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How much music is missing from 'Prisoner of Azkaban'? The whole musical approach for the third film is a healthy improvement on the Williams-in-a-wake-coma mode of the first movie where the music sounds exactly like a 70-year old man patronizingly writing down to small children: 'This is a CUTE/MAJESTIC/FRIGHTENING moment and i will ram it down your ears with a blunt instrument!' and so on... Watching the movie, you kinda know where he got the idea....

Why anyone who loves broad orchestral scores could overlook the joys of scores - even if it just amounts to parts of them - like 'Perfect Storm', 'Zorro' or 'The Missing' is beyond me. It's not that Horner has turned into Randy Edelman by 1992 and an elaborate epic/action piece like i. e. 'Escape' from 'Four Feathers' is something i gladly would take over some of the more acclaimed pieces by Elfman, Williams or Newton Howard. Horner certainly is a joke as a composer often enough, but some of this grossly exaggerated reactions come off more than petty.

I sincerely hope that "The Life before her Eyes" and "Boy in the striped Pyjama" have more than synth-augmented piano doodlings. If anything, Horner is probably one of the last 'old pro's' - and i think his productivity isn't sinking because he's offensive to Holywood, but rather because he's just lost interest to compete for fascinating assignments like 'Transformers 2'.....

If that is the new Williams adventure sound, i'm shuddering. Did it need 50 years of experience to arrive THERE? Probably Steve Jablonsky did the 'additional music'.

'Congo' was a movie made exclusively for the fact that Jerry Goldsmith was still around. I'm convinced there was an assembly line for cheesy action and adventure films just to keep Goldsmith busy. There is no other explanation for 'Baby - Secret of the Lost Legend', 'Chain Reaction', 'The Shadow', 'Supergirl' and countless others. And all the better for it!

As Hollywood composers go, i'd say that Williams' tutti heavy scores (Indy, Hook, Potter) warrant another shot, although 'Dracula' is high on my list, too. Goldsmith has 'One Little Indian', 'The Shadow' (at least of 'Mulan'/'Mummy' calibre and 80 Minutes long, most exciting stuff left off the album, like the finale), 'Baby - Secret of the Lost Legend' Rozsa's 'El CID' may be the last EPIC score i wanted complete, and it's coming this year

The problem with 'Last Crusade' is that it has some splendid themes, the Knight stuff in particular, but the themes come up too fragmented. 'Temple of Doom' at least has every theme developed full throttle, and they're pretty good, too. I'd like an arrangement of the lyrical grail themes in fashion of 'Restoration' from 'Jane Eyre', at least four minutes and with lots of ornaments. Did Williams ever do a concert arrangement of those?

It seems far more hard to endure endless viewings of the revolting and childish syrup of 'Hook' than '1941', which at least didn't take itself seriously to begin with... I remember a Broughton interview where he rightly stated that some bad films can be a lot easier to score due to the fact that they're not draining you, emotionally, as some heavy drama about war terror or cancer or whatever. Having to live with depressing thoughts for months is sure to give you some emotional scars, i guess.... Sitting in a screening room thinking up music for, say 'Congo', seems more of a logistical problem than an emtional one.

It's entirely possible to shut out your brain for the odd 10 weeks when you're working on some filmic horse manure and try to handle the current assignment as the best ever. To imply that a seasoned veteran like Goldsmith wasn't able to see 'Mom and Dad save the World' for what it was is just an insult to his intellectual capacities. Whatever Richard Kraft may have said certainly was meant more along the lines that there was an understanding not to make life harder than it is by actually bemoaning the badness of an assignment on a daily basis, so Goldsmith maybe trained himself into a state of mind where he could watch those films with a more innocous children's eye. Neither Goldsmith nor WIlliams, or Horner for that matter, would have reached their status if it weren't for the fact that they took the films they've worked on very seriously.

While a lot of the humour and the 'cool' scenes in POTC 3 were yawn-inducing (i. e. the giant woman, some of the interaction between the main characters, the 'wedding' in midst the final battle), i still find the movie somewhat compelling for the sheer monstrosity of the special effects and, listen up, the scope of Zimmer's score. The whole sequence where they are sailing into 'No Man's Land' is very moody filmed and scored. The love theme and the pirate theme (Hoist the Colors) are certainly stand-outs in the thematic department of 2007. The script vcertainly had it's problems, though. To put it mildly.

Williams's all the way. Kilar's lacks the dark romaticism and isn't very inspired, either. At the time, i thought why'd they go through all these troubles to hire a polish composer instead of a Hollywood man just to let him write a mundane score (approach-wise), although the Kilar has some nice elements, too. The only thing we really need badly is a better-sounding version of the Williams.

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.