publicist
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Posts posted by publicist
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Anyone who says that score is not to Williams' standard is quite mad IMO.
It is not. And i'm not that mad. It is capable and very loud, but it lacks the spark of unique-ness. It often seems to just go through the motions without fine-tuning them
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@Marian:
Don't fear the german dub of Jack Lemmon; his famous dubbing voice (Georg Thomalla) is long gone, sadly.
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If you don't think he's been dabbling in more post modern sounds lately you're not listening to very much of his latest work!
Dear God, is that really so hard to grasp? Williams isn't fit to write 'American Beauty' or 'Black Hawk Dawn' - at least not in the way they were succesfully scored. And now don't you come me with 'War of the Worlds' and stuff like that. That's still orchestral music very much rooted in Strawinsky.
I just wanted to stress the fact that todays' cinema, whatever you think of it, and Williams' sensibilities are not in exact synch, although there are exceptions, of course. No wonder, in an industry built on exploiting short-living trends.
That is no good/bad thing, Goldsmith, in his lifetime, also was deemed old-fashioned by Jerry Bruckheimer, of all people. Make of that what you want.
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I think the reason JW defeats all composers (in the film genre at least) is because he is the most varied.
Is that so? Well, i'm rather anxious to hear his takes on the Bourne films, 'Crash' or 'Black Hawk Dawn'.
Thus, he is, at best, the epitome of the ideal composer of the archetypical films soundtrack-geeks like best (fantasy/epic with heavy orchestral backing, maybe an Award-winning drama for the elevation of the own hobby, seldom things which really move too far away from the well-worn formulas). Apart form that, Williams is at his age (understandably) neither able nor willing to dabble in postmodern musical language as represented by the most popular 'modern' musicians (say experimental Thomas Newman, Remote Control, Powell and whatnot).
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May not be for all tastes, but the score certainly has several remarkably affecting and effective cues.
If you read all the hosannas here, you could believe it's a genuine masterpiece, which it is not.
I'll grant you that pieces like 'Jewish Town' or the Auschwitz-cue are (rare) standouts, but the basic ingredient is minor strings with gusto, which i find just too much with such a subject. It's just too cliché.
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You really, really need to subject "Rememberances" to that Dark Test of yours. It's one of Williams' most heart-wrenching pieces. It's impossible, under any context, to listen to it and remain unaffected.
It's neo-romantic mush in a jewish idiom. Williams would've better followed a more intimate concept (á la the jewish song before 'Nacht Aktion') instead of the string heavy syrup he poured i. e. over the 'I could have done more' sequence - unfortunately, the Academy Award proved his instincts (or Spielbergs) right.
It's a rather mundane drama® score, the kind of which Delerue already came up with for the WWII-concentration camp drama 'Escape from Sobibor'. Sadly, nobody ever mentions that.
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The really interesting question is then if Marcus' LOTR would rock the world the same way as Shores version did.
I'm certain it won't be hard to top the complexity of the writing, but else?
I said it and i say it again, f...ck them all and bring the long cut of the films in a Delorean to Jerry Goldsmith in 1980. Give him 3 years, and you've got the best score trilogy ever made.
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Williams' concerti are being performed very frequently, for 20th/21st century repertoire. His horn, tuba and bassoon concertos are becoming standards for their respective instruments.
This is simply fact, and it is all the more astonishing considering how recently they were written.
Well, I have never seen evidence of this and i'm from Germany, where all things cultural certainly are held in high esteem.
I think you simply want to give empiric proof to an obvious false notion. What you brush aside as quirkiness on Hermann's part speaks volumes about your real agenda: lauding rather conservative western music as music that YOU would like to see accepted as the epitome of absolute music, since you obviously hate the modernist school.
Williams is simply not what you want him to be...the fact that popular mediums like film today have a zillion more weight than some concerto only adds to the fact that he will be remembered mostly for his prolificness as film composer of polished orchestral scores with a certain range, but far from being the end of all things, even in film music.
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The first thing I told John Williams when I first met him in Boston four years ago was "It's such an honor to meet someone who will be remembered historically as another Beethoven!"
I hope he laughed you off.
Williams never will be more than part of the 'one of the successful film composers of the dawning blockbuster era, John Williams, as Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, John Barry...... Listen here to samples of 'STAR WARS THEME/SUPERMAN THEME/HARRY POTTER THEME' enumerations.
His concert works have not nearly the stature to overpower his more opportunistic film works (most of the time they are not that noteworthy in the concert repertoire, either).
The big difference between a Bernard Herrmann (who is considered a musical genius now) and John Williams is, that Herrmann inspires musicians, Williams inspires film music and film buffs.
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Well, DOES the japanese pressing of DRACULA sound better?
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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.
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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).
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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.
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'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.
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Hey, don't blame us. We had never had to face a fact like that until ten years ago and we're getting used to it.
You had. And it began in the 60s.
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Some of my favourites - "The Thin Red Line" or "Blade Runner" don't have the themes in the traditional meaning
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!
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Everything I've seen about the film, including all interviews by all people involved, imply that Shyamalan was totally earnest. The look of the film and the score further enforce that. The movie may be so bad it's good, but knowing Shyamalan's track record, I do not see how it could possibly be a parody. The only attempt at anything approaching parody of anything was with Bob Balaban, and that was just painful.
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.
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D & E admitted that they did it because of the review Siskel and Ebert gave for ID4.
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.
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I hope Pan's Labyrint, the new and extremely praised Del Toro film, is better.
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).
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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.
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I like Spielberg, but Jackson really has no directorial talent. The weakest parts of LOTR were his direction by far in an otherwise amazing trilogy. And his other stuff is...well....not well known except among cult fans for a reason.
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'????
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I'm sorry, this is just your typical Zimmer bashers vs. Zimmer defendors. We might as well give up here. I don't understand you people, and I'm sure you don't understand me.
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'.
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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'.
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It's still just a facsimile.
Well, lowered expectations produce less strain...
Goldsmith writing 'LotR' anno 1982 still is the one and only wet fanboydream i stand by...
ST:TMP Love Theme?
in General Discussion
Posted
It's called 'There's a Star beyond Time'.
It IS cheesy, but kind of fun, starting with 'There's a star beyond time, floating in space, waiting for u and me'