Uni

Interesting. Didn't know about this website. I'll have to check it out further.
After reading this several times (a requirement, given this guy's need to use ersatz, pseudo-intellectual prose, which only serves to muddy what he's saying), I'd say this is largely arse-talk. I get what he's after (more or less), but ultimately it's not much more than an opinion asserted in favor of newer styles of film composing. He's a Zimmerite. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but he's taking it to the extreme of somehow trying to say that film music never worked until Hans came along. I don't buy it.
It was a nice maneuver there, tossing Williams a backhanded compliment by saying his music is just too good for movies, but all he's really saying is that he's not much of a fan of his "operatic" approach to film music. That somehow if a score is appreciated and even adored apart from the movie that inspired it, it's somehow inherently flawed, because if it can so easily be separated from its source then it isn't woven tightly enough into the film's tapestry. But surely that's nonsense. To apply it to the context he's writing in (a thread about Man of Steel), he's basically stating that Williams' score for Superman isn't connected intimately enough to the film to justify its magnificent scope. Does anyone (besides him) really believe that? In this case, the music is the film to a very large extent. The director, Richard Donner, has testified that he fell to his knees when he first heard the main theme in the recording sessions, and Christopher Reeve beside him burst into tears. It seems hardly possible to imagine Superman flying to the rescue without hearing the heroic idiom accompanying him. And try to picture watching scenes like Clark leaving home, and the Fortress of Solitude sequence, with no music. How would those play? I'd say there's no separating the music from the movie in this case. With Man of Steel, however, I hardly remember the music at all. Not a critique, just a fact—though doubtless this guy would aver that this is exactly what makes it such a good film score.
Here's an example I've always loved of how important music is to a movie, and how it's tied in on a fundamental level with what's happening on the screen. It's a Williams score, and yet defies—in my eyes, anyway—what this gentleman is attesting about his "operatic" approach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2K-YedETiI
I flat-out have to disagree with him when he says that "Williams best music first serves itself, as all great music does, and then the movie." Williams writes this music for the express purpose of serving the movie. It wouldn't exist if not for the film it's written for. That it goes on to serve itself—and us!—so well doesn't change the order and intent of its creation.
I can sorta go along with some of what he's proposing. He's saying that technology and movie music have evolved together to the point where the music can more easily become a deeper part of a film's tapestry—i.e., by creating or echoing actual sound effects. (That's what he's desperately trying to communicate when he says, "That is to say: by underlining and even magnifying the artificiality of the three-fold marriage (story+visuals+music) rather than by aiming for a truly authentic filmic component-dissolving fusion," a sentence so staggeringly obtuse it deserves to be enshrined with other examples of writing awe-inspiring in their overwrought density.) And yet . . . this is something composers have already been doing for decades. Goldsmith was a master of the practice. It's easier these days, now that composers are using a lot of the same tools as sound mixers. But it's really nothing new, even if it is becoming more common. If you want to call that a kind of musical "grammar" or whatever, then . . . I guess. But to me it's rather just a stylistic decision that can work as well (or poorly) as any other. And to go as far as to say that until this evolution happened film music was an "imperfect, never quite fully developed species" is just chuckleheaded at its core.

Yeah, but . . . Williams didn't. JW had been composing for television and film for more than 20 years before he reached the period for which he's so adored. At this point, Gia's been at it just about as long, and is just now about the age John was when he started penning his classics. What has he done in the time leading up to now? Super 8, The Incredibles, Up, the two Star Trek scores, John Carter, and now Jupiter Ascending. What was John doing in the time leading up to his Golden Age? A Guide for the Married Man, John Goldfarb, Penelope, Diamond Head, Valley of the Dolls, and the like—and with far more formal musical training and experience.
My point is simply that there's huge precedence for thinking Gia's best years could still be ahead. If people expect him to be the next John Williams, he should at least be given the chance to become the next John Williams in the same fashion and time frame the last John Williams became the current John Williams.

