Kevin McCallister

Silvestri is the composer that got me IN to film music. The Back To The Future Theme is my all time favorite movie theme ever. I already have the promo, but that is still missing music. A digitally restored COMPLETE score soundtrack would be fantastic! This campaign has been going for a few months now and I hope it's making an impact. MCA, Varese Sarabande, are you listening to us? Release this now!

The complete version of the Temple of Doom End Credits is fantastic, especially the rendition as Indy and Willie kiss and the kids run to them. And Williams splicing Short Round's Theme with the Raiders March was very clever. That gets my vote.

Finale from Edward Scissorhands Remembering Childhood from Hook Christmas Star from Home Alone 2 David And The Supermecha from A.I. Main Theme from Cast Away Lone Pine Mall from Back To The Future (when Doc is found dead and then revives) And probably several others I can't think of.

I figured this would be interesting to vote on, and later on for other movies. For this one, I have to go with the crystal motif. So mysterious, so eerie, so suspenseful! With the main theme being a close second.

Batman is fantastic, but Superman is perfect. I love both scores, but Superman is just so much richer in themes and cues. And sadly, Batman still has 20 minutes of (great) unreleased music. Spider-Man comes next I think. It's no Batman, but Elfman supplies the film with an exceptional score that DOES have themes (despite what the people at Ain't It Cool News say) . I love "Costume Montage!" X-Men would be next IMO. It's not a great score to just listen to, but it suffices in the film. It'll be interesting to hear what John Ottman does (Ottman is rescoring X-Men for the new S.E. DVD as well as the sequel. Wonder what Michael Kamen thinks of this?). Elliot Goldenthal's Batman is, IMO, an insult to Danny Elfman and is far too bombastic and overbearing. I'll take the theme for the 60s show over that. I've never heard the Crow score. How is it?

Thank you very much for the explanations John. Actually I looked close and saw that some of the cues that were broken into multiple parts on the first boot were either minomered, or contained alternates of it inserted into the body of the score. It turns out that only the really long cues like Remembering Childhood and The Ultimate War were broken down into 4 or 5 cues. I guess seeing 3 parts for a short cue like Flight To Neverland kinda confused me. One last question though. Are the alternates for the Never-Feast on the Concorde boot identical to each other? Besides the 2 second cut off on one, each cue sounds exactly the same. Do you know?

I've been listening to my custom made 3-Disc set for Hook and I reread John Takis's score analysis and then took a look at the assemblies on the pirated releases. A lot of questions began to pop in my head and perhaps. may never be solved, but I'd like to make some points here and see if anyone else may know or be able to figure out some of these points. Here we go - 1) I've been listening to the 3 versions of "The Arrival of Tink and Flight To Neverland" lately and I'm almost convinced that one of the alternates probably isn't real. The one that I think is real is the alternate with the film version ending. How the music was edited in the film is a mystery. Is the film version ending on the film version of the cue just unreleased, or did they cut the ending off the alternate and paste it on for the movie? Either way the other alternate has nothing different form the film version IMO besides the fact that the scene of Tink in the doll house is missing as it is in the other alternate. The orchestrations don't even sound different, while in the other alternate, they do. Am I missing something, or am I onto something? 2) Apparantly Williams composed seven original songs for Hook when it was going to be a musical. Two showed up in the theatrical release and then we have the "Childhood" piece. What about the other four songs? Did Williams ever record them? Or were they dropped completely? 3) When looking at the first boot (the one with mis-nomered tracks and poor sound, or the "NON-Concorde version"), I saw that several cues were broken down, even single cues were broken into Parts (e.g. Flight To Neverland, Remembering Childhood, and Farewell Neverland). On my set, I was able to find enough single cues so that only 6 of the 48 tracks had cues combined. However, the representation of the cues on this boot makes one think. Did Williams compose only portions of certain cues and then combine them in the final mixing process? Or was this boot just cleverly edited by its creator? 4) Is it just me, or does the 0ST version of the Ultimate War sound like an alternate of the film version? If you compare it to the Concorde version, the OST's sounds like it has much more bass and harder orchestration and there are even two sections on the OST that are different from the Concorde version. 5) The OST and Concorde versions of Banning Back Home must be either alternates or severely edited down. The film version differs very much in terms of music and orchestration. Could it be true? What do you guys think?

I've always thought of Christmas Star as the "Star of Bethlehem" of the second film (although I'm not sure which is better). What would've been cool is if when Williams went to score the scene where Kevin sets his traps in 2, he composed an action scene using Christmas Star rather than rehash the Star of Bethlehem/Carol Of The Bells version. That would've been interesting.

