Bayesian

What a lovely gesture by the USMC. I would have loved to see the presentation, not to mention the concert itself!

I cannot f***ing wait for this film. (I won’t indignify it by calling it a “movie.”) It looks sumptuous and Joaquin phoenix looks spectacular in this. Another Oscar nom coming his way?? Yes please! And like others have noted above, the trailer music is utter shit. We well and truly are at a low ebb for film advertising, sadly.

Same! The site asks me to first register an account before I can order and I get stuck when it asks for a 7-digit postcode. Our ZIP codes are either 5 or 9 digits long, so my guess is the site isn’t intended to accept an address outside Japan 🫤.

What a dismaying thing to see. This will only serve to reinforce the completely false and unjustifiable equivalency between JW and Zimmer. How do you even pit the two against each other anyway? Zimmer’s name has been applied to countless scores principally written by his RCP factory minions, so the match-up is already fundamentally flawed. Obviously, the production of this concert will be done such that neither composer is made to look inferior to the other. Hence, like I said, the false equivalency will be reinforced—two titans of film scoring, their music featured on the same stage, their names to forever share the same rarefied pedestal, etc. At this rate, it’s going to take decades to unwind this baseless received wisdom.

Saw it last night. My initial reaction to this movie is positive—a solid 3 out of 4 stars. Lots of action, very well cast, and perfectly spotted. JW’s score was a gem throughout and I thought it was mixed nicely. Unlike many others here, I didn’t find the lifts or near-lifts distracting or disappointing. Every scene had the right kind of music, confirming that JW hasn’t lost a single step in his advanced age. At least a dozen times during the movie, I caught myself being gobsmacked at the fact that a 90-year-old man wrote every note I was hearing with a pencil on paper. (And, yes, there were a lot of notes to be heard, played on instruments many of today’s film composers appear to have forgotten still exist—like woodwinds, for instance.) I sort of share the growing consensus here that Indy wasn’t really done right by the plot or script. It was deflating to see Indy broken by the loss of his son and his marriage and worse still not to see him recover his mojo by the end. The story arc, however, did make more poignant and believable Indy’s desire and willingness to remain in the past, and I thought that Mangold did an OK job landing that story beat—although I really wish we could have seen what Spielberg would have done with that, because he would have nailed it. While we’re on the subject of the third act, the reveal of the Battle of Syracuse was one of the very few times I can recall in my moviegoing experience that I was genuinely taken by surprise and loved it (I count myself extremely fortunate that I forgot there is a track called Battle of Syracuse on the OST.) Mangold handled the uncertainty of that whole sequence brilliantly. Indeed, every shot taking place inside the airplane was basically perfect. (It’ll be a long time before I forget the look on Voller’s face when he realized how badly he fucked up. And then the panic throughout the plane when it dawns on them that their escape window is closing with each arrow hit… I felt like I was going to get stranded in 200-whatever B.C.) I felt stakes in a movie for the first time in I don’t know how long. More stakes than I’ve ever felt in any MCU/DCU movie. More than I felt in the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy. It was bliss to feel that in a movie again. That alone was worth the price of admission.

Great set of quizzes you put together! I’d love to see more! Some candidates for futures ones, if you were inclined, might include: - concertos - Olympic themes and ceremonial works - tribute albums by third party conductors and orchestras - specialty label OST expansions - themes and motifs from across his filmic oeuvre - JW-conducted performances of specific cues or suites (Star Wars fanfare, Flying theme, journey to the island, raiders march, Superman theme, hedwig’s theme, and on and on…) A couple of these could require some work to pull together all the relevant examples, but it would be fun to see what people think is the best version of the Imperial March JW ever conducted, for instance. Or if there’s consensus about JW’s best concerto.

I haven’t seen it, no. Maybe I should check it out. I don’t doubt you that it’s a good movie, but in my mind Napoleon is a film that basically screams “lavish me with Oscar and BAFTA praise because I’m the definition of big-budget prestige pic and I was produced to meet that standard.” CR2 sounds like “we’re running low on back catalog titles we can reboot or mine for the nostalgia factor.” But that’s just me. 🙂

Two things: 1) Thank the great good God above that Zimmer had nothing to do with this film. 2) HGW, did you really step away from a Ridley Scott epic on Napoleon of all historical figures to score the sequel to a kiddie flick about a chicken??

