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Posts posted by Bayesian
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2 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:
Geez, Louise! That fake trailer is better than the whole of NO TIME TO DIE
I’m usually simpatico with your position on most things, but you’re way off base here—NTTD was a fine movie. Even got me a bit misty-eyed toward the end.
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I’m going to one of these concerts one way or another. Two of my biggest musical idols under one ochre-colored roof… there was no way I was going to make it there for his first trip, but with 14 months’ advance notice now, I can properly plan for this one.
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I voted for the Shaham/Feldman because I have a fondness for that entire album. Their performance of the Saint-Saens Danse macabre was one of my favorite things ever. I remember 20 years ago (or whenever it was I first bought the cd) replaying the final recapitulation of the theme, from about 4:55 to 5:12, over and over like a mental patient.
Even now, here I am at my desk at work, and I've scrubbed back over those 17 glorious seconds about 8 times already. Listen to Feldman's right hand fly off into the upper register at 5:06... these are the moments why we have ears.
Anyway, since this is a thread about JW, let me say how much I marvel at his devil's dance, which could have been written 175 years ago for the mastery of its form, that's how good it is.
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On 15/04/2024 at 10:50 AM, JNHFan2000 said:
Now this is exciting news! I hope it's got enough appeal for a theatrical release.
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I can't believe I only discovered this thread now. Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin?? Color me curious -- and cautiously optimistic!
I have fond memories of the Naked Gun movies. Along with the Hot Shots and Airplane movies, they made up the bulk of an entirely distinct category of comedy whose existence was like an island in the long timeline of Hollywood movies. The main reason the absurdist humor worked, of course, was that Leslie Neilsen played the role completely straight but also tongue in cheek. That's probably damn harder than it looks, and I hope Neeson gives a performance that can compare. He has to play the role like he knows the world he's in is ridiculous and absurd but still takes it dead seriously.
More than that, though, the NG movies worked because everyone played their roles straight. There was no winking at the audience. I hope the script treats the audience like adults and doesn't stoop to Deadpool-style pandering.
Also, I hope during the opening credits they do something like put up Leslie Neilsen's name and then awkwardly/frantically try to replace it with Liam Neeson's. That would make me laugh.
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On 14/4/2024 at 7:48 PM, Quppa said:Hans Zimmer composed some music (a 'song') for TRON (the cryptocurrency, not the film franchise). I can't find any information about the commission, but I presume he was paid handsomely.
Here’s an article that discusses it in a little detail: https://cointelegraph.com/news/hans-zimmer-writes-tron-theme-song. Apparently, the “song” had been under development since 2022 (although the end result sounds like Zimmer only worked on it since 8:00 this morning.)
Read the article. It quotes Zimmer on how this music represents the potential of Web3.0. The disconnect between what he says this song represents and the actual banality of the music itself is… well, it’s astonishing.
I really believe Zimmer has somehow managed to achieve the impossible — he’s transcended his corporeal form to become a being of pure marketing.
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The re-uptake of this thread has been a very interesting and thought-provoking read. (I also admire how civil we’ve all been so far in disputing positions!)
A few years ago, my take would have been more conservative/conventional, namely that JW is representative of the skill set that a “proper” professional film composer should have and that composers with less formal musical backgrounds are slowly dragging down the quality of film scoring as an art. (Danny Elfman being a very important exception.) But I’ve become more sanguine about the whole thing lately. Not because I’ve begun to enjoy or appreciate the music of the likes of Zimmer or Balfe (I haven’t and never will), but because I realize composers such as them are, if nothing else, good at the very narrow thing they do and that there’s room in the movie business for their specialization. Zimmer’s music for Dune, for example, would be a godawful sonic experience for most people on its own, but as part of the movie, it definitely succeeds at evoking an otherworldly environment.
As for the actual musical talent—piano performance, reading or writing music by hand, improvisation, etc— of the likes of Zimmer & co., it actually shouldn’t matter, in principle, whether a person can do these things if he can give the buyer what he wants. If producers want the Zimmer sound and a composer can give it to them without the benefit of a conservatory education or sight reading skill, well, why not? We shouldn’t want credentials (or the philosophy behind credentialism) to stand in the way of people finding their way to success. That kind of gatekeeping is classist and elitist and I’d love to think society has had its fill of such things finally.
- Mephariel, GerateWohl and bruce marshall
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Wish is now on Disney+ and I gave it a watch because of my morbid curiosity given all the bad reviews and press it got last November. And yeah, the movie is as middling and disappointing as everyone says. It's not a bad movie necessarily, but it's just so frustratingly weak in too many aspects. There's no soul or depth or nuance to anything (costumes, faces, settings, character arcs...). The overall impression you get is that this movie is a simulacrum made by an alien or generative AI of what it thinks human beings would enjoy in a Disney animated movie. Watching Wish is just a wan and emotionally flat experience. Except during the songs, when all you can do is cringe at the amateur quality of the writing. ("Throw caution to every warning sign"? What does that even mean?) You can't help but miss the genius of Howard Ashman and Stephen Schwartz when you hear talents like Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine do what they can to make lemonade from the artless rhyme-lemons foisted upon them.
Also, it seems like every tenth word spoken in the movie is "wish." I never thought that word could get annoying to hear but, yes, it definitely can.
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On 2/4/2024 at 10:52 AM, Erik Woods said:
Nixon, IMO, is hands down the single greatest trailer ever cut with the single greatest piece of trailer music of all time! Nothing comes even close.
Yeah, I’m gonna have to agree here. That trailer was a masterpiece, selling us on Nixon’s life as a modern-day Greek tragedy. (The movie itself was just as great; probably Stone’s high-water mark as a filmmaker.)
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On 28/3/2024 at 8:46 PM, Edmilson said:
Not only there's a sequel for the Winnie the Pooh horror movie being released this year, they already announced a third part.
https://variety.com/2024/film/global/winnie-the-pooh-blood-and-honey-3-confirmed-1235954467/
Doesn’t Disney own the IP on Winnie the Pooh? I’m extremely surprised they’d allow this character to be used like this!
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Some folks here have mentioned not having seen Insomnia. If you’re one of them, make point of watching it. It’s Nolan’s first movie and it’s really good. Robin Williams was masterful in it. Watching his performance will remind you that we lost him far too soon.
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Her role couldn't be that big, could it? Haven't they been filming this one since 2022? I'd have thought principal photography had wrapped on this already, SAG/WGA strike notwithstanding.
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On 26/03/2024 at 6:48 AM, JNHFan2000 said:
New Bad Boys.
Let's see what the box office is like after the slap.
That trailer is awesome. Several solid LOL moments in there for me. I'm gonna do my part to make this a box office hit. Plus, I'm not ashamed to say I love Will Smith, always have, always will. And they found a way to bring Capt Howard back, and not just in a silly cameo kind of way, but core-of-the-plot kind of way. That's seriously awesome.
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I had no idea this was in the works. Very exciting! I hope we can look forward to an official cast recording. As Menken’s last contribution to the Disney Renaissance era (launched, of course, by he and Howard Ashman), it’s nice to see Hercules get the live musical treatment.
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2 hours ago, mstrox said:
The Elfman theme has been used in so many trailers over the last 35 years that it’s too cliche for this movie.
It looks like what I expected. Hopefully it’s just some weird supernatural comedy and not nostalgia diarrhea like the Ghostbusters revival.
By all accounts known to me, we should be safe this time around. This is going to be a straight up sequel with no reboot elements of any kind. (I’m sure, too, after his experience on POTA, Burton’s now allergic to the very notion of reboot, lol.)
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17 minutes ago, Badzeee said:
I have a certain sympathy with this... where they definitely don't antagonise me, Goldsmith's scores rarely move me in quite the same deeply emotional way as, say, a John Williams, a John Barry, a Joe Hisaishi or an Ennio Morricone might. There are exceptions (Star Trek V, The Mountain being one, the Voyager theme another), but I think he's fantastic at action scores or terrifying you (The Omen and ALIEN being good examples). Which is when I figured it out - fear is not simply an emotion, it's a fight-or-flight response and this is what I think Goldsmith is extremely good at - subtextual scoring.
I'm not a musician myself (although most of my family are) but I love music and work to it most of the time. And what I've found is, a lot of Goldsmith stuff is often about the mental state of the characters onscreen, whereas all the others mentioned have a slightly different approach - less focused, more "widescreen," if you like. Williams is the uber-storyteller, matchless in deciding what approach to employ, whether thematic, emotional, action-led, whatever, to any given scene; he can use music to "zoom" you in or out of an emotional state.
Barry was often romantic. Arguably, he invented modern action music with his Bond scores, but he could never quite resist the emotional undertow of a scene, especially if there was a romantic, yearning quality to it. Both Hisaishi and Morricone are epic, vast, absolutely unrepentant in using orchestral colour to illustrate even small human emotions. (And I love that about them.)
