Pieter Boelen

This review of a Lair promo is also interesting: http://www.tracksounds.com/reviews/lair_pr...john_debney.htm

Interesting: John Debney talks about scoring Lair: http://blog.us.playstation.com/?author=4025

I'd say the lengthy final battle cue: Disc 2 Track 8: The Battle/To Dawg's Ship/Morgan Battles Dawg/Dawg's Demise/The Triumph (17:52). All other tracks are excellent as well, but since this is the longest, it must be the best. As far as I'm concerned, this track alone is a very good reason to buy the 2-CD set rather than the OST, because it contains a lot of brilliant material not heard on the OST. There is no material on the OST that is not on the extended version as well, so you're not missing out on anything. Now in addition to that there are also "Morgan In Command", "A Lady Scorned" and "Betrayal" amongst the previously unrelesed, which also make very welcome additions. These are just a handful of tracks I highlight, but as far as I'm concerned just about all tracks are masterpieces in and of themselves and the entire score to Cutthroat Island is the most aweinspiring score written for a pirate movie I have ever heard.

Can this teaser trailer be found anywhere?

I love Indiana Jones. It's my favourite film series still. The films and scores are all brilliant. I used to consider the Last Crusade the best Indy score, but now my favourite Indy scores depends on the track I'm listening to. Now I am listening to Nocturnal Activities, so Temple of Doom is my favourite score.

With or without dialogue?

I don't want any parodying in Indiana Jones IV. Neither parodying the other Indiana Jones films nor any other films. Except for one small tiny funny reference to one other Indy film, similar to the RotLA references in the other two films.

I hope that rumours that area 51 and aliens have anything to do with Indy IV are completely unfounded. If there's one thing I DON'T want to have in Indiana Jones, it is aliens.

1. The Mummy Returns 2. Back to the Future 3. Back to the Future III 4. The Polar Express 4. Van Helsing I find this quite hard. Alan Silvestri is a great composer, but horribly underused.

Let's put it this way: Being melodramatic is also one of the main unfortunate things with the two sequels. I like the sequels, but I think a lot of the fun from the first film was lost. I personally hope they'll do a fourth film at one point which is just plain fun and not all too dramatic.

Being melodramatic is one of the main unfortunate things with those scores. I liked the first one for its sense of fun, the second contained too much drama for my taste and the third had some good fun tracks and some dull dramatic ones.

Up Is Down is definitely good; too short though. Drink Up Me Hearties is enjoyable. But none of these tracks come even close to the brilliance of Cutthroat Island. True. Master and Commander is a really good film and the music works great in the film, if not as stand-alone music. Cutthroat Island island I find to be an enjoyable film, mostly because the amazing music lifts the film up very much indeed.

As long as Cutthroat Island exists, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End can never be the best pirate score. As far as I'm concerned anyway. I only consider Hook to be an extremely good score with piratey elements; not a pirate score.

Satisfyablish perhaps. But the scores all sort-of end in a low rumble, which is not impressive to me. This mainly applies to He's a Pirate, which really doesn't end in an impressive way. I like truly impressive finales to tracks, such as in the examples provided in my previous posts.

I find that any and all Pirates of the Caribbean scores don't have a truly satisfying end. Neither in the films nor on the soundtracks. It seems that Hans Zimmer has great trouble writing proper finales like in Cutthroat Island, Star Wars or Indiana Jones in any case.

One down, one more to go.What I said was: "John Williams definitely confirmed writing for Indiana Jones IV, possibly unreleased music being released from Star Wars and John Williams possibly writing for Harry Potter again: Not a bad week, is it?" The first still rings true. Therefore: One up, one down, one to go. I never did truly expect that Star Wars release to be what we wanted it to be, but we could hope, couldn't we? Same for John Williams for Harry Potter. I don't actually expect that to happen either, but I would be most pleasantly surprised if it did.

At one point in time I might have mentioned PotC in such a context, but my opinion on that score has been put firmly into perspective by Cutthroat Island. Cutthroat Island IS one of the best scores ever composed. Pirates of the Caribbean, as enjoyable as it might be, is merely that and has no level of excellence.

It does fit in a way, but then it doesn't fit in another way. The music seems to be more spectacular than the scene. Which is the complete opposite of the finale, where the scenes are more spectacular than the music. Still I much prefer having spectacular music in good scenes over having anything less than that. Most of it does fit the scene, but some of it feels a bit out of place. Most of the music I genuinely enjoy. There's just a couple of really bothersome elements. "The Kraken" is no big favourite of mine, but one could argue it does fit in a way. And the finale of Dead Man's Chest I find really annoying music-wise with the low male Crimson Tide "Hynemou" choir. That piece of music always distracts me. But then there is "The Medallion Calls" which again works wonders in the first film for Jack Sparrow's entrance. Basically I find the quality and "fittingness" of the music to vary greatly throughout the scores. Some pieces really enhance the scenes, but some are pretty distracting as well. I'm not entire sure what to think of it.

