nicholas
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Posts posted by nicholas
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I watched a DVD of "Under the Sand" ("Sous la Sable") last week and was very impressed by the score. It was by a composer I'd never come across before, Philippe Rombi. He seems to have scored quite a few films, mostly French, and he often works in collaboration with director Francois Ozon. Does anyone have any experience of his music? any recommendations?
John Williams scores are so few and far between these days I feel like its time I found another composer to bore people rigid about...
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I clearly remember the majority view on Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone when it first came out was very negative. The concensus appeared to be it lacked 'magic'.
Now look.
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Groundhog Day.
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I don't understand the question.
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'Close Encounters' taught me about the potency of the bonding between image and music. It haunted me and still does. I've bought every John Williams score since, even when I haven't seen the film (sometimes the films have little interest for me).
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The solo oboe tune in Stepmom from "Taking Pictures."
The opening of "Audience with the Holy Father" in Monsignor - a lovely question/answer motif with such subtle harmonies.
God, the man's a genius.
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If John Williams didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him.
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Is anyone here familiar with the work of this composer? He seems to be quite prolific. I only know him from his haunting work on the sublime "Inspector Morse" series - which usually took second place to the detective's beloved opera. Hearsay has it that the original music contains hidden clues to the identity of the murderer, in Morse code and the like, and of course the theme tune spells out Morse's name in Morse code (I am reliably informed).
I have recently started watching the follow up series - called, rather blandly, "Lewis" - for which Pheloung also wrote the music and I must say I am very impressed... It captures the same atmosphere as the original and the music is just stunning.
Any views?
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Didn't he write something for Dukakis? By the way - who IS Dukakis?
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Doesn't it fall into that category of something that's so bad - it's good?
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I am very fond of this score and cannot see why it took so long for it to be released. For me the highlight is not the much feted Gloria or the scherzo but the first few bars of "Audience with the Holy Father." I just can't get those beautiful opening phrases, backed by the wonderfully subdued strings, out of my head. Listen again in case you missed them...
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Sorry - I forgot. Who committed suicide?
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Jonathan Ross hosted this year. Or should that be Jonathan Woss?
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Has anyone noticed how often the music used in film trailers has nothing to do with the score? Example: yesterday I bought the soundtrack for "Atonement" having heard the music which accompanied clips from the film during the BAFTA awards and being rather impressed by it. The music is wonderful - but it has nothing to do with what was playing during the show. I can understand that different music might be used in a trailer during an early stage in a film's production when perhaps the score hasn't been completed or even recorded - I seem to remember this happening for Schindler's List - but weeks, months afterwards? What's going on?
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The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin deserves a mention in this thread, especially given his likely influence on Spielberg and Williams when they collaborated on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For an early performance of his Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Scriabin had a special keyboard built that projected different coloured lights onto a screen in the concert hall according to which notes were played.
Williams mentions Scriabin in the liner notes of the CE3K special edition CD so I guess it was that piece he had in mind. I wonder if Scriabin's 'mystic chord' shows up anywhere in that or any other of John Williams's scores? It consists of a series of ascending fourths (C - F sharp - B flat - E - A - D) and appears in a few of Scriabin's works, including Prometheus.
Wasn't it Zoltan Kodaly?
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Death in Venice - with slow movement of Mahler's fifth
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'Prolific' seems an inadequate word. I wonder if you bumped into Ennio and said, "Ennio, old chum, can you whistle me the main theme from 'I Marziani hanno dodici mani' he'd know how it went? I doubt it somehow. I wonder if John Williams has problems with some of his obscurer scores from the 60s?
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Thank you for all your encouraging comments. You're all right. The CD arrived the following day and I must say I was completely taken aback by how good the music is. The Gloria is a revelation - not at all what I was expecting - it's actually quite modernistic. And the rest of the score is full of beautiful things - the opening of "Audience with the Holy Father" in particular.
The whole thing a remarkably bracing breath of fresh air - and all for an apparently dud film too...
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I just ordered "Monsignor" from Movie Grooves - a great UK site. It wasn't cheap. Just how does it compare to other scores written around the same time? Is it a classic? Have I wasted my money? You just wonder when it has taken so long to get a proper dedicated CD release...
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All this reminds me of a bad joke.
"Do you talk to your wife while you're making love?"
"Only if she phones."
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Last week I got Transformers out on DVD. Funny how it's possible to enjoy a film without understanding a single moment of it.
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Close Encounters. The music haunted me. Not the 'When You Wish Upon a Star' stuff, just the mostly atonal underscore. I got it for Christmas on a cassette - best present ever. Anyone remember cassettes?
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These boards are NOT the place for patriotism. After all, it's so un-ENGLISH.
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The main theme with solo trumpet is as seventies as sideburns - I love it. It's actual a rather wistful, plaintive sort of tune, particularly effective on solo clarinet as it appears later in the score. And the training music is impossibly catchy.
Exactly what JW scores are true 5 star scores to you?
in General Discussion
Posted
I'd say (roughly in order):
Angela's Ashes
Schindler's List
Close Encounters
Hook
Star Wars
Empire Strikes Back
The Fury
Munich
Jane Eyre
War of the Worlds (yes, seriously...)
And all the other great ones I've forgotten...
Funnily enough, the Indy and Harry Potter scores, seeming mainly to consist of 'action' music, don't do it so much for me, although I LOVE (and couldn't live without) "Fawkes the Phoenix" and "Window to the Past"...