Uni

I think the lack of thematic direction beyond Behrani's theme is part of what makes it such an effective score. Also, I think it's his best use of synths ("An Older Life" and "The Dreams of Kings" are gorgeous.) Really, I love every track on the album except "Break-In." And it may be brilliantly effective in the film. I haven't seen it. Doing so may alter my impression of the music (it often does!). I'll have to give it a watch.

He did such a good job on these two films. I don't think I would've considered him the right choice for the assignment if I were looking at it ahead of time, but man, did he nail it.

Nah. I don't buy it. It's just like internet forums to take the slightest "clue" (which may not be anything but a natural, benign change in a person) and attribute massively dramatic outcomes to it. There's no reason to think any such thing at this point, and it serves no decent purpose to assign motives based on total speculation to a respected figure who's just passed.

You have to know what he's referring to. Probably the most prominent/famous example comes at the end of the main title line at the opening of Field of Dreams. He usually played it as a sort of echoing fugue after a melodic line like that, though he would sometimes use it as an effect in itself (think of the late passages of "Goodbye and Godspeed" before the end credits begin in Deep Impact). Throughout his career, it was arguably his second-favorite affectation after the danger motif.

If he didn't coin it himself, it certainly became a trademark of his.

House of Sand and Fog - Kind of a listless, wandering score. It has some beautiful pieces in it ("The Waves of the Caspian Sea," "Kathy's Night," "We Have Traveled So Far. . . ."), but I wouldn't say this is his best. In its usual wisdom, the Academy chose to nominate this while overlooking so many other works that better showcased his abilities.

Having collecting film scores for nearly as long as Horner wrote them, I continue to be amazed at how often the music you're listening to matches up perfectly with real-life moments and situations as they're happening. This has been another beautifully fitting example. I had to wait until the end of the day to start with the playbacks--I put a moratorium on all other scores in the meantime (I usually listen for an hour or two while doing admin work), and I couldn't listen to Horner during that time for fear of the reaction it might engender. When I finally got away from things, I cued up my "Just James" playlist on shuffle--I have a "Just" list for all my favorite composers--and settled in to face the grief. Turns out that, while it was a wonderfully emotional experience (as listening to his music usually is), it wasn't as completely heartbreaking as I thought it would be. Sure, tt was hard at times; I started with the two pieces I knew I had to listen to first, "Preparations for Battle" and "The Place Where Dreams Come True," but there really weren't that many tears and I had a smile on my face for much of the time. The man left such an amazing legacy for us. As masterful as Korngold was in being one of the forefathers of film music, he only scored 18 films. Horner gave us nearly 150 projects to revel in (though we're still waiting to properly revel in some of them, unfortunately). I spent time with the Ludlows, the ancient Scots, the 54th Regiment, the Apollo 13 astronauts, a Nelwyn and his Daikini companion, and many others I've gotten to know over the years. It was a great time, really. As I was nearing home and the the point when I'd have to set it aside for a while, the finale and end credits from Star Trek II popped up. I found that very appropriate, more hopeful than Spock's actual death scene. But when Leonard Nimoy began reciting the ST creed . . . that's when it got to me. Having lost him so recently made it very affecting. This was followed by "Saying Goodbye To Those You So Love," and the whole Nash thing . . . wow. But then the last piece I had time for came up: "A New Beginning" from the Avatar sessions, the scene when Jake leaves his broken, human body and takes up his new form. It made an ideal ending for the run. Then this morning I had it playing again. During the last ten minutes, on the bus from the parking lot, I was reading Joe Johnston's memorial comments. As I was reading the words of his recollection of Horner playing the Rocketeer theme on piano for him that first time, that piano began playing that theme in my ears. It was a perfectly synced moment. Nobody sitting around me could figure out why I had a gigantic smile plastered to my face and a tear in my eye all the way to the office (how do you explain something like that?).

Horner didn't score Black Friday. Indian Ocean did. . . .

