BLUMENKOHL

This is something that happens virtually in every message board after a long time, mainly because the people who post more frequently start to get used to each other and to the respective POVs about most of the topics in discussion, especially in cases of very specific, niche-like subjects like film scores. It's part of the game, I guess, and the reason why many people in the end feel more comfortable in some boards than others.
However, that's also a sign that more often than not the subject of the discussions themselves probably arrived at a dead point. I mean, how long we can discuss perspectives, ideas and point of views about a certain topic, especially a very specific one (like, say, the aesthetic of Hans Zimmer's music or Williams' current style or complete & chronological release vs. album presentation, etc.) after years and years of debate and confrontation? The repetition of the very same concepts and threads is certainly something that speaks more about people's passion for a certain argument than the validity of the argument itself. I mean, we're not UN ambassadors talking about how keeping peace between countries (it's a stretch, I know, but take it as the ultimate example). Certain topics have only a delimited area of discussion that, after a certain amount of time, arrive at its natural end.
That's not to say people cannot nor shouldn't discuss any of those topics--this is a message board after all! But the insistence on certain arguments and the fact that, like you pointed, the subject changes rapidly from "what we're discussing" to "how we're discussing it" is likely a sign that we maybe prefer contributing because we want mainly our voice to be heard, we want to see our opinion valued and appreciated by other fellow members so that we can feel more at ease with our own point of view on certain things. At the very end, we will have always the evergreen "It's all personal taste, you know!" argument on our side, which is usually the killer of any good exchange of POVs. Because let's be frank: what we probably care the most is our own personal opinion about certain things.
I know, this very post is an example of what I just said, but actually this is the reason why I don't post much here nor any other board. I still prefer the "what" than the "how", in this very case. And that's usually much easier and funnier to do in real life conversation than in virtual places. I'd love to see more people getting engaged into speaking WHY they LOVE something instead of getting into pointless bickering about the same old things all the time and getting defensive about certain things or offensive about others. I'm not talking about personal attacks of course, those are simply a sign of disrespect and incivility.

