BLUMENKOHL

Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens.  Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb.  Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it.  Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level.  Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there.  Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity.  The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to.  Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.)  "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy.  For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen.  A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience.  Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself.  Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music.  Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining.  Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording.  Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic.  Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time.  Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good.  Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet.  Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you.  Don't carry around more than a dozen albums.  One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention.  If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone.  Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music.  Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room.  There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you.  Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more.  If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick.  Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this.  While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before.  Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds. 

Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens.  Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb.  Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it.  Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level.  Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there.  Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity.  The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to.  Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.)  "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy.  For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen.  A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience.  Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself.  Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music.  Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining.  Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording.  Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic.  Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time.  Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good.  Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet.  Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you.  Don't carry around more than a dozen albums.  One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention.  If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone.  Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music.  Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room.  There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you.  Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more.  If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick.  Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this.  While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before.  Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds. 

Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens.  Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb.  Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it.  Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level.  Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there.  Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity.  The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to.  Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.)  "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy.  For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen.  A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience.  Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself.  Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music.  Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining.  Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording.  Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic.  Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time.  Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good.  Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet.  Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you.  Don't carry around more than a dozen albums.  One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention.  If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone.  Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music.  Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room.  There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you.  Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more.  If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick.  Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this.  While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before.  Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds. 

Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens.  Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb.  Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it.  Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level.  Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there.  Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity.  The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to.  Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.)  "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy.  For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen.  A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience.  Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself.  Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music.  Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining.  Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording.  Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic.  Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time.  Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good.  Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet.  Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you.  Don't carry around more than a dozen albums.  One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention.  If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone.  Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music.  Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room.  There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you.  Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more.  If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick.  Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this.  While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before.  Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds. 

Listen to good music again and again. Truly good music will only get better with repeated listens.  Don't listen to music all the time, you'll go numb.  Don't listen to good music while doing other things. Listen to it when you can really listen to it.  Don't listen to dark music on sunny days and don't listen to cheery music on rainy days. Heighten the experience by matching music to the weather. It'll take you to another level.  Listen to pre-17th century music from time to time, there's something magical there.  Fuhget about sound quality, sometimes the best recordings really are the older recordings with the terrible fidelity.  The rainier the weather, the older the music you need to listen to.  Save the pop, electronic, and new-fangled stuff for when you want to listen to music and do other stuff (work, exercise, etc.)  "Turn-down" music at home is awesome before bed. Find something relaxing, set a low volume, turn off the screens and enjoy.  For the ultimate listening experience: wait till night, preferably a little before you get tired. Grab your best headphones, turn out the lights, close your eyes, lie down and listen to one album of your choice. No rewind, no fast forward, just listen.  A glass of red wine before hand heightens the experience.  Don't get too analytical listening to the music. You'll ruin music for yourself.  Quietly humming along to music (especially the basses/lower end instruments) heightens your "feel" for the music.  Never listen to music before having a serious listening session. Let the silence drive you mad with anticipation. Nothing tastes as good as water after being in the desert, and no music sounds as good as what you listen to after abstaining.  Decently performed live music  > amazingly performed recording.  Angry music will make you angry, dark music will make you dark, and optimistic music will make you optimistic.  Own a musical instrument of some kind, and fiddle around with it from time to time.  Older music is better for the soul: there is an optimism, even in its darkest moments, that propels you in your life. Newer music is too real for its own good.  Take your streaming playlists, shuffle mode, etc. and flush them down the internet toilet.  Make a deliberate choice about what music you listen to and why, however broad or specific your goal, don't let some playlist make that choice for you.  Don't carry around more than a dozen albums.  One album listened to intensely for a week is better than 12 albums hopping from album to album and with half your attention.  If you really need to work and listen to music, loop a single track until you're done. That way you don't lose the zone.  Do not let music become your proxy for feeling emotions. Real experiences > music.  Good speakers will always beat the best headphones. Music hits different when it’s propagating through the room.  There’s music you can listen to with other people, and there’s music that will deflate and go flaccid when someone else is in the room with you.  Don’t be a computer with the rules, bend and break to your heart’s content but if you take nothing else away: temper your musical consumption and you will enjoy the fewer moments of deliberate music listening a lot more.  If you want to heighten your experience of music, a cup of coffee or strong tea about 15 minutes before will do the trick.  Let the music flow, don’t keep pressing the rewind button on your favorite part…trust me on this.  While listening to something you’ve listened to a million times, scan the spectrum. Pay attention to just the low end. Or the mids. Or the highs. See if you hear something you never noticed before.  Music + sex only work if you can keep physical rhythm. But even so, eventually the music and the rhythm you want will be mismatched. Like shower sex, best to avoid it. More glamorous than it sounds. 