This is one of those wonderful compositions that inspires speculation about what sort of music Williams would've created if he hadn't gone in for film scoring.
He simply shifted mentally toward his avatar for a moment. Happens from time to time. He was saying, "I shall listen to it in Theornibg, the holding of Theorned, son of Theorningas, near the borders of Fangorn, where the surroundings will surely give the piece a more appropriate setting for proper meditation."

While it's a fun idea in theory, I gotta go with this take on it. The majority of the group who this would appeal to have all or most of these titles already, and wouldn't have the money to spend on filling out the rest of their collection by paying a huge bundle to get the last few missing scores.
Actually, it would be cool if they sold this kind of thing as both the complete box sets and individual members of the larger groups—in other words, you could buy the single scores you're missing, or you could purchase the entire set at once. I don't know the feasibility of that approach, but it would certainly make it more marketable.

So . . . now it’s my turn. I didn’t read much on this film before seeing it, and I haven’t read much since, so this is a fairly blind assessment (meaning I will no doubt bring up something someone else has mentioned somewhere in the last 19 pages, which I will try to read at some point). It’s also a fairly lengthy assessment, but I’ve wanted to get this out of my system for a couple of days now, and you’re the closest schmucks in range. You’ve been warned.
I got out over the weekend and saw two movies. The first was Interstellar (finally!). As I said, I’ve managed to steer clear of most of the talk concerning this film, so I honestly knew very little about it when I sat down in the theater—only that the Earth was dying and mankind was in need of relocation in a hurry. I went in as a sci-fi lover who grew up going to late-night movies alone with the ardent desire of being blown away unexpectedly by a great story told really well. (And it used to happen, too. A lot. These days, not so much.)
And y’know what? I started out impressed. The early goings played very strong, even when they seemed like they shouldn’t have worked. And once it actually got interstellar, I was indeed blown away. This is the kind of movie I adore: scientifically sound science fiction. There just aren’t enough films like this these days. There were moments where I could connect to what it was like sitting in a theater in 1968 watching 2oo1: A Space Odyssey. This was great cinema, with great characters playing out a great dramatic premise over great scenery. It was headed with confident assuredness toward top-ten status for me.
And then . . . and then.
My brain has tried to wrap a solid analysis of this movie around the format of a standard review, but I can’t get the structure to coalesce. There’s just too much here. This movie seems better suited toward a list of pros and cons (or at least that’s what I feel more comfortable doing here). And since I don’t mind listing as many of them as I can think of right now, proceed at your own risk and settle in for the long haul here, if you have a mind to know mine. Here we go. . . .
On the good—even great—side:
I would put good money on the table that critics of this film are complaining about the amount of exposition. I get that to some degree, but a movie built on a foundation of so much information will have to explain a few things. The approach Nolan takes here is brilliant. He doesn’t try to take stock of the whole world. Too many directors succumb to the temptation to go global with global disasters. It would seem the obvious thing to do, but ultimately it just wastes time. We don’t need to see what things are like in the big cities. We need to get to know the characters, and if you can communicate the big picture through their perspective, you’ve nailed it. And that’s what happens here. We learn an enormous information about the effects of the Blight (both logistically and socially) and the Cooper family through the simple device of a parent-teacher conference. One line from Cooper’s father-in-law—“Six billion people, can you imagine it?”