Uni

Finally someone else agrees! Oh, I'm with you too. I hated neither the movie nor the score, but neither of them really stood out with me. I didn't feel it was another great Williams action-film score. Again, not terrible (any time you don't label a Williams score a classic around here, people assume you're taking the other extreme and have turned altogether to the dark side), but definitely not one of his best works. I liked this one much better than the first Gremlins score—though that was judging by the OST. I've been meaning to get my hands on the Deluxe Edition for a while now. I'll have to give your montage a listen first, just to see if it'll be a worthwhile purchase.

It'll definitely be on my Top 10 (as soon as I can figure out which one will get that coveted last spot. . . .)

I was just as surprised by that. Usually unreleased cues are wandering, fill-in-the-gaps pieces that were kept off the OST for good reason. But the Rocketeer unreleased pieces were like smaller parts of the bigger whole—full of same sorts of theme and melody featured in the rest of the score, like he painted the whole picture (even the lesser details) with the same brush. It really is an amazing piece of work.

At 9:30 PDT—the two-week mark—I put on "Re-Entry and Splashdown" (and followed through with the "End Credits") from Apollo 13. I wanted to recognize the occasion with something a little more uplifting and hopeful . . . although I have to confess that when the music reached the point where Tom Hanks says, "This is Apollo 13, signing off," I got a little misty-eyed. And now it's time to lift the moratorium on scores by other composers. Two weeks is a fine way to honor a great composer, but I need to get back to some of the stuff I was working through before the news struck (starting with A.I., now that it's here!).

I've gotten mine. And I think today will be the day I listen to it. I've been on JH for two weeks, and it's time to move on to other things. This seems like the best place to start.

I've said as much before: trying to correct every mistake on an internet message board is the voyage of the damned (especially in a forum where so many people speak and write English as a second language—more's the credit to them). It isn't worth the prolonged effort, and since you don't really know whether it was a random missed keystroke or if they really don't know better, you wind up offending people at least half the time with your presumption. Of course, I feel the exception is when the typo/mistake winds up being something really funny. It's no different than when someone says something the wrong way out loud: as long as everyone can have a laugh about it, then it should be no big deal. (And for the record, I think the above "Sta Tek" blooper falls under this category. Obviously a simple mistake, but no reason why we can't smile over it.)

The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper - Strange that no one's listed this in their top 10 yet. . . . I'd almost forgotten I had this one tucked away among my LP set. The album features only three Horner pieces, and all three are pretty much exactly the same: pure, unadulterated bluegrass romp. From James Horner. (I know, right?) At least this is one score where he can't be accused of the slightest bit of self-plagiarism, either before or after. (And there are no synth voices to be found!)

I don't think there's anyone here who's a JW fan to the exclusion of all other composers. More accurate to say we're all just film music fans—though JW's no doubt the consensus favorite—and there's no way a person can be a fan of film scores over the last three decades without recognizing and appreciating the works and influence of James Horner. Still, it's kind of an odd list of pieces so far (at least from where I'm standing) . . . proving only that everyone has vastly different tastes.

Nice list. But you've only got 9 there. Which of your honorable mentions would you like to earn the extra point?

This one has grown on me immensely. Time was when I didn't give it a second thought. Now it's a semi-serious contender for that Top-10 list (though not likely to make the final cut). There's a deeper passion at work here than might be immediately obvious to some. Really moving stuff. Seriously! Cocoon was the first score to feature many of the sounds he would later replicate, and which still work brilliantly today.

Copy that. Thanks for clarifying.

It's okay if you are intimidated by my top 9, these are real good pieces, I know :lol: Those are intimidatingly good pieces, for sure. Actually, though, that would be a top 11 list—the first three parts of Iris are separate works, and are threatening to push the last one off the end (although I'm not sure which piece in Braveheart is represented by the title "Theme" anyway). So you'll need to clarify which of those Iris pieces you want to keep, or let BH go.

