, so it makes sense to distribute them to people who know their business. Imagine a double album for PHILOSOPHER'S STONE for 30$, selling, say, 5000 to 8000 copies. It means 50.000 or even 100.000$ profit in return for Warner without any investment, and the labels would have to put up license money on top of it. Sounds not like a bad deal for me.

Pah, that's an asthetic can of worms. The last decades have seen a steady embracing of those stylistic traits you call 'dated'. First, bachelor-pad 60's lounge was en vogue again (mid 90's, around AUSTIN POWERS), then cheesy 80's pop and now, we start to appreciate the popular music of the terrible 90's with relish. It just isn't as easy anymore to point at wah-wah guitars and say they are dated. That's what post-modernism is all about (Tarantino haters, take note). What i'm getting at is that even regular people accept much more eclectic style mixtures (like HIP-HOP meets baroque) than they did, say, in the early 80's.

Shouldn't that make the plight of the average Russian soldier more sympathetic? He's as likely to be killed by his own commanders as he is by the Germans. I remember that being one of the more interesting aspects of the film. Everyone's good in the film, IIRC, though Ed Harris' accent was distracting...I wasn't clear on what he was going for. This was one of those infamous Berlinale films which was actually laughed off the screen in 2001. While i agree that the sniper scenes are well done, all the rest is just so cringeworthy. Joseph Fiennes is the quintessential weak intellectual, complete with glasses and of course he becomes a traitor, Jude Law the simple hero who just does what he has to do (=shooting germans) and the love story is shoehorned in with the sensibility of a sledgehammer. On top you have Ed Harris and Bob Hoskins playing broad caricatures. The battle of Stalingrad certainly deserves a better filmic memory than this overproduced western cartoon offered here. Jamie Horner is grandiosizing everything with his calvacade of chorus and orchestra, and still, i'm one of the select few who really like Horners music for it's sheer audacity. Also, his russian thieveries never were as á propos as it is the case here. It even makes sense in that context.

PLAYERS...mmmh....this one would be better served by a rerecording of the main title, since the Korngoldian fanfares sound so tinny on Goldsmith's own 40-PLAYERS :cool: version.

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD! That would get my juices flowing (the boot souds even shittier than FAMILY PLOT). As for FAMILY PLOT: i wouldn't mind a release, but after a careful listen to the boot, i really only need the Main Title, Diamond Deal and End Credits. That would make an ideal 13-minute suite.

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM (Goldsmith, 1977) I have known the score well enough from the '87 recording, but the original tapes are mandatory since the intimate nature of the writing is captured best in the old recording. The caribbean flavour gets a much better reading here, too. It is a kissin cousin to PAPILLON, also by Schaffner, with a similar mixture of dry uncertainty, impressionistic and yearning thematic stuff. Both have more attention-grabbing cues strategically placed (the shark attack in IS TEN TOO OLD and the formerly unreleased EDDIE'S DEATH here) which break up the languid pace. Both have a long central tune in the middle (GIFT FROM THE SEA in PAPILLIN, MARLIN in ISLANDS) which i ironically both don't fancy too much. The main theme here is surely repeated a lot, and i don't find it one of Jerry's stronger tunes. It's nice enough, but somehow it stays a bit on the vague side. I really would like to see how it works in conjunction with the film. Some readings of it are first-rate, though, i. e. THE LETTER or HOW LONG CAN YOU STAY. The main and end title pieces, which sandwich the eloquent tune between impressionistic flute runs representing the waves of the sea are of special note.

Craig Armstrong is a 180° turn from composers like Williams and Goldsmith, though, so he doesn't count. I maintain the unpopular opinion that complete releases of film scores are (for me) unnecessary and unwanted in 98,8%. They present the most unpleasant and unwelcome things about filmmusic in the most glaring manner (musical filler, cues without structure and so on). From a purely musical standpoint, they are a pain in the ass and composers are right in vetoing them. RETURN OF THE JEDI or the recent INDY releases are all well representable on a single CD. As for HOOK, syrupy and jumbled as the score may be, it would need 2 CD's.