Is it official or fan-made? If it’s official, it seems a little odd to release a new official poster so close to the release date, doesn’t it?

Thanks for sharing that with us, @Dr. Know. (You sure "know" how to make a JW fan's day!)

It turns out mine did too. It’s weird it did that because I’ve ordered previously, twice, from DME for Legacy albums and both times the confirmation came into my regular box. Sorry all for my little freakout!

Anyone else not receive an email confirmation of their order today? Thank fuck I took a screenshot of my order confirmation page I can show them if they don't fulfill my order on Aug 9.

I tried pre-ordering thru Paypal and got the same problem. Normal credit card process worked fine though. Paypal's actually been kinda buggy for me on eBay too in recent months. The 30% off sale is a nice respite in light of all the LLL 20% off sales I missed out on because I was too impatient for the newest JW release.

The film I would have adored to have JW score is Ridley Scott’s forthcoming Napoleon. I’m sure Martin Phipps will do a commendable job, but I do wonder what kind of themes JW would have come up with for this one (assuming he would have wanted the gig in the first place.)

The fine print at the end of the Homelander update is great.

I’m just really happy this is coming out on CD. It took me some time to get over the fact that Danny Elfman’s OSTs no longer get the CD treatment (MIB: International being the last one, and a European release at that). I also happen to really like the album cover. I think that places me in the minority, but I think it’s a damn sight better than the official poster.

Wow, @Chen G., this is an amazing analysis! Truly impressive work; nuanced and supremely researched. Really shines a light on the origins of this now-eternal pop culture property. (I don't think Lucas would care much to read it, though, lol.) What are we to make of Lucas and Star Wars after this? I mean, if I'm not mistaken, the only really original thing Lucas came up with was R2-D2. Everything else (characters, places, storyline, story beats...) was just pulled off the shelf of a dozen pop cultural sources, sometimes in almost a direct lift. There's certainly a level of sophistication required to put all these ingredients together into a film like Star Wars, but it's dismaying to learn how little of it is a truly original creation. It's like if I took apart two dozen kitchen appliances and cobbled together from cherry-picked parts from each one some kind of wondrous new food-making machine. How much credit do I deserve for building that device if every part inside it is a modified original part from some other appliance? The question is almost philosophical. What a great read. Thanks so much for sharing this with us!

OMG, yes! I remember feeling that too on opening day! It was such a weird feeling too, one that I felt guilty about having because I'd waited so long and with such anticipation for this movie. It was like I had to tell myself I was wrong for thinking that the pacing was bad, because how could a movie that had been so hyped up have that kind of a problem? (I also distinctly remember being dismayed at hearing words like "ambassador," "legal," and--my favorite--"negotiations" in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

I liked the parts where they note JW is the “most revered living film composer in the world” and highlight his “traditional, and exceptional, approach to his artistry.”

No no no no no no!!! This news just ruined my day. I was so pumped to hear what Desplat would do with this material. Why would Gerwig and Desplat even agree to do this movie together unless they both understood what the movie needed and what Desplat could give it? Why does Desplat keep getting bounced from big projects at the last fucking minute??

Naturally, different people will gauge the quality of recent Simpsons differently. What matters, though (at least to people like me) is that you don’t toss out a blanket dismissal about a show if you haven’t watched it for nearly half its run. For whatever reason, The Simpsons has become the poster child for this kind of sheeple behavior. I can’t think of another show that endures this kind of mistreatment. This kind of thoughtless, assumptive stereotyping is one of the laziest, stupidest, and most irritating things about our culture.

Here, I fixed your typical-idiot-naysayer-Simpsons-should-have-ended-ages-ago comment.

Ah yes, you’re right about that.

I have doubts that would have been the case. He had noted in the early ‘10s that film scoring needs were shifting away from his aesthetic. I seem to recall around the time of The Amazing Spider-man him saying that he was either surprised or lucky to have gotten the job and that his future gigs appeared to lie with small pics.

I’m definitely in the “form my own opinion” category for TOD and KOTCS!