Seth

He got a similar look of concentration at the end of Battle of the Heroes, if you watch the webdoc at starwars.com My guess is that he is listening to the final chord, making sure it sounds the way he wants it. Maybe it also has to do with the issue of "on the air" so to speak. By that, I mean that the red light is still on and he is making sure that the orchestra is still aware of it. Just some ideas.

I think Jacqueline Du Pre's recording with the London Symphony and John Barbirolli is considered the definitive recording of this piece.

. Definitely have to agree with that. And the score...the launch sequence gives me chills and even nearly brought me to tears once. Say what you will about Horner, it's a fine piece of work.

Waiting for Guffman. Absolutely hilarious. It's all subtle humor that you have to listen closely to pick up on, but that's some of the best. Music and lyrics by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy. Between that and This is Spinal Tap I think Guest has some real musical talent for the type of stuff he does. Highly recommended.

I'll try to help out a little. Bernard Herrmann 1. Psycho 2. Vertigo 3. Fahrenheit 451 4. Taxi Driver 5. North by Northwest Danny Elfman 1. Edward Scissorhands 2. The Nightmare Before Christmas 3. Sleepy Hollow 4. Sommersby 5. Black Beauty Those are some of my picks. The last two Elfman picks are on Music for a Darkened Theatre, Vol. 2. I can't pick 5 Thomas Newman scores but Little Women, American Beauty and The Green Mile are worth picking up in my opinion.

It could have been a temp track.

I have to disagree-these two scores are brilliant in how they serve their film. Is melodic or harmonic interest sacrificed to accomplish this? Perhaps. But in the place of those two areas, Williams shows his mastery of the orchestra and how it can be used as an organic, cohesive unit that sounds like it is a part of the environment of the film. I hope that makes sense. As for SPR, I don't find anything wrong with the approach Williams took. I think it would have cheapened the film if he had scored it with lots of overt brass, percussion, etc. The approach he took, while not making the best album, is elegiac and appropriate for the film, which is the ultimate goal of the film composer. Just my two cents.

I hate to bump this thread-but is the CD a true hybrid? Will it work even though I don't have an SA-CD player?

I have to agree with POA. The material is much more developed, particularly in some of the imitative passages. He also gets cool points for opening the cue with a harpsichord and for using tolling bells and bell tone like sounds in the brass throughout the cue. It sounds so much more inspired than SS/PS.

Toms have relative pitches from high to low. Other percussion is unpitched and can be notated on a single line. On a 5-line staff bass drum usually gets the bottom space, snare drum gets the treble clef C space, and others fall in as needed (to the best of my knowledge).

I'm gonna play flak bait here and go with 2005. War of the Worlds is for me one of his most visceral scores, and even though it isn't thematic, I think the writing is brilliant and gets under your skin; it's one of those scores you feel before you hear and I love that about it. As much as I love Schindler's List, I prefer Munich. To me the Prayer for Peace theme seems more honest and mature than Schindler's List. Just my two cents.

I think it is a very good score that requires viewing of the film to fully appreciate. I really enjoy the rhythmic drive that so much of score contains, and the lyrical writing is beautiful. I don't find it to be an autopilot score at all and it is obvious that Williams put more time into and was inspired more by this film than Attack of the Clones. But I can't blame him for that.

No. Having bought the set (call me what you will), the matte lines are still there. They don't bother me though.

The best ones I know of are at starwars.com. The webdocs have some good session footage and and AOTC music video has some good footage too.

How is the picture and sound?

I like the end of ROTS. I know it's rehash and has a somewhat lackluster performance, but that final Force theme statement is cyclical and I like it. But more than that I like the statement of Luke's theme that precedes it and the celesta progression that leads into the horn melody. As for the other prequels, nothing from AOTC really stands out, but a couple of things in TPM stick out-the horn line when the Queen's ship lands on Tatooine and that striking brass fanfare that comes right before the balcony scene with the Sith Lords.

To get off Yoda for a short time, the official site has put up a set of 122 images showing all the changes. I never knew the film was tinkered with to the extent that it was. I was aware of the major things, but all the detail work completely escaped my attention until this morning.

I have to admit that I don't envy the guy. Not only was he scoring one of the most anticipated films of the year but he also had the task of owning up to Williams' themes. That said, I think he did a decent job. About the love theme-the new chord doesn't bother me, but one thing I did notice that may just be my perception-he seemed a bit hesitant about putting the beginning of the phrase that follows the first five notes (the offbeat sixteenths) on the offbeat-to me it never seemed to be sure about where it should lie. I also had a real issue with the hi-hat grooves under the Smallville theme early in the film as young Clark bounded through the corn fields-it reminded me of West Side Story. Also-did the new Superman theme (the "emotional" one) remind anyone else of the Jerry Goldsmith's "First Contact" theme from the Star Trek film of the same title? All in all, I give the score a B-.

It's a nice piece (I would say that, though since I am a trumpeter). I found it more accessible than the cello concerto. That said, I have only heard it with the piano reduction and not the orchestra. I have avoided the recording because I don't want to hear Arturo Sandoval do classical.

Across the Stars. I know that it is a reworking of Hook crossed with Nixon, but to me it is more emotionally complex. It doesn't necessarily have the harmonic or melodic interest of Superman, but Across the Stars just clicks with me more.

Starwars.com has just put up an article about the release of the original, unaltered Star Wars trilogy on DVD. This sounds great-hopefully the scores will be intact and in great sound.

It's very good in the film. I'm not sure how it would be on the album, as a large part of the score is very subtle and very dark and not really thematic. But some of the final cues are nice and it might be worth it just for those.

That's a great point. I know I always tend to use film music as background music-I don't know how long it's been since I just put on a score and listened to it for the sheer pleasure of it. Certain cues, yes, but it's been a while since I played a complete score.

The Wagner is from Lohengrin.

Why? As in, Why did you make this picture?