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Leo was always Oscar bait after his much noticed start in 'Gilbert Grape' etc.

It is, actually. The phase after 'Legend' (which must have struck him hard) until 'Basic Instinct' or even 'First Knight' was the weakest in his career with some borderline offensive offerings, but he was always the film music Tesla, with failure being at least a 50% option when he tried new stuff like the Fairlight.
 
'Link' is much better than many others of that time, but it's also unafraid being goofy, something especially hardcore Williams fans are understandably are wary about.

It is, actually. The phase after 'Legend' (which must have struck him hard) until 'Basic Instinct' or even 'First Knight' was the weakest in his career with some borderline offensive offerings, but he was always the film music Tesla, with failure being at least a 50% option when he tried new stuff like the Fairlight.
 
'Link' is much better than many others of that time, but it's also unafraid being goofy, something especially hardcore Williams fans are understandably are wary about.

Drone Mass by Jóhann Jóhannsson
 
Jóhannsson's last substantial work, while not a score, is a beautiful enigmatic offering. Featuring a nice hybrid of strange colourful vocal textures, shifting microtonal drones and some lovely choral cannons.
 
 
 
Traveler - A Journey by Austin Wintory
 
Absolutely sublime. Although I think it loses a little of its otherworldly magic in the traditional orchestral setting, it gains other new colours and shades. Apparently Wintory is planning to release the conductor's score at some point too, so looking forward to grabbing that at some point.
 
 

More like Steven's folly.

Ain't that the truth for many fans. People hear a succession of a few notes and cry 'wolf!' when in 90% of the cases it's a completely different key and harmony and has its accentuation on a different phrase (and so on). In other word: completely knee-jerk reaction.
 
But in the bigger scheme of things it's laudable to make people aware that there are classical film music origins, and especially with more eclectic composers as Williams and - brace yourself - James Horner, who time and time again tried to get away with wholesale theft of complete themes from all over Europe's and Asia's musical heritage. With education being what it is you can bet that the number of people who recognize the heavy Prokoviev influence in both composer's work is dwindling.
 
 

Which gave mE a spontaneous idea:
 
 

There's probably a piano app on his iphone. 

This series has some of McCreary's best work (gregorian and medieval, but also modern), but there are almost 5 hours of music spread across three volumes (90 minutes on this first volume alone), so it needs some serious whittling. I'd like to whittle all 5 hours down to ONE single album of, say, 50-60 minutes. It's a massive undertaking that will take lots of my time and energy, and I'm not quite there yet. Even after having owned these for several years now. It makes me sad and frustrated that great music is presented this way; makes me want to play it less and hence more time to familiarize myself with highlights etc. prior to a whittling process.

85-year-old Davis is still active as a composer, as far as I know, although he's slowed down in later years. While most people are only familiar with his silent film scores, he did many other good things. Like this horse movie from 1983 -- completely unashamed orchestral romance.

I sort of like him where he is. Do you really want him to slavishly follow temp tracks and water down his talents? If it's something more out of the left field then yeah. Have you heard his The Rendezvous, by the way? It's terrific thriller score with a lot of colour and charm. The studio system would never allow a score like this. 
 
I love this action cue:
 
 
Anyway, on my playlist:
 
The Batman (my 77-minute playlist)
How To Train Your Dragon 2
The Orville Seasons 1 & 2
 
Karol

Good, old-fashioned melos á la Delerue by Philippe Rombi, orchestra with string/piano waltzes and full of woodwind flourishes rarely head in today's film music. 

It's just vapid pop. You may say about the original version what you want, the end result (from a Beyond Rangoon temp) is completely at odds with the rest of the score and sounds like stuff from a Disney channel teaser. Which makes it a commercially viable choice, but it sure is not 'interesting'.

I would go as far as saying ON THE BEACH is a great early 80s Williams. Full of distinct themes and orchestrated with an assured hand (sans Prokoviev) it's certainly a lost treasure (only 50 people bought the CD, while DEP IMPACT, a boring score to a similar film, sold around 80.000 copies).

If you guys want a slightly trimmer album here's my 77-minute proposal. I could probably lose another 4-5 minutes but this is the best configuration that works for me. It follows the film's chronology, with a couple of exceptions. I moved the Riddler/Catwoman suites to the beginning of the album where they introduce themes "SW prequel OST style". Hoarding School in my version appears now earlier in the programme. It is mainly due to Riddler's theme being absent from the middle section of the album. It is still a fairly long album but probably would flow better for a casual listener. I myself quite like the 2-hour programme but this is a slightly shorter version of that just in case I don't feel like listening to the full official album:
 

 
Karol

War of the Worlds. I created my own 56-minute version of the OST album playlist from the Intrada set. I eliminated the majority of the dissonant quiet materialn. The playlist is mostly chronological...with the exceptions of tracks 3 and 4 switching places. Decided not to include Refugee Status as it never really fit in with the rest of the material for me. Overall, I think it flows much better than the official album. There's no real fat and the "lamenting" string theme is featured consistently throughout which gives it a stronger thematic identity.
 