Ssssooooo . . . are these your choices for the top 10 votes, or are you just sort of inserting that conversationally? Just curious.

I know. Who was the dumb ass who thought this would be a good idea. . . ? I figured I had it narrowed down pretty well, but the more I listen to in an attempt to "eliminate" certain contenders just makes the decisions that much tougher. I'll have my 10 scores in place long before this list is ready. . . .

I've been noticing that as I listen to his stuff. Anything piece connecting with flight tends to rise above its companion pieces in a score. "Flying" from The Man Without a Face, "Flight of the Griffin" from The Spiderwick Chronicles, all the material from The Rocketeer and Apollo 13—even the change in mood that takes place in Krull between the moment the fire mares are galloping on the ground and the moment they take flight . . . the subject just seemed to bring the greatest inspiration out of him.

You have to think that, given his relationship with the Flying Horsemen, that he loved not just flying but the idea of those daredevil acrobatics. I'm sure they showed him the how-tos on some of their tricks, and it isn't hard to believe he was prone to a little experimentation in his spare time. But he wasn't a full-time stunt pilot, and he probably wasn't as capable as he might have thought he was. Terrible to have it end like this, but as everyone's been saying, he was doing what he loved. I won't be the one to blame him for that.

You're not kidding. I was listening to tracks from this the other day, and was unexpectedly blown away. (I've had this thing for 30 years now, so I'm probably a little inured to it.) I just sat and shook my head, thinking, "A kid in his twenties, writing for his first big studio picture, had no business composing a score this sophisticated." The complexities in the writing are sometimes easy to overlook—especially, again, if you've seen the movie 100 times and have listened to the score ten times more than that—but when you stop and really listen, even just to the opening credits sequence, you can't help but see what a prodigy Horner was. It's no coincidence that this is the one that launched his career into the stratosphere.

Yep. It's well worth the $100 or so to get yourself an extra TB of space.

Yeah. People often fly single-engine aircraft at low altitudes in low-population areas.

Getting ready to catch up on the last few entries. Before I do so—and see what changes it brings—I can report that the top 3 scores are separated by only 1 point apiece at the moment, as are the last 4 on the list. The surprise sleeper (again, in my mind at least) has dropped from 2nd to 4th, but is still contending strong. And one of the scores I thought would be in the top 10 for sure only has a handful of points so far. So nothing's been decided yet, and there's plenty of opportunity for some shifting to come. Of course! Anyone can submit changes right up to the end—which still hasn't been absolutely determined yet. (I'll start a countdown in days when it seems like it's time to wrap things up.)

Actually, it sounds more to me like something catastrophic happened just a minute (or even only a few seconds) before the crash. He was steady at about 500 agl at each sighting, including a few moments before impact. The engine sounded normal. There were no erratic actions. I doubt there was much warning before everything went wrong.

Wow . . . starting to tabulate things, and seeing some very interesting things. The score currently in 2nd-place is a mind-blower (well, to me, anyway), and some of the scores I thought were shoe-ins for the final 10 are nowhere near the top, at least not yet. This is turning out a lot differently than I figured it would—which is making it that much more fun! This is probably understood, but just in case . . . again, I can't make up the order, so it goes by the order you listed them in. Also, any "ties" will be counted as holding a single place in line, pushing the last score(s) off the end of the list.

Which is interesting, because I thought there would be. (I just figured everyone would agree with my choices, y'know. . . ?) They won't be scored casually. STII will get the highest score on your list, followed by Cocoon, then Brainstorm, etc. If you have qualms about that, you'll want to rethink that ordering.

You can change your mind right up until the polls close (which is at least a week or two away, so give those new scores a listen in the meantime).

This is Horner, so we could do 50 or 100 easy. But we're after the best of the best here. It's hard, sure, but . . . Again, though, there's no need to rush into it. Take some time to think about it. If you change your mind on anything in your list, let me know.