I've been out of the loop around here, and haven't really gotten news on anything from anywhere recently, so I didn't hear about this until this morning. I was thunderstruck. I've had to spend the day carrying it around, numb, distracted, somehow not connected to reality the same way I was yesterday. James Horner was my second film composer. The first, having grown up as a fortunate member of the Star Wars generation, was naturally John Williams. When first encountered the fascinating concept of listening to the music from the movie away from the movie, I celebrated the novelty by picking up a few scores I already knew by heart from seeing the movies three dozen times—Superman, Close Encounters, Star Wars. I was a Williams fan before I knew I was a Williams fan. What I still didn't know was that I was a closet fan of other composers as well. I learned this from a friend who, when I told him about the new JW-centric hobby I was picking up, said to me, "You should check out James Horner." The name didn't click—even though the two movies I used to watch nearly every day after school were Close Encounters and Star Trek II. The next time I picked him up at his place, he brought the cassette for TWOK and played it on my car stereo. I could already whistle the theme, of course, but (being the slow-moving dope that I am) I hadn't yet connected the dots between that new hobby of mine and films scored by other composers. I was instantly hooked. We move on to other things that evening, and when I dropped him off later that night he forgot to take his cassette with him. Poor bastard never got it back. I just about played that thing off its reels before I got around to a CD copy of the score. From there it was on to Aliens, and Cocoon, the SCSE edition of Krull, and the twenty or so others I nabbed over the next couple of years. Horner would not keep his second-favorite status indefinitely—the eventual development of my love for Goldsmith in later years would move him back to the unfortunate position of close third—but I never fell out of love with his music. And by some odd twist, in those early years I managed to compile a collection that largely avoided his most repetitive habits. I mean, they were always around; there was never a time when you could listen to a Horner score and not know you were listening to a Horner score. But the redundancies in my collection were limited to motifs and effects for the most part: the rumbling bass echo following a melodic line, the high tinkling piano, and—of course—the danger motif. It wasn't until I really set my mind to becoming a Horner completist that I encountered the longer and more blatant examples of his copy-and-paste habit (as featured in scores like Bicentennial Man pretty much in their entirety). So in those formative days I couldn't quite understand why people made such a big deal about his "self-plagiarism." I did come to understand it later, yes, but . . . I've never been able to hold it against him to the extent others do. Partly because I couldn't hope ever to come up with one theme or melody to match with any of his, and if I did, then hell if I wouldn't use the damn thing over and over again myself; and partly because most everything he repeated was so damn beautiful and inspiring and deep and meaningful (and full of shakuhachi!). At least he was replaying great stuff. (Y'never hear this sort of complaint about rappers, for instance, whose every "song" sounds exactly like all the others, do you?) Ultimately, he was just so perfect for so many of the films he scored. As great as Williams and Goldsmith are and were, they just couldn't have done what James did with movies like Field of Dreams. (I don't care how big a fan you are of those two, either--you know I'm right.) For all the variety in my now-pretty-vast collection of film music, and for all I appreciate in that variety, it would not be the same if it lacked the Horner scores. It would be missing something vital, something intimate, something comforting and familiar (in the best way). Like everyone else has said, I hate that we won't get more from him . . . but I would've hated far more not having anything at all from him. He may be gone, but he's still with me in exactly the same fashion he's been with me for the last three decades. At least I can hang on to that. And I intend to do just that--though I have to think listening to his stuff is going to be a whole different experience, at least for a while. One less-pleasant thought has been pressing on my mind all day, one I've been trying to push away with only mixed success: I can't helping imagining what his final moments must have been like--the fear, the helplessness, the likely understanding that he wasn't going to make it through this. Whenever that threatened to take over my mind's eye today, I made myself think instead on what the moments just after may have been like: Light. Lots of light. Then the beginnings of clarity emerging from illumination . . . a magnificent, gleaming city, with the largest concert hall in the universe at its very center. Then awareness of another kind. A presence. Someone standing next to him. Someone in robes, someone he hadn't even realized was there. He isn't startled. Everything is peaceful. A wondering grin spreads over his face. "Is this . . . is this heaven?" he asks. The figure beside him crosses his arms. "No," he says, in a deep, rich voice. "It's Iowa." He gives him a bemused look. The robed man smiles. "Just kidding," he says, nudging him with his elbow. "It's heaven. But you have no idea how long I've been waiting to say that to you." He reaches into his robe, pulls out a baton, and nods toward the concert hall. "Would you mind? As it happens, a lot of people have been waiting a long time for this. . . ."