 
Karol

Good to see two european titles. Joan of Arc by Friedhofer, certainly (and a much better candidate for a re-recording than painstakingly re-creating short Goldsmith oldies which are not that interesting to begin with, but hey, i still put my $ in the Kickstarter, so...).

Spotify offered me today this most-cherished (by me, anyway) old Williams 'war horse' in its perfect-length LP incarnation. Two impressions from listening to it again today: Williams and De Palma should have worked together more often (just imagine Williams scoring 'Dressed to Kill' instead of 'Heartbeeps' in the early 80's) and that the last two cues, 'Death on the Carousel' and 'Epilogue', as curated specifically for this re-recorded LSO album, are two of my all-time favourite Williams pieces, edging out several of his more famous franchise scores.

Love JNH for several reasons, though i also admit that his pragmatic approach to his employers' laundry list of bad suggestions not always makes for the most compelling music (not FILM music).
 
First of all, he's the only one today carrying the Goldsmith torch of a strong, to-the-point theme augmented by short characteristic motifs in an orchestral/synth framework and he does it with style and like Goldsmith for every genre imaginable (like in JG's later career phase, that automatically leads to a good number of merely functionable scores, but that's the nature of the beast).
 
Secondly, i love the understated elegance in a lot of his themes - think King Kong's emotional material, and under which conditions it was conceived.
 
And his recent concert works are proof that he's really a very capable, accomplished composer, whom i wish better assignments than the many lame CGI spectacles he has to labour over in recent times. 

Spotify offered me today this most-cherished (by me, anyway) old Williams 'war horse' in its perfect-length LP incarnation. Two impressions from listening to it again today: Williams and De Palma should have worked together more often (just imagine Williams scoring 'Dressed to Kill' instead of 'Heartbeeps' in the early 80's) and that the last two cues, 'Death on the Carousel' and 'Epilogue', as curated specifically for this re-recorded LSO album, are two of my all-time favourite Williams pieces, edging out several of his more famous franchise scores.

Spotify offered me today this most-cherished (by me, anyway) old Williams 'war horse' in its perfect-length LP incarnation. Two impressions from listening to it again today: Williams and De Palma should have worked together more often (just imagine Williams scoring 'Dressed to Kill' instead of 'Heartbeeps' in the early 80's) and that the last two cues, 'Death on the Carousel' and 'Epilogue', as curated specifically for this re-recorded LSO album, are two of my all-time favourite Williams pieces, edging out several of his more famous franchise scores.

Love JNH for several reasons, though i also admit that his pragmatic approach to his employers' laundry list of bad suggestions not always makes for the most compelling music (not FILM music).
 
First of all, he's the only one today carrying the Goldsmith torch of a strong, to-the-point theme augmented by short characteristic motifs in an orchestral/synth framework and he does it with style and like Goldsmith for every genre imaginable (like in JG's later career phase, that automatically leads to a good number of merely functionable scores, but that's the nature of the beast).
 
Secondly, i love the understated elegance in a lot of his themes - think King Kong's emotional material, and under which conditions it was conceived.
 
And his recent concert works are proof that he's really a very capable, accomplished composer, whom i wish better assignments than the many lame CGI spectacles he has to labour over in recent times. 

Spotify offered me today this most-cherished (by me, anyway) old Williams 'war horse' in its perfect-length LP incarnation. Two impressions from listening to it again today: Williams and De Palma should have worked together more often (just imagine Williams scoring 'Dressed to Kill' instead of 'Heartbeeps' in the early 80's) and that the last two cues, 'Death on the Carousel' and 'Epilogue', as curated specifically for this re-recorded LSO album, are two of my all-time favourite Williams pieces, edging out several of his more famous franchise scores.

Spotify offered me today this most-cherished (by me, anyway) old Williams 'war horse' in its perfect-length LP incarnation. Two impressions from listening to it again today: Williams and De Palma should have worked together more often (just imagine Williams scoring 'Dressed to Kill' instead of 'Heartbeeps' in the early 80's) and that the last two cues, 'Death on the Carousel' and 'Epilogue', as curated specifically for this re-recorded LSO album, are two of my all-time favourite Williams pieces, edging out several of his more famous franchise scores.