—elegantly lays out the changes in population without using the usual ancient canards, like replays of old newscasts. Similarly, the scientific explanations are presented in ways easy for the layman to understand, allowing the consequences of the character’s actions to be just as easily followed. As for the story itself, most movies attempting something like this can’t quite strike the right balance between the epic nature of the story and the human element that should be driving it. Either the characters are overwhelmed in the action or their feelings and perspectives take up so much space that the story itself becomes an afterthought, which only serves to undermine its credibility. Neither is the case here. The story certainly never takes a back seat, and yet the emotional undercurrent hits the mark—which is a little baffling, really, because at its heart it’s a cliché that’s been hammered out many times before (which so much less success). I think maybe the scope of the story—the end of the Earth, exploring other galaxies for a solution—works to elevate something that normally would fall flat on its face. I don’t know. I’ll have to think on that one a little more. Whatever the case, though, it works here. I also loved the size of the story, its length, its patience in getting to where it needed to go. That’s not to say I thought every sequence was necessary (more on that later), but in the same way I like settling into a really hefty novel from time to time I think it’s a shame we don’t have more 3- and 4- hour movies these days. As long as there’s quality there (and there was here), then by all means give me the uncut version of Dances With Wormholes. I’ve been cultivating a healthy distaste for CGI for some time now, mainly because of its overuse as a lazy way to replace good storytelling. I don’t know how much of this movie was done on a computer, but it doesn’t matter: the results are breathtaking. I’ve always been a fan of Star Trek and Star Wars and the like, but we all know that’s not what wormholes and black holes and such would really look like, right? I loved how this movie presented outer space. The wormhole effect was great, precisely because it wasn’t flashy or decorative. Although we don’t know for certain, it’s easy to believe that’s what the bending of space would look like. And that makes it so much more real than any high-budget sparklies ever do. Same thing with the sound FX—or lack of them, where necessary. How rare has it become to see a movie that remembers there actually is no sound in space? (Even Gravity couldn’t get that one right.) This movie didn’t lock itself down into genre-specific parameters, either. It had something of everything: Heartbreak. Wonder. Fear. Humor. Gripping intensity. Wild settings. Science. Philosophy. Beauty. Everything. And it had Matthew McConaughey, playing Cooper to the hilt. Let’s face it, this guy is pretty much the same character in every movie he performs, but in some it works better than in others. And it was just the right fit for this part. Most of the rest of the cast I could give or take, but he had to be the fulcrum for this story, and he pulled it off. On a side note (neither good nor bad): if any of you have ever wondered what I look like in real life (it isn’t Bilbo at his desk, I promise)—or at least what I looked like at one point—take a look at Casey Affleck. He resembles my younger self so much that it’s always been a strange sensation watching him in movies. I also had a full beard for several years when I was younger, so seeing him on that video screen with facial hair for the first time gave me a little fifth-dimensional experience of my own. (I wanted to start pushing books off the shelf and yelling, “DON’T BECOME SUCH A DICKHEAD!”) Science fiction movies are often made or broken by how they present their artificial intelligence. This movie had some of the best presentations of robotic companions I’ve seen. Part of it was in the voices, which somehow managed to sound both programmed and spontaneous at the same time. Great balance. And it was also in their locomotive properties, both basic and wonderfully creative at once. When TARS took off to save Brand, I nearly cheered aloud. I wondered early on why they were panning down the portrait line of the Lazarus astronauts, then didn’t show Mann’s picture clearly, even though he was their leader. Of course, no one would ever cast Matt Damon for a one-off pic if his character’s already dead, so giving us a clear shot at that point would’ve given away that we’d be seeing him, which would’ve made the entire debate about whether to go to his planet or Edmond’s pointless. It was a nice fake-out, because I didn’t know Damon was part of this thing. This movie straddled the line between solid and speculative science very well (for the most part), especially in that it made things look and sound so right but wasn’t afraid to be imaginative. On that point in particular, the planets were great, even if they crossed the line once or twice in terms of acceptable realism. (For instance, how did they know the water was only a couple of feet deep on the first planet? And if it was, how the hell could it create waves a thousand feet high? There would be no water on the backside of such a wave after it passed. They would’ve landed on the ground.) But when it comes to this kind of thing, I can appreciate the same level of imagination that we used when my friends and would spend entire afternoons landing