Bayesian

@Andy, I owe you thanks for introducing me to Empire Jazz, a hitherto-unknown-to-me gem of an album. I've been playing this basically nonstop on YT since last night, when I first read your post. Why this isn't on CD yet (so I can add it to my JW collection) is a mystery. p.s. Huge respect to Ron Carter, who managed to get probably the greatest SW-themed album art that isn't part of SW canon on the front of his album.

I lost count of the number of fanservice callbacks to JP and even TLW now and again. Total overkill. Like that pointless Nedry lookalike for that one scene—why?? And why did the geneticists repeat nearly verbatim the same mistake they made back in JP?? Also, why did they make Dodgson look like Tim Cook? He’s literally the least vilifiable of the big tech CEOs. They couldn’t make him look nondescript—or at least like Zuckerberg or Bezos or even Musk?? The cleverest moment in the movie for me was the T-Rex walking behind the big circle. Otherwise, it was a fun enough movie to watch once on the big screen, but it mostly vanishes from the mind the moment you walk out the theater. It could have been so much more.

A number of the reviews for Dominion on Metacritic suggest that the movie is a blown opportunity to actually give viewers a proper look into a world where dinosaurs and humans uneasily coexist. Instead, it's mostly a fanservice mashup of No Time to Die and the Bourne movies. To botch the chance to do some truly imaginative counterfactual worldbuilding in Dominion is truly regrettable. I hope the movie is better than these reviews are saying, but am not holding out much hope.

Lol. I was just about to post that I had no clue Rain Man had done so well. And I agree, cameos do not count. (And if they did, which they don’t, where’s Tropic Thunder in that list??)

Not gonna lie, I’m getting real tired of the epic trailer music sound. I hope the day isn’t far off when kids will watch trailers like this and roll their eyes (ears?) at it.

I've mentioned elsewhere in this forum that JW's incredible work ethic and humble demeanor are truly inspiring. If ever a man lived who could rightly brag about the sheer volume and diversity of his achievements, it would be JW -- and yet, I cannot think of a single instance when he has ever been anything but self-effacing and deferential. No "I'm king of the world" moments from this man, no "I got a million people to come to my concert" attitude. Hell, even Beethoven, who slaved like a motherfucker over his music, claimed he was doing God's work (which was admittedly true). JW has never once coasted in his career, which is astonishing to me. He works and writes today--at 90 years old--as if he's trying to prove himself for the first time. He is the living embodiment of the best of human industriousness. He inspires me to try harder, every day.

Who are Spielberg's people? How would we contact them to pass along this request?

I love Obi-wan’s new theme. And while it took me several listens, I think I now understand why the suite is put together the way it is. The first half of the piece is the “accessible” part, with the haunting theme/melody in poignant horns and ending with a gorgeous “action-y” ostinato. But then it segues into the second half, which Is slower, broader, more elegiac, and requires more effort to follow and integrate into the larger whole. Some folks have mentioned the lack of a B-theme as a detriment, but I see now why this isn’t a problem. In fact, I think what JW has done with the A-theme is (as usual) considerably more sophisticated than what any other film composer today could hope to achieve under a similar ambit. During the Ep. III-to-Ep. IV interregnum, Obi-wan needs to go from “top-of-his-game Jedi knight devastated at his supposed failure towards Anakin” to “ascetic recluse despairing at the near-extermination of his kind and forlornly watching over a kid whose guardian wants nothing to do with the Jedi.” There’s nothing happy that happens to him here. It’s perfectly appropriate, then, that JW gives Obi-wan the melancholy theme he does. But it’s fucking genius that he gives that theme a workout that goes into a brief state of driven purpose (the ostinato, likely representing his soon-to-seen showdown with Vader) only to lapse back into an even deeper and more complicated melancholy tinged with the slightest shade of hope. After all, that’s where we pick up on old Ben in ‘77 SW. This new theme isn’t JW on the decline. This is him continuing to ride the peak of his storytelling ability, undimmed in the least, with full and sensitive recall of the trajectory of a character he hadn’t had to think about since Bush was president. No B-theme was written because none was needed to convey what needed to be conveyed. Good lord, what are we music-lovers going to do when we finally lose this man?

To have the Disney suits countermand the director-slash-executive producer of the show on something as important as the music soundscape suggests either that JW has more pull over the musical identity of the Star Wars IP than almost anyone else or that Disney actually grasps and cares about the nuance of the continuity situation. My money’s on the former.

Beautifully said. If this is the last new Star Wars music we ever get from this man, what a mesmerizing and deeply felt way to go out. We really do not deserve him. New JW music sometimes feels to me like the only truly and thoroughly decent thing to come out of this wretchedly flawed century. I savored those few minutes watching him conduct that suite.

Waterworld is seriously underrated. And Spielberg's West Side Story. IMHO. Overrated? Anything by Christopher Nolan following Dark Knight. Not to say that movies like TDKR and Interstellar weren't entertaining, but they are not the messianic work of the savior of upper middlebrow cinema that his acolytes claim.