It would help if he mentioned if it had a murky premiere as 90kB mp3 recently. That would make the guessing easier. Other than that, it could be Michael Small, MARATHON MAN. If the year goes on like this, i'll just wait till December and order all the stuff together. Ups, half of it will be sold out by then. Bummer....

Btw, is HOOK still under Sony's distribution? It certainly would cost a ton of money, but being with a release-friendly studio would certainly help its cause.

And for all we know, La-La Land is covering 90's Goldsmith by issuing the old Big Screen Records catalogue, which pretty much means we get DENNIS THE MENACE and FOREVER YOUNG in complete form this year. So no drought for good 'ole middlebrow Jerrys till December (though i would fancy the post FIRST KNIGHT stuff like GHOST AND THE DARKNESS a tad more):

Sometimes, I don't think you read things. They've gone back to the original master tapes and our specialty labels have been known to produce great sound when using the original masters. So no doubt that this release of the score will have improved sound quality. Improved by what standards is the question. The Rhino release doesn't have bad sound, you know...

When things sellout, people just download this stuff from the internet. At least a cursory glance at the google-blogsearch results for 'baby secret lost legend Goldsmith' seems to suggest as much. It is illegal, i know, but it's really nothing else than the old copying it from a friend made easier.

There are so many releases right now that it seems hard to chastize this triple-release practice (and it makes sense from a business standpoint), but i'm really getting sour when i have to re-buy boatloads of perfectly fine albums because a new source is slightly better or some odds and ends are added.

The problem with HEDWIG'S THEME is simply that it's three melodies (if you count the bridge). The celeste part is only the first, if you take the SCHINDLER-like progression, i doubt much people would recognize this part of the theme.

The Kaplans are the last straw of old FSM, when they all were really pissing on any new score of a respective year. I remember the print edition when they made those hilarious yearly roundups. I always asked myself how they dared to approach composers like Newton Howard, Zimmer or Horner (sometimes even Williams) for interviews. Goldsmith obviously was the only sourpuss of the bunch, even Horner talked to Jeff Bond afterwards!

Not many men can claim as much, Mark. It is a deliriously crappy film, which transcends almost every rule on good moviemaking by wearing it's ineptness as proudly as a torch, an all within the frame of an A-production. In fact, it's dear to my heart. Consider: - the shark seeks personal revenge against the Brody Bunch - he kills young Sean Brody, now police officer in Amity, in the harbor when he is about to remove a piece of driftwood, after it has been firmly and repeatedly established that Sean is only there by the double coincidence of the Coast Guard being busy and his deputy being ordered to solve a case of 'cow-tipping' in the neighborhood. The filmmakers go at lenghts to stress this point - and finally, scenes later, Joe Sargent cuts to an ominous piece of wood...the very driftwood which besieged Sean's fate. So the shark obviously laid an ambush, and a cunning one at that. He not only saw to it that the Coast Guard was busy (which one could accept, since he is well-versed in maritime surroundings), but he obviously organized the cow-tipping, too! (there is a great website going through this and numerous other idiotic happenings in this meisterwerk and i laughed my ass off about all the spots i hadn't even noticed). Add to that a shark model which looks like the equivalent of an alcoholic with a bad case of psoriasis and so many visible cables around it it looks like the cable shaft of an office building and you have a hell of a party movie.

Dear god, i was jesting...

Only fractions, he was busy playing LEGO games, feverishly hunting for 3 second-long INDY jingles.

It is firmly established by now that Horner goes far beyond those superficial sound-alikes. At least i cannot remember SMALL SOLDIERS borrowing minute-long passages from MATINEE, but hey, it's your hearing.

The international OnlinePostLicense cannot come soon enough....

In fact, most A- and B-listers can turn down a high profile project. Horner did it for years. Elfman does, even Debney does. For guys like Hooper, it's another matter.