One thing I do find with Hans Zimmer is that his music is frustrating. Frustrating in the sense that I get the idea through his music that he CAN write better music than he does. For example: The track "Up Is Down" from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End demonstrates what I would want the ENTIRE score for that film to sound like. But then we get a track like "I Don't Think Now Is The Best Time" which is just plain standard-Zimmer music with the PotC themes thrown into the mix. This illustrates that he CAN do it, but usually doesn't. Surprising to me is that "Up Is Down" doesn't really fit the scene in the film so much, yet "I Don't Think Now Is The Best Time" is somewhat distracting at times as well. In the Maelstrom making-of they used "Up Is Down" to underscore the maelstrom sequence, which, even more strangely, worked surprisingly well. One thing that would greatly help Zimmer's music is he would record the orchestra normally for a change and see how that turns out. That might bring a lot of like to the music he writes that is now lost simply because of his preferred recording method.

There is no SFX in there anywhere, is there?

Alan Silvestri and James Newton Howard are both pretty good contenders. John Debney can write truly amazing music (Cutthroat Island), but he doesn't frequently do it. Of course he never got another project of the same size.

Why is it that everybody is always so adamant on having sequels be darker than the film that went before it nowadays? It seems for every sequel there is a "must be bigger, better and darker" kind of idea. It's beginning to get annoying, really. How about: "Just as big, just as good and just as dark/light as the previous film"? Of course some variations are fine, but I'm beginning to dislike the going darker trend of apparently every series of films. In some cases it is understandable and sometimes even required, but in many other instances it is entirely uncalled for. In the case of Harry Potter it is OK, although I think they shouldn't be so pinned on making the next film darker. Instead they should try to make the tone of the film the same as the tone of the books. The way the films are going, Deathly Hallows might be shot in black and white. The best examples of this "darker" trend can be seen in Pirates of the Caribbean and Spiderman. The first PotC film was good fun, but for some reason they had to put a lot of drama in the second two films that was entirely uncalled for. It made for some pretty good and enjoyable films as far as I'm concerned, but they didn't stick to the tone of the first film, which I think was a missed opportunity. In the case of Spiderman 3 I don't even want to see the film because the "inner darkness", "son of bad guy with hatred of hero goes bad as well" and "love triangle" kind of storylines are just dark for the dake of being dark and in my opinion this is just plain boring.

How about this for an 8-disc version: 2-CD Phantom Menace Special Edition 2-CD Attack of the Clones Special Edition 2-CD Revenge of the Sith Special Edition 2-CDs of unreleased OT tracks and additional PT tracks That would, I think, be the ultimate 8-disc version possible. Then with this 8-disc version and the OT Special Editions, we'd have everything available.

They even report it on the main page on MuggleNet now (some really odd comments in the "comments" section though); looks like people are taking this news seriously. I hope it indeed is to be taken seriously. I would love to have John Williams write for Harry Potter again. I personally sorely miss his involvement. John Williams definitely confirmed writing for Indiana Jones IV, possibly unreleased music being released from Star Wars and John Williams possibly writing for Harry Potter again: Not a bad week, is it?

My current amount of Star Wars music is 11 hr 30 min consisting of extended Episode 1, 2 and 3 scores, along with SE's of the original trilogy. Devided by 80 minutes per CD, this would require 8.6 CDs if all space on the CDs would be used. Since my extended Episode 1-3 editions still have quite a bit of missing music, we can conclude that it is impossible to put all music on 8 discs even if all space would be used by putting the beginning of the next episode's music on the end of the previous CD. The sound quality on the DVD accompanying the RotS soundtrack is notably improved over the SE's, isn't it? Even if this release would not contain any new material, don't you think it should have at least the same sound quality as that DVD? That would at least be something noteworthy material released. I personally think that yet another re-release of the original trilogy SE's would be completely nonsensical. First there was the RCA/Victor releases, then Sony re-released the exact same discs again with some additional "improvement" of the sound quality that I personally cannot hear at all. In other words: Most of the music for Episodes 4-6 is already pretty well available. Episodes 1-3 on the other hand are a different story. None of these have had a proper soundtrack release. I am personally crossing my fingers, hoping against hope that this 8-disc edition will have at least some sort of notable new music included, even if it wouldn't be much.