Bayesian

Columbia House was the bane of my young existence in the early-mid '90s. But at least with Amazon, sending things back is a piece of cake, so this could be the rare thing that gets resuscitated and happens to be better the second time around.

I loved reading your synopses and interpretations of these pieces @SteveMc. We have so much content on this forum that delves incisively into JW’s film music, but much less for his concert work—and certainly not in a single thread like this. But his concert work deserves it just as much. Thank you for this. Do you have plans to survey the next decade (or five) of his output? (I hope you do!)

Lovely quote. In what interview or situation did Arnold say this? Edit: never mind, I see you started a new thread on it 👍🏻

No, don’t do that! What did I tell you to do last week?? Cancel that shit and order it from www.jpc.de. Mine shipped out two or three days after I placed the order with them, with tracking info. (DHL to the US, then USPS, full tracking the whole way.) Excellent packaging and great email communication from start to finish. You’ll pay less than what Amazon would charge, or at least very close to it (depending on state tax), because they charge next to nothing to ship. And you want this release. It’s beautiful and well made. The recordings are top shelf. And it’s got that European style of penmanship on the back, where the unit number goes. The way they use two lines to draw a “1” or swerve the horizontal part of a “2,” that kind of thing. It just classes up the whole thing in a way most people couldn’t care less about—but which is exactly why you should care. I’m guessing Amazon will eventually get some copies, but the agony of waiting is just going to get worse.

Today’s SF Chronicle has a piece on the 40th anniversary of Raiders’ release to theaters. Nothing in it revelatory, although the writer mentions a couple of Bay Area venues were used in filming (something I didn’t know).

I’m looking forward to Indy 5 as much as the next guy, but I’m going to miss the Spielberg touches. The way he moves the camera to reveal things, the trademark light & fog, and all the other tricks he uses to make a movie fun to watch. Even KOTCS had a ton of those kinds of moments. Edit: this comment belongs in a different thread. Carry on, nothing to see here.

I am intrigued by this preview, although not enough to pay to see it in front of F9 (how the hell did the first one grow legs to make it this far, anyway??). I’m also curious if this will feature as the first few minutes of Dominion or is intended as a standalone feature on the blu-ray. Either way, I have great hopes for Dominion. After five movies taking place on islands (and one gloomy looking estate somewhere), we’re going to see what the world looks like when dinosaurs run free in it!

I might have been channeling my annoyance at people who gave a pass on the film because they couldn’t get past the plot quality problem when I wrote that. They couldn’t see the Pandoran forest for the trees. Yes, plot matters, but for me, a basic or serviceable plot is sufficient if it allows the world-building to flourish. Which it did in Avatar. And especially when it’s for the first time. I will grant you that this can only go so far. If Cameron had decided never to touch Avatar again, the film would still stand as a singular achievement in modern film. Of course, as he’s said there are four sequels coming and two are already in the bag, we the film-going public face a situation where plot will matter more since we now have seen this world and will remember the first film’s plot was thin. But I have total confidence that Cameron knows what he’s doing.

I haven’t watched the Abyss in years and cannot answer the OP’s question. But with regard to Cameron’s other movies, he is as reliable as they’ve ever come in terms of making entertainment that begs to be seen on the biggest, most advanced screen you can find. And there is a level of command in his direction that simply never fails. He’s even better than Spielberg in that regard, or at least more consistent (although to be fair, Spielberg has directed a lot more films and I’m leaving True Lies out of this.) Cameron has a singular gift for making the lizard part of my brain squeal in glee. When I was watching Titanic for the first time at age 18, I sure as shit didn’t care about the supposedly bad dialogue or romance—all that mattered to me was that I was being given a front-row seat to watch how this ship went down and managed to take so many people with it, and my greedy eyes could not get enough of it. Every detail was precious. (I loved from the very first time, for example, the details you see in the electrical room just before the lights go out throughout the ship—it’s a scene that lasts, what, maybe 6-7 seconds? And yet it’s seared into my brain. I’ll bet you anything Cameron spent relatively as much to make that set look real as he did for the promenade decks or what-have-you, which get a lot more screen time. But they’re all equally important. No detail too small. In Avatar, you think I cared about the basic plot? Fuck the plot. I’m being presented with the first truly realistic otherworldly environment in god knows how long, with actually plausible vehicles and tech for once, and on top of all that, I’m being given a grand tour this world, being shown how truly scary it would be when a really big tree comes down on top of you, or what it would be like to fall to the ground from two miles up or how it might feel to be nearly killed by some terrifying jaguar-like creature. You can have your precious plot. In so many movies (looking at you, MCU, but certainly not just you), I watch at a distance, never actually buying what the filmmakers are selling because the premise is never really believable. But Cameron, he makes movies that you believe could really happen (or actually did happen, in one case). He takes you places and leaves you there, even after the movie has long left the theater. I cannot wait for the next Avatar.

