Bayesian

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.
 
 
 

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.
 
 
 

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.)

It's an underrated film and score.  The anguish of the mom is heartfelt because of her loss.  I think this film is a nice bookend to CEOTTK with its Pinocchio overtones.  In that film, Roy wished to be an eternal child despite his adult responsibilities.  Here, David is literally an eternal child because he was built that way though wished to be real and grow.  I thought the score was a real departure and full of unrequited longing.  

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.
 
 
 

Absolutely ADORE this little bit with the wah-wah brass
 
 

Yeah there's already a topic about it 
Let's just say not everyone was happy about this release 

I used to be a stickler for that, too. But more and more I realise that the power of these themes is in their capacity for change. That's what funny about motive lists with names, is people try and find a name that "covers all the bases" so to speak, but the fact of the matter is that a theme can mean X and then come to mean Y only later. Obviously not all musico-poetic developments are going to feel as warranted or as succesfull to all people, but in this case it doesn't really bother me in and of itself.
 
I think that, looking beyond the individual themes, the Star Wars scores are built on a kind of binary opposition in music: there's the "good guy music" (the Jedi and Rebels/Republic) and "bad guy music" (The Sith and the Separatists/Empire). They're juxtaposed all throughout, and then at the end of Return of the Jedi, the good guys' music clearly wins.
 
Once its won, its over.

Beautiful 
 

Next up is 'Elfman' by Danny Batman. Elfman is a superhero a bit like Superman, for whom I wrote music that you may remember... but he is a different character. His costume has ears like an elf, and he was memorably played by... Buster Keaton. Anyway, here is the march from 'Elfman'.

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!

I never had something like a complete turnaround from dislike to like.
 
But I didn't really have a high oppinion on Danny Elfman until I heard his violin concerto.
I had a few score albums of his like his Batmans, Beetlejuice, Edward etc. But I disliked the shortness of breath of his themes and his at first glance narrow stylistic palette and there alway was too much unisono with full orchestra and choir. And his melodies didn't really get caught in my head. His electronic efforts like A Civil Auction I found even more boring.
Then what first let me pay more attention were his Spiderman scores. And after that I completely fell in love with his violin concerto.
Now I managed to see what I found narrow more like a stylistc trademark and really enjoy his rhythmic powerful usage of the orchestra.
 

Shark Cage is brilliant. The quartal organization of the subject is really nicely reflected in the Orca Theme.
 

 
I had the Kent Kennan counterpoint book as an undergrad too, and it's excellent. But really, the best teacher is Bach. Just sit down with the Well Tempered Clavier some time. Start by flagrantly copying him. You'll pick up on the technique through imitation.
 
 
Haha, my cocktail napkins are definitely not worth preserving! The whole talk isn't really fit for sharing in the state it's in. But this thread has given me a spur to revisit it and turn it into a proper article. Once I get this other big thing out of the way, it'll probably be my next JW project.
 
Oh, and here's a "Guess That Score" challenge. Can anyone place where this canonic passage from Williams comes from, and why it may be an especially appropriate use of the technique?:
 

 
 

Now THIS is primo JWFan content!

I've been summoned!
 
Exact definitions differ between theorists of course, but there is a pretty stable consensus concerning what's genuinely fugal, what's canonical or imitative, and what's just polyphonically busy. For a fugue, it's all about that incremental feeling. One voice introduces the fugue's main idea ("subject") in full, then another comes in repeating it while the first offers a countermelody ("answer"), and so on. Traditionally, these need to be at quite specific tonal levels -- the second either in ("real") or on ("tonal") the key of the dominant.  And back and forth it goes until all seperate contrapuntal strands are introduced, usually 3-4 voices in total. I'm simplifying a lot, though it's worth pointing out that Williams almost never writes fugues by completely by the "book." The key thing is that feeling of accretion, of rising intricacy, of one melodic subject chasing another, 
 
 
As breathtaking as it is, I'm afraid there's nothing fugal in the Asteroid Field. March of the Resistance's middle section includes definite but quite unconventional fugal exposition that modulates up by fifth three times, from F to D, and doesn't have a consistent countersubject. 
 
A few years ago I gave a talk on all things neo-Baroque in Williams, which included transcribing all of his fugues, fugatos, and canonic passages. It's a marvelous thing to behold. In any case, my vote is for Black Sunday. 
 

i also saw the film yesterday (apple) 
The first movie after gladiator i really like from Ridley! 
The performance from Joaquin was amazing.
I also really like the cue „Austerlitz Kyrie“
 

I'm disappointed by this thread; I really thought it would be about underwear.

I love this film. Seen it twice already in theaters and I'm front row center for the 4-hr director's cut when it hits Apple TV+ (and, please please please God, 4K blu-ray). The soundtrack has similarly impressed me -- Borodino is a goddamned masterpiece, for instance, and I hope Phipps gets recognized for his work by the Academy. I'm so happy this FYC exists!
 
What I've come to learn to appreciate about Phipps' approach to scoring this film (after my second viewing and, now, after listening to the FYC) is that he managed to create an epic sound that is truly different from the epic sound of Zimmer and his factory-farm clones. It's a considerably more intelligent sound, one that rewards close listening, one that has range and multivariate character. And it's an up-to-date sound -- you couldn't mistake it for any other decade than the present one. No pastiche (except perhaps the diagetic stuff). No overprocessed synth instruments or overpowering synth drums. And no one-trick-pony shtick like, say, Goransson and his violin that sounds like a cat being tortured.
 