I've been out of the loop for a bit, and just found out about this yesterday. Another heartbreaking loss. He was the man who did it all, and brought a thousand stories with him to bring his characters to life on the screen for us to enjoy. 2015 has been a tough year for these sorts of losses. . . .

This one was not necessarily at the top of my wish list, but as a JW completist, it will be mine. No question about it. The best of the best. Wait, what? I thought D1T4 of the Oscar promo was 7m3 from 0:00-5:40, and then 7m5 from 5:40-end What is 4:36-5:40 then?7m4! All I know is that one of you sank my #%@&*! battleship.

Looks like I should've picked up that copy of Music Expressed as Warp Field Equations for Dummies.

Absolutely. It's great to have a good listening experience available, sure, but to expect a composer in the process of writing for a film to stop in the midst of creation and think, "Y'know . . . this music is perfect for this scene, but it just doesn't seem like it'll be a fun listen on the album. I should change this. It won't be as good for the movie, but hey, I've got fans out there, right?" Ludicrous. It's music designed and written for a specific purpose, and that purpose is not pleasing a very small and esoteric portion of the audience who actually buy the music for listening apart from the movie it was composed for.

Nope, that's SPACECAMP. Oh, hell no. . . .

You don't know that. Said seat belt was off-camera (inside the fridge).

Wasn't that Steiner's King Kong? Oh, hardly. There were a few during the silent era that were written to fit with a movie (rather than using the more common bibliokinotech method). The physical score was sent with the film so the bigger movie houses—which had pit orchestras to play along with the movie—could play music actually composed for the film, rather than a selection of appropriate library pieces. Steiner's work for King Kong was the first full-length score for an American talkie, and the first to use themes and leitmotifs rather than just "setpiece" music.

So one may forego the usual need for a seat belt simply by driving in a lead-lined fridge (as I've been recommending to people for years, to no avail).

L'Assassinat du duc du Guise—Most people, in thinking back to the silent film era, imagine oddly-speeded sequences of slapstick underscored by the music of a lone, rusty piano. They think "serious" film music began with the advent of talkies and the soundtrack on film. This score—widely considered the very first composed and distributed specifically for a movie—is proof they were taking even the earliest cinematic entries very seriously as a new forum for orchestral composition. It's an operatically-styled symphony that (for the most part) passes on the silly melodrama common to the day. Well worth a listen, and not just for the historical significance of the work. It was a terrible adaptation of Crichton's best book. What a disappointment.

That's really too bad. Wasn't even their own driving involved. Tragic loss. Really? It is enforced? Here, we have regular police controls on this very thing, and if you're caught not wearing a seatbelt (whether you're in a taxi or your own car or even on a bus), there's a hefty ticket to pay. That is the case here. Enforcement is tricky in a lot of cases, though. Have you ever tried looking at a moving vehicle and being able to clearly determine whether the driver has his belt on? In most cases, the officer has to have pulled the driver over for something else in order to make a clear discovery. Wow, that's awkward. Makes it sound like something's wrong with your seat belt. I like ours better—"Click it or ticket."

I've done that a couple of times. I just pretend I'm still back in the days when VHS was the best thing going. (Yes, there was a time. . . .)

This. This. This, this, and this. Not this.

I rather like the interpretation found on the Spielberg/Williams collaboration album. Moving and heartwarming in a quiet sort of way. I agree with both of you. The score as a whole is wandering, aimless, and without much substance (which made it perfect for the movie, which was all three of those x2). But the suite, as featured on the collaboration album, pulls the best elements out of the thin air and shapes it into a beautiful symphonic work—one of my favorites of his, ironically. It's really the only way I listen to that theme any more.

Definitely! Born on the Fourth of . . . February?

Nope. Got a PM a couple of days ago, and no email notice for it.

It's the best of the lot, and one I still love. (McQueen and Newman make the movie.)