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If scale alone is a deciding factor, you can't ignore the musical contribution to the RING-trilogy, but as pure music, there's certainly better executed music in smaller doses. BUT after frequently listening to the complete score on my seemingly limitless iPod, i've found very beautiful musical moments, but they are often hidden in the thick chords announcing 'something's going to happen' for minutes. The moment when the Fellowship leaves Rivendell and Shore's score swells with it is really one of the most sublime film/score moments i know. The villain music is his weak point. The Mordor/Isengard music is repeated so often in a nearly identical setting that one really must have a lot of patience to sit through the endless hammering.

If the yardstick is that high, Wilder wouldn't have problems to find his third-tier failures on many best-of-lists. If you have the time, do read the script for the 3-hour-plus-version of 'Sherlock Holmes'...it would be one of the best 'long' pictures ever made. As it is, it's roughy 2 hours and is a very good, picturesque film lacking momentum. It has a quiet yearning underneath the crime story (which blossoms in the finale) and while i would agree that the Loch Ness monster storyline isn't the best way to end it, the film is still ingrained in my memory. Maybe the O'Toole/Sellers coupling for the leads would've helped it. 'The Apartment' certainly is a brilliant 'slick' film, for the lack of a better term, but even ugly films like 'Fortune Cookie' or 'Kiss me, Stupid' have at least one or two elements which makes them worthwile (for me, it's Walter Matthau and Kim Novak, respectively).

So why this uproar about who wrote it? Would it really make the world turn back if Ross wrote a cue like this bumbling march for the Kenneth Branagh character? Maybe some of it would be actually better if they would've just let Ross do his thing, while interpolating Williams' themes instead of producing this hodgepodge.

'Sodom and Gomorrah' has a gorgeous love theme on par with the Cid's. The 'Rebecca' theme from 'Ivanhoe' is uber-romantic as well, with this slight jewish-medieval flavour. 'Plymouth Adventure' has 'The Mayflower' cue which should be able to shame every swashbuckling cue Williams ever wrote But yes, 'El Cid' is a real keeper. Let's hope they re-record the score in it's entirety. If there's anything which fuels my enthusiasm for film music these days, it's projects like this.

You had. And it began in the 60s.

These scores certainly HAVE melodies...which, in translation, constitute themes. I do vividly remember them. As for 'War of the Worlds', the whole discussion adds up to the cognizance that Williams wrote a rather functional film score which isn't that interesting as a stand alone listen. Apart form the odd piece here and there, maybe. That irritates people nourished on sing-along-themes or more common types of western music...i. e. warm americana and the like. Bonkers, i say!

All the brouhaha with the Disney people Shymalayan went through makes it pretty clear that he was serious after all. But if a parody was intended, it certainly was a costly endeavour. A one-person ratio (Alex) of entertained people does not ake for good business.

What petty-minded rebuke...but Shymalabla took this nonsense to new heights in 'Lady in the Water' where the critic isnt only *BEWARE:SPOILER* eaten by the film's obligatory monster, but also critically adressed by other characters in such a self-serving way that i really miss old dame Pauline Kael, who certainly woud have added some great acidic comments about such filmmaker sissies.

The extreme praise is extemely exaggerated. It's a noteworthy film which could've been better in a lot of ways. Fairy tale bits were too short to carry someweight and reality bits became grating and were too much centered around one rather idiosyncratic character (the nazi).

The final battle in the maelstrom did compensate me for all the pain and anguish i had with the two hours preceding it. I suspect the writer got paid by 'improbable story development per minute'-ratio. The music was...dare i say...slick. Still too many noisy beer commercial moments, but at least i was surprised at the amount of occasions where i thought 'gee, this moment was rather good'. 'Up is Down' has Hans in Goldsmith-mode with juxtaposing french horn calls of the 'fate'-theme with jig-like rhythmic inflections, the Morricone homage is funny, the 'Wit's End' piece even gains momentum for a time span of more than a minute and the whole finale has, apart from the abundance of noise mentioned above, some rousing stuff happening. After 'Da Vinci Code' the second time i didn't roll my eyes at Zimmer attempting epic.

Have we here some secret free-mason knowledge about the proceedings behind 'LOTR'? What exactly differentiates the 'weak direction' of Jackson from the rest of the 'amazing trilogy'????

I do not think this is true. I just think Zimmer's 'insights' are (often, not always) so offensive in their simple-mindedness that i find it hard to believe that anyone would be in awe to talk at lenght about his musical integrity. He can sell his stuff...be it chit-chatting with an unassuming producer or to various film music 'reporters'. He's the incarnation of 'jovial'.

Zimmer is his usual self-compliant persona. Why anyone would want a beer with a man just because he's oozing 'easy going', especially if he's working in the fields of the arts, is beyond me. As the saying goes, 'nice' is the little sister of 'bullshit'.

Well, lowered expectations produce less strain... Goldsmith writing 'LotR' anno 1982 still is the one and only wet fanboydream i stand by...

NOT NECESSARILY! Since Jerry obviously isn't producing this sound any more and his style is becoming quickly out-of-vogue, i cherish any halfway professional attempt at it. And Howard does produce good scores in his own right.

Apart from the fact that Shore's compositional abilities are better suited to smaller, intrinsicate things than Wagnerian show-off-parades, what films he COULD have scored since 'Kong'? Spiderman 3? Pathfinder? The Reaping? But i must say, as run-of-the-mill Newton Howards 'Kong' is, i've grown to enjoy lots of it more and more...his musical fluidity just makes for better listening than Shore's often very cumbersome attempts at 'action' music...

'Sugarland' sounds god-awful....the end title is beautiful, but sounding like a tv recording from a polish tv set anno 1973....nahhh.

It may be stretching your definition. It sounds like Stephen Sommers punching on Silvestri's head screaming 'ADD ANOTHER BASS DRUM'!!

Closely...unfortunately, i might add...getting 'Van Helsing' complete in return made me grateful, though...it's loud, but at least it sounds good.

If you're moved by this, James Horners 'Courage Under Fire' will shatter your heart. It's almost the same piece.

To be specific, it has 31 tracks of which 26 are titled and the rest consists of 'alternates'. It's roughly an hour...a lot of it shorter cues without much replay value. "Opening credits - The Seance" (5:32), "Diamond Deal" (3:32), "Looking for Mr. Arthur Adamson" (3:47), "On the road" (1.24) and the "Credits" (4:19) are easily the best cues.

No. Only Williams counting the downbeat.

On some unmentionable internet venue, i recently found the complete score to 'Family Plot', albeit in mono. Often such hings leak when there's an imminent regular release looming...do we have a hunch, anyone? Moderator's note: Please do not post requests for these files in this thread. All trading of this must go via the PM system. Requests will be removed. Thank you.

Gee, i wonder if you've enough critical distance to admit when Spielberg's age finally starts to show in the 'imagination'-department... I gladly will eat my own words if i'm wrong, but i just don't believe that this director at this stage of his career is able to offer more than polished and all-things-considered 'worthy' films.

Certainly one of the thinnest scores for a child epic of this kind and scope. When i was on a 'LOTR' concert here in Berlin last weekend, i realized how lame a lot of Shore's non-melodic writing actually is when performed without the wizardry of modern recording techniques...compared to 'Narnia', it still came out smelling like roses.