Goldsmith, when he went epic, he'd do The Omen or his various Star Trek themes. They're huge, brilliant, but even when he's doing an action or military theme, there's always something incredibly centred and intense about the notes and instruments he chooses. He's more of an interpreter than the others (as opposed to an emotional accompanist). When he does scary or paranoid, he does it better than almost anyone - like in Seconds or Total Recall.
I dunno, I'm not using music terminology, just attempting to describe my impressions so I might not be making a lot of sense. But I too find him stylistically very different to all his contemporaries and peers... but maybe understanding the interpretive intensity that drives his scores is a way in. It certainly worked for me.
That's a really thoughtful way of describing how Goldsmith finally clicked with you. I appreciated reading it. Maybe I can find my own way in based on this..
- Yavar Moradi and Badzeee
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I felt the need to post this track from the Pocahontas soundtrack (1995).
Up until 0:58, we get a statement and a bit of development of what I think is supposed to be Pocahontas' theme (a seven-note motif). All quite lovely and whatnot. In the movie, this is when Pocahontas and John Smith kiss for the first time. But at 0:59, the motif takes a dark turn as one of Smith's men sees the kiss, reflecting the impression of Smith as a traitor to his people. The theme snippet (now reduced to 5 notes) is then immediately repeated, but in an anguished and devastating way, as this is when we realize that P's husband-to-be is also watching them kiss.
Those few seconds, from 0:59 to 1:11, contain the music of those awful first moments of heartbreak happening in front of your eyes. It's the soundtrack of the implosion of hope. It's a stunning musical moment.
To anyone who knows music theory: can you explain what's happening during those 12 seconds? The five-note motif is played twice during that span, with the first iteration sort of setting up an aural expectation for the second iteration. But whereas the first iteration sounds like horror dawning, in the second iteration, the last three chords of the motif (starting at 1:07) sound like pure anguish. What does Menken do in those three chords to achieve that emotional response??
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I imagine my first exposure to Goldsmith was Gremlins. The main theme was super catchy and stuck with me for years. However, I didn't pay any attention to who wrote it (just like I never cared at the time to learn about who wrote the BTTF music, which also stuck with me instantly).
Goldsmith is a tricky one for me. I know he was super talented and I very much respect that. But overall, his music leaves me weirdly indifferent, or even antagonized at times. It's like I can appreciate at arm's length his proficiency but with relatively few exceptions, his melodies and thematic development don't click with me and his scores don't linger in my mind. In some cases, like Air Force One, his music just gets really grating on the ear. And I've tried to like him, believe me, ever since joining this forum, where lots of folks are deeply fond of his oeuvre.
- Badzeee and GerateWohl
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Great questions, Bespin. I’m definitely curious about the answers too. I just wanted to pop in and clarify that what we on this forum refer to as “micro-edits” are just simply “edits” in a professional sound engineer/mixer/editor’s context. (I once posed a question about that terminology here and that was my takeaway.) Technically, the only thing big, small, or micro about an edit is maybe how much original material gets displaced from the affected cue. Otherwise, it’s the always fundamentally the same mechanistic action to cut in or cut out something that wasn’t captured in the original recording.
If I’m wrong on this, let’s get that cleared up also. I’m sure I’m not the only one confused by the use of this forum vernacular.
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I would have loved to have attended this! Mind you, that would unfortunately never have happened even if I'd known about it in advance; getting to Vienna from California and back would be budgetarily out of the question, so I'm hoping against hope that the concert was recorded.
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4 hours ago, Edmilson said:
Ok, that was pretty great! It's sorta like Desplat channeling Elfman in Desperate Housewive mode. Wherever he got his inspiration, I totally dig it.
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Another wonderful accolade for JW that’s, as always, well deserved. I can’t help but notice that out of the 19 laureates, JW is the one the AP picked to headline the article. Just further evidence that his living legend status reliably sells, whether it be concert seats or live albums or article clicks.
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Does anyone happen to know what cello Ma played at these concerts? Mere curiosity, is all. He’s got two cellos from the early 18th century—a 1712 Strad and a 1733 Montagnana, according to Wikipedia. (To think that either of those master luthiers couldn’t have any idea at the time that their instruments would be playing JW’s music three centuries later..)
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Anyone here succumbed to 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray?
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Grainy one. Every time. I don’t like my movies looking like generative AI made them.