Pieter Boelen

I'm having a hard time voting. I'm wondering if I should choose the first or the second option. John Williams most certainly should score OotP and all other Harry Potter films. If he doesn't and a worthy successor is chosen, I won't mind too much. But I do not want another GoF-like unimpressive score that lacks magic, fun and excitement. If John Debney, James Newton Howard, Harry Gregson-Williams, Alan Silvestri or David Arnold get to score any of the following Harry Potter film, that will be OK with me. If Doyle really has to continue with Harry Potter, I hope he will then remain some consistency with his own work, even though I'm not particularly impressed by it. I also hope he would add some more excitement, magic and fun in his music as well in upcoming scores. But John Williams remains the #1 choice. And #2. And #3. And #4-#99.

Here is my list of all reasonably good scores released this year and whether I think they would deserve an Oscar(nomination): The Chronicles of Narnia: The Witch, The Lion and The Wardrobe Harry Gregson-Williams I reckon this one would be good for a nomination. Not realy the best of the year, but certainly very good. Sahara Clint Mansell Fun, but far from Oscar-worthy. Kingdom of Heaven Harry Gregson-Williams Deserves an Oscar, or at least a nomination. No doubt about that. The Legend of Zorro James Horner It's OK and has some nice parts, but far from Oscar-worthy. Very far from. King Kong James Newton Howard Not sure; It might be. I don't think it'll win after the Howard Shore-debacles. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Patrick Doyle John Williams' Harry Potter work deserved an Oscar for at least the first and third films. GoF does, in my opinion, not merit an Oscar at all. Patrick Doyle seems to have done his best, but I found the music sincerely lacking. It's good and functional, but not excellent. I really hope this one won't even get a nomination. Zathura John Debney It's good, but not excellent either. Not Oscar-worthy. Memoirs of a Geisha John Williams Absolutely Oscar-worthy. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith John Williams Oscar-worthy, of course! Heck; What else would you think? War of the Worlds John Williams Not sure about this one. It's John Williams and it's good. But compared with the others, I think this one might be less Oscar-worthy. Munich John Williams I don't know yet, but I can't imagine it not being Oscar-Worthy. List of scores that are likely to get a nomination (in the order that I consider them Oscar-worthy): 1) Memoirs of a Geisha 1) Kingdom of Heaven 1) Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Wouldn't surprise me if it doesn't get a nomination, but it does deserve one!) 2) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Witch, The Lion and The Wardrobe 2/3) War of the Worlds (Probably not) 2/3) King Kong (Possibly) - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Probably, but I hope not) - Munich (I know hardly anything about it yet)

Does anyone know what piratey movies have got good music? I like music for pirate movies very much indeed and am trying to get anything good I can get my greedy hands on. At the moment I have the following soundtracks: - Captain Blood Erich Wolfgang Korngold Rating: No rating I only have a few tracks in horrid sound quality. Nice main theme though. - Cutthroat Island John Debney Rating: ***** I have the full 2-CD soundtrack and I really love it. As far as I know, best overly amazing score for a pirate movie ever. So far, none of the others have impressed me quite as much. - Hook John Williams Rating: ***** I have the original soundtrack and an extended 3-CD version, but the latter has stupid clicks and plops. Definitely a great score indeed! - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Christopher Gordon Rating: * Dul, boring, hardly anything to like here. "The Battle" must be the most boring battle track ever. Works in the movie though. - Mutiny on the Bounty Bronislau Kaper Rating: ***** I have the 3-CD set, but haven't listened to it in it's entirety yet. What I did listen to sounded absolutely awesome. I love track 2 "Main Title/Portsmouth Harbor". - Peter Pan James Newton Howard Rating: No rating - I think *** would do Didn't really sound very piratey. Nice enough though. Sounded a bit Hookish in the movie every now and then. - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Klaus Badelt and co. Rating: ** When I first heard it, I really liked it. After I heard Cutthroat Island, I have become unimpressed with it. Having now heard even more proper pirate-movie scores, I don't really like it anymore at all. - Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas Harry Gregson-Williams Rating: ***** Great fun, great music, absolutely excellent. - The Sea Hawk Erich Wolfgang Korngold Rating: No rating yet - I think ****, but it might be ***** after all Nice main theme. I haven't listened to the rest of the music yet, but what I heard sounds nice. [sacrilege]Didn't seem quite as impressive as Cutthroat Island though. And Mutiny on the Bounty also impressed me more after the first few tracks.[/sacrilege] - Treasure Planet James Newton Howard Rating: *** Some nice piratey parts. Definitely a good soundtrack. Not overly impressive though. The modern touches are great for the film, but I would've liked the music better without it. Last track is awesome!