?
 
 
I think that will be a much better cut, with much more emphasis on the Napoleon-Joséphine relationship.

Look, I hate, loath, despise The Rise of Skywalker. Its a comic-book movie in the worst possible sense without being based on a comic-book.
 
But it has A LOT less of the kind of winking-and-nodding to the camera that Marvel movies practically live on. I'm developing a topical allergy to that kind of cinema.

I don't know how many fans think 'Star Wars' has gone bad simply because it's aiming for more female representation or viewership. The "problem" doesn't lie there for me, it's in the way it's being done.
 
If we cut through the vitriol and noise and take the time to listen to the fans, they're mostly saying that Rey, for example, is a poorly developed character with no real arc or "Hero's Journey", and that in their view, male characters were disrespected to make her look good and put her front and centre. And this is coming from female fans as well.
 
The stoic, strong female character that aims to show that women can do it as well as—if not better than—the men, is simply not that interesting, and it's a tired trope at this point. And again, there are female fans that share in this viewpoint.
 
These, I think, are legitimate complaints which Disney/Lucasfilm should listen to instead of taking a standoffish stance...especially when they're voiced by a considerable part of their audience.
 
But then you have all-but-confirmed Disney shills attempting to smear the fan base in hit piece articles or YouTube videos by calling them "misogynists" for disliking Rey or other female characters. And, well, it's become the usual shouting match online of "I'm right and you're wrong."
 
That being said, even if they feel disrespected by Disney, some of these fans need to tone down their language for decency's sake...
 
It would serve their goals better to present their arguments in a reasonable and respectful way. Some YouTubers do it, which I've subscribed to, but it's apparently more popular to present an angry viewpoint and stoke the fires of discontent. But in the meantime, nobody's really listening to each other, and it's an example of what's going on at large in societal discourse.

A-propos the Rey film, which is clearly Episode X in all but name....
 
Its incredible that we had a series of film, which for all intents and purposes ended pretty definitively in 1983, then had a kind of victory lap in 2005. AND THEN somebody (George Walton Lucas Junior) said: "Well, you know what, that wasn't the end" and Disney proceeded to drag out three more films, ending on the most pathetic whimper of all time, AND NOW they're effectivelly saying: Hang go, actually that still wasn't the end: now THIS is the end."
 
Its like a farce.

The new Hal book is just Green Lantern Vol. 7, which has been published since May of the last year. It has (I think) 7 issues so far, plus two tie ins for a stupid event DC did in the middle of the last year (they can help themselves but do a massive event every six months). But that event was so poorly received by fans, and so irrelevant to the overall narrative of Adams' book, that you can ignore them entirely!
 
The John Stewart book is called Green Lantern: War Journal. It's part of a major push to get him stories where he's the protagonist. Even though he has been an important character for decades, only recently DC decided to give him some stories as the actual protagonist. He was the main character on Green Lantern Vol. 6, but that book had terrible reception by fans and was cut short due to the Dark Crisis event (which saw poor John being killed alongside the rest of the Justice League).
 
Anyway, as promising as those books have been so far, they're not (yet) the best ones ever in the history of the franchise. Which leads me to...
 
Yep. That's the Blackest Night story arc, the climax of everything Geoff Johns and his team were building up since ressurecting Hal Jordan in 2005. It's the culmination of the War of Light saga, where the Black Lantern rings are awaken by an ancient prophecy and start bringing back deceased heroes and villains alike in an attempt to extinguish the universe of all emotion. It's a GREAT story filled with incredible art and some huge climaxes to everything DC was doing in the 2000s. 
 
Anyway, that wasn't the end of Johns' run on the characters. He stayed up until the first 20 issues of The New 52 (which began in 2011) and although his post-Blackest Night writing wasn't as stellar as what came before, it still had some amazing moments (I love the War of the Green Lanterns saga) and gave the franchise something rarely seem on superhero comics: a definitive ending. 
 
He (and his team, who were writing the other books for the franchise, like Green Lantern Corps and The New Guardians) gave everyone such a satisfactory and closed ending by the end of GL Vol. 5 #20 that if you decide never to read a Green Lantern comic again after that you'd be okay (especially because what came later was very irregular, with a few decent moments but a lot of horrid ones). Kinda like post-Endgame MCU...
 
Seriously, anyone who likes space operas and space fantasy a la Star Wars but has been utterly disappointed by the current crop of space stories (including those from SW itself) should give these comics a chance.
 
Speaking of Star Wars... sigh. Even though Disney itself admitted that betting so hugely on the culture wars only drove people away from the company, they still insist on hiring people that would still insist on that kind of confrontational attitude. 
 
The attitude of people working for Disney chased away older fans and even casual moviegoers while not bringing enough new and diverse fans to justify their massive investments. Why not just, you know, making something that will please everyone instead of being so confrontational against (what they consider) bad people like white males?

Something tells me she's not terribly informed on all things "Star Wars"...
 
Bob Iger said that Disney had to course-correct, and not let politics get in the way of good storytelling...but approves the hiring of a political activist to direct, who apparently welcomes the opportunity to use the Star Wars universe as a platform.
 
I'll try to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it's not looking good.

I can't image Rey having a tumultuous life, seeing how easy everything comes to her. 
 
Also loving the fact people would rather talk about comic books than this movie 😂