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And nobody will die if he/she's denied the odd catacomb or crawling around cue here and there. Alternate takes of major cues we need, i say!

'JAWS': tons of 'em! (if i had to choose one it would be Brody's last stand, when the shark suddenly appears under the crow's nest, always gave me a chill) '1941': when Belushi flies through the Main Street and all hell breaks loose; the Dance Sequence 'Raiders of the Lost Ark': The first 5 minutes. 'E. T.': obviously the Bycicle Chase 'Temple of Doom': the Underground Chaos Sequence, the The Thugee Ceremony 'Empire of the Sun': ditto Alex 'Schindler's List': when Schindler chooses his secretary, most of the Goeth Scenes 'Saving Private Ryan': ditto Alex 'Munich': the bomb under the bed

Maybe you aren't the target audience?

Since there's obviously SOME music on the fifth CD, we certainly get more than enough of each score. It would be interesting if Williams did some alternate takes of any importance. I don't mean this stuff which on bootlegs often is referred to as alternate takes and you have to search with a magnifying glass for the differences, but real alternates. It seems that Spielberg at this time of his career certainly was more demanding in this respect than nowadays.

Not in this form....sadly.

That's your pregorative. My dear Bryan, did you even read what i wrote? If your idea of two well-speant hours in the cinema is to watch escapist junk, as i called this kind of comic trifle, 'Iron Man' certainly fits the bill. Apart from what critics and the average 14-year old may think of this, my prerogative is to call it what it is: mindless entertainment, which in it's second half isn't even entertaining but just the same noisy sfx affair we've been riddled with for too many a year. 'The Happening' is certainly a bad movie, and a mightily impressive bad movie, that is. The deliberateness of awkward scenes, direction and protagonists did catch my interest much more than sitting through one of those slick, safe movies which never fall as flat on their face as 'The Happening' but never aspire any cinematic heights, either. In a nutshell, i rather watch an Ed-Wood-like concoction by Shymalayan which at least breaks some of the more common conventions than sitting through another movie with a guy chasing rockets or fighting silly machines.

'Better' by what standards? Being better escapist junk? I had to see 'Iron Man' in a press screening and while i was mildly amused by some of Downey's antics in the first half, the second half is unbearable sfx-dreck without any redeeming features. And i'm really lost why grown people cry 'MORE!' when they see endless scenes of computer-generated tin men fighting and destroying their way through some big city. It must be some kind of mental regression.

I never saw 'Signs' but found the 'Happening', despite all the cheesiness, not a total waste of my time. We certainly have entered a period where Shymalayan has become the whipping boy even for the more innocous cinemagoers - and his directorial decisions are strange, indeed. But in a time when people are actually considering lowering their bottoms for 2 hours into a seat for 'Superman Reboot' or 'Iron Man 2' or whatever junk the studios churn out these days, we certainly have whipping boys much more fitting. I for one wish Shymalayan a hard-edged screenwriter who is giving him a great script and flak whenever the strange moods become him - and then, we would have a movie to talk about.

If you got your will, Willliams would be the Bob Hope of film composers. The same jokes repeated for over 100 years with an appreciative audience of people either too deaf or too senile to care.

It wasn't even that. There were several highly dramatic scenes especially in the second part of the film...the music there seemed like an asthmatic dog trying to catch up with a sausage tied to a fast-driving car. I was highly critical of the smug first score but in retrospect, Williams even in his most 'been there, done that'-style at least knows how to improve the film dramatically.

It's no great shakes, for sure, but i rather liked the 'flying' theme and some of the cues are charming in this old-fashioned mid-80s Williams style. The triplets in the pen-ultimate action track are a clear predecessor to 'Last Crusade's' tank cues.

Then, most people were relieved that 'Star Trek V', 'The Burbs' and 'Leviathan' somewhat signalled that Goldsmith had recovered from his darkest days ('Rent-a-Cop', 'Criminal Law', 'Warlock' etc.)...after 'Not without my Daughter', every hope was on the razor's edge again.

