Bayesian

Well, we are talking about Warners here, which is striving valiantly for the award for most ineptly-run studio in Hollywood. Maybe we shouldn’t read too much into this decision.

Other takeaways-- Hook expanded edition is selling like hotcakes and may be 80% (or more) sold out already... and MM hasn't begun working on Star Wars expansions yet. (Or maybe he has and he's really good at hiding that fact. But the way he spoke about SW as a project he'd like to work on doesn't sound prepared. I think he really hasn't been given the green light yet for that one.)

Thanks for sharing this! It's nice that the first concerto still gets some attention. Although Discogs has pics of the album, it doesn't appear on Amazon or even Pentatone's website. Anyone have any luck finding it for sale?

Competing tornado hunter teams, with one of them led by a brash, cocky SOB.... barrels filled with round metal tornado sensors... "we got twins!"... tornadoes that get bigger and badder each time... I appreciate the originality of the filmmakers here. I mean, they really went out of their way to find new directions to take this story. Who says Hollywood is a soulless, dying, creatively bankrupt bottom-feeder??

“We turn not older with years but newer every day.” —Emily Dickinson By the way, @Andy, I’m sending you a self-addressed stamped manila envelope. If you could just go ahead and insert those B&W photos of JW and drop the envelope off in the first mailbox you see…

I’m looking forward to this one! My main hope is that the plot is a little more complex than the usual mandalorian episode or season. I also wouldn’t mind if the mandalorian’s dialogue was a little less second grade reading level, but I’ll take whatever they give us.

Ah, good catch. Although I’ll confess that neo-noir dystopian movies have never been among my favorite genres.

So I’ve come the realization—far too late, but better than never—that Ridley Scott makes wonderful movies. You see, I always liked Gladiator and Alien and appreciated the craft in Hannibal and black hawk down and the last duel. But after hyping myself up for Napoleon and having my sky-high expectations almost completely satisfied, I started to look at the rest of his oeuvre. All the Money in the World: phenomenal. House of Gucci: Masterfully entertaining. The Duellists: A brilliant debut. American gangster: Fantastic. Still need to watch body of lies, the counselor, g.i. Jane and a few others, but I don’t expect to be disappointed. Anyone else feel the love for this director? He’s giving Tim Burton a real run for his money as my favorite director after Spielberg.

This is currently my most anticipated movie of 2024. A teaser at the Super Bowl would be awesome.

Unless it's a big salad. You know, big lettuce, big carrots, tomatoes like volleyballs. The kind of salad you deserve to get credit for when you buy one for your friend.

“Part One” still appears on the title card when streaming it on paramount+, I just discovered. Interesting…

Here's a link to Sony Pictures' press release about the renaming, for those interested: https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases/2024/0118 (Obliquely interesting that this dedication coincides with Columbia Pictures' centennial anniversary.)

Has this breathtakingly impactful moment been discussed yet? I'm talking about the devastating piano at 4:20, but you really need to watch the whole buildup to that moment to get the proper impact. I was watching A.I. on Paramount+ and that moment hits like a gut punch.

Monsieur le professeur, would you be able to share that talk with us?? Slide deck with annotated score snippets would be just darling, but we’d take talking points scribbled on a cocktail napkin if that’s all you had in your archives. I guarantee you wouldn’t find a more captivated or grateful audience!

Ooh, so much delicious ear candy to choose from, it's basically impossible to select just one favorite. I went for Setting the Trap because it has strong nostalgic associations from the first time I watched the scene that it was scored for. But Shark Cage Fugue and Quidditch Yr 3 are close runner-ups.

Sorry, I forgot about the trombone! A trombone concerto would be lovely too. Is that it, then, for major instruments? He's written concertos or similar for violin, viola, cello, horn, trumpet, tuba, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, harp, wind ensemble, brass ensemble, and string ensemble. Now that piano's on its way, that leaves, yes, trombone, as well as double bass, percussion, organ, saxophone, English horn, guitar, and jazz ensemble. Oh, and piano duo and piano four hands. And piano for the right hand, for symmetry with Ravel's concerto for the left hand. And orchestra, to match up with Bartok. Whew, that's a lot of concertos left to write!

