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Action music hasn't to be inspiring. In it's best incarnation it's a steam roller or a running engine. Perhaps you meant that Williams best action music is just a bit more 'inspired by'.

Thank goodness for that! More notes is always better in action writing Actually, I am only half kidding. Detail in action music is part of what makes it exciting. Sometimes few notes will do as good, if not better. The whole discussion is rather moot, because we don't have a frame of reference. Is 'Total Recall' better conceived action music than 'Minority Report' or 'War of the Worlds'? I would answer with a big resounding YES! Is 'Total Recall' better than [insert any 'Asteroid Field'/'Desert Chase' here]? Different animals...pitting music for sprawling adventure against music for taut, stark techno images is rather futile. Could Williams write 'The Bees Inside'? 'Pilot Over'? 'The Hijacking'? 'Raisuli Attacks'? 'The Tractor' (from 'Secret of Nimh')? And now think of the gazillion of other instances of Goldsmith writing exhilirating kinetic music. I cannot believe that, even if we only take the quantity into account, anyone would dare to suggest that in this special area of expertise Williams is tops. He has written individual pieces which are better than some individual Goldsmith pieces, but that goes without saying. It's nonsense to compare, say, 'All Aboard' from 'Executive Decision' with 'Quidditch, Third Year'...of course Williams has the upper hand here. Goldsmith still is much more accomplished by sheer domination and domination comes from expertise...he just could do it splendidly.

More rubbish. Primitive fanboy jingoism of the lowest order, unworthy of any adult. Williams just isn't an 'action writer'. He can pull it off, and as you say, marvellously sometimes, but it's simply not his primal strength. And more varied? With all this post-Strawinskyian writing he's not an iota more original than Goldsmith was in later years, he's just using more notes. Most importantly, Williams action writing is rather UNCOOL.

That's rubbish. That ratio of unmelodic action material Williams has written at least equals the set pieces from the fantasy/adventure movies. Williams may be a better theme-writer, the bona fide prize for ACTION music is beyond his reach...

The typical 'Forever Young' love theme wasn't one of Jerry's fortes, imho. The aforementioned 'First-Knight' one is a syrupy John-Barryish concoction, as is 'Medicine Man'. If we venture in the larger canon 'allusions of romanticism', he fares a lot better. Longing, hope, friendship etc. have all found very brilliant equivalents in Goldsmith's music. Even a forgettable potboiler like 'Timeline' got a rather attractive 'love theme' based on the concept of century-crossing-love.

He's a customer at the ice-cream parlor, showing up around 45 minutes in the film...'Did he say 'Rats'?' is his by-now-classic line...

It's like economic highs and lows, which happen every few years... The recent trend is to have the music as muted servant in aid of the film...It seems somewhat obscene to have dramas like 'Children of Men' or 'Babel' with very upfront scores...both very pompous-pedestrian films, another unfortunate modern trend. But i think we will see things change in other directions over the next few years. There will be one film which starts a trend, like 'Gladiator' did, for instance, and if we're lucky, good music will be part of the package. AND 'Lady in the Water' indeed may be no musical masterpiece, but i find it unbelievable how one can see that schlock of a movie and not have the utmost respect for Newton Howards endeavours to make it a palatable story. The comparison with 30 year old Williams or Goldsmith scores simply holds no water...another time, another taste/style. And i bet that the cocky sureness about Williams writing a better one should be put to test in 20 years...and i bet that these Shymalayan scores indeed will have a special place in that era. The films are another matter, sadly.

When i was on one of my rare visits to an actual cinema recently to see 'Pan's Labyrinth' (which was laudable concept somewhat muddled in the filmic realization), the trailershow before was an atrocity.... or, in Billy Wilder's words, 'Thanks for the Warning!' there was 'Pathfinder', 'Spiderman 3' (my stomach juices began to rise with sudden eruptions at this point), some Hilary-Swank-film about the biblical plagues in southern swamps (read: supernatural junk), a dire conspiracy thriller with Jim Carrey (forgot the title) and 3 other even worse things (300, SAW 3 etc.). I don't consider seeing one of these films and i can say with almost 100% certainty that i'm not gonna buy or listen to one of those scores. On the other hand, i realize that there's so much to discover in filmic history, so what does it matter? The only sad thing is that, indeed, the great scores for bad movies-ratio has diminished to the point where it's simply is no fun to be a film music fan anymore. The gibberish anticipation of a new announcement (John Williams has agreed to score "His Dark Materials", Jerry Goldsmith has agreed to score "300") is just....gone.

I found it just gross. It's like creating a filmic equivalent to a freak accident on the highway...you know the human condition and that people will gloat, but it's a very cheap way of scoring points with the audience.

I tried to like it but couldn't. Don't even know why... But to stay on topic, i saw 'Life and Death of Peter Sellers' recently. Geoffrey Rush is really good at creating a layered character who seems to be caged within his own chamaelon-like persona. There were some most welcome departures from the usual bio-pic style narrative, with Rush commenting on incidents in Sellers' life in the drag of the interacting people (Sellers' father, mother, wife etc). Although the film tends to get more and more depressing as it goes on, it's recommendable.

