publicist
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Posts posted by publicist
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54 minutes ago, Remco said:
All I’m saying the score does what it needs to do for the intended audience. I have never heard anyone complain about overscoring except some movie buffs on the internet. And Columbus could’ve toned down the score in post-production, right? I assume he didn’t for a reason.
Of course he did it for a reason, it just happened to be the wrong one (but that movie is awful, with or without the relentless scoring).
And back then, i can assure you, people were complaining: i remember because i worked in a local Multiplex during my university days and i had to take the complaints.
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14 hours ago, Remco said:
Actually the kids that grew up with it all love the score and it’s a huge part of the nostalgia for these films. Williams knows all too well what to do for this kind of film…
A back-handed compliment, really. When i think what my generation loved when we were kids, man...
Put on a very simplistic level it's of course true that JW wrote a memorable tune and the opening celeste is instantly recognizable. But back in 2001, a lot of people, and i mean not Alan Rickman, complained about the sheer overscoring and loudness of the score as mixed in the movie, especially in its first half.
For a film music fan this can be rewarding, for a patron trapped in a movie house, maybe less so. Williams was in full Episode 1 swing back then and it probably would have needed a director as strong as Cuaron (part 3) to reign him in a bit.
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Dug this up on some old hard drive. It's not a great movie, but the medieval subject matter, rarely ever dealt with in the movies but still strangely relevant in key spots, makes up for the deficiencies.
'The Last Valley' starts by informing us that the Thirty Years' War began in 1618. It started as a religious war - Catholics against Protestants. But in their relentless pursuit of power, the princes of both religions switched sides as they saw fit - and in the name of religion, unparalleled carnage began in Europe.
The story proper starts with Omar Sharif, a drifter (and the movie's token cypher standing in for the modern audience), escaping marauding mercenaries through the harsh, wintry Alps. Accidentally he falls down a slope and finds himself in a village cut off from the outside world and untouched by the bloody conflict.
Subsequently, however, Michael Caine and his mercenaries also find their way there. Sharif is able to convince mercurial Caine not to raid the village but instead to stay there during the winter. To maintain order and discipline, the captain has any violations of his rules severely punished. Sharif ensures his own survival by acting as a mediator between the soldiers and the inhabitants.
In this microcosm, a whole range of human and religious conflicts arise, very much in the tradition of monumental spectacles popular at the time, complete with didactic aphorisms about the nature of war, the inhumanity of men and religious zealotry, suitably put into the mouth of the matching characters ('God is an excuse that is used too often!'/'You dare to speak to me of just wars? There is no just war. The truth is your leaders are bigots, your generals are bandits; you employ any mercenary you can get and the Pope plays politics! The truth is your war is filth, greed and hypocrisy – and the other side is just as rotten!’).
It's a wordy author's screenplay, full of eloquent existentialist speeches, and the eloquence is used to disguise the fact that their targets are rather low-hanging fruit. But what makes the movie stand out is the mythical core idea and the breathtaking vistas. The setting and its photography make the medieval time come alive and of course, the critical eye towards religious hypocrisy is as relevant today as it was in 1970 or 1642.
John Barry's choral score lifts the movie now and then, modern critics would hate it for its sheer audacity to musically frame the story, but in the end, when all is said and done and Sharif bids farewell to a dying Michael Caine in a magical lit forest, Barry gives Caine's dark, combative tune a thoughtful closure before 'his' men's chorus is replaced by a female chorus which swells into the sweeping hopeful main theme that majestically closes the movie. You might not even like such approach, but we surely haven't come up with anything better substituting it (see YT link below).
- GerateWohl and Chen G.
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8 hours ago, Sandor said:
There are almost 8 billion (!) people on this planet my friend, all with different ambitions, opinions, goals, viewpoints and dreams. If you're going to comment on every line of thinking that deviates from your own, you're going to find yourself a very busy man.
Be assured that i make such comments only in the most puzzling examples (which i spot). Or i would have a full-time job on this board alone.
