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I'm surprised how anyone could watch the Cliff's Notes movies which are the last two Harry-Potter-films and get an ounce of cinematic feeling out of them. It may make sense, but i hate movies which only work as movies if you've read the book. There are so many unresolved scenes and ideas and if you have, in fact, not read the books and are forced to sit through these messy films, they penetrate your balance...

Rumour has it that Sommers got on Goldsmith's back after initial scoring was finished and forced him to stay in a London hotel room several weeks longer than planned to write more music than originally spotted. Goldsmith argued that the extra music wasn't necessary (or at least he saw it that way). Since Goldsmith seemed open to suggestions generally, it obviously was a matter of bad communication. It remains his secret why he thought the film so much worse than 'Along came a Spider' or 'Rent-a-Cop', though.

While i find it hardly debatable that in terms of 'uniqueness' the Goldsmith is miles ahead of Silvestri, it surprises me to hear the word 'cohesiveness'. in regard to the Silvestri Silvestri wrote a more broad variant on Goldsmith's typically idiosyncratic music, complete with Indiana-Jones-type marches and 30s-like menace chords for the bad guys, but when the 75-Minute album is over, the last word that comes to my mind is 'cohesiveness'. It's certainly rousing in spots, but with so much incidental music and a lot of rather unappealing 'chaos' and last but not least a very fake sounding elegy in it's final third (haven't seen the movie, except for some parts on TV). So i'd say that you'd prefer the Silvestri if you're more for broad and massive Hollywood style, while the Goldsmith is more for the mean-and-lean listeners, who prefer their adventure music hard-edged to the tee.

Thank God that the german soldiers are portrayed so convincingly. And that Spielberg isn't channeling absurd amounts of good 'ole patriotism and upright god-fearing, pilgrim style, and i haven't the gut feeling that 'Oscar' wasn't the last thing he thought about when concocting the whole thing. All of this doesn't bode to well with non-compromising battle scenes.

Rubbish. That's such a simple-minded reading of the themes the film presents that you can slap it ad hoc in direction of almost every film connected with war, even 'The Dirty Dozen'. Think of the 'High School Teacher' sequence in SPR as to what i mean with didactic Spielberg presenting well-tempered POV's of his characters (some more, some less offensive). Or the Church sequence....if that is the best a filmmaker can come up with, dialogue-wise, i feel a bit like on some democratic convention rally, which is not a good thing.

You certainly like 'A.I.', too. I do think most of these 'central question's' are neither very important nor especially intelligible to begin with. People love messages, apparently, even if they don't affect their own existence in the slightest. But i'm also rolling my eyes everytime when i'm in a videostore and the 'in-crowd' runs for the latest David-Lynch-spectacle because the media has conditioned them to believe they get intellectual feeding there. To me, it's all like the critic's joke in 'Annie Hall'....

IMO, discounting SPR as not much more than a technical achievmant is severly selling it short. In all honesty, I too see it mostly as a technical showcase. I'm referring to the two battle scenes (the beach and the village). They are simply incredible! The rest of the movie is just filler to me. It's from Steve's didactic period...and since i'm wary of a) Spielberg's screenwriters of late and b) american didactics, i'm yawning through the whole narrative. It may be no Hallmark level of offensiveness, but it's certainly no big shakes in the philosophy department, either.

Let's say lightning did strike twice at a time in this case: the political aspect of a theme which haunted Spielberg was mandatory enough for the industry to choose the until-then bridesmaid of the Oscars now as the real deal. The theme couldn't be ignored. And for all the critical blablah about it, he really deserved it. I don't know about 'Saving Private Ryan' which is a technical achievement but not much else, but if not for 'Jaws' or 'E.T.', 'Schindler' was the right film to honour for this particular director, as was 'The Apartment' for Wilder.

Which isn't necessarily the best thing to start for you, since it's a dense action score without much happening in the 'themes' department...

Talgorn's handling of the orchestra is miles ahead of the current crop of Hollywood composers working today, even prolific ones like Newton-Howard. While i think his action music is too Williams-y for my liking, he has certainly written pieces (like 'Tyler's Rage' from 'Heavy Metal 2000') which are as good as anything in 'War of the Worlds' and the like. His sense of the lyrical is astonishing and his scores like 'Le Brasier' and the already mentioned 'Moliere' are a treasure trove of orchestration.

There was a musicians strike in 1958, so the sessions were held in Vienna and Muir Matheson conducted. Otherwise, Herrmann did all his conducting himself.

