BLUMENKOHL

Vangelis 2
Silvestri 0
As of the first two episodes.

I think it's fine as long as they don't try making her Bond's sidekick, which is what the rumors have mainly been about. I'm fine with her being able to kick ass and such, because wouldn't you want the head of MI6 to be aided by a secretary that can also function as an agent? I would have loved to see Lois Maxwell do something fun on occasion besides flirt with Bond, if done right. One of the highlights of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER is seeing Moneypenny on the field. It's such a nice twist for the Bond formula, I'm surprised EON didn't try doing that again in the films afterward.

I didn't think either Steef or Blume had an actual issue with it. Well, maybe Steef....

http://www.jurassicsystems.com

http://www.jurassicsystems.com

I think the E.T. experiment in the video illustrates why film music has gotten so backgroundy. With today's visual and audio technology, a lot of what the music was doing there could be achieved visually.
Neat tribute though!
And fantastic advice from John Williams himself about the importance of getting something, anything down on paper, and then refining and iterating. It applies to virtually every field. Creative, technical, physical.

I think the E.T. experiment in the video illustrates why film music has gotten so backgroundy. With today's visual and audio technology, a lot of what the music was doing there could be achieved visually.
Neat tribute though!
And fantastic advice from John Williams himself about the importance of getting something, anything down on paper, and then refining and iterating. It applies to virtually every field. Creative, technical, physical.

Of "classical" music, I consider Vivaldi my favorite composer.
And this album contains, in my opinion, the finest recordings of some of his works:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQITXE/ref=dm_ws_ps_cdp?ie=UTF8&s=music
The "La Follia" recording is sublime.
I'm hesitant to post a shitty-quality YouTube video, but even through that amount of compression, the performance shines through:

Of "classical" music, I consider Vivaldi my favorite composer.
And this album contains, in my opinion, the finest recordings of some of his works:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQITXE/ref=dm_ws_ps_cdp?ie=UTF8&s=music
The "La Follia" recording is sublime.
I'm hesitant to post a shitty-quality YouTube video, but even through that amount of compression, the performance shines through:

In Prisoner of Azkaban there is this wonderfully haunting moment where I think the camera is flying over the Hogwarts Express as it winds around the misty scene and you have these distant and incomplete echoes of A Window to the Past.
It's genuinely my favorite John Williams haunting moment. And it's about 5-7 seconds tops.
The music itself is misty. What's more haunting than mist?!

In Prisoner of Azkaban there is this wonderfully haunting moment where I think the camera is flying over the Hogwarts Express as it winds around the misty scene and you have these distant and incomplete echoes of A Window to the Past.
It's genuinely my favorite John Williams haunting moment. And it's about 5-7 seconds tops.
The music itself is misty. What's more haunting than mist?!

Oh absolutely. I think it would be a gross oversimplification to say every minute of Goldsmith's post-cancer life and therefore every minute spent writing Nemesis was bitter. Even cancer patients have ups and downs. In fact from my own experiences with co-workers and my own mother, I would say it's a hallmark of the disease: the roller coaster ride nature of it. But the downs to be very down, and they gently seep to every other part of life.
I think it serendipitous that Nemesis ended up on Goldsmith's plate when it did. The film, as average as it was, I think provided an opportunity for Jerry to write more of himself and his life into the music than he normally would.

Star Trek Nemesis is a score about a man who is facing his mortality too soon and at the hands of a terrible disease. Except, the man who is dying isn't Shinzon. It's Jerry Goldsmith.

I never appreciated Nemesis until just a few years ago. When it first came out, I hated it. It was strange. It felt like familiar Goldsmith, maybe too familiar, but distorted. As though the man's style had been taken and put through a twisted fun house mirror and sprinkled with rage. It was, and I would venture to say, is, a tough score to love. Something just isn't right, and to be honest I can't quite place it. Maybe it's the theme? It's off-putting. It straddles this strange border between melancholy and menacing. When I listen to the music I'm left in a hollow, empty, depressing mood. And unlike depressing scores like Schindler's List, there is not much innate beauty to the music itself. The whole score, like its main theme is in a profoundly uncomfortable place: sorrow and rage. And the struggle between the two is never resolved. No dramatic resolution of the two ideas into something beautiful, something more is made.

It takes two disconcerting forms of human emotion and presents them as is. Raw.

Maybe that's why it's such an upsetting score. Maybe that's why it feels half-baked.

It's no wonder why I once thought this was a dud. I thought Jerry dropped the ball. He made a mistake. He made poor decisions. He fucked up, and we got an ugly, raw score that turned me and a lot of people off. Or maybe, maybe he just ran out of time? Maybe his heart wasn't in it anymore?

Well, the highs and lows of twelve years of life since, a dash of hindsight, and the application of probability theories have all made me realize: I just wasn't getting it back then.

It's simply unlikely that an artist, one like Goldsmith, with such an incredible track record, who still continued to write music well into his final days, would suddenly be uninspired, or make a mistake, or drop the ball.

Instead, I realize now that every corner of this score was crafted with a very clear direction and purpose. And it was crafted by a man who had entered the frightening world of cancer. A world, where upon entry, people all-but merge with the technology and medicine that will preserve their lives. A world where people are poked and prodded to add months, weeks, month, or even days to their life. A world where they face their mortality every moment of every day. A world where they face their helplessly watching loved ones. A world where you're not sure if you have two more years or two more months.