Not gonna lie, that action cue is pretty good and better than I hoped for from Gia. I hope there's more music in that vein in the full soundtrack. It's unfortunate that it ends at 2:20 with ten seconds based on a three-note motif that sounds, to my ears, really badly harmonized or is simply bad writing.

Man, I wish I could afford to have your problem, lol

Yeah, exactly!

@Phantomjedi, these covers look amazing! Great work! I think you've done as well as possible in terms of placing the SW wordmarks, but would you be able to provide versions of all nine without any wordmarks at all? I think the artwork for each movie is unique enough that one could do without the SW logo on any of them.

Ordered too!

(1) This sounds like an awesome story you're putting together and you have to let us know when it airs, Tim! (2) In exchange for that, I'll track down the instances the JP theme has been used in the Simpsons. I know it was used at least once, probably a decade ago. Let me dig into it.] EDIT: OK, the instance I was remembering is in episode 14, season 22 ("Angry Dad: The Movie") at 14:07, where it plays over a montage of Homer hogging all the credit from Bart for an animated movie they made. EDIT 2: Season 31, episode 21 ("The Hateful Eight-Year-Olds"), starting at 3:40. Lisa learns that her new friend owns horses. They set it up just like in the movie, with Lisa even wearing Dr. Grant's outfit. EDIT 3: Season 6, episode 6 ("Treehouse of Horror V") @ 10:19. Homer transports himself back in time and marvels at the dinosaurs around him. Note that the music here only imitates the JP theme, but in a way that it's impossible to mistake the reference. EDIT 4: Season 30, episode 4 ("Treehouse of horror XXIX") @ 16:45. A parody of the JP theme plays during a promo video for "Geriatric Park," which is itself a parody of Jurassic Park.

Is there a chance that Sony will just quietly press a new batch of corrected discs and sell those once the first run has either sold out or has been recalled from the warehouse? Maybe if we wait a couple months to buy this CD, it won't have this issue anymore.

I remember being disappointed it didn't become the biggest movie of the year. I also remember enjoying the movie a fair bit (my standards for summer entertainment were lower when I was younger). That summer, the first one post-9/11, was a bit of a weird one. Everyone was hesitant about when we could start enjoying frivolous things again like during the late 90s. The dark mood of Ep. II certainly didn't help lift spirits or hope much. That Ep. II did as well as it did speaks to how invested in Star Wars people still were.

I'll never forgive Kevin Feige for cursing moviegoers and poisoning the Hollywood machine with the interminable MCU... but his awareness of Bach and Beethoven and his insistence on using them in a Marvel movie does go a considerable distance in redeeming him AFAIC. I remember I took a fair bit of pleasure in the first Iron Man when Jeff Bridges' character tells Stark that his arc reactor was his Ninth Symphony. Now we have "Lethal Symphonies" in the Strange vs. Strange smackdown. These two high points may have been 14 years apart, but I'll take 'em where I can get 'em.

Several reasons for me for why I collect, most of them shared by others earlier in the thread. I will add here, though, that one thing about film scores I greatly admire and cherish beyond what classical music from the common practice period offers is their color. There is no other genre of music where so many varied and eclectic instruments/sounds are brought together on a regular basis. From taiko drums and anvils to kenas and synths, from wordless choirs to electric guitars and drum kits, film music is where the modern symphony orchestra and the rest of the human music-making world hook up and make beautiful musical babies. It's no surprise to me that the some of the best talent in recording and mixing film scores has also done classical work (or vice versa). Or that the musicians in L.A. are equally as talented as any member in an elite orchestra or philharmonic. Or that the best film composers are formally (classically) trained (Elfman being an astounding exception to the rule). So I continue to collect film music, even when no one else I know (outside this forum) can usually be bothered to even pretend to care about my obsession. It's an important part of who I am.

The 355. Watched it on Peacock. A run-of-the-mill action thriller and not very good. Appropriately enough, Tom Holkenborg’s “score” was a steaming pile of boring, brain-dead, melody-bereft crap with a shitty drum loop that got used ad infinitum. I can see why Universal chose to dump this film in theaters during the desolate wastes of January.

MM knows his audience and surely wouldn’t be so cruel as to toy with us in that way! Imagine the depths of despair we’d plumb were this mere raillery! I like to think that, this being the year of JW’s 90th, there’s justification for expanded scores from movies from any year. But if we’re specifically talking releases tied to anniversaries, we can probably agree that “LLL’s Hook: 10th Anniversary Corrected Edition” has a nice ring to it. Mike, I know you can make it happen!

Somehow, this thread completely escaped me until now, but wow, am I impressed, @ocelot! This music has a strong JW feel (and I mean that as a serious compliment) and I love the orchestral colors you bring out! This must have been an exciting commission and I hope it opens the door to more for you. Is there a recording of the whole six-part suite we could get somewhere??

I’m excited for this one, not gonna lie. I knew Cameron would know what’s at stake and pull out all the stops. This teaser and Danny Elfman’s score are the two things that will draw me to the theater when Multiverse of Madness opens.