Three options for me: 1) Better Pirates of the Caribbean theme 2) Better First Task music for GoF (possibly with the Nimbus 2000 theme in it) 3) If possible, a Voldemort confrontation cue with Fawkes' theme and Window of the Past in it for GoF

It is? It really did sound like one of the themes from Chronicles of Narnia. I might've known there would be more music from other films in that trailer, in addition to the small part of music from Van Helsing. Thanks for telling me. :spiny:

I have listened to the full soundtrack to Chronicles of Narnia yesterday (apart from the songs, which I skipped) and my first impression is that it is most certainly good. Everyone who said that the quieter parts will be the most enjoyable will be happy: Most of the music is quite quiet, but still excellent. There are few statements of orchestral bombast and even "The Battle" seem to be somewhat quiet-like. However, anyone who has watched the 9-minute trailer will know that there is some truly spectacular music during the second half of the trailer that didn't make it onto the soundtrack for the most part. Although the music is excellent, I did find that a major let-down. I had been hoping to hear that music without sound-effects. Now I will have to satisfy myself with the recording of the sound of the 9-minute trailer. Is there any word yet on whether the Collector's Edition soundtrack actually will contain expanded score as was originally said? If so, I hope that some of the excellence that is missed on the original soundtrack will be on there.

Thanks a lot for debunking my comments. I have to say that I agree with quite a lot of your debunks, actually. I probably will never truly consider PoA the best Harry Potter film, but thanks to you, I'll certainly be able to enjoy it more. Thanks.

Good ideas. Personally, I would also be fine with James Newton Howard, Harry Gregson-Williams and especially John Debney getting to do it. People say John Debney is like a chameleon composer, composing in the style of another composer. I don't care if he is; he could imitate John Williams. Seriously, I think (judging only by the absolutely amazing Cutthroat Island) that he is an excellent composer.

Thanks. That's at least one good point that is true. Please read my post above and feel free to debunk all of my other complaints as well. I personally don't think a darker school was nescessary. Logically, it would've looked the same as two years before PoA. And a dark school wouldn't be a great place to learn either. Thankfully, it still all looks quite beautiful.

That is probably my biggest and only true complaint about AotC. The battle music is almost completely tracked from TPM. It should've gotten some proper new music all for itself. Why they didn't even use most of "The Arena" is beyond me. It's a great track.

