Gnome in Plaid

Thoroughbreds - Set against the fitting facade of wealthy suburban Connecticut, Amanda, a disturbed teenage girl is sent to her former best friend for SAT tutoring, who it is quickly revealed has plenty of problems of her own. Lily, provoked by her dismissal from Andover, takes inspiration in Amanda's apparent sociopathy (she "doesn't have emotions," and teaches Lily how to fake cry quite convincingly) and develops a desire to kill her asshole stepfather. Amanda, it turns out, is facing animal cruelty charges for brutally killing her own horse in a mercy killing gone horrifically wrong, and in Lily's mind, this makes her a reciprocal murder tutor. Together, they enlist Tim (Anton Yelchin in one of his last roles), quite possibly the world's worst drug dealer (and convicted sex offender), to serve as their hitman. Oh, and it's largely played as a black comedy up until the (finally, after being a milder-than-expected film for most of its runtime) disturbing twist: It's a really brutal ending, but I'm not sure the film actually earns it. While Mark is certainly a dick, but the actual emotional abuse is fairly mild. This plays up the black comedy - people suffer much worse without having any thoughts of murder - but it makes the whole effort feel rather pointless. I have to commend the filmmakers for getting the setting right--having overlapped with that world when I was in boarding school, I can say very few media representations accomplish that--but it's a thin story that never takes full advantage of its conceptual potential or cutting insight into New England elite life. One truly standout element, though, is Erik Friedlander's score. Seething cello, pounding percussion, and bizarre prepared piano--all rather mundane-sounding elements in today's film music world, but used quite uniquely here--come together for a really stunning sound that clashes with the film's visuals in the best possible way.

Mouse Hunt (Silvestri) - Pure, gleeful fun. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Sessions) (Zimmer) - I honestly have no idea how the album was botched so horribly, because this is a 10/10 score as written. The new Moriarty material is absolutely perfect, Zimmer completely nailed the Romani music, and Diego Stocco's "Experibass" contributions are absolutely wild. Titanic (La-La Land Release) (Horner) - Maybe I'm going soft, but this one has actually started to grow on me. I still don't care for a lot of the synth use, but it doesn't completely turn me off the way it used to. That's a really neat piece. Funnily enough, if not for the piano ostinato, I might guess it was from a Howard Shore score I hadn't heard.

My guess is that this means there will be far fewer FYC albums kicking around in the future.

1. Home Alone 2 (Williams) 2. Alien 3 (Goldenthal) 3. Year of the Comet (Mann) 4. Single White Female (Shore) 5. Wind (Poledouris) The Lion King? The Client? Ed Wood? Little Buddha?

Sometimes you just need to rock out.

All the time-lapse shots in House of Sand and Fog are marvelous, but it'd be hard to distill those in to a screenshot, but this brief shot is mixed in, and really capitalizes on the mood and setting. Leave it to Roger Deakins to make the glare off a windshield beautiful. What even is this, you ask? Looking vertically at the sun through snow starting to cover a skylight. Really, all of The Fountain is stunning, but something about this shot has always stood out to me. The last five minutes or so of Attack of the Clones are great! It's the best musical finale of the entire series. (The rest, not so much...)

Nixon (Williams) Loving Vincent (Mansell) A History of Violence (Shore) All top-notch.

For film: 1. John Williams 2. Howard Shore 3. Jerry Goldsmith 4. Clint Mansell 5. James Horner 6. Michael Kamen 7. Christopher Young 8. Hans Zimmer (at times) 9. Scott Glasgow 10. Leonard Rosenman Plenty of honorable mentions: Herrmann, Rozsa, and the other golden and silver age composers I don't know all that well; Beltrami, Newman, Goldenthal, Isham, and occasionally Giacchino and Harry Gregson-Williams today. Zuckerman and Wintory will probably join the list in time. Concert music somehow became a Top 24, and since the order doesn't really matter after about #8 or so, I didn't want to remove anyone. 1. Krzysztof Penderecki (all eras) 2. Richard Strauss 3. Toshio Hosokawa 4. Gerard Grisey 5. Witold Lutoslawski 6. Jean Sibelius 7. Helmut Lachenmann 8. Lepo Sumera 9. Dmitri Shostakovich 10. Pascal Dusapin 11. Thea Musgrave 12. George Crumb 13. Gustav Holst 14. Wojciech Kilar 15. Gustav Mahler 16. Toru Takemitsu 17. Marina Khorkova 18. Sergei Rachmaninov 19. Kaija Saariaho 20. Per Henrik Nordgren 21. Alan Hovhaness 22. Karol Szymanowski 23. Takuma Itoh 24. Matthias Pintscher So, yeah, lots, but my two #1 picks fit your request, and for 21st century specifically that would default to Hosokawa.

I'd at the very least try taking the HD into some tech repair shop. I dropped one a few years ago, but it turned out the drive itself was fine and what I'd broken was the USB connection. It worked fine once I pulled it out of the enclosure and hooked it up to a SATA to USB cable.

Err... interesting title. Anyway, that collaboration gave us High-Rise, so I'm definitely looking forward to this.

Loud percussion loops with occasional cello solo vs cello solos with occasional loud percussion loops?

I can't remember who the composer was, but I read an article about a composer giving all of his scores to a library, and they had all the piles of music sitting in front of him on the table as they made the announcement.

Allyn Ferguson's Les Mis is amazing, but I can't imagine any label taking it on as a project. That and Shore's rejected King Kong are my ultimate musical grails.

This scene was pretty clearly temp-tracked with "The Mirror of Galadriel" (for obvious reasons) but the end result is pretty impressive, and I love the "Battle of the Heroes" statements:

Mabel Foletelu in the original recording, a boy soprano in the symphony, and the featured adult soloist in the LTP. As for other scores, Desplat's daughter sings in Hostage and Buck Sanders' daughter created a "Nazgul screech" sound for No Escape.

A girl soprano? The only soloists I remember are the boy soprano, adult mezzo, and baritone for Aragorn's coronation. Even the Dimrill Dale solo is done by a boy soprano in the symphony. The solo at the end of "The High Fells" wasn't a boy soprano? Wow.

Plot twist: David Cronenberg is George Lucas.

The era that let Shore, Horner, Young, and Goldenthal start careers and move rapidly into major projects is certainly far-removed from today's atmosphere.

http://filmmusicreporter.com/2017/11/15/howard-shore-scoring-ben-lewins-the-catcher-was-a-spy/ Howard Shore has apparently completed The Catcher Was a Spy, the true story of eccentric baseball player-turned-spy Moe Berg. I don't know anything about the upcoming film (other than this), but the book that became the screenplay is a great read. Howard Shore? Baseball? A WWII biopic? In one package? Bring on 2018!

Loose in a box, padded by clumps of guanaco hair.

Ron Jones, Walter Murphy, or John Williams.

Thoughts so far: 21x02 "Put It Down" Tied together pretty well, and the finale song is so incredibly timely. As for the opening song, did South Park have Jennifer Walshe as a guest composer? 21x05 "Hummels and Heroin" The first real classic episode in a long time, although I'm a little disappointed that the hummels' "special power" was so... ordinary. 21x06 "Sons a Witches" Meh. I'm going to make a wild guess and say that Comedy Central demanded a "witch-themed" episode to tie into that week's Broad City.

I'm not sure I've ever removed a score completely except for replacing fan-made DVD rips when the real thing surfaces. Whaat!? But digital space doesn't really count. You can get a refurbished 1TB drive for like $30, and that can store the same amount as 1500 uncompressed CDs, and more than double that even in FLAC.