on different “planets” in our backyards. The science wasn’t our focus. It was cool. On that note: Landing on frozen clouds, layers above each other, hanging above the planet’s surface? Awesome planet is awesome! It was great, no matter how they approached it, to see a cinematic interpretation of Rama at last. I’ve always wondered what that would look like on the big screen. . . . Finally . . . the score. Zimmer doesn’t do much here that he hasn’t done before (particularly with Inception), and under different circumstances I might’ve had a problem with its redundancy. But here it works perfectly. Deep space, after all, gets a little redundant in its own way. And creating lyrical and melodic themes for the mind-staggering vistas might have suggested that the situations and visuals couldn’t work on their own and needed their own musical “sparklies” to get the point across. They didn’t, so Hans didn’t. He just sat his ass on the organ at the right times, and it hit the spot. (Not that he did that constantly. I’ve always loved the music that goes with docking sequences—as in Apollo 13—and this one was great as well.) I’m sure I could think of other positives, but all of those were central to the film and were what made it work.
Now for the other side of the coin, more or less in chronological order:
Let’s start with the worst item: This movie has perhaps the worst sound mix I’ve ever encountered. As much as I liked McConaughey, he’s still mumbling like he’s driving a Lincoln around and rubbing his fingers together. Everyone whispers or intones on a low frequency at one point or another, and between the SFX and music, at times they’re drowned out entirely. People whisper in other movies, and I can always hear them just fine. It’s an annoyance when you think you might be missing a major plot point hiding under someone’s breath (especially when one of the characters is giving a deathbed confession). Minor nitpick, but by gearing up with people doing documentary interviews (though I did think it was a pretty good way to communicate information) in which they speak of conditions on Earth in the past tense, you’ve started out the story by telling us people are going to survive beyond the disaster. I said I like long stories, and this was no exception, but that doesn’t mean everything served a good purpose. The drone sequence was one such example. I mean, I get it; it shows us that he’s cannibalizing tech stuff for his farm equipment. But it goes on a little too long, and is a little fishy on its face. (He kept emphasizing it was an Indian drone. I have to think he didn’t mean Native American. So it’s flown over from friggin’ south Asia? He also said it had been in the air ten years. How did he know? And without need for fuel or a maintenance check, in all that time and after crossing the Pacific? Huh?) Why do the talking docu-heads refer to that duststorm as if it were special? They recall the exact date and the time it started. But they had all seen storms like that before, and surely after. What happened that made that one different? Never explained. I know things are probably pretty tight underground, where space would undoubtedly be at a premium. But you really have a conference room (with a sliding wall!) located right next to the butt end of a launch tube containing a rocket? C’mon. I said I liked the water planet. And I did. But they shouldn’t have. Even if it had the makings of a life-supporting biosphere, the proximity to Gargantua makes it extremely problematic. The astronauts themselves were dicey about spending a couple of hours on the surface because of the time shift. Seven years per hour means that, once the Lazarus stations do get there and begin descending to the surface, the first landing parties would shoot off down the timeline while the others (even from the same station) waited their turn. Let’s just say, for instance, that to bring everyone down from orbit takes ten trips over a period of 12 hours. (It would probably take much longer than that.) That means the first people who leave the station will likely be dead by the time the last ones arrive 84 years later. What about other stations arriving months after that? Add the effects of entropy outside the time bubble and (again) the proximity to a black hole, and this just isn’t a good candidate for colonization. Not when the universe is rolling on at 67,320 years for every one of yours. How did Cooper come to the conclusion that Brand was in love with Edmonds? Nothing was ever mentioned of this (that I heard—maybe someone mumbled it) prior to their conversation where he brings it to the table. What clues did he have? If anything, Brand expressed more admiration toward Mann (“He was the best of us”). This came out of the blue, and felt entirely forced. I liked most of the cast, but Anne Hathaway was useless in this role. She’s a charming actress who brings nothing of what makes her great in other films to this project. Anyone could’ve played this part. Ditto Matt Damon, whose surprise appearance (when he wakes up and mistakes Cooper for Robin Williams) comes to nothing in the end. It’s kinda pitiful when an actor’s appearance in a major film feels like some sort of buddy-casting tack-on, like Kevin Smith got him in with Nolan somehow. And while we’re on Damon’s exploits . . . would it be possible, at some point along the road, to bring us a deep-space movie that doesn’t feature either a computer or a crew member going buggo and killing people? There was a time when that kind of thing was interesting, even compelling, but at this point it literally has me shaking my head. Things were going so well to that point. And his insanity didn’t even serve a purpose. He lied about the viability of the surface conditions, programmed his robot to self-destruct, and tried to kill Cooper . . . why? Because he wanted off the planet. Umm . . . what? Would it not have been ten times more efficient, the moment they woke him up, to simply say, “Nope. Planet sucks. When do we leave?” And I don’t care how many balls he’s tripping up there, you couldn’t find a first year NASA cadet who would ever, ever attempt to open an airlock in space he’s not absolutely, completely sure is secure. Whatever other problems the Blight has caused, it hasn’t stopped the advance of air compression technology. These people seem to spend hours and hours and hours in a spacesuit without worrying about their oxygen supply. So let’s get to the sequence we all know I’m going to deal with, yes? Because I’m a good guy and I’m willing to suspend some disbelief for the sake of a science fiction movie, I’m going to allow for the notion of someone taking a spacecraft into a black hole, then ejecting from said spacecraft, and still surviving. I went along with it at the time because I thought all this was still being directed by another intelligence that was perhaps “living” in the center of the singularity. Whatever. Anyway, we get to the train station and learn what we knew already: that Cooper was the one trying to communicate with Murph in the bedroom. Okay. Fair enough. This leads, however, to an interminably long sequence which justifies neither its length nor its conclusions, because it handles the whole thing so ham-handedly. These points need further indentation:So this is all about gravity, right? And love, too. Can’t forget that. The love allows Cooper to connect with the room, and the gravity allows him to communicate. No problems so far. But now he sees the need to “transmit” the coordinates for NORAD in a way that he knows his former self will understand. Binary. Fine. So he does this . . . how? It was a little hard to tell, but it looked like he was “cutting” lines into the dust that was falling to the floor. Really? How in the world are you going to create a series of discernable lines in dust that’s floating down from 8 feet or so above the floor with only two hands? Even if you could trust the dust to float straight down, once you move one hand, the dust is gonna fill in that space again. This literally made no sense at all. And even if you could make that work, how is gravity affecting these lines to the point where bouncing a quarter off the floor is going to land on one of them? And what does any of that have to do with the combines going crazy outside? And you’re telling me a surveillance drone on the other side of the world was able to detect all this? I didn’t follow at all where Murph was getting the word “STAY” from. Did the lines on the floor mean both complex coordinates and a simple word in Morse? If Cooper so desperately wanted his own dumb ass to STAY home, why the hell did he give himself the coordinates in the first place? Mixed messages to his doppleganger, there. (Of course, I know he had to send the coordinates, so he could wind up on the other side of the galaxy to get all this done. So once he understands this, why yell at himself for being a moron when he’s doing what he’s supposed to do next?) All of this is intercut with THE MOST POINTLESS business in the movie, where older Murph sets a fire in the cornfields to distract her brother Tom while she checks out the room again. WHY?!? If it added to the story, if there were an outcome that explained it, there would be no problem. But there’s no reason for it whatsoever, other than to attempt to add conflict and some sort of “ticking clock” pressure where none is needed. (Communicating with dad across the universe isn’t interesting enough?) It would’ve been so much easier—and lent to an infinitely shorter and less distracting scene—if the family had already moved out, and Murph simply went back to confirm her theory on her own. Turning Tom into a dickhead (he didn’t get my gravity message, dammit!) added up to nothing . . . especially considering what eventually came of his character (more on that to come). Instead, we got a long, annoying, loud, and falsely “intense” scene that was somehow instantly resolved when Murph showed Tom a watch. A watch that, incidentally, Cooper used to communicate quantum equations to solve a massively complex gravity problem through Morse code. (And where did he get this information, anyway? How was he able to suddenly solve the problem?) And then he goes and shakes Brand’s hand on the ship. But again . . . why? How did he get there? He was powerfully tied to the bedroom through his love for Murph. What love did he have for Brand while they were in the wormhole? What feelings were strong enough to pull him back to that point in space-time? And why would he feel it necessary to touch her hand at that moment? What was it supposed to mean? This makes less sense than anything in the previous scene—especially considering the explanations that scene gave us. All of it adds up to a sequence that was ultimately some two or three times longer than it had to be, and threatened to derail what had been a great movie up to that point. And that wasted time could’ve been put to much better use, in offering better explanations for the final elements of the movie, to wit: So how the hell did he wind up back on the other side of the wormhole? Did he send himself there? Was there another intelligence involved in all this (which they never make clear)? This needed more, too. As did the mission of the station(s). Were they going to the other side of the wormhole to look for more feasible planets, even head for Edmond’s world? I assume so. (If not, why head for Saturn? Why not just stay in Earth’s orbit? That way, if they ever figured out a solution for the Blight, they could just head back home.) It would’ve been nice for someone to drop a short sentence saying that’s what they were doing. Just to be clear. This movie should be renamed What About Tom? After becoming the dickhead—though he perhaps came to a moment of self-realization and repentance when he sees the watch in Murph’s hand (we don’t know, do we?)—the movie forgets about Cooper’s son. Completely. For no reason. As much as it sounds like I had major issues with the black hole business, this is unquestionably the most unforgivable sin in this movie. Cooper would want to know as much about him as Murph. He never even asks. So Cooper wants to head out to try to find Brand on Edmond’s planet. I’m cool with that. She deserves to know he survived, and that the rest of humanity’s on its way ‘n’ all. But his methodology is a little questionable. He climbs into a two-person flyer with TARS, wearing a space suit (those tanks do last forever, though, don’t they?). No provisions for a long flight. Nothing else brought along. Yet . . . they stated earlier that the problem with going to Edmond’s planet was that it was much further away than the others, forcing them to choose between Mann and Edmonds. (I don’t remember the exact time and distance they talked about, but wasn’t it weeks or months away?) Isn’t this a little like jumping into a VW Bug and driving to the moon without even stopping at the gas station first for snacks? These are the issues that lingered with me, and which caused a bit of lingering disappointment. But I’m not just nitpicking to no purpose here—though I will say I’m allowed, and it’s perfectly justified. When you create a story designed to get people thinking, you lose the right to lament that people are overthinking it. This movie expanded my perspective, even staggered me in some ways. You can’t ask me to switch my brain off when it becomes a hindrance to wrapping things up neatly at the end.
But there is a point to all this. When you add up every one of the problems I had with this film, those I listed above and those I might not be remembering, what does it come to?
Half a star.
That’s what I'm forced, reluctantly, to knock off its rating. I struggled with docking it by that much, but it mainly comes down to the Tom problems—his mood swing, the burning scene, his sudden disappearance. They're just too much to ignore. Things got a little sloppy toward the end, and I can’t bring myself to dismiss that altogether. But the bottom line is, in spite of all the issues and nitpicks, I loved this film. Its greatness overwhelms its silly misses enough to be patient with them. I even love that it engaged me enough to take the time to pick it apart like this. It still has me thinking about it, wrestling in particular with the whole bit about love and its implications. I’m still ambivalent about that part, but I’ll be seeing it once more this weekend, and I’ll give it more attention then. Can’t wait to watch the rest again along the way.
***1/2 out of ****

It's a combination of Thousand Island dressing and Red Bull.
Great show. Great opening sequence. And absolutely a great theme.

I owned Time Warp and Fantastic Journey on cassette in the 80s (the latter of which has become very difficult to find). I loved them, and--as others have mentioned--in some cases considered their arrangements improvements on the originals (though I felt a vague sense of blasphemy in the thought). The end title suite from Goldsmith's Twilight Zone in particular was so much clearer, separating out the melodic lines in a way that every part of the writing could be distinguished in a way that was a bit muddled in the original. It was also where I first heard the music for The Boy Who Could Fly, which became a favorite.

Good point. Like watching not only decades of your father's life, but decades of your own life, shot out of a cannon for a circus side show.

Dammit Uni, i NEED you...badly!

Reflections (and a couple of questions) for a quiet Wednesday evening. . . .
I spent some idle time this afternoon thinking that music resembles a number of other activities in that it's something that can be enjoyed on myriad levels. For a comparative example, consider chess. One can learn the rules of the game and the moves of the pieces in five minutes, and out of that can enjoy hours of playing against another amateur with similar skills and understanding. But they don't have to leave it at that. They could begin to study fundamental strategies to improve their abilities and comprehension. Eventually they might take to learning a wide range of openings, and advanced strategies, and start to take on more experienced opponents, even entering tournaments just for fun. They could open the encyclopedic window into the classic games of Kasparov and Morphy and Capablanca and Fischer, dissecting the classic matches to better understand how grandmasters think. And after working through all that . . . a student might still have only scratched the surface of all there is to learn about the game.
Music's a lot like that. Most people spend their whole lives just listening, and finding plenty of fulfillment in it. Beyond that, a guitar and the basic I-IV-V chords--a short afternoon's worth of effort--can make a musician out of anyone. (There are rock stars out there making millions with little more than this basic palette at their disposal.) A little more time and effort can open an understanding of intervals, scales and modes, and the circle of fifths--the ground-level components of all music. Then comes the deeper stuff, the higher theory, the more complex chordal relationships, the study of the classical and modern masters. And after working through all that . . . a student might still have only scratched the surface of all there is to learn about the craft of making music.
So with that in mind, and considering the possibilities out there for people who want to move up to the next level (now that the internet has opened the door for people to learn in ways that weren't available twenty years ago), here are my two inquiries. First, since we have the privilege of watching the several theorists we have on this forum banter over the finer points of film music structure, I think it would be interesting to know how these folks gained their knowledge. What sort of training did you receive? Formal music education? College degree? Self-taught? Apprenticeships? Do any of you work in music as a professional vocation, or is it all a personal pursuit?
Second, as a practical matter for those who'd like to step up to the next level of learning, what would you recommend as a good means of learning higher music theory (beyond the fundamentals I mentioned--the circle of fifths, scales, basic chord progressions, etc.)? Are there online courses you've heard of or personally used? Is it something only long years of schooling can impart? Or are there other ways to go?

I believe there are two ensigns stationed on Deck 38 who know nothing about it.

You asked for brutal honesty. . . .
I can't say I liked it much. For starters, it's only thirty seconds long. Could you not put a little more effort into something like this?
And it didn't feature any of the major themes from the film. Just some low-key ambiance with some flutes fluttering in the background. This was a massive score, dude. Throw a line or two of the adventure theme in there. Spice things up a bit, fercryinoutloud!
I expect better things next time.

Exactly. Something that you have to explain to people, who've never heard the score and probably haven't seen the movie and wouldn't remember the music if they had.
On the other hand, I used a cue from E.T. in a recent power point presentation. Two members of the audience identified it immediately.
It took me quite a while to track down another copy when I lost my original, and it was quite an agonizing search. Honestly, the original is one of the worst examples of the curtailed OSTs from back in the day: only 8 pieces, a mere 40 minutes of music, several concert pieces that weren't in the movie . . . it was everything I hated about Return of the Jedi at the time. And yet—the concert pieces were so damned good, and 15 minutes of the 40 were the best marriage of music and cinema ever created. It was an absolute must-have, and still is to this day, in spite of all the newer and more complete releases.

Safe, predictable . . . and one that sounds like deep/interesting/touching music to people who have no idea what they're listening to and for. That's one of the big reasons scores like this win. It's like asking sportscasters to vote for the year's best fashions.

Gandalf: . . . and in that fair valley lies the Shelfs of Elfsdelf.
Thorin: Um . . . isn't it "shelves?"
Gandalf: Quiet, dwarv.

Is it just possible that Spielberg chose a movie he wanted to do? That, despite their friendship, he doesn't just select films for JW? That he has more in mind than just the music?

I've never been able to fathom what's not to like about both his Golden Age and his latter-year works. Does everything have to be and sound the same? Granted, I can understand those who don't genuflect for his early-period stuff—the silly, light-jazz scores for the rom-coms of the 60s—and not everyone's going to have an eargasm over Heartbeeps, even among the most avid fans of the man's work. But nearly coming to blows over whether E.T. or Schindler's List is worthier of its Oscar win? What the hell? They both deserved every ounce of gold they received.
For me personally, the vote goes to E.T. Like I said, all three are phenomenal scores, but E.T. means the most to me.

I thought James Horner wrote the score for BOFA . . . right?
I haven't given the Hobbit scores enough of a listen yet to make an educated guess. As for the LOTR scores, I was impulsively going for the ROTK click, but then I stopped. It's the best in a lot of ways, but . . . it doesn't feature the Rohan theme as prominently as TTT does. Nor does it approach the Fellowship theme as grandly as FOTR. But it has "Into the West," so it has to be the best, right? But the opening to TTT is the best of the three. And FOTR has "Aniron," one of my favorite vocal parts of the trilogy. But so is Billy's song in ROTK, so. . . .
The more I think about it, the harder it is to even consider these as separate scores. Like the novel--which isn't actually a trilogy at all, but a single novel published in three volumes--I've come to consider them a single, great score. Which speaks to the power of Shore's work as well as anything else, I guess.
So since the Academy sorta recognized the whole trilogy by honoring the last installment, I guess I'll do the same.

They can be . . . if you're seeing the right movie. As a child, I watched both E.T. and Close Encounters for the first time at a drive-in. Neither had much of an impact on me. They require the closed-in, intimate experience that only a theater can provide. (I specifically remember seeing E.T. again, in a theater, a short time later. It was like an entirely different film. I didn't cry at the drive-in. I cried in the theater.) But if you're watching an action/adventure romp, the experience is much more fun.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

That's one helluva point right there. I've recently been asking myself what really separates the Hobbit films from the SW prequels. You may have just nailed it on the head. PJ's got a lot of excess going on, no question, but there's still a good bit of substance at the heart of the thing, a solid story with characters and situations worth seeing. I believe you could actually cut it down from three films to two, and have what we should've been given from the start.
The problem with the prequels, on the other hand, isn't excess—though with all the CGI crap piled on the screen, it's easy to think that. It's actually the opposite, though. It's anemia. There is quite literally nothing there. If you were to try to cut the "fat" out of the prequels, you would wind up with nothing. There is no story. There are no characters. There's nothing of substance at the heart of those films. If you attempted to remove everything that was an unnecessary addition, at the first cut the whole thing would turn to dust and dissipate into thin air. It's all an illusion.
So the only modification I'd make to your statement above is that it wouldn't be "harder"; it would be impossible.

Has it only been 35 years? Seems like longer than that. . . .
Beautifully said. And really only marginally dated, even after three and a half decades (mostly in the wardrobe department). It remains my favorite Williams score, mostly for personal reasons—and, well, the fact that it's friggin' awesome.

Gandalf: . . . and in that fair valley lies the Shelfs of Elfsdelf.
Thorin: Um . . . isn't it "shelves?"
Gandalf: Quiet, dwarv.

Ladies and gentlemen . . . the John Williams Fan Board!