We ended up going to see The Hobbit last night instead of tonight. We saw it in IMAX 3D non-HFR, because our local GIANT SCREEN IMAX doesn't do HFR. So my view count is two. Sadly I don't have time to do a full on Incanus style paragraphical sweeping thesis review for you all to read and scoff at and go about your business so here's a quick blow by blow.
Color coded ratings! BLUE = EXCELLENT! RED=SHIT.
Writing: 8.5/10
There are moments that really shine in the writing. The entire dwarves arrival scene for example is wonderfully done. Loved the wonderful scene by the fireplace between Gandalf and Bilbo. Overall considering the vast extraneous story elements included I have to hand it to them, they did a very high quality job. The gags and slapstick was too much. Points deducted for that.
Art, Costumes, and Set Design: 8.5/10
Everything was really well done here, but it's very obvious they didn't give it the extra mile. There are no fantastic bigatures and sets like in the LotR. Really loved Bilbo's corduroy jacket, had this lovely warm texture that worked really well for the Hobbit.
Editing: 6.0/10
This is where the film is let down. While I can honestly say every scene in the film feels justified (YOU LIKE THIS SENTENCE STRUCTURE?!), I can't say the length of the scenes feels justified. Especially action sequences that drag on and on. It's a real shame. Were it not for length, most of the scenes were really nicely woven into the story with full justification. But the editing fucked it up.
Editing for artistic effect is dreadful as well. Thorin slowmo man at the end, I'm looking at you. God that was awkward and will not age well.
Visual Effects: 8.0/10
Strong, but nothing special. WETA continues to suffer from composition issues, they cant' take 5 to 10 sources and make them fit. This has been a rather weak year for visual effects for all movies involved in 2012. So still, The Hobbit is at the top of a boring and unspecial pack this year.
There was one scene that took my breath away: Gollum's first appearance, his eyes twinkling with the small reflection of light. FANTASTIC! It made me feel terrified and excited at the same time. Which is what great CGI is supposed to do...tell a story, sometimes an emotional one. Best CGI this year.
Cinematography/Color Grading: 6.5/10
The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers are the standards against which I judge the rest of the series. Watch the Fellowship scene in Bree. It is the moment where I fell completely into the world of Middle Earth. The cinematography and color grading ooze texture...you feel the rain on your face, you feel the warmth in the firelit windows, you feel the warmth of the fireplaces. You want to be there.
In FoTR and TT They managed to be completely mystical and fantastical without delving into candy colors and Alice in Wonderland territory.
Return of the King completely dropped the ball. It became a fucking color fest of every color imaginable, with swoops of camera all over the place, and just gaudy.
The Hobbit suffers from the same problem. It's overdone in terms of cinematography and color grading. The blue darkness against fire became old after the 20th time in the same god damn movie. Every god damned sunset and sunrise is a god damned explosion of complementary colors and pretty clouds floating in the distance.
Remember the opening of Two Towers where you had this gorgeous sunrise they camped out to capture? What happened to that kind of awesome sunset/sunrise?
Music: 8.5/10
Howard Shore's original work is lovely. There is a timbre of innocence and sadness for the poor little Hobbit and his poor little Homeless band that permeates the score that I love. The editing in the film is terrible.
Sound: 5.0/10
There seemed to be a lot less detail and textural sounds than in LotR. Are the sound guys different?. Hobbiton was fairly well done...but not the rest. Is it just me? Rarely do we get to hear rustling grass, crackling fire, or creaking chairs or someone cooking in an iron pot. The world doesn't feel alive in the soundtrack. I'm not sure why.
Acting: 9.0/10
Freeman, McKellen, and Serkis are leagues ahead of everyone else. Balin was good too.
Trueness to the Hobbit by Tolkien: 9.0/10
I'm a huge reader of Tolkien's books. Read 'em multiple times. There were a couple of minor missteps. But overall I would say everyone stayed true to the spirit of Tolkien's work. I didn't doubt that, since the LotR trilogy did so well in this regard despite huge changes.
OVERALL: 7.7/10
Which is actually pretty close to my 3.75/5 (7.5/10 on the 10 point scale) stars I initially gave. So my opinion didn't change much on the second viewing.
For Comparison, I would rate:
FotR: 9.5/10
TT: 9.3/10
RotK: 8.9/10

I don't have exact figures, nor does this take into account re-releases. I used to do a lot of sleuthing on this stuff, a long time ago, around 2005. Most of my numbers utilize data from Billboards, RIAA and Nielsen. These are US-only.

The Phantom Menace OST is by far the fastest selling, 350,000 in one week, and 1,000,000 in one month. It is possibly the best selling album John Williams has released, at least in the US.

Star Wars OST is the next fastest selling, 1,000,000 in around 4 months.

None of the other Star Wars score releases have reached 1,000,000. Although they have reached 500,000, with the exception of Revenge of the Sith which is the poorest selling. No other John Williams score that I am aware of has sold more than 1,000,000 in a single release as of yet.

From what I have, combining information from RIAA/Nielsen/Billboards the rankings would look something like this.

1. Star Wars The Phantom Menace OST
2. Star Wars OST
3. E.T. The Extraterrestrial
4. The Sorcerer's Stone OST (619k (Nielsen), or 820k (Billboard) is largest number I have)
5. Empire Strikes Back OST
6. Return of the Jedi OST
7. Close Encounters OST
8. Attack of the Clones (Reached 500k in a month)
9. Jurassic Park
10. Schindler's List




In terms of untouched figures combining all the releases, Star Wars will dwarf everything else by far. A "Main Title and Cantina" music release alone sold 1,000,000.

Praising Nolan's action?
Sigh. "LOL OMG real stuff=gr8 ackshun!"
Skyfall had wonderfully directed action.

My final effort:

It's good and will work, once the colours of the images bleed and blend a little more into the main black of the border. At the moment the collage just looks a bit forced, a bit pasted on.
Also, it needs more John.