Since the dryspell of non-Williams-months isn't going to end soon, it's my duty to remind people here of several new scores by frenchman Frederic Talgorn, hot on the heels of his latest 'Asterix aux jeux Olympiques'. The 'Asterix' music should come as the most King-Mark-friendly of those, meaning that it's in an idiom very close to Williams' own rambunctious efforts, without just doing the copycat. It's not as densely orchestrated as the Williams of late, but more in keeping with late 70s/early 80s scores. Samples are easily available under http://www.amazon.fr/Ast%C3%A9rix-Aux-Jeux...p;sr=8-1#disc_1 Especially the 12-minute chariot-race is infecting... Apart from that: go for 'Moliere' and 'The Red Needles', which are very good, albei more somber efforts, the first reminding me of 'Restoration', the second more of things like 'Angela's Ashes'...

Do they say 'f..ck' a lot in this beach scene in 'Atonement'? If not, i'm inclined to say it's about as Tarantino-esque it is Wilderesque, Hitchcockian (ever seen 'Frenzy'?) or maybe even Renoirian...we can add certainly 20 other directors who've liked to hold a shot for over a minute..... The Monty Python discussion inspired me to grab 'Time Bandits' and 'Life of Brian' again. While the latter is much more famous, i saw 'Time Bandits' first and was astonished to learn that this odd beast of a movie was actually at the Nr. 1-Spot of american B. O. in 1981- ungraspable, with those parents exploding at the end. Terry Gilliam might be an odd beast himself, but i really like the doped-out quirkiness he brings to his fantasy films. Does the narrative suffer? Boy, it does but rarely my imagination is as spurned as after watching a Gilliam film...well, there is also 'Brothers Grimm'...so let's say in his 80s films.

I always looked on PRINCE OF THE CITY as an adult's version of 'The Departed'. It's like the Scoreses without being overly operative and grotesque (no buffo characters á la Le Jack here). And Treat Williams is a treat here, so to speak, as is Jerry Orbach.

It's really one of the best moments in that score, I agree. However, did anyone else notice a similarity between this cue and Williams' "Cinque's Theme" from Amistad? I'm not speaking about the melody or the theme, but imho there's more than a resemblance in terms of atmosphere, orchestration and mood. My bet is they temped the scene with that cue. ?? There may be pieces which are more apart from another, like i. e. 'Yellow Rose of Texas' and the Can-Can, but a lot it ain't....

That i don't know. Zimmer's score oozes classical elegance, which is the best thing you could've done with that story, anyway. Horner may have produced a similar sound just with more characteristic trademarks, to put it kindly....so i'm happy that Zimmer (and team, of course) did this.

S*P*Y*S is not light-hearted. If it's anything, it's dangerous to your hearing...So goofy that it hurts <_<

I guess the true fanboy is the one who opens a thread about 'Dennis' and needs about three posts to get to inevitable 'my pet composer writes everything better' point. It's a jerky notion and unfortunately gazillion fanboys seemingly can't live without it...

That requires a very big IMHO. Let it just be stated that Goldsmith couldn't have written 'Born on the Fourth of July', while Williams couldn't have pulled a 'Gremlins' to save his ass. The rest of the discussion measures up to stupid fanboy reasoning. What intellectual inferiority complex leads to this 'my idol is better than yours and i can scientifically prove it' nonsense may stay their secret.

Pardon? The shark was as motionless as a rubber mattress. The guy had to climb in it's jaws to be eaten. The shark in 'Jaws 2' does not really look bad, it's just photographed in very unflattering angles. Some of the broad daylight shots look quite terrible, though. But that goes for 'Jaws', too. The final attacks on the 'Orca' do look like the shark is squished whenever it hits something.

One has to say that the benefit of the creators of a work of popular art (and i say that in the broadest sense possible, as we talking Hollywood films) is certainly more important in the grand scheme than soundtrack collectors not getting COMPLETE! releases or similar things. I mean, if the general consensus were that they're withholding those releases because of the too-big artists' share, people would sending letter bombs to John Williams himself instead. I just don't see why some Eisner or Katzenberg or whatever weasely manager earns big-time for negotiating deals or mediocre actors with marketing value are so much more important than creative people like the writers.

'Spiderwick' is just boring. Nothing to do with stolen themes. God, when they even get a tunesmith like Horner to cook low on the themes, where does this lead us!?!

So what? Aren't the love theme and the 'Hoist the Colours' theme from this third Bruckheimer-POTC-grenade some of the best themes churned out this year? Answer: they bloody well are...When Hans is able to do something right what most modern composers can't, it's writing tunes.

Maybe because he's 12 years old and his musical perception skills are on deaf-mole level? This kind of statement would suggest that you know absolutely nothing about music in any sense of the word. EDIT- okay that may seem a little harsh but it's one thing to not like Desplat's style but to outright invalidate his compositional abilities would honestly suggest that the person making such statements has little understanding of formal music theory or practices. Desplat has more inherent musical abilities than almost anyone in Hollywood at the present time. His music may sound "thin" or transparent because he scores for orchestra differently than the Hollywood credo of overdone, thick-as-molasses orchestrations. I meant the POSTER, not Desplat, of course.

Maybe because he's 12 years old and his musical perception skills are on deaf-mole level?