Leaving it with an exclusive private corporation? Whatever. 
 
Go look at what Aaron Copland left at the Library of Congress, accessible to any peasant on the planet now that it’s being digitized. 

I don't like E.T., Hook, or 1941.  
 
I usually don't care for Williams in militaristic mode.  
 
There are swaths of the original Star Wars scores that are just completely uninteresting to me.
 
Some Williams themes start with great promise and are then resolved in an awkward or clumsy way.
 
He writes too many endings sometimes.
 
Williams post 2000 >>> Williams pre 2000

His point has some merit. When you choose to put classical music into your movie you are bound to form some associations with elite and pretentious snobbery.
 
But to diss 2001 for having snobby classical music is to diss the Queen of England for wearing snobby clothing. 
 
It’s a snobby movie and the snobby music works. 

I think Alexcremer's answer would be: it depends on the end result. 
 
And...shockingly, I agree with him. 
 
One of the greatest marriages of music and picture (the end of E.T.) is effectively a director cutting a scene to a pre-existing piece of music, rather than vice versa. For all intents and purposes what Williams wrote wasn't appropriate for the scene. So the director made the scene appropriate for the music.
 
In other words, screw the process: the outcome is what matters. 

Understand it in what way?  How it relates to the retroactive abstraction of general principles from past music people call music theory?  Then sure.  In a more meaningful, interesting way?  Not really.

I have a fetish for grandmasters and craftsmen/women working in their place of work/offices, so this is by far my favorite John Williams photo.

If Danny Elfman had written a good score, this wouldn’t be a problem. It’s irreedeemable crap, he shat over his own theme, John’s theme, and even the Wonder Woman theme. 
 
By comparison, the popular reaction to TFA was hugely positive. It’s one of the best selling film scores in the last few years. 
 
This forum has to get it through its head that just because you have an orchestra and more notes on the page than average doesn’t mean your music is good. 

Goes to show if the original trilogy were released today they would be analyzed to death and Empire would be considered a mess and disappointment. 
 
Analysis culture: how to ruin everything by intellectualizing. 

Fucking seriously? You got your knickers in a bunch over my post over 4 years ago!

Please. I doubt that anyone, including you, would be able to point to any specific 'personal style' inherent to RJ in this movie (pardon, 'product'). It's a multi million $ operation with hundreds of people working on it independently. The authors of the auteur theory never dared to dream of productions of this scope.

Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Being a Behind the Desk General is Just as Good as Being a leading the charge Leader! 

One of the plot lines I most disliked in TLJ was Poe’s. It rubbed me all kinds of the wrong way. 
 
He’s a terrible person in this movie, and Holdo and Leia serve to only make him worse. The entire arc defies everything that a Star Wars movie and a mythology should be. 
 
We send a very bizarre modern day message that a good leader is someone who methodically thinks through problems and tries to optimize the equation and saves everyone and himself.  
 
In the first part two thirds of the movie Poe is portrayed as a hotheaded instinctive idiot, who none the less puts his own ass on the line by being out in the action. The problem is that he puts other people’s asses on the line as well. Fair enough. 
 