And why are people so concerned about the 'public', anyway? We, the collectors, are obscure and somewhat mystifying to them, why should the composer's be different? And no 'Raider's March' or 'Star Trek' theme can change that, even if it obviously makes the fanboy drool in excitement if a tv program guide got the name right once in while.

The truth of the matter is that every era or generation has it's defining sound. Take any of Williams' post-90s scores, Horner after 'Titanic', Barry post 80s...nothing they wrote afterwards ever catched on and defined a new way of scoring films. At best, they tried to emulate styles of the contemporary successful stuff. And you can squish it and squeeze it, but not deny it...Shore had 'LotR' and afterwards, everything 'important' had to sound like 'LotR'. Same with the mundane Zimmer stuff from 'Gladiator' and now 'Batman'. Those scores were aped up and down, not the prequels scores or 'A.I.'. What distinguishes Goldsmith was that he could deliver workmanlike efforts for the standard Hollywood films for every decade which just sounded modern enough without being too anachronistic. And he had mostly no plum assignments like Williams or Horner. He had 'US Marshals' and 'The Mummy'.

It's not entirely unreasonable, though. The more varied my tastes got over the years, i too had less and less patience for albums with 43 tracks, half of which come under 50 seconds. If you look at the recent Varése release of 'North and South', most tracks are like this. Now for rabid archival freaks, this may be a dream come true, i would rather lose a foot than obtain such silly things. The problem with an edited cd, however, still is the fact that other people would pick the cues and they always f...ck it up.

Well, it wasn't 'officially' certain, so....

If you look carefully on the inscript on the bonus cd, it say "INTERVIEWS AND MORE MUSIC FROM INDIANA JONES'. So this bonus CD will hold more music for a fact.

Which is debatable, even if i think Goldsmith is a more INTERESTING musician than Williams. Hobgood squawks all this rubbish about thematic coherency, where my first question would be: What if a composer slavishly follows The Hobgood Way and works with weak basic material? (in relation to Goldsmith, most post-'Basic Instinct'-thriller scores fit that criteria beautifully). Or he uses gawd-awful electronics and makes the film look cheap? Certainly more of an esthetic question, but valid nevertheless...Is the score still better per se? To balance this with a typical incoherent Williams-approach take 'Empire of the Sun'. A beautifully realized musical work, but dramatically, it creaks like a civil-war wheelchair. Most episodes (Shanghai Siege, Cadillac of the Skies, Pheasant Hunt) don't have any connection musically, whatsoever. There is the biblical choir for the weighty and uplifting scenes, dissonance for the tension and those elements never connect. The almighty Hobgood would've sent Williams back to his desk with a pile of 'Patton' cd's to report back when Jim's Theme would be a strain throughout the whole movie. But as it is, does Williams' score not enhance the movie? After never bothering to post on the FSM board, i now have officially entered my disregard for this ignorant hokum into the ring!

And don't forget these wicked self-stealings from 'The Final Conflict' in 'Mr. Baseball'!!!

I'm sure he would have spend long winter nights chewing over the lack of respect by someone whose words betray such an erudite musical scholar. They never run out of brilliant ideas, do they?

If a thriller score based on a waltz and written only in 3/4 meters isn't 'anything special', i don't know what is. Kids today.....

Hmmmm...great 'high concept' score by Goldsmith. But buying it, i won't. I have to confess that i find the album presentation more than sufficient and unfortunately, the sound on Intrada's samples seems still somewhat muffled. The only reason for me to buy this thing is when i can really hear the basses...

Has anyone seen the new Coen film, 'Burn after Reading'? I dread the combo George Clooney/Brad Pitt....smugness á la 'Ocean's 11' is something i don't want in a Coen film, but i'm optimistic!

I think I will agree. If not the best, it's definitely Top 3. The http://www.thirdmanrecords.com/ link features a version of this new song which somehow reminds me of updating of the somewhat limp 'Man with the Golden Gun' song. It isn't an eyebrow-raiser like the Madonna song but it could've been a TAD more distinctive.

How.....exciting.... <_<