I don't say that you can judge the films on how you imagined things from the books. But if things are completely and utterly off, then that does influence my judgement. There are a lot of things in the Harry Potter films that weren't how I imagined them (even in the first two films), but only in PoA is it truly bothersome, because I found that there's not enough of a connection with the book left (see below list of my comments on PoA). PoA feels like a film that doesn't have much to do with the previous two, nor with the book it's based on. I can live with it not being quite like the book, but a lot of continuity with the first two films was dropped as well, which is, according to me, not a good thing. I will write a list of a bunch of comments on PoA that I have. Please tell me why my comments are wrong: - The beginning of the movie was quite good (and true to the book as well). Aunt Marge's Waltz was great fun and works really well. One of my favourite scenes. - The Knight Bus scene is good as well (but what's with the creepy... playgarden?). The shrunken head is way weird, but his comments are quite funny. Shame the scene isn't quite as it is in the book. I would've liked seeing dustbins and telephone poles jumping away from the approaching bus. Still, so far, so good. - The first of my real complaints is in Tom, the barman of the Leaky Cauldron. He is 100% different from the previous movies and is now truly ridiculous and not funny. - The Monster Book of Monsters is real funny and well-done. - The Dementors looked nothing like I imagined, but that is my mistake. I read "hood" to mean "hat", so that the dementors in my imagination looked like big raincoats with a large hat on top without a head in between. Which was a whole lot less creepy and not how it was supposed to be either. I don't really like the design, but it does work fine. But the fact that they can suddenly fly in the movie, I find really stupid. Gliding/floating is fine, but flying is not. True; it doesn't say in the books that they can't fly, but since there's not stated that they can, I think it's safe to say that they were not originally intended to be flying creatures. And the sucking of happiness looks ruddy weird too. - Why is Lupin a creep? To set him up as bad guy or something 8O - Flitwick suddenly looks different as well. If only he had looked like that in the first two movies, it would've been fine, but now it is completely impossible to know that they're supposed to be the same character for people who aren't really into Harry Potter. - The Double Trouble song is weird and unnescessary, but since it's great John Williams music, it's fine being there. - Dumbledore is waaay off, according to me. Not at all like the previous two films. The old Dumbledore didn't play Dumbledore; he was Dumbledore. The new Dumbledore doesn't have the same feel to him as the old one did. I find the new one quite a lot better in GoF, so I reckon I'll be able to live with him in the end. And his "Remember to turn on the light" text is not sounding wise or anything; it sounds ANNOYING to me. Dumbledore doesn't lecture!!! - What's with the blue bird and the suddenly completely different Womping Willow? That is NOT funny; it's one of those "What the heck" moments. - Why is Hagrid's Hut suddenly larger? I will hold off from complaining about things that are different from the other movies. Suffices it to say that there are a LOT! - Buckbeak is absolutely amazing and is the only one who does looks exactly how I imagined. I'm skipping to the end of the movie now. It takes a lot of time to write this and you probably won't read all of it. - Why did Harry have to see Pettigrew on the map? It diminishes the impact of the end of the movie, because he isn't surprised by Peter being alive at all. It also makes Sirius less suspect of being the villain. - The werewolf was again one of the biggest mistakes ever. It looks stupid. In the book, it is clearly written that a werewolf looks virtually the same as a normal wolf with only very small differences. That werewolf defenitely does not look like it should! - It's a shame a lot of explanation was cut (Marauders, Sirius' escape from Azkaban). PoA being 20 minutes shorter than the other films, this could easily have been added. - The Patronus is probably one of the worst mistakes in the movie. Whoever said it's supposed to be some weird force-field most of the time and suddenly look like a stag once. Somebody who doesn't know the books will be wondering why there's a stag; someone who does know the books will be wondering why there's a force-field. How cool would it have been to have a white ghost-like stag charge through a horde of non-flying Dementors at the edge of the lake? Would've made for some powerful imagery, I can assure you. :roll: - There are also two truly big story mistakes in the film: 1) Hermione says that a werewolf only responds to the call of it's own sort. Later in the movie, she pretends to howl like a werewolf and Lupin responds. Add 1 and 1 together and Hermione is a werewolf. Which, obviously, she isn't, because then she'd have turned into one as well. 2) During the Boggart lessen, Lupin stops Harry from fighting the Boggart after it already turned into a Dementor. Later, he tells Harry the reason that he didn't let him fight the Dementor is because he feared it'd turn into Lord Voldemort. If Lupin is having any eyes at all, he would've seen that it didn't. This is where I'll stop with my comments. Obviously, I am highly critical of a lot of things in PoA, so somebody please tell me why I don't need to be, why everything is quite OK and why PoA is the best of the Harry Potter movies.

LOL. Too funny. Great shock about John Williams turning on his fans though!

I usually want to clap, but I don't, because people will think me crazy. Which, of course, I am, but I try (and fail) to make people not notice. Last time I saw RotS on my DVD, I did clap.

James Newton Howard is capable of writing great music. As is Harry Gregson-Williams. With these two around, we at least have two good young composers that use mostly orchestral music. Even if neither of them will prove to be quite as good as John Williams, at least they will be able to keep some quality in the music for future films. At least, that's what I hope. I really wouldn't like all films getting Zimmer-like scores. His music is OK, but gets highly repetitive after a few movies.

