Alejandro

not sure if someone has posted this or not ... Williams conducts Liberty Fanfare

I care about all three. I'm one of the very few who believe that Conrad L. Hall deserved the Oscar for Searching For Bobby Fisher; Kaminski had taken it for Schindler's List in 1994.

I think his back went out so someone else conducted a few cues, or at least led the rehearsals. Williams was there, of course. John Williams, while recording JP, I believe conducted the titles for The Flintstones movie. JP post required a "producer" and a "director." Kennedy stayed in the U.S. to finish JP as producer; George oversaw the "director" portion, with Spielberg reviewing reels at night after shooting List during the day.

Kathleen Kennedy supervised post-production on Jurassic Park. George Lucas? Are you kidding? He may have been around to look monitor the special effects, but it was Kennedy who saw to the day-to-day activities, including monitoring the budget and schedule--both of which George Lucas had no role in. Kathleen Kennedy helped found Amblin Entertainment and she ran it. She left after Jurassic Park to form the Kennedy/Marshall Company with her husband, Frank Marshall. She did not have any involvement with any Amblin/Spielberg project for a long while. However, since A.I., she has had an active role with some Spielberg films. It now appears she's back with Spielberg, having magnificently produced War of the Worlds (she deserved a freakin' Producers Guild Award for that one!) and Munich. Kathleen Kennedy is awesome.

Steven Spielberg usually films the recordings sessions himself. But, producer Kathleen Kennedy oversaw post-production on Jurassic Park by herself while Spielberg went to Europe to film Schindler's List. Since he was absent, most likely that's the reason why sessions weren't filmed. Too bad, though. Kennedy bought the List book rights and developed the project, but she had to stay behind and finish JP so she took an exec prod credit for List. List wins the Oscar, but she's ineligible. She leaves Amblin the following year.

They were broadcasts. My boss at the video store threw the VHS tape out.

Holiday at Pops with John Williams, in the past, had: Holiday flight (brief version), Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas with Chorus, Somewhere in My Memory with orchestral intro and then chorus, and Star of Bethlehem. These were done on two separate years (Star with Flight, Memory with Christmas). All were wonderful.

At the moment, it's between Alexandre Desplat and John Powell. Powell had United 93, X3, Happy Feet, and Ice Age 2 ... all solid scores.

I think he was honored and proud, really.

This is a common complaint. When a film is nominated for Best Picture but not director, people always say the director was cheated. To me, Best Picture means that almost every element in the film, from editing, photography, score, performances, sound, screenplay, were excellent. And, yes, the visual style. Clint Eastwood did some very fine things in Flags, but the overall picture was just ok. It wasn't bad, but there was a bit that could have been better. Same thing with the beloved Saving Private Ryan. If director and best pic went hand-in-hand, then they would just include the director on the Best Pic ballot with the producers.

It's odd. The score to Superman Returns is in both my top 5 and bottom 5 for the year. There are so many great moments in the score and, yet, so many missed opportunities. In some parts, particularly when he's flying, the film comes to a halt. People should never be yawning in the theatre when Superman flies, but they were. On the whole, I enjoyed the film and have seen it multiple times. I too noticed the credit zipping by very fast for Williams. I would have liked, "Original Themes by John Williams" since Krypton and Smallville also appear, not to mention that Ottman used a section of the Helicopter Sequence from The Movie. In the end though, as a Superman fan, I wanted three things: 1) The Superman theme 2) An opening credits that uses Williams' music 3) Fly Around the World at the end.

Some footage was shot by Richard Lester, especially the Metropolis fight and Niagra Falls. Most of the music is by the LSO because it was lifted from STM; LSO was not used by Thorne.

dp

This piece is lovely, but I much prefer the piece, "Taking Pictures" from the same film.

Well, Harris wrote the screenplay for this film so it should, at the very least, be interesting. I read an early review over at aintitcool and it sounds like I'll enjoy it. So, we'll see. Wasn't Thomas Newman once attached to this, or was that a rumor.