DEFINTELY not a cut and paste job. And I should know! Seriously, the score is very good. Yes, some of the same cues and themes show up in the score, but there is enough new material to carry the score all the way. The fact is a lot of the best original music was unreleased. There is over 25 minutes of unreleased music, and that's in the film itself. Even some themes/motifs are unreleased. Here's a rundown of all the main themes from the film. Along with Kevin's Theme, the Villains Theme, Somewhere In My Memory, Holiday Flight, Star Of Bethlehem, and the Setting The Trap motif, the following new themes appeared in Home Alone 2 - Christmas Star - A new original song composed by Williams with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. The theme itself emphasizes the tenderness side of the film, not unlike what Somewhere In My Memory did for the first film. It also underlines Kevin's wonder in New York. New York Theme - Heard only once or twice in the film, it is first played in full when Kevin first arrives in New York and views the city. Plaza Hotel Theme - A lofty theme for the luxurious Plaza Hotel "New York's Most Fabulous Hotel Experience." The theme underplays the beauty of the hotel in all its majesty, as well as the environment with the people, employees, etc. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas - Also know as "Duncan's Toy Chest Theme," it was another original song composed by Williams and written by Bricusse. Although no straightforward or concert version exists for this like the other original songs it is played during the Toy Chest scenes and emphasizes the Chistmas season feel of the film and is heard specifically in the End Credits. Pidgeon Woman Theme - One of the darker themes in the film, it only appears a few times. Like the motif used for Kevin's neighbor in the first film, it has a mysterious, scary sound to it. I don't think the OST does the score justice. Like "The Attack On The House" from the first film "Kevin's Booby Traps" is rather butchered and missing several segements of music. "Arrival In New York" is not what the cue in the film is, but rather a concert variation of the Somewhere In My Memory theme. Even the End Credits is missing music. There's a beautiful redition of Somewhere In My Memory after Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas ends, but is not included on the CD. A shame really. Hopefully we can expect expanded CDs of these in the future, as they are famous Christmas soundtracks.

I enjoyed the Hook score for a long time before I saw the actual movie.

Get Home Alone as fast as you can!!!!!!!! -Kevin

The expanded releases I have are Superman (Movie, not the re-recording) CEOT3K Raiders Of The Lost Ark E.T. 20th Anniversary The Empire Strikes Back The "unofficial" expanded releases I have are A.I. Promo Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade I made my own 3-CD set for Hook (over 190 min of music!).

Here's the URL. It's still online. http://worldzone.net/music/johnwilliams/in...y2/analysis.htm Great article. We NEED this score to be rereleased!!!

I want to get the Star Wars and ROTJ 2-CD sets, but at Amazon, they have 2 versions. One is the slimline, which is cheaper, and the other is the regular soundtrack which is about 10 dollars more. Is slimline the packaging where there is an outer cover and the booklet comes out with a hardcover? Or is that something else? I have the slide out hardcover booklet version of Empire, and I love it and want to get that version for the other two. Which do I get? The regular soundtrack is more expensive, so I think it may be that one since I always saw the Empire soundtrack I bought more expensive than the Jewel case release. But I'm not sure. Can anyone help? Thanx. Oh, one other reason I don't want the jewel case release is that the booklets inside all the copies I've seen look creased and in bad condition.

*Indicates an unreleased cue. The Raiders March is one of the best themes John Williams has ever composed, but where do you think it was used the best? My vote goes to Underground Heroics. This rendition, with Indy pounding the Thuggee guard and Short Round pounding the Maharajah, just sends chills down my spine everytime I see it. A close second for me is The German Sub, the first full rendtion of the theme in the movies, and with a powerful scene.

I agree Indy. But the pressing question is, how will the music (that I mentioned in the topic post) be presented?

I think Crusade is a very strong score and a five star album, but falls short of Raiders and Temple. I think it's incredible from the beginning up until and including Scherzo For Motorcycle. After that, a handful of the cues are good, but some of the cues ARE well, not so much boring, but not invigorating by any means. Like on the 2-CD boot, I find myself skipping from Scherzo For Motorcycle...to No Ticket...to the Belly of The Steel Beast...to Indy's Return...to the End Credits. I don't necessary listen to those exact cues, but I think some cues like The Berlin Air Terminal or Reunited With Sallah are good, but not the type of mystifying, pounding, or action cues that the other rest of the score (or the other films) have. Just my two cents.

I will concede there Luke. Yoda's scene was fantastic and did top some of the F/X in Spider-Man, but as far as I'm concerned, Spidey will look more real to me than Jar Jar Binks ever will. IrishCal, I agree that some of the composite shots were weak. The film was shot in 1.85 instead of 2.35. I suppose Don Burgess is a good enough cinematographer, but I think the film would've been rendered much better had the film been shot in 2.35. Since it wasn't, I think some shots suffered, and some of which were the digital effects shots. I know Stan Winston does mostly visual effects, but I always thought he had some hand in the digital effects. Does he really have none?