Prioritize? Nonsense. Cuts to arts funding are almost always driven by convenience.
If the arts budget was 10...15...20..30% of the Greek budget and it got slashed in half or something, I would be completely OK with such prioritizing.
But it's not. In no country on this planet does public arts funding even *approach* any meaningful proportion of government expenditures.
In the case of Greece, when your annual expenses are $140 billion, and you are cutting $10-15 million, you have to stop and ask yourself, is that cut worth it? Or are the benefits of having public arts funding far more valuable than shaving 0.01% of your total expenses off? It would be like not buying a $0.25 pencil for your child to shave 0.01% off your $2,500 monthly household expenditures.
No one is doing an analysis on the value of that cut. Things this small get cut for no reason other than they are convenient and easy for politicians to slash with comparatively little backlash. But the damage is huge.
As Steve Jobs (who took his employees out on trips to [publicly funded] museums and symphonies to inspire them in their engineering efforts) said, in a quote that highlights the importance of the arts to other industries, including engineering and technology which drive a lot of modern economies:
"I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

Prioritize? Nonsense. Cuts to arts funding are almost always driven by convenience.
If the arts budget was 10...15...20..30% of the Greek budget and it got slashed in half or something, I would be completely OK with such prioritizing.
But it's not. In no country on this planet does public arts funding even *approach* any meaningful proportion of government expenditures.
In the case of Greece, when your annual expenses are $140 billion, and you are cutting $10-15 million, you have to stop and ask yourself, is that cut worth it? Or are the benefits of having public arts funding far more valuable than shaving 0.01% of your total expenses off? It would be like not buying a $0.25 pencil for your child to shave 0.01% off your $2,500 monthly household expenditures.
No one is doing an analysis on the value of that cut. Things this small get cut for no reason other than they are convenient and easy for politicians to slash with comparatively little backlash. But the damage is huge.
As Steve Jobs (who took his employees out on trips to [publicly funded] museums and symphonies to inspire them in their engineering efforts) said, in a quote that highlights the importance of the arts to other industries, including engineering and technology which drive a lot of modern economies:
"I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

Prioritize? Nonsense. Cuts to arts funding are almost always driven by convenience.
If the arts budget was 10...15...20..30% of the Greek budget and it got slashed in half or something, I would be completely OK with such prioritizing.
But it's not. In no country on this planet does public arts funding even *approach* any meaningful proportion of government expenditures.
In the case of Greece, when your annual expenses are $140 billion, and you are cutting $10-15 million, you have to stop and ask yourself, is that cut worth it? Or are the benefits of having public arts funding far more valuable than shaving 0.01% of your total expenses off? It would be like not buying a $0.25 pencil for your child to shave 0.01% off your $2,500 monthly household expenditures.
No one is doing an analysis on the value of that cut. Things this small get cut for no reason other than they are convenient and easy for politicians to slash with comparatively little backlash. But the damage is huge.
As Steve Jobs (who took his employees out on trips to [publicly funded] museums and symphonies to inspire them in their engineering efforts) said, in a quote that highlights the importance of the arts to other industries, including engineering and technology which drive a lot of modern economies:
"I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world."

Stop fiddling with Android settings. Saves you so much time!

Steven Soderbergh's State of Cinema
Haven't seen this posted on here. It's a long long read. But really worth it. Addresses a lot of topics we recurrently discuss here.
http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/steven-soderbergh-state-of-cinema-address/#utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Excellent fit on the suit Steefy. Looks very sharp.
Almost made me feel a tingle of gay somewhere in my loins.

But the fans don't. Right, fellas?

I must also empathize with Blume also, to some extent. It does get a bit too much when the chorus joins in, just before the crescendo finish. That said, the moment in Journey to the Island where the theme finishes, and the martial rhythmic bit begins is a wonderful segue.