I too am finding Rebel Moon very disappointing. (I’m about two-thirds of the way through.) The problem for me is that it’s too damn derivative. Yeah, I get that Snyder is aiming to make an “adult” Star Wars, so we’re going to see some familiar tropes, but we have seen literally everything in this movie before. The copy-paste tame-a-wild-alien-bird bit from Avatar, the Nazi-looking bad guy, the wholesome, down-to-earth farming community…. in 2024, it’s just lazy for a filmmaker to copy so much from so many places, and it’s boring for the audience to watch it. Also, I’m getting pretty tired of every last character in movies like Rebel Moon speaking like they all went to boarding school. Every damn character speaks with such ponderous solemnity all the fucking time. No contractions, no folksy vernacular, no conversational humor. Just the goddamned King’s English, no matter the mood, no matter the scene or setting or context. A character from a Luddite farming community speaks no differently from a senior warmongering officer? Really? That’s just lazy, lazy, lazy. And it makes movies like Rebel Moon boring. Say what you want about Star Wars, but at least Lucas gave us alien languages, characters from different social classes who actually sorta kinda acted or talked like it, and an innovative look for the bad guy. We need filmmaking to find that kind of creativity again.

I am so excited for a JW piano concerto. It’s the last major instrument he hasn’t written a concerto for. How did Emanuel Ax get this honor, I wonder. I’ve listened to his recordings since the early 90s and always liked his sound, although I don’t think I could identify anything particular about his performance style. (ASM’s concerto was written to her particular brand of virtuosity, and I imagine the same is being done for Ax.)

I couldn’t afford to attend any of JW’s European concerts (and even if I could have, getting tickets would’ve been impossible), but if he really does intend to revisit the hallowed halls of classical music, I’ll need to figure out a way to make my in-person attendance a reality. I will not miss out a second time.

Thanks for appreciating my ranking, @Tallguy! It’s been a long time since I watched it, but thanks to Disney+, I can confirm that I start really liking TESB only once they get to cloud city, with only 43 min remaining. In another dose of contrarianism, my high esteem for TLJ stems from the fact that it’s an eminently rewatchable Star Wars movie, second only to ANH. And it’s great fun to watch Kylo lose his shit on crait. (Mind you, the less said about seeing Rey use the force to lift four thousand tons of rocks like it was nothing, when Luke could barely free his lightsaber from a snowbank three episodes earlier, the better…)

My list, in terms of personal enjoyment: 1. A New Hope 2. The Last Jedi 3. Revenge of the Sith 4. The Force Awakens 5. The Phantom Menace 6. Solo 7. Empire Strikes Back 8. everything else So the thing about TESB is that I never thought it was all that great, outside of the score and the last hour or so. Han is at his asshole-iest when we see him on Hoth and the movie is slo-o-ow when Luke gets to Dagobah. I know this opinion is unpopular, to say the least, but I figured it was worth getting it out there before the year runs out.

I haven’t, but it’s on my to-do list, alongside K-pax and the others mentioned above. 👍🏻

Ah, yes, the Martian. A great Ridley Scott movie. You know, since Thanksgiving, almost all of my music and motion picture entertainment discoveries (outside of LLL’s Hook) are due to my newfound fascination with Sir Scott. After Napoleon came out, I realized I really didn’t know the man’s work outside of his biggest four or five films. By way of Napoleon, I learned about the Duellists (great movie)—and the terrific music of Howard Blake— and about Bondarchuk’s Waterloo from 1970, and then about other movies featuring Napoleon, including, just today, Count of Monte Cristo. Which then led me to learn about the music of Ed Shearmur. It’s been an interesting and rewarding few weeks.

No kidding. Maybe with superhero fatigue finally setting in and a bit of luck, we might soon see studios pivot back toward literary sources again for story ideas.

Listened to this album for the first time today. Where the hell has this score been my whole life?? How did I manage to miss this (and the movie it was written for) for two decades?? And why hasn't it been expanded yet by a specialty label?? Count of Monte Cristo was directed by the guy who made Waterworld -- one of my favorite action/adventures of all time -- and Robin Hood PoT. Theoretically, I should have been all over this movie (and its score) from day one. Now I wish I had been.