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14 hours ago, Taikomochi said:
Starting to get some hopium that this could be Williams’ year
Williams' *year*? Because he might win his now sixth Oscar for what is certainly no major new work? This kind of thinking always was elusive to me. Who cares? What does it change? JW really has enough awards, honorary titles, plaques and so on. It would honor him much more if they would use the opportunity to showcase him and film MUSIC in a segment as (once) important artform that has been neglected and for quite a while now.
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7 hours ago, bollemanneke said:
And what could be more glorious than James Horner going Irish? Oh, I know: James Horner going Irish during every second of this movie. He was criminally underused. The opening cue was so moving and then the director decides to not score half of the film. It’s insane. Why get him to compose your score if you’re going to waste 90% of its potential? He could have done more!
He did more, but it went unused. Be aware that Devil's Own was one of the numerous 90's movies that turned to shit because stars attached to it changed 10 times and with them the script and its character dynamics. The final movie with Ford and Pitt was a marketer's dream only and from what i remember, the origin story was completely different before they kept adding more Gary Cooper-honest cop stuff for Ford.
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2 hours ago, Andy said:
It’s been three years since TROS. Does anyone else miss the theatrical experience, the long time ago silence anticipating the blast of the Main Title? I’m ready for big budget full bodied cinematic 95 piece orchestra Star Wars.
By all means, but please not the SW main title again.
4 hours ago, DarthDementous said:The music is like the way it is probably because Tony is not a Star Wars fan
On a deeper level, the grungy thriller story presented to us in 'Andor' isn't SW, either. We tend to overestimate the importance of the musical element. I truly think it doesn't matter much nowadays with the huge sound mix, even if it would be less atmospheric, the operatic gestures would have never happened.
And if they would happen like in Rogue One, dramatically amateurish and with zero regard for the musical ancestors guys like Korngold and Williams used as a role model, frankly, i prefer Britell's background atmo.
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5 minutes ago, Fabulin said:
It's probably more than a bit incorrect since I have trouble reading the spots that are probably trying to communicate to me the sharp and flat symbols, and I am too tired to play a harmony guessing game atm. One bar of bassline is obscured, so I left it empty.
The work of an old and wise master!
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I think even Williams stopped counting all the requiems he wrote for SW since ROTS.
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Warlock, which for some inexplainable reason pops up as recommendation on Spotify regularly, is no shining beacon in the Goldsmith filmography, to put it mildly. What it is, though, weird synth noises notwithstanding, is a rather unique horror score. Written during the expansive 80's, the last thing on its mind is a loud roar unleashing huge orchestral forces. Instead it's quaint and harsh sounding, with a ominous tik-tok sound echoing a big clock that Goldsmith seems so fond of he basically uses it as a heartbeat throughout.
The thematic material, a five-note call close to 'Legend's darkness motif, is not very memorable and the church hymn that pops up at the beginning and the end is ruined by accordion-like synth - i would have liked to peek into Goldsmith's head at the time, the movie itself is entertaining in a cheesy kind of way, but it could sure have used a shot in the arm musically but exactly where the filmmakers practically invite him to the ball to dominate the proceedings, Goldsmith holds back.
When you listen to the moments recalling classic Goldsmith, which are the cues 'The Weather Vane' and the big finale (Salt Walter Attack and Salt Flats), they fitfully remind you of Goldsmith's eminent status, but he employs the magic so involuntary it seems he hates his own guts. It was a weird phase for him, but still, you couldn't say he stayed idle. But it's no recommendation, really.
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2 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:
No, really. Today I watched the second episode and can say, the score is perfectly fine for the show, but still for my taste this music has no life on its own, kind of a parasite score. When you detach it from its host, the film, it dies. It is appropriate for its purpose. No complain. It doesn't need to stand on its own. Perfectly fine. I just say, that was different for Star Wars in the past, and these days are simply over. That's it. No problem. There is already enough good Star Wars music.
That's not what i am talking about, people get used to everything. I was more seeing the whole thing in perspective, all the pr claims about legacy etc., and it's bleeding obvious that they just feed modern habits and don't give a shit, really.
It's not a big deal, things in popular culture just run their course, but when i watched the three episodes (which was a pure coincidence, i don't watch much tv these days) it was apparent that this doesn't share even the tiniest DNA strain with SW, and the music, if we call it that, felt like a total antithesis to it.