The point is that it's a very simple piece, based on good old triads (I-IV-V), it almost sounds "pop" in that sense. Maybe a tad too much, imho. But it's the truly perfect music for the scene it was written for. The sense of awe and wonder in the scene is almost totally dictated by the music. It seems Williams heightened to the highest level possible that "Spielberg face" feeling. So it was important for him (I guess!) to find a musical solution that would convey a sense of simplicity and directness, based on something familiar and reassuring, even singable (the music almost spells "Jurassic Park") almost to the point of sounding "pop". We know from interviews that Williams usually starts the writing process from a key moment in the film, a scene which can become the pivot around which he'll be able to build the whole composition. I guess this was the scene he tackled first, because it was important to get it right.

Elevator rides will never be the same.

Clusters.

I'm sure that study is interesting and largely valid, but I wouldn't consider it gospel on the matter. Pop music, yes. Ultra specialist? No.
This I can definitely agree with.

I agree with Marian. Since 2004 good scores have become an exception rather then a rule!
Especially in the action or thriller genres.

Goldsmith's death was the end of good music as we know it. Or at least it was the point where I realised that very little worthwhile film music was written anymore.

Collaboration for artistic purposes can be fruithful, I think, but remains contingent on an actual artistic contribution. The challenge is to have enough space to be able to offer something of merit and substance, while at the same time making sure that there's some sort of coherency -or at the very least, an interesting dynamic or tension- to the sources at hand. For this reason, I tend to prefer as heterogenous a collaborative pairing as possible.
There are creative duos and teams that succeed in establishing a kind of artistic "mutuality", although I've never personally been quite as convinced by such "collective" voices. Just as a choir blurs the color of the individual voice, so do I perceive -perhaps incorrectly or clouded by prejudice- a slight diminution of personality to such ventures. Unless they work more the way a band works, with often quite clearly defined roles and capacities.
(Some of the collaborations mentioned (Goldsmith&McNeely on "Air Force One", Goldsmith&Goldsmith on "Star Trek: First Contact") are primarily examples of collaboration dictated by time constraints, and that's entirely different.)
True, the monetary-driven pressure to adhere to what may currently be perceived as a successful "formula" (based on perceived commercial viability) is probably the one greatest obstacle facing anyone who wishes to contribute something more personal and (very likely) of greater artistic ambition and integrity.
I've dealt with this myself in my own limited experience with feature films, and it's one of the reasons why I primarily work in the field of concert music, though I'd love to score more films.
Even relatively modest productions generally have a lot of money at stake, and of course, everyone wants their film to be as successful as possible (also financially), and music tends to be an easy thing to blame and replace. In my experience, producers want to hear something that is as close to the finished product as possible, as soon as possible, and ideally as close to their expectations as possible; all three potentially problematic, as far as I'm concerned.

I wouldn't want a Giacchino-Williams collaboration.
Also, this "film composers aren't real composers/artists" attitude is what composers like Williams fought against their entire careers. Your first statement is a perpetuation of a stereotype that has plagued wonderful artists from the Steiners and Roszas to our modern day Williams. It seems you have adopted the stereotype, but tweaked it just enough to let John Williams in, in the process missing the spirit of these men's efforts against this stereotype for the last century. What a shame.

You've both gone mad! London Calling is a great cue!

Theft is the highest form of art, engineering, science, math, and every other human endeavor. Theft is how nature itself operates. Our very existence is thanks to DNA plagiarized from two parents.
There is no such thing as creativity in the fluffy sense of creating something completely new. That's just accidental discovery and it happens very rarely. And usually that's just unexpected theft. Most of the greatest works of mankind are wonderful ideas absorbed by one person from another and imbued with their individual style and flavor as it is assimilated.
It is the exact same process within the mind of a single artist. I never understood what the big deal was, and I hate the "that's theft, but that's style" pick and choosing nonsense. It's all part of the same artistic process.
The best thieves and artists are the ultimate curators. They steal the best from the best and hopefully make it better.

It's not missing large setpieces, but as Jason suggests it is missing much of the connective tissue that holds everything together. In no way is the album a cohesive listening experience or a rounded presentation of the score.