This wouldn’t be JW’s first appearance at Carnegie Hall, would it? I think just to see his and Mutter’s names on the concert poster outside the box office, with a large “sold out” sticker slapped across it, would be pretty amazing. It’d be another totem of his conquest of the classical/art music world, like that time he dropped by the Musikverein and spent the weekend bringing down the house.

You're referring to the trumpets at 9:59, right? Yes, those sound like pure Williams for sure. Very little else in that track does, though, at least to my ears.

@ATXHusker @Jay, might I recommend you do what I did--which was to cancel my Amazon order after I got fed up with the delayed release date and purchase it instead at www.jpc.de. It's actually selling at a 10% discount right now (24.99 Euros) and shipping is a ridiculously low 3.50 Euros. You'll pay less than what Amazon would have charged even after conversion. I'd never bought from jpc before this, but I'd absolutely buy from them again. They give you tracking info and the parcel packing was first-rate. I don't read or speak German but Google Translate on Safari is a lifesaver.

I see the hype and merchandising machine for all things Indy has begun cranking up. I saw this just now at my local grocery store.

I didn't realize how starved for new JW releases I was until I saw @Chewy's post. This might be the start of the flood of releases we were hyped up for! 3,000 units is a rather decent quantity for a relatively low-profile movie like Always, don't you think? Maybe there's more appreciation out there for this score than I thought.

I was thinking about this earlier today. If you know of any, I'd love if you could you describe them or paste a link to them? I never seem to notice it. (Maybe it's not a common problem.)

Same here! Movie looks fun too, although the CGI in the trailer leaves a lot to be desired..

Amazon pushed back the estimated delivery date on this release for a second time (to June 4), so I canceled my pre-order and bought a copy from jpc.de instead. Tired of waiting!

You know, I had that same thought some weeks ago. Now I wish I’d posted it so I could have harvested those dozen likes for myself 😜

I’m gonna admit I’m surprised this thread hadn’t been done in a dozen different iterations previously. It’s a great topic, though! Here are mine: - Jurassic Park - Star Wars - The Lost World - A.I. - Empire Strikes Back - Schindler’s List - TPM - Jaws - Nixon - Raiders But it’s so hard to limit to just 10. JW’s oeuvre comes as close to a uniform distribution of awesomeness as you’ll see from any composer.

These detailed reviews are a treat to read, Jay! They make me want to revisit these albums.

Both are no great shakes to my ears, but I like Gia’s slightly more for the catchier opening bars (to others’ chagrin here, surely, I appreciate hearing texture instead of brass/low string flatness). My main issue is that neither composer’s melodies “go” anywhere interesting. They seem to intentionally avoid large intervallic leaps of any kind, so the result is a boring noodling-around. (Again, just to my ears.)

Thank you for posting this! What a fun read! (And it’s neat to see a tiny bit of how the comedy writing industry worked back in the 80s.) Schwartzwelder is a definitely a hero to us, right alongside Oakley & Weinstein. (Someone’s gotta do an interview with that duo too!)

@Manakin Skywalker that was f—ing priceless! You killed it with that one.😂 (I think we needed that laugh)

I posted this in another thread ages ago, but I'll never forget what this statement of the force theme did for me in the theater in 2005. It was like JW was telling me, "here we are, the last Star Wars movie you're ever gonna get, and you're in for a hell of a ride." Twenty-eight seconds of utter magnificence (followed by many, many more seconds of same). This is JW's "hold my beer" reply to anyone who thinks a wall of synth brass and synth choirs = epic.

Amazon US customers aren’t going to see their copies shipped until mid-May, I believe, which makes me think our copies will be numbered in the 1,XXX range. (Maybe even the 2,XXX range?)