Uni

I need to catch up with these. I've been working through so many classic scores from the Golden Age of Hollywood that I seem to be forgetting about all the new stuff coming out these days—and then there was two weeks of Horner-only listening that pushed everything back further. Maybe I'll take a break from the past this week and focus on the present (and the future).

MI:III - Finally got around to seeing this (years too late), on my way to Ghost Protocol and in preparation for the new film. The first MI was a decent, interesting film, but a little underwhelming. The second one was a flop. If there's one action director who can outdo Michael Bay when it comes to stupid slo-mo camera work, it's John Woo, and it completely undermined this film. So they gave J.J. the reins for his first big-screen effort . . . and man, did he come through. This was easily the best of the series (so far, anyway), and one of the best action movies I've seen in a long time. Tom Cruise has been hit-and-miss in recent years—hell, when you get right down to it, he's been that way through pretty much his entire career—but he plays Ethan Hunt with so much intensity that you have to appreciate everything he invests in the role. I thought the story was great, the twists were fun, and the action choreography was top-notch (as I would expect from J.J.). Just a great, fun film.

So I put together a top-20 list, and arranged it in order . . . and realized that in doing so, I was, by default, creating a top-10 list. So I guess it's all good (I can always post my 10 runners-up anyway, right?). I'll be putting up my list sometime today or tomorrow. And I'll be publishing the overall results along with the Top 10 Scores list next Monday at 9:30 PDT. So if you want to take part, you now have just over a week to put your lists in order.

ATTENTION MODERATORS: The board has developed some kind of glitch that now seems to be replicating posts from the thread about Prometheus and putting them here, in a post about the top ten scores composed by James Horner (who didn't write the score for Prometheus and has never worked with Ridley Scott). We need to get tech support on this right away. . . . Since the conversation's here 'n' all, though . . . for the record, and speaking as a lifelong Alien fan, Prometheus was a terrible movie. ***************************** Now that that's out of the way, if we can back on topic again: I'm writing up my own list at the moment, and hope to post it in a little while here. I'm thinking that I'm going to publish the final results of the poll next Monday at exactly 9:30 PDT (the four-week mark). That gives everyone another week to finalize their ideas and post them—or revise their previous lists, if they choose.

Well . . . the whole "listening party" thing implies that we're listing what's on our playlist at the moment—just like the "What's the last score you listened to?" thread, exclusive to James Horner. But there's no reason you can't recommend something for the rest of us to listen to. Still fits the theme just fine. And Balto does seem to be Horner's overlooked animated score. It's just as good as The Land Before Time and An American Tale, but it gets a lot less attention for some reason.

That has to be the single best phonetic rendering of the danger motif I've ever seen. Nice. Now do "Stealing the Enterprise. . . ."

Man . . . I know what I said about the "hard making it great" (well, Tom Hanks said it for me), but . . . this is turning out to be a much tougher task than I would've dreamed. Maybe we should do 20, given that there are 10-15 times as many pieces as there are scores in the man's repertoire.

I'm not as picky about sound quality this and that, and it's so much easier to organize, manipulate, and mix and match digitally (playlists 'n' all), that I don't make nearly the effort to change out CDs that I used to. It's just simpler this way, IMO.

Two things popped into my head when I read the thread title. The first was that this has to be the subject of one of those Christopher Guest mockumentaries. Fred Ward would play the part of 007. Bob Balaban would be conducting the orchestra. And Guest himself would have to be the director (a la Waiting for Guffman). I can see him now, talking to someone beside the camera: "It wouldn't be Bond without an 'opening credit' sequence, so we have Cirque du Soleil doing that whole thing. Y'know. And he'll have this gadget where he presses the little button on his cigarette case, and a 'hologram' of Stephen Sondheim pops out and does this big musical number. And I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that we'll go down in the books with the most expensive and elaborate car chase scene in Broadway history. If you've ever imagined what a combination of Oklahoma! and The French Connection would look like, then you might have some idea of what I'm talking about here. . . ." The second was Michael Palin's voice at the end of the Argument Clinic sketch, saying, "What a stupid concept."

It was definitely better than Armageddon. And for some reason, the piece that's gone through my head the most over the last couple of weeks (when I haven't actually been listening to JH) has been "Goodbye and Godspeed"—especially the section during the end credits with the chorus. It's a very solid bit of Horner scoring but not one that has any chance of making my top-10 list (either one).

This wouldn't have meant the end of the show. Harry Shearer is one of the brightest comedy minds in the business, but this is voice-over animation. There's plenty of talent out there. This is like the days when the original cast of Saturday Night Live were moving on to movies; people everywhere were predicting the show's demise. (And that's one program that's been around longer than The Simpsons.) Not that I'm a fan myself. I've seen maybe six or seven episodes total since the show began. They were funny, clever, worth a smile. But I've never understood what's kept it going so long.

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. . . .