Richard P

It's an odd one for sure. I would imagine that the spirit of the award is for filmed performances, which is awarding the merits of the performance and the overall production. If there's no new music, and no new performance, it seems more suited to the 'best documentary' Oscar than an awarding body that is specifically focused on the music. Same sort of thing as the debate a while back about re-recordings and restorations considered alongside each other. What exactly is it about the nominated work that's being awarded?

This is my final edit of the magic performance I posted a while back - a complete stem rebuild was critical here, because it enabled individual volume control, and dialing out of a few bits where foley got in the way. Key also, was the synth and guitar models picking up the surround bits. Crowd noise is the main source of degradation in the latter half, but the entire thing has dialog over it. 09 - Space Shuttle.mp3

'Sea Devil'... racist....

Yeap And no, we'll never know what our reaction would have been if Columbus hadn't changed it. In some sense, the intended verson draws a contrast between the vibe of Diagon, and the great hall - one projects an old, slightly rickety environment (which is literally what it is), while the other is full of magic and childlike wonder. But the argument would therefore be that while the contrast might be appropriate story-wise, it doesn't work as well standalone. It's the sort of debate the filmmakers would have all the time, and it's going to result in musical changes. And it remains that regardless of one's view on how tracked music should be treated on an official release, if you're looking purely at how the music came across and made you feel during the film, it's completely irrelevant whether it's tracked or not.

That doesn't make sense. Williams wrote the great hall entrance music, then Columbus tracked it into the diagon alley scene (a move I support). No one repeated anything, compositionally. 100% - it's so much more effective at conveying the delight and discovery of Diagon. I kind of see what Williams was going for (the Old English vibe), but it doesn't have that magical element. The 'first night' cue with Williams' unused bold brass section, is another example of where I think he got the tone wrong. I'd never advocate an edited version being released in place of the intended version on an expanded set, but as a bonus track? I don't see a problem with that.

Do we know how Mischef Managed even came about as a concept for an album track? Listening-wise, it was a waste of disc space from day one. Would it have involved JW preferring an editor assembly over his Firebolt... cue? I'll defend a desire to hear the film edit on account of it being in the film (it's a hill I'll die on) but there's so little about this particular one that makes sense, content-wise.

Cameron may treat music like hell in the editing room, but he's asking for the right stuff - sounds almost golden age in its style.

Horner mentioned recutting as a major source of problems for Aliens - essentially the reason why a cue might be 80-90% of what Cameron wanted - all the timings would be off.

Wow, didn't see this one selling out, but great that it did find an audience, and it lives on in digital. I listened to some bits on Spotify a while back, but I think I came to the same conclusion as when it first came out - it's not quite my thing. I have the DVD, as I saw the film a very long time ago - just long enough that I think I remember what the 'big twist' was at the end:

Could it be related to their Paramount-heavy slate this year? LLL have expanded several 90s/00s Horners from them, but a lot of titles from other studios, so maybe it's a focus on other Paramount titles this year. The Paramount focus is the only reason for my guess that maybe we could see Deep Impact at some point (not a grail or anything, just a good score that could use a remaster).

Tyler's score is serviceable and has a nice theme for Cruise's character. That's about it, really. I hope they could at least ask Silvestri, who seems to have had fun with Returns.

What gave those shorter albums an edge is that they only presented the best parts of a score, so those less interesting scores never had their duller bits exposed to the ravagaging hordes of listeners/critics. Where a score is less affected by duller bits, it still allowed the score to make its best possible impression very quickly - a valuable quality of an initial album. But now Spotify is ful of near complete releases for all sorts of material - both good and bad, it's easy to see where someone comes across a dull, plodding album that needed to be tightened to 90s Varese levels. Unfortunately this score fits into that 'dull' category for me, but I love the fact that it's complete. Official expansions for current scores are largely not under the remotest consideration (the composer puts out what they want), so if this had major missing material and FYC season passed without joy, whose who love the score would be SOL. The RoP scores are the pitch-perfect model for how to do it to please everyone. OST too lacking in a particular bit? Episode album to the rescue!

They did Dances With Wolves some years ago already. Realistically it's hard to predict outside of Bond, and I suppose the reasonable expectation that Mike is trying to work through Williams titles. 3 weeks Friday!

My first proper attempt at a complete stem reuild - I have 11 tracks in my editor. This is nowhere near finished (levels are all over the place, for one), but gives an idea of cleanliness. The degraded bits are where there was crowd noise, and the entire thing had dialog over it. franz_stem_sample.mp3 The key to getting applause out of the percussion was crowd removal on the whole thing, then extract drums, then split those into stems, and use two of those to substitute for polluted stems.

If this is what he's doing every day instead of concert material, it doesn't seem unreasonable to end up with a decent-length complex score in the next several months. But his material isn't as fresh as it used to be, and perhaps not as fresh as a younger composer (such as Powell), so I think that's a cost of having their 30th collaboration together.