MySpace Film Music Group: http://groups.myspace.com/filmmusiccentral Let's be a bit nice on the Varese release ... that was an intensive reconstruction of the score, they had to go through Williams' archives and many cues were different than the actual recording for the film. Also, they had to record in just a matter of days so time was a huge concern, rehearsals were probably very short. On Superman: The Movie, I do not believe Williams wrote any material for Superman II, including the Lunar scene. If he had, the Salkinds--who needed large amounts of music for their extended tv presentations--would have definitely used it. Also, the film was pretty much fully cut when Williams scored the film, save for special effects. Also, here's an excerpt of an interview with Mike: 1. In the original interview, you mentioned that there is evidence to suggest that John Williams recorded some alternate pieces which cannot be found. Can you elaborate further? What are the cues? And what is the evidence? To answer this I have to explain a bit about what happens to these recordings. When all of the takes are put down on multi-track reels, the composer, mixer, and editor (in the case of SUPERMAN, Williams, Eric Tomlinson, and Bob Hathaway) give notes as to what takes they liked and what sections of each are the best. For example, let's say we have a cue number 165. They may record it five times, so on the scoring log it will appear like this: 165-1, 165-2, 165-3, etc. Hypothetically, let's say the artists like measures 1-16 of take one, measures 17-78 of take four, measures 79-82 of take 2, and then measures 83-110 of take one again. This is indicated on the log and sometimes on the score itself. And then, takes 1, 2, and 4 -- in their entirety -- are spliced out and put on a separate reel. This reel is then mixed down and dubbed, and the music editor then assembles the cue based on the notes. The remnants of the mix-down are sometimes kept and sometimes tossed. This procedure is followed for every cue, and the final result is called the "goody reel," a bit of parlance that can apply either to the edited takes or to the reel on which the selected raw takes were set aside, depending on what was kept and what was trashed at the end of production. What all this means is that any recorded takes which are not used AT ALL... never make it to the goody reel. This, of course, includes all "alternates." On STAR WARS (A NEW HOPE), we were fortunate that Lucasfilm still had 16-track reels with all the "goody" components missing, and this is how we found the alternate "Binary Sunset." On SUPERMAN, we didn't even have the goody reels, which means that alternate bits of underscore are gone for ever. What we primarily used was the six track mix-downs used to actually create the final mix of the film. But according the scoring log (usually indicated by the note "revised"), there were alternate versions of music for the following scenes: the opening of the dome on Krypton, the toddler Clark lifting Pa Kent's truck, Clark's trek through the arctic, and the alley mugging scene. We were fortunate that we did find a 2-track reel of "trims and outs" which contained the original prologue & short march and the alternate "Planet Krypton." The alternate "Can You Read My Mind," strangely, was on the six-track final film stems as if they were to be used in the film, which tells me that this was changed at a very late date. I really wish producers would get into the habit of making an x-copy of the complete raw sessions and hold on to them, because you never know when there might be future interest in this stuff.

Stretching it? Really? Have you listened to them? In Munich, it was the 'something is about to happen' motiff that was throughout the entire score, and then Powell uses it 4 months later. They even mentioned it on the FSM podcast.

Isn't he being sued by the Holst Foundation?

United 93 was good, even with the Williams Munich references.

Wow. What a patriot.

Powell does tend to over-orchestrate, but he clearly knows how to compose music. He has multiple themes, he develops them, and provides variations of them. X3 is a great score, but too bad the film is a bit chaotic. I hope Powell, in the future, limits his use of chorus a bit. MySpace Film Music Group: http://groups.myspace.com/filmmusiccentral

I think Leo carried The Departed. It was a very, very good film. DiCaprio did an excellent job.

I haven't heard anything about this, but it sounds interesting. What is it? Ray Barnsbury When did "The Wild" come out?

I think Harry Potter proved that Williams can write scores rich with numerous themes if he so desires to; a return to form, just like Hook was a reminder during the early nineties.

I didn't think much of it the first time I heard it; but it's been in my head for almost a day now.