Bayesian

My copy arrived, finally! I took pics of the relevant pages and resized them to keep the text legible while also shrinking their file size. The entire issue looks like a great read -- the folks at Gramophone did a fantastic job, as usual.
 
There are several articles that feature or discuss JW, which means a lot of pics to upload. I'll break it up over two or three posts.
 





Next batch of pics...
 





And final batch. Enjoy!
 

I would love to see Avatar 2 beat Endgame. I'll do my part by seeing it again, this time in a proper theater setting, as opposed to the shitty Regal Edwards in Fairfield, which was the only one available on opening weekend.

For context, here's the article Bespin is referencing, by John Mauceri.  This is pretty much all material covered in Mauceri's 2022 book The War on Music, which I read and enjoyed last Summer.
 
https://airmail.news/issues/2023-1-21/the-view-from-here
 

Very enlightening thread and a reminder of the wondrous sound that JW conjured for the prequels -- a soundworld that remains peerless even in his own body of work. But my eyes keep getting tripped up over the cue title.
 
I'm sorry, but is it supposed to be "The Armies Face Off" or "The Armies' Face-Off"? Is face off used in the noun or verb sense?? 'Cause it sure as shit can't be both at once.
 
Well, there you have it -- the only criticism toward JW I'll ever come up with.

The Phantom Menace is tops. Empire comes close and Star Wars is timeless but nothing touches Phantom. It opened the imagination in ways none of his other Star Wars scores come close to doing.
 
I think the Droid Battle should be talked about with the same reverence as Battle in the Snow.

Well, first, Williams wrote a cue called 6M1 The Armies Face-Off:
 

 
This got recorded as 6M1N The Armies Face-Off.  Here's that entire cue:
 
 
 
Later, he wrote an Insert to replace 0:27-1:03 of the original cue that for some reason got recorded as 6M1 Pt. 2; Here is that entire Insert:
 
 
Later, he recorded an OVERLAY (music meant to mixed over an already-recorded cue) titled 6M1X Randy's Forest Mist:
 

 
Here's that entire overlay:
 
 
As you can see in the sketch, it was meant to overlay 0:28-0:45 of the original version of the cue, though I can't find a video on youtube where someone did this
 
 
 
For the OST album, he opened track 14 with the full 6M1 Pt. 2 Insert, segueing directly into 1:03- of 6M1N, and then includings 6M1X all by itself later in the track, even though it was originally meant to be used as an overlay.
 
The film version uses the 6M1 Pt. 2 Insert as intended, and also mixes in digeridoos:
 
 

I love Donnybrook. The woodwinds from 0:50 onwards, especially that staccato bassoon, is delicious. As delicious as cookies, I daresay.

And now it's 6 in 5 years!
 
Fingers crossed for either of Hook or The Terminal this year

I want JW to get seven more Oscar nominations so that he may pass Walt Disney (who had 59) and become the most nominated person in all of history, period. For that to happen, he will need to start writing some songs alongside the scores so that he may be nominated for 2 rather than 1 Oscar every year.

Given what came of those infamous Zimmer Facebook posts with one composer alleging a lot of employees having to use pirated software because of the costs being out of their low pay grade (plus one former worker discussing very unfortunate occurrences when working with him before forcibly being let go), I can't imagine things are that much better, even with it seemingly managing to only avoid full blown sexual harassment (as far as we know, as I am just remembering Trevor Morris apparently being too open around his team).
 
I think with how much studios seem to really value the sound design side of modern film scoring, I can't be surprised that the most prominent female voice (Hildur Guðnadóttir) today really went full tilt with it in order to have any recognition (which even then wasn't enough for an Oscar nomination this time around with both her efforts last year). So whatever voices there are probably just aren't what Hollywood want (either that, or they just get pushed out even harder in this already ridiculously competitive market).

Except that many people feel differently and have room for more than one recording of a great film score on their shelves.
 
Yavar

I believe there should be as many recordings of scores as there are symphonies. Bring it on! There’s room in my heart for all of you.
 
I don’t personally love Tadlow’s Conan the Barbarian but I LOVE most of their Rozsa. And other people adore their Conan, so it has every right to exist. I also wish conductors wouldn’t try so hard to make it sound like the original recording when there are re-recordings. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Dudamel!) Give it the Gerhardt treatment and for god’s sake, some rubato!

That's exactly how I feel about it and if we're going with the "but Beethoven didn't record his music" then there are plenty of composers who lived into the recording era who did and have, perhaps most notably Igor Stravinsky who recorded most (all?) of his orchestral works but I don't know many classical/Stravinsky aficionados who lay claim to his recordings being the best or even necessarily definitive. They are certainly pretty fine (and the sound is good despite the age of some) but I don't think any count as a top choice or the last word on his music. The same should go for film music; yes many of our favourite composers who conduct are/were very fine conductors or hired fine conductors to conduct their music, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for other people to interpret their music.
 
Is it good to hear the original? Of course, but there's plenty of room for interpretation and if there are multiple options, then even better. I think it's frustrating that so many people have the "original tracks versus re-recordings" mentality, it's so very "them and us" rather than the original recording simply being one of several recordings of a work. Sure, some subsequent recordings are perhaps not as good as they could have been (the Varese BTTF and Superman albums, for example, have a few ropey moments) but most offer fine to excellent interpretations of some classic music and should be enjoyed in that way.