Here are my ratings from the movies and scores, together with a small explanation on why I gave these ratings. Films: Philosopher's Stone - 8 The movie is exactly how I imagined the book. Chamber of Secrets - 8.5 Everything is like I imagined it to be. Plus I didn't feel that it was noticeable that parts from the book were left out. Prisoner of Azkaban - 5 The movie is something like exactly how I didn't imagine the book. I was like "What the heck" in virtually every scene. It's serviceable, I suppose, but everything but a good movie. There were too many things that didn't made sense. If you want examples, feel free to ask. Goblet of Fire - 7.5/8.5 Much, MUCH better than the previous one. Not sure if I like this movie best of all. If it had a John Williams score, this would be my favourite Harry Potter film for sure. Scores: Philosopher's Stone - 9.5 Absolutely awesome score. Instant classic, as far as I'm concerned. Shame the soundtrack is so short. I want a two-disc edition!!! Chamber of Secrets - 7.5 The new themes were absolutely excellent. The only reason for it not being a truly excellent score, is because John Williams didn't have the time to write it as good as he could've had. But for the short space of time he had, he did a spectacular job. Prisoner of Azkaban - 9 Absolutely excellent and very original. One of PoA's two redeeming factors (Buckbeak being #2). The only reason it doesn't get the same rating as PS is because many of the old themes were abandoned, which is rather a shame. Goblet of Fire - 6 It works in the film and has it's moments of greatness. Not at all in the same range as the John Williams scores though.

I really like the AotC score and just can not see why some people don't. I personally like it a whole lot more the RotJ, which does have many moments of greatness, but the Ewok music really didn't help. I also used to like AotC better then my TPM soundtrack, but now that I am getting to hear the TPM music as it was meant to be, I'm not entirely sure anymore. I didn't use to like TPM very much, but my appreciation is greatly increasing.

If anyone is interested in a review of the Zathura soundtrack by John Debney, check it out here. This seems to be the only review I have been capable of finding. Seems as if virtually all the world isn't even aware of it's existance; not even the main movie music sites. Edit:.

I never found The Patriot a very bad score. I actually really like the main theme, as well as a fair few other tracks: To Charleston, The Colonial Cause, Preparing for Battle and Tavington's Trap. Not sure about the other tracks, but I do really like those. Oh dear; now I've done it. Now I've lost any sort of credibility I might have had left!

Does anyone know the "Montana (Jones)" cartoon series? It was an adventure serie, a bit similar to Indiana Jones, because the main characters went searching for lost treasure. I really like the main theme from that serie. Not the Japanese main theme though; the one in the Dutch episodes. It is not being shown on television anymore; I wished I knew where to find them. For all I know, they're completely unavailable! If anyone happens to know where to find them, be sure to tell me!

Why can't I vote something like "5: Bring back John Williams for crying out loud!". The music is OK and does work in the movie mostly, but completely lacks the absolute brilliance that is even apparent in lesser John Williams scores.

I had just written rather a lengthy post about my views on PoA, but because, for some reason, this message board will not keep me logged in for longer than five minutes, I lost all of it. AAARRRGGGHHH!!! Generally, I was saying that I don't really like PoA and was hoping you people could help me point out why, in fact, PoA is a great movie.

QuickTime didn't work too great, so I don't know about the score. I still have high hopes for it. Harry Gregson-Williams is highly capable of writing good music. :roll:

I tried to, but I could only listen to a few. It didn't really work all too great.

If anyone is interested: I just found out Apple iTunes has samples available. Seems like they're the only ones having samples yet.BTW: I found on this site a CD tracklisting for Narnia with four songs at the end. They're joking, right? I don't want stupid songs on my soundtracks. The more songs, the less music can be on there!

I really like the prequels myself. The tracking/butchering of music is truly unfortunate, but otherwise the movies are quite good. As far as I'm concerned. Sure, they could've been better, but I think they're quite fine already. I do hope they'll fix some little things in future releases though. :roll: