Incanus

LOL :?

1. Memoirs of a Geisha: Becoming a Geisha, Confluence, Chairman's Waltz 2. Star Wars & Revenge of the Sith: Anakin's Betrayal, Anakin's Dark Deeds, Immolation Scene 3. Harry Potter & Prisoner of Azkaban: Secrects of the Castle, A Window to the Past, Buckbeaks Flight 4. War of the Worlds: Intersection scene, Epilogue, The Ferry Scene 5. Minority Report: Spyders, Everybody Runs, Psychic Truth and Finale 6. The Terminal: The Tale of Viktor Navorski, Dinner with Amelie, Finding Coins & Learning to Read 7. Catch Me If You Can: The Float, Recollections, Catch me If You Can Reprise and Finale 8. Munich: A Prayer for Peace, Remembering Munich, Avner and Daphna 9. Angela's Ashes: Angela's Prayer, Lord, Why Do You Want the Wee Children?, Angela's Ashes 10. Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone: The Face of Voldemort, Hedwig's Theme, Harry's Wonderous World 11. A.I.: Reunion, Search for the Blue Fairy, Abandoned in the Woods All scores contain so many good tracks choosing three was very hard.

Young Sherlock Holmes by Bruce Broughton. A very thematic, entertaining and exciting score that has that childish charm but also surprisingly harsh passages. The temple sequence is particularly wonderful with tha pseudo Egyptian ceremony chant that owes some of its style to both TOD Thugee ceremony and Orff's O Fortuna Imperiatrix Mundi. Broughton should get more scoring assignements.

For me hearing the score in the context it was written for usually deepens my listening experience since the function of the music is more clearer after seeing the scene/sequence where it was written for. Many times the film also contains music that is crucial to the thematic development of the score and it may have been left off the soundtrack album and hearing the whole thematic line makes new connections with the music I am familiar with and makes the score even better (A.I. is a good example. The album left one major theme out and after seeing the movie I felt there was an important element missing from the development of the score). So the film completes the picture so to speak and gives of course a deeper understanding of the music's structure and what relates to what musically. I listen film music both intellectually and purely for the music's sake and there are many pieces of film music that sound unimpressive on the album before seeing the film and after seeing it they make perfect sense and I find myself appreciating them in a new way. Shelob's Lair from ROTK and parts of Shawshank Redemption, Road to Perdition, Henry V, Presumed Innocent and Nixon albums are good examples of this. You have to see the images to really know the music's full purpose and what the composer is trying to achieve with it. So I have to say seeing the film adds my enjoyment of the film scores. It is not obligatory that I have to see a movie to enjoy the score and many scores work well on their own but I usually try to see the movie that I own a score for. Williams is a composer whose music speaks very well outside the film medium and stands on its own but whose skill incorporating this same music in the movie in a way that it supports and elevates the picture is really remarkable. And he still retains artistic level in the music that is like nothing else. E.g.his dialogue music (the above mentioned music for ROTS dialogue scenes or e.g. Presumed Innocent) is both good music on its own and it accentuates the scene and gives the words deeper meaning. And above all his music is strongly thematic and thus it ties the musical threads and ideas reflecting the film's world together in a most satisfying manner and the music becomes a subtext for the movie but also an independent creation. This is most true in his longer scores which practically tell the story of the film through music alone.

I was so disappointed that the wondeful section of the Rescuing Sarah was left out of the soundtrack. That is a great moment when the T-Rexes stomp out of the woods accompanied by those fatal sounding chimes tolling doom for poor Eddie Carr. One of the bets unreleased sections of the score.

To me it's very un-Williams-like that his scores need film. They always stood on their own and in many cases surpassed the film they were written for. I think Williams would be little hurt if he heard that But what you say is true IMO too. In Williams' case it is mostly true that his music can be taken apart from the film and it still is great music. Not all composers have the skill to write such music. I see it as Williams' strength. His scores work in the films and enhance them but also work independently from them. But you think Geisha does not stand on its own apart from the film? I have complitely opposite view. I find Memoirs of a Geisha enchanting to listen to even just for the atmosphere Williams creates. But there are also the strong themes and dramatic writing I enjoy. I can't wait to see the movie and experience the score in it.

Indeed, I'm sure that combined with beautiful images the score has more effect. And that is where the effect of the music should first and foremost be. In the film. Sometimes I think, we the fans, forget it.

john williams can DIE? :? That is a vicious lie spread by James Horner fans. Do not believe it!

I'm glad you do not like it That leaves more to like for the rest of us

I find that sad and melancholy music does not deepen my sadness but helps to get over it. The music mirrors my mood and it is easier to let the music take that sorrow and sadness away. That sounds poetic but it works .It is same with agression. If something pisses me off I usually play the most agressive music iI can find and I play it loud. It helps. That way I do not vent my anger on people (who usually have nothing to do with the reason I am angry) but can exhaust the anger through music.

And thank God he did, it gave Williams a kick on the backside to rediscover some elements that were missing from his writing for a long , long time PS is a masterpiece BUT I do love AI too (even from the CD) Perhaps I feel that PS is so fluffy because of the album presentation of the score. I do not like Simon Rhodes' recording/mix. It is not crisp and clear enough (I am amazed how great his recording of the COS sounds in comparison. Just listen to that celesta on the first track of COS. That is what magic sounds like.) and the PS album contains some of the most fluffy music featured in the movie. On a whole PS is a great score but the album left me wanting to hear the complete score and all the great cues missing from the album

Oh well I can't remeber all the music from the movie. I have not seen it in ages. But that music edit is horrible. The worst in a Spielberg movie.

THe Hunt track was to be used in the great dinosaur hunt scene where InGen people capture dinosaurs on Isla Sorna. Perhaps due film edits or decisions made by the director (Spielberg) and composer (Williams) in the scoring process made it impossible to use the cue so it was dropped from the movie. THe scene if I remeber correctly does not have music at all. It is not that uncommon that an alternate cue or unused cue ends up on the soundtrack album since it is prepared well before the recording sessions are over and music is still being edited and rescored.

I avoid those Silva Screen compilations since usually the interpretations are bad and it seems that the orchestra does not even try to get it right. They do have good ones but most seem done with too much of a hurry. On the other hand Silva Screen has produced many good rerecordings like Nino Rota's Romeo and Juliet and Barry's The Lion In Winter. Munich: Bearing the Burden

It seems so. I stopped voting 5 rounds ago and I am waiting and seeing how this turns out (It was just too painful to vote all those good score off the list). A.I. will be voted off next round which is sad since it is better score than PS, Memoirs and Munich. If judging by the album presentation alone A.I. should be voted off but as a complete score it is magnificent. I feel A.I. had the magic and feeling PS needed but which was in part drowned by the sugar coating and fluffiness Chris Columbus demanded from Williams for the film.

Star Wars is the best of the lot IMO.

The hunt for new scores from the library is still on I see I did not even know Goldsmith had composed for a movie in question and in fact I do not know the movie. I just listened a bit of Gabriel Yared's rejected score for Troy and I must say his score beats Horner's easily. It may be little old fashioned in few places but certainly much better and more grand than what Horner could do in two weeks. Some cues like the cue Mourning Women have unsettling and little too strong ethnic tint that would have been too much for the film IMO but mostly the music is rich with melody themes and genuine feeling. This is the best Yared that I have heard.

The chances are Academy will give the Oscar as an encouragement prize to a new or foreign composer as if to say "Nice, you wrote some music, now write some more in the future". And most of them do not. Atleast not on the level deserving an Academy Award. Why can't they give it to a deserving person, in this case John Williams, a master craftsman of his art. He who has year after year produced the best of scores and maintained the same high level of craftsmanship in his work. I know Hollywood politics come to play in the Academy Awards but it is pure agony to see year after year Williams lose to surprisingly mediocre compositions (not all the winners in recent years have been mediocre but many have). I also know his fellow composers vote for the best score and I think most of the time they think that the nomination(s) is enough honour for Williams. They recognize the old master by nominating him every year but why do they not award him. Does he have too many Oscars? To recognize the same person with Oscar every year would be silly but Williams deserves his Oscar this year (as on many occasions before). The smell of Academy politics is heavy on the dounble nomination. It could easily divide Williams' votes and thus once again stop him from getting the Oscar. It is little futile to agonize and grieve before anything has happened but I see that this double nominations spells "No Oscar this year old chap, but atleast you got 2 nominations. We hope you are happy. We'd hate to make an old man sad". EDIT Every soundtrack review site that lists the nominees on their pages also say in the next breath that Williams wont get the Oscar since his 2 nominations cancel each other out. I guess it will be the hard and cruel truth.

Libraries save me alot of money since there are scores I would not necessarily afford to buy but am interested in hearing them and the library is an excellent source for free scores. And if the collections are extensive as they seem to be in Montreal and they are centered in one place then getting new and old music could not be easier. As I said earlier in this thread our score collection is all over our city in different libraries so that makes it a bit of an effort to hunt the music. That limit on the titles you can loan at any one time is actually quite prudent. Here we have the limit of 20 CDs and 20 books or something and people never seem to return them in time.

Damn they have a great Soundtrack collection there in Montreal. I am so envious. I would be going back and forth from the library daily with new batch of scores (as you seem to be doing KM).

Memoirs of a Geisha

My optimistic outburst was just a delusion born out of desperation. Some foreign composer is going to waltz out of the ceremony with the Oscar and leave JW in his seat crying for the cruel fate and crooked Academy.

JW Rules!!! Memoirs of a Geisha will win.

Mysterious are the ways of the Academy Hitch. You should know that.

That happens very often to me also. I remember the good old times and that actually can cheer me up even more (like in the case of SW scores or Jurassic Park).