I can't imagine what it must have been like for a person in that world to watch and score a film like Nemesis, or a character like Shinzon. Or the breaking of the family. Loss. Moving on. The blood work. The rage.

"Look in the mirror, see yourself."

Indeed.

When you let all that sink in, and you listen to a track like "Full Reverse," with its angry, raw, orchestral power, your mental imagery is no longer of CGI ships pulling away, but of a great artist expressing his own raw anger and his ordeal through the most personal of ways he knows: the notes written on a page.

When you listen to a track like "Repairs" you begin to wonder if the track isn't perhaps the musical narrative of a day in the life of an ill Jerry Goldsmith. Distant warmness, cold technological...almost...medical synthesizers. Nauseating distorted electronics.

It all of a sudden makes sense why the snare drums at the beginning of "Attack Pattern" sound like they are about to be ripped apart from the fury with which they are being struck.

I honestly cannot think of a Jerry Goldsmith score that has as aggressive, direct, and raw a performance and writing as this. It gets downright ugly.

What we have in Nemesis is a personal work of art. It is a glimpse into a world that few of us want to catch sight of. A window into the life of a composer in a profoundly difficult time.

The dark score doesn't fit Star Trek like a glove. It's too depressing for the Star Trek universe. But Jerry gave us over three hundred scores where he lifted films from hideousness to tolerability, and from goodness to greatness. Surely then, the man deserves just one film where the score is more an expression of himself than the universe of the movie?

Blume Score: 89%

I thoroughly appreciated the appalling, brutal "conceptual" reality of Sherlock shooting Magnussen. Not the action or the on-screen violence...but the horrifying idea beneath it.
You can be a highly intelligent person, top of the world, just topped the smartest man in England, and you ruled the WORLD with the abilities of your mind.
Within a fraction of a second your brain, the weapon, the tool that has led to your conquest of the world, has ceased sending signals throughout itself and your body, and it is splattered on your front patio.
In the same way, it's beautifully mirrored on Sherlock's end. You can be a highly intelligent person, just back and top of the world again, you pride yourself on control and logic, you've never killed anyone intentionally, and all of a sudden your brain, overcome by the reality of the situation has led you to pull the trigger.

I thoroughly appreciated the appalling, brutal "conceptual" reality of Sherlock shooting Magnussen. Not the action or the on-screen violence...but the horrifying idea beneath it.
You can be a highly intelligent person, top of the world, just topped the smartest man in England, and you ruled the WORLD with the abilities of your mind.
Within a fraction of a second your brain, the weapon, the tool that has led to your conquest of the world, has ceased sending signals throughout itself and your body, and it is splattered on your front patio.
In the same way, it's beautifully mirrored on Sherlock's end. You can be a highly intelligent person, just back and top of the world again, you pride yourself on control and logic, you've never killed anyone intentionally, and all of a sudden your brain, overcome by the reality of the situation has led you to pull the trigger.

Watching Cosmos as a young boy was probably one of the most profound experiences of my youth. Changed my thinking, changed the trajectory of my life to a large extent.

Speaking of Sagan, the Sagan series have to be some of my favorite YouTube-age videos.
http://saganseries.com

Ah, love to hear Jerry's angry brass writing once again. No one else could write brass like him.
Love the synth arpeggio in "The Scorpion" now that I can hear it.

If you ever wondered how those awesome shots in Sherlock are accomplished....

And that effectively means Gilliam is bitching about a director's personality manifesting in his film. In which case he is the worst offender.

They are two very different film makers with two very different tastes. Gilliam doesn't get that.

This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
So might as well do it.

There may actually be empirical evidence to support that. My wife's research is actually focused in this "choice" area of behavioral economics. It's already been established that decision making is a very laborious process for the mind. Every decision you make drains you of substantial decision making "reserves." And the greater the number of choices the worse the effect, sometimes to the point of decision paralysis. If not paralysis, then the more decisions you make without taking a break and letting your mind and body rest, the worse your decisions become.
Interestingly, in the game industry realized this independently when designing games with choices. When you give players too many options they just sort of freeze up, or start doing some really dumb things. They start looking for shortcuts, or ways to avoid the decision, or make it in the least mentally taxing way. They start doing everything but playing the game before them just to avoid picking from 20 different weapons.
My wife would be quick to say, no one has studied filmmakers so it's unwise to extrapolate. But still, it's not too far fetched to imagine leaving all the big decisions for high-pressure 5 days before the film is being shipped to theaters will have negative consequences on the quality of the decisions made for the film.

There may actually be empirical evidence to support that. My wife's research is actually focused in this "choice" area of behavioral economics. It's already been established that decision making is a very laborious process for the mind. Every decision you make drains you of substantial decision making "reserves." And the greater the number of choices the worse the effect, sometimes to the point of decision paralysis. If not paralysis, then the more decisions you make without taking a break and letting your mind and body rest, the worse your decisions become.
Interestingly, in the game industry realized this independently when designing games with choices. When you give players too many options they just sort of freeze up, or start doing some really dumb things. They start looking for shortcuts, or ways to avoid the decision, or make it in the least mentally taxing way. They start doing everything but playing the game before them just to avoid picking from 20 different weapons.
My wife would be quick to say, no one has studied filmmakers so it's unwise to extrapolate. But still, it's not too far fetched to imagine leaving all the big decisions for high-pressure 5 days before the film is being shipped to theaters will have negative consequences on the quality of the decisions made for the film.

Pre-ordered the CD from Amazon.com. Marcus Paus is the next John Williams.