mrbellamy

I'm not surprised, BAFTA is medium on Williams compared to the Oscars...Oscars have nominated him more times since 2010 than BAFTA has since 2000. And Oscars are more likely to go for the franchise scores as well. That said I don't think he'll show up on the Oscar list for Indy 5. If he even has an Achilles heel with awards groups, it tends to be summer releases, sequels, or box office disappointments, and DOD hits the trifecta.

My best friend One thing that makes me soft on Rise of Skywalker besides who did the music is that it does have a little cameo by pretty much everyone. That'll mean more over time. In general nerds will figure out how to take the sequels in stride, like they have with the prequels (which if anything are overrated these days, but better than reading "George Lucas raped my childhood" every day.)

You've seen the cameo, though, right??

Last time there was a JWFan petition for something I didn't honestly believe would happen, it was good ol Jurassic Shark's desire to see John cameo in Episode IX.... Who knows if they ever actually saw it or if Abrams thought of it independently, but hey, saying it is better than thinking it.

High praise for Thomas Newman, "The Night Window" is the only piece in there since 1989. And Papa Alfred is the only one who merited two separate entries besides JW himself

Well he was wrong there

That's funny because I think I was at my anti-Zimmer peak during those years. But I think a lot of it was because John Williams was mostly MIA, 2005-2011ish, feeling sad that he might be retired and Zimmer was always the obvious punching bag. That also just came with being a teenager and figuring out my own general tastes too. Interstellar was a good reminder that he's exceptional at his best. I think it'd be fun to see him live, a friend who has no particular interest in film music said he was the best show at Coachella 2017 which made me smile.

These kinds of things should be so easy to ignore because they're just hacky novelties from an artistic perspective, but because AI is involved they're given more attention than they deserve. Those quoted excerpts are groan-worthy. Who is going to listen to a full hour of this, as opposed to a few seconds to see if it got the voice? As an impression alone, this isn't even close to the most unnerving AI concoctions I've come across.

Hermione is also terrified of getting on the dragon in the book, which is another thing the movies never really captured and part of this struggle Hollywood has with giving strong girls or women vulnerabilities. She was more athletic in the movies but no less capable in the books. Even though she could be a bit of a wuss about the action, she got through it because the books often pointed out that bravery didn't mean being unafraid. Which isn't to say Rey shouldn't be a natural athlete, necessarily, and I do think people overexaggerate that Rey doesn't have any humanity. She's scared through a lot of Force Awakens, naive through much of Last Jedi, she can be impetuous in how she runs away from her problems in TFA and TROS or gets crazy ideas that backfire like saving Ren in TLJ. She won't accept emotional support from Finn when he's trying to be there in TROS. She's prone to crying way more than most action-adventure heroes, except maybe Samwise Gamgee lmao. There's a character in there but some of this ends up coming off contrived. I also get the "she's good at everything" complaint but I guess I felt like it was established fine enough for me that she knew a lot about space junk. And I'd seen enough REALLY invincible action heroines that I was sort of grateful she had some visible struggle while fighting the bandits on Jakku, and had to try at least a couple times firing a blaster or doing the Force memory trick lol. I understand that the acrobatics of the Falcon Chase are equivalent to a teenager without a license competing in Fast and Furious, but it's executed with enough pizzazz for me not to care. I honestly just accepted these things as dumb typical adventure movie shortcuts and was kinda stunned by the outrage. But I probably should have known a lot of people sincerely hold The Force as a special exception to other kinds of movie magic and dumb luck. Perhaps I do too, but in the opposite way where I'm even more inclined to forgive a lot of bullshit in Star Wars because of The Force. Rise of Skywalker has to be seen to be believed, but it's still not really among the worst big budget genre movies I've seen, because it's at least watchable for the most part. I didn't find it thoroughly dull or charmless, just confounding. I wouldn't give it less than a 4/10, which was still far below my lowest hopes for Star Wars Episode IX. I thought it'd be a 6 at worst. (Personally I don't even think it's the worst Disney release of 2019. The Lion King takes the cake for me.)

I think this is virtually unanswerable in a general sense, but it would be great to ask him a ton of questions on one scene in particular as a case study. I guess that would be another interesting topic, what scene or sequence would we pick if we could get John Williams to go step by step through his entire compositional process from spotting to recording. I guess "Adventures on Earth" is an obvious candidate. Or what if the scene we could ask him about had to have a maximum time limit of like 2 minutes.

Anybody else do this?

I like Burlingame but this is a lame take

I think this is quite possibly the most boring idea they've announced yet. So it'll probably happen.

Big THX fan, huh?

Yeah but depending on who's hosting and who's drunk, they're better than the Oscars

Williams is a little less popular at the Golden Globes, anyway, and they almost always ignore his blockbusters. They never nominated an Indiana Jones including Raiders, and the only sequel he's been nominated for is Empire Strikes Back. A.I. is the only score with any genre elements they've nominated since E.T.

Does Escapades count?

This one gets thrown around a lot but I still feel like the similarities are kinda vague "Bathilda Bagshot" hits the mark more specifically for me, especially right here:

Like who, JJ Abrams? Nobody ever presents a list... I think this argument is like "There are dozens of hot singles in your area!" for movies. It's true in a way but not really. The best writers and directors are the best because they have a reputation for not taking jobs like Star Wars sequels and spin-offs, and they can still get great stuff made for big budgets with more creative control and fewer built-in expectations. They're too smart for this and realize that taking on Star Wars, especially for Disney, is a lose-lose proposition. David Fincher knew it and was the first to say fuck no to Episode 7. If they do something different, they'll be hated. If they do the same shit over again, they'll be hated and probably hate themselves even more. Either way, they just risked their profile on Star Wars instead of something new. At least younger directors have something to prove and are either more likely to play ball or they're more willing to put up with pushback from Disney and fans for a chance to pull their ideas off on a big scale. Tony Gilroy so far is the most sophisticated industry veteran they've nabbed who's apparently been able to do what he wants on his terms, and those circumstances arose basically by accident.

Dial of Destiny made the BAFTA longlist in Original Score Slightly notable considering The Fabelmans was omitted last year Hateful Eight wasn't all that beloved...arguably Force Awakens was a more acclaimed movie so they could have given it to JW instead (the Grammys did) or indeed Bridge of Spies, Carol, or Sicario. But Morricone had never won in competition and Tarantino did a good job making that a thing at the Golden Globes. I don't think it's exactly so cut and dry that it has to be the most beloved movie. The closest he's come to winning since Schindler's List was Memoirs of a Geisha, which was NOT an acclaimed movie but was considered the most "sumptuous" of the year. And strikingly different for Williams. The Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman collaboration was also impressive. Brokeback WAS more beloved and probably made a difference, but there are other factors. Best Picture winners lose Score all the time. I think the exact reasons Williams hasn't won a sixth Oscar change from year to year but mainly it's because everybody knows Williams has a lot of Oscars. The fact that he gets nominated all the time might even work against him too, because it's easy to take him for granted. He's never had a comeback, he's never been the underdog, there's no hook, no reinvention, he's just always been good. 6 is not a very dramatic number either, unlike say Meryl Streep where the narrative became that she should have 3. She basically had her entire career between Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady. With Williams, there's not that same urgency to reward him for everything he's accomplished since 1993 in particular. That would require an unprecedented level of John Williams appreciation. And many people probably assume he has like 20 Oscars, anyway. This is all just hot air around the fact that they're indifferent about it altogether. I think it is possible that there could be a movie or score or a competition field with some weird X factor in his favor, but they've just gotten too picky at this point. I think too many people automatically rule him out.

I remember Spielberg revealing in an interview that he has a scene for a Jaws sequel that he will never tell anyone because he doesn't want it out there, but he fantasizes about it all the time and has to keep talking himself out of it.

There were at least two where we were throwing around ideas

Out of every artist in every genre on Spotify? Not really If it makes you feel any better, he has more than double Zimmer's listeners

Still sounds like a combination of film scoring genuinely being way lower on his priority list and that he actually just can't predict anymore what time or interest he will have for a film project. I feel like there's a touch of defensiveness from some of these quotes since turning 90. The answer's legitimately both yes and no. For decades, the odds that he would score Spielberg's next film were as close to 100% as possible. I would still place good odds but probably more like 75% now. Everything else is a total wildcard.