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5 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:
Yes, I think, we just have to realize, that there is no Standard anymore to Star Wars music. It is in the meantime just some random score by random composers. Nothing to stand on its own.
For some it just takes longer time to sink in.
There is an almost religious hope put into weirdly phrased press releases and when you finally can look at the end product, you have to pinch yourself and ask 'Is this it?'
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18 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:
I will clearly have to give it a bit more air time. It’s just one of those Horner scores that passes me by I think. My comments probably came across more negatively than I meant but as a fan of Bartok and James Horner that’s definitely a similarity I’ll have to root out!
If you have the longer Intrada edition, i would limit myself to cues 1, 5, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25 and 28. The musical downgrade of the past 30 years makes Horner's simpler writing of the 90's, especially in regards to his even-metered action cues, appear better than it is, but this is actually one of the few of his post-Willow scores that has a remarkably dynamic interplay between the orchestral sections.
Why that is beats me, but rumour has it because much of it was ghostwritten, which doesn't make much sense. Why take chances when you have little time (especially repetition-happy JH)? Maybe Mikael Salomon loves classical music, who knows. Be that as it may, this kind of sophisticated, orchestrally complex writing did go out of fashion at last with Williams' 'Revenge of the Sith' (which has similar, weirdly complex passages for instance in 'I am the Senate', where i thought 'Gee John, why bother?').
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If yo give it 6 months you may find it in his 10,0000+ filmography!
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It would be WIlliams' biggest hit since many years!
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It might have been 'Ripley', a Patricia Highsmith adaptation.
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4 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:
A Far Off Place (James Horner) - Very much one of those Horner scores that sounds a bit like various others of the same period (1993) but isn't quite as distinctive as any of them.
Musically, it's quite ahead of them. What you call busy action is occasionally quite advanced Bartok, much more bold than Horner's monotonous Apollo 13-snare beats and the ethnic parts are also quite good, just listen to the distinctive parts that make up the main title (the lilting flute and percussion part leading into the brutal dissonance finally rising into the glorious swelling main theme by way of the hammered piano hits, i mean, that's really quite advanced wrting).
Whoever wrote it out, i don't believe for a minute that it's a simple matter of ghostwriting-so-it-sounds-different. That's a much too simple explanation. It rather sounds as if Horner was told that he could go more wild on this one than was usually the case on his children's movies.
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4 hours ago, crocodile said:
Watched the first two episodes. Didn't hate it but wasn't too engaged either. The execution is sound, probably better than that of most D+ shows so far, but I am really not that excited about the core concept. So it is an odd one. We shall see.
I saw three in one go and i think 15 minutes into the third it gets up to speed. That there's no urgency before might be a case of 'we have to fill 8 hours but only have a story for 4', which i experienced on quite a few tv series (not only) lately.
The Blade Runner vibe is OK with me, as i don't care much for SW in the first place. Either Disney/Lucasfilm just re-invented brand-building, or they are just really bad at it remains to be seen.
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It's a step up from the gloriously awful 'Obi Wan', but man, that pacing is deadly. Three 40-minute episodes and what happens in three would fit comfortably into one (is that Gilroy's talent, making you feel everything in real-time?). It's more 'Blade Runner' than 'Star Wars', which might not be a bad thing, but somehow there's a big neon light blinking over the proceedings, saying 'We're rudderless here!'
The score, subject of much self-congratulory pr, amounts to exactly the kind of industrial noise you'd expect for locations like a huge iron foundery.
- Van_Etten, Not Mr. Big and JNHFan2000
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One of the few (gentle) cues from the mammoth release that stood out to me.
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On 19/09/2022 at 1:26 PM, Richard Penna said:
I wonder if it's one of those films where enjoyment is helped by some interest in the subject matter. The music similarly did absolutely nothing for me, but I think it's because JW's serious, character drama side is not for me. (his adventure/fantasy is more me, generally)
No, i had a good knowledge about the political/journalist background of the story and it didn't help much. It was just waxworks standing around, spouting pieties. But once in a while the Spielberg magic comes through, for instance in a spinning shot elegantly depicting how lost Meryl Streep is among the men whose boss she is supposed to be. It's hard to endure the rest for such moments, though.
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