Here in Germany the film got rave reviews for being the rare instance of an actually good movie by a german director, but historically concerned people observed the inherent problem of the film: it's sacrificing historical accuracy for dramatic effect. It just isn't right regarding the very nature of the STASI. It may have been a secret service, but the director revives the old 'romantic' cliche of the cold-blooded spy/agent observing his victims like a scientist would observing a rare insect under his microscope. In reality, the STASI was full of Joe Schmoes, married with children, watching soccer and drinking beer. It's the 'banality of evil', as Hannah Arendt called it, and it would be thrice as hard to uncover this in a story about oppressive regimes with the same chilling results. The turning point (he listens to the piano concerto and realizes the immoral nature of his actions) is just corny. The end in the bookstore was strong, though.

Well, that's the point, isn't it? Santablabla really has no responsibility for the AA-choice and still people mostly bitch about him, respectively his work, even if it's between-the-lines. I don't have any opinion on his scores, since i haven't seen either film, but i doubt it's the catastrophe some posters make of it.

I wonder if people here would be so up-in-arms if Williams wrote a spare guitar score for a gay-themed drama... And if this score would going to win the AA, the Academy most likely would be applauded for being so adventurous by the same people who now bitterly complain about Williams score XYZ losing.

Alex, i what i meant was that 'Kiss me, Stupid' was deemed 'immoral' by the then-powerful 'Legion of Decency' and therefore not widely distributed in the States. I can see why one would find the film misanthropic, but i liked the 'Polly the Pistol' character very much...Novak wasn't a bad thespian!

Alex, since you're so dedicated to comment on the 'dated'-stage of films you saw, this one surely must be one of the most dated (read: it's so 80s!) movies from your list. The over-the-top-climax is the only reason i would bother to watch it again. Did you find 'Kiss me.Stupid' as amoral as the 'Legion of Decency'? I like the film, but i can see why people would find it tawdry.

I liked the other two better. 'Funeral in Berlin' for the obvious reason that it's located in my hometown, 'Billion Dollar Brain' simply has the best Bond villain Bond never had. The cowboy-dressed henchmen in the computer lab are just priceless...

If Williams has enough of something, it's Academy Awards!

Don't like either one....Too much orchestral chaos, with a few highlights scattered within.

Let's say 'The Meaning of Life', 'Kiss me, Stupid' or 'The Man Who Wasn't There' represent a wide array of films i find vastly more enlightening from the standpoint of existentialism. Hmmm...i don't think that 'A.I.' is really 'raising an issue'. You could INTERPRET it that way, but that's really stretching it since it is so vague and, may i say, all over the place. I have read an essay about all these supposed meanings in a renowned german culture magazine which i found so intellectually PHONY that i wrote them about it. But i can understand the 'clicking' you mention.... Recently i saw 'Da Vinci Code' and 'Judgement of Nuremberg', two not-very-good-films...but to hell with it, i just liked them...no hidden meanings in them, though...

You are a bloody relativist. I know where you come from, but if we really start reading THAT much subtext into films, we might as well find a lot of Sartre and Focault in 'Pearl Harbor'. Before a thread about 'Lincoln' gets bent out of shape, i will close by saying that i don't think that Spielberg has the intellectual chops to play top-heavy exercises like that. He's after all a commercial filmmaker and no Pasolini or Herzog (note that i like Spielbergs filmmaking style a lot better, so it's not meant to denigrate him). My theory is that 'A.I.' is simply this rare beast of an expensive studio film made without any clear conscience about content. Spielberg may have had thoughts of his own, mixed them with thoughts he ascribed to Kubrick and et voila, ready is an odd mix of vague concoctions about lofty topics like 'HUMANITY' and god knows what else.... Problem is, the film has no audience. Most 'intellectuals' (i say this in the broadest sense) will reject it for the obvious and predictable elements, Joe Schmoe will reject it for it's irritating nature... and very few people will find pleasure in the fact that IT IS an irritating brew. I find it rather irrelevant. What does it tell me which has relevance for my existance? I friggin' don't know. Over and out.

But it's a shoddy device. There was an audience made up of several women crying for the extermination of Haley Joel Osment, for chrissake! Even if they assume that he's a machine, they could never completely abandon their motherly instincts. This whole event wouldn't happen like that, POV or not. It just is, let me not say 'bad', although i think it is, but awkward screenwriting. Spielberg mounts hurdle after hurdle for himself just to present us shopworn philosophical discourses in the end which could be told in a much more elegant manner. In this case, i really think the director should be relegated to his chair and let a good author solve problems for him...not himself creating 12 new ones.

You didn't found the story of 'A. I.' awkward? I mean, for someone who has seen his share of films, the narrative nonsense manifested by 'Flesh Fairs' and 'Professor Know's MUST have bothered you, at least in some ways! No?

I will wager, though, that they are simply films which YOU do 'not enjoy', but the jury's still out if this has to do with script quality. 'Always' and 'A.I.' have, by any halfway objective standard, no better script than 'Empire of the Sun'. And Spielberg certainly did more than an 'ok job' with this one. The dubious description of 'mature films' so many people like to throw around like frisbees reeks of nothing more than good 'ole intellectual fraudulence.

'The Screaming Woman'!

Well, the answers would differ, naturally. The 'other' approach wouldn't necessarily be original, but maybe less cliché. For one, Rowling could have asked for a more british score, instead of a primarily russian one.