This kind of proves that film music is different from "regular" music. That's like saying that we only need one recording of Beethoven's Sixth.

I can’t decide quite what I think will happen.  Just as an interesting narrative I prefer the improbability of Tom Cruise having the biggest hit of his career at 60 to “sequel to most successful film ever is very successful.”  But I want to approach the question somewhat empirically or whatever.

I feel no shame in my enjoyment of following Hollywood the business like its sports.  It’s art and commerce in both concert and conflict, and I think it’s fun and fascinating.

Both are good movies, and deserving of their success. 
 
I think it's really interesting for the movie industry that the three highest-grossing movies of the year were from people or franchises (Jurassic, Tom Cruise/Top Gun and James Cameron) who were synonymous with 80s/90s cinema.
 

 
It really shows how Hollywood became so obsessed with superheroes that they weren't able to create "the next Tom Cruise" or "the next James Cameron", and now that the MCU is maybe past its prime, they need "the heroes of an earlier age" to rescue them.

That reminds me, early in TWOW, we see a flashback to the scene from the OG (sorry, Avatar) when Selfridge and his team are being led away, and the decrease in quality in the rendering from that flashback compared to TWOW is noticeable.
 
How do WETA do it, time and again?? Used to be that ILM was the top dog in the CGI business, but that's certainly no longer the case.
 
Actually, come to think of it, I think I should be a lot more conflicted by the state of this art, since I seriously dread the way AI is soon going to make it impossible to know if we can believe anything we see on a screen, yet I've got nothing but praise for TWOW. 
 

I think there’s much unfair criticism for Laurent B here. Unlike some of his contemporaries when he was commissioned to do the bonus material content for Laserdisc and the early days of DVDs there was always a film music focus. It’s clearly a passion, not just a gig.
 
The original Jaws and 1941 documentaries were feature length and very in depth.
 
LB has also done superb docs on Hitchcock which accompany all Universal Studios films.
 
Yes the soundtrack releases had flaws, but even the great Shawn Murphy made errors with ones he was involved in.

Steven Spielberg: Yeah I got a better composer who could do this instead 
Narrator: He didn't 
 

That reminds me, early in TWOW, we see a flashback to the scene from the OG (sorry, Avatar) when Selfridge and his team are being led away, and the decrease in quality in the rendering from that flashback compared to TWOW is noticeable.
 
How do WETA do it, time and again?? Used to be that ILM was the top dog in the CGI business, but that's certainly no longer the case.
 
Actually, come to think of it, I think I should be a lot more conflicted by the state of this art, since I seriously dread the way AI is soon going to make it impossible to know if we can believe anything we see on a screen, yet I've got nothing but praise for TWOW. 
 

I haven't seen Avatar 2 in HFR unfortunately. Nowhere near me was doing it for some reason, but I had the exact same experience with the Hobbit. It took time for my eyes to adjust, and Bilbo walking around Bag end was like someone had pressed fast forward, it was awful. So I would assume people had the same experience with HFR for Avatar, taking time to adjust. But I wouldn't know.
 
 
 
I thought all the CGI in The Way of Water was flawless. I didn't notice a single scene with potentially rushed effects or less than finished. Everything looked perfect. Sometimes scarily perfect. Like a "how the hell is this not real" kind of way.
 
I watched the first Avatar recently, and was blown away at the massive step forward that the Way of Water took. It's as big a leap as the first film was. Just the facial animation is stratospherically more advanced. And comparing the 1 or 2 water scenes in the first film with the water effects in the 2nd film... my god. This is truly what CGI artists are capable of. Any facial CG or environmental, like water effects that we got the last few years is absolute garbage in comparison, besides things like the Apes trilogy (by WETA Digital as well, of course). By far the best effects house in the world. 
 
If only the industry gave CGI artists enough creative time and money, look what they are capable of.
 
I can't imagine what works of art they will create with Avatar 3.

The movie just passed 2 billion!
 

I know exactly the scene you're referring to and had the exact same experience (the colourful scene at night flying around the forest, lit only by the moon and bioluminescence). RealD 3D as well. 
 
It might be the first instance of rapid movement HFR in the film and thus stands out in your brain more? 
 
I remember one of the early shots in the first Hobbit looked horrifically bad in HFR, one of the shots of old Bilbo walking around Bag End. It was like the film was running at double speed, because my eyes hadn't adjusted to the HFR. 

I'm thrilled we're beginning to piece together the true scope of the Avatar franchise and understand/appreciate how impressive it will be once it's fully unveiled.
 
At the end of the day, these are just movies and the world will carry on with or without them. But within the scope of the art and science of mass audience moviemaking, Avatar represents Cameron redefining how to truly astonish and entertain a public that has long since grown bored with cheap-looking world-building or the physics-defying (and stakes-free) feats of costumed man-children -- and reminding that same public that we can allow a plot to unfurl at a more leisurely pace as long as we enjoy the ride along the way.