He he comes back and he is basically told by the bureaucratic people in charge, observing the situation from the comfort of their big ships, that this is not the way it should be, you are sacrificing too much, and that you are an idiot you are demoted, SLAP. 
 
Leia is is out of commission, a new bureaucratic person takes over, and then like a classic sitcom refuses to communicate and stares pensively out into the abyss, no doubt methodically thinking through the problem and optimizing the equation. The lack of communication makes Poe take matters into his own hands, but now, starting to take the bureaucratic lessons to heart, he sends Finn and Rose to do his bidding. From his bureaucratic chambers, he deems the plan is going well, and he over throws the bureaucracy with his own.  
 
The plan backfires, things go wrong, the original bureaucracy returns to power, and Poe gets stunned.
 
We go down to the planet, the bureaucrats have kind of saved the rebels but really just fucked them by getting them cornered. So, Luke Skywalker comes in and sacrificed himself to give them a chance to save the day. 
 
What does our now more more thoughtful and pensive Bureaucracy Approved Poe do? Well he runs the numbers, optimizes the equations, and while giving a speech about sparks resolves to lead the rebellion by escaping while Luke sacrifices himself for the cause. 
 
But it’s Poe, right? Surely he wouldn’t be that bureaucratic! Surely he would put his ass on the line and find a way to help Luke buy even more time for the Rebels!
 
Right? 
 
No! Sacrifice is verboten in this new bureaucratic order. Poe determines that being a good leader in this case doesn’t mean taking some personal risk to help maximize the Rebellions chances. 
 
So he literally leads the band, first in line running away from danger, with Bureaucratic Leia smiling at how much of a desk general Poe has become through a rigorous regime of slaps and stuns. 
 
All this, literally in the same universe where just a couple of years ago Jyn and a band of rebels defy the bureaucracy and steal a shuttle to go get plans for a deadly weapon with virtually no hope of success and die not even knowing if they were successful. And that was the message: that doing the right thing and taking PERSONAL risk even when the bureaucracy disagrees is the foundation of the good side. 
 
What an absolutely shitty message the Poe arc sends. 
 
 
 
 
 

If you were a true Star Wars fan, you would know that planets strong with the force like Ahch-to and Dagobah tend to warp the passage of time. An excellent bit of canonic trivia to overcome the sloppy chronology in ESB and now TLJ!

I absolutely hated that plot line. 

Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Being a Behind the Desk General is Just as Good as Being a leading the charge Leader! 

I think he's the best of the young trio.

I think he handled Kylo well. The overall Rey/Ren dynamic was the main strength of the film. Daisy is good, but Adam was the stand out of the film by far.

Oh, I get it. Sequels tend to cheapen everything that came before and themselves in the process. Because there never will be a happily ever after, the emperor wasn’t the end all and be all, and I’m sure there will be a Snoke 2.0, Emperor 3.0. 
 
I agree. 
 
You know why they left you wanting more with Snoke, right @Quintus? 
 
 
So here are the risks I saw Rian take: 
 
The fandom wanted a deep historical backstory for Snoke as some master architect character – Rian killed him off and made him unimportant to the story.  The fandom wanted/expected some vital parentage for Rey, maybe even Skywalker's daughter – Rian made her a nobody. The fandom wanted Rey to play with the dark side, as is fashionable with heroes these days – Rian made her empathetic but unfazed by the dark side. The fandom wanted Luke to be an ongoing presence in the trilogy – Rian killed him off.  Those are gambles. The divided reaction to this movie tells me Rian took risks. If you say he didn't take big enough chances, I'd agree. But having Luke be darker and edgier is not something I consider a risk (as the marketing hinted). It's pandering to fashion these days.    Anyways, I just doubt we will ever see a big gamble with these movies under Disney. 

I reaaaallllly loved that detail. It’s the kind of thing you often see in ancient mythologies. These tiny misunderstandings that lead to cosmic consequences.