PokeDocMatt

Completely agree. Unsophisticated and trying too hard to sound “Epic”.

The crawl… goodness. Just a block of text sliding up the screen. At least make it fade into the distance. And what was that opening bridge scene, Star Trek?? There was something else off with the first episode… oh yeah. Let’s spend three minutes watching a video game style solve a puzzle to reveal the treasure. Added nothing to the character or plot. Still, I have hope.

1. MI:3. Stakes are set high from the opening act with the death of his protege. It’s personal. Saving humanity is the secondary plot. This is Ethan at his best when the things most dear are threatened. Great score to boot! 2. Rogue Nation. Because there is a flute gun! 3. Ghost Protocol. Great fun! 4. The Original 5. Fallout. It’s fine. It just doesn’t know what it wants to be. 6. The utterly ignorable MI:2.

I watched the Criterion 4k edition of The Piano last night. With the mute main character, the amount of silence in the film and the slow pacing was even more reliant on the score by Michael Nyman. It’s lovely music but it is bizarrely anachronistic. If they would have developed the “traumatized musical genius” as an explanation for the way Ada plays the piano, maybe I would have understood it. But it was just distracting from an otherwise gorgeous and aesthetically consistent film. Maybe the more modern piano music with unusual tonal shifts and chord progressions was intentional. That’s probably the case. But assuming it was an unintentional decision and not specifically artistic, I wonder if it was Nyman or Campion who just didn’t know better.

I’ve been waiting for a Horse and His Boy film ever since I was a child. BBC didn’t do it, Walden Media didn’t… it’s a fantastic story. It’s practically a screenplay! It’s begging to be done!!

I picked up 4k Avatar 1 and 2 for my home theater room. Started 1 tonight. I’m impressed at how well it has aged, from a technical/visual standpoint. There are so many gorgeous shots, it makes me wish Cameron would have lingered on them longer. Dolby atmos is enthralling from the first few seconds. Horner’s score is still goosebump inducing. When Jake first transfers to his Avatar and is running, I feel it with him, the new world that’s just been opened up to him. The score makes this Wizard of Oz esque about face, from black and white milataristic hopelessness, to full color audio, organic and full of life. I can’t wait to watch Way of Water again. My first viewing at my rural, crappy, under-maintained theater was a let down. I’m sure the experience will be better at home. I think Tom Cruise would even understand if he saw what I had to put up with at the local cinema…

Sounds like Raiders theme is just a couple BPM slower. I like it. Less rushed. More secure in what it is at this point in Indy’s life.

I always spend the first few seconds in a well looking around trying to figure out how I’m going to get out. Then I remember… I found Hoz leading a merry little militia on their way to attack a fort and joined in the assault. That was fun! I think he said they were planning another raid, but I’ll just wait to come across them in my slow explorations again.

Ah yes. I think my kid and I were too eager to build something! Going to be a mixed bag with the many solution options. We’ll probably brute force a slow painful solution too often!!

Jay how’d you make it to the ascend shrine? My 4 year old wanted to make a really long single file log bridge so that’s what we did. It’s fun to have him come up with solutions or ideas. I’m at the same spot you are, but I have a lot more hot pepper meals to get me through some more exploration of the cold area. Speaking of… my least favorite thing about the start of BotW was the time pressure in a cold environment early on. I’m a little bummed about this again, I know it will be fine. I vastly prefer exploration and curiosity satisfying without any kind of pressure. Im a slow player. Don’t want to face that baddie right now? No worries! Want to see how high I can climb with some stamina boosts? Sure! Anyways cheers and happy exploring!

Star Wars 4-6 just came out!

Listening to Empire right now in my dedicated home theater room with 7.2.4 speakers. It is… impressive. My young boys are jumping to the Imperial March. The strings just sparkle! Now if only they’d do Phantom Menace…

Gordy Haab has convinced me that he “gets” JW in a way few (no?) other mainstream media composers do. The intricacy, both from his orchestration and harmonies, is light years beyond Balfe, Giacchino, and even Powell. What a breath of fresh air this score is. I love his other Star Wars work too, but this cakes the cake so far. Don’t know anything about this Stephen Barton fellow or how they shared the workload, but maybe he deserves just as much kudos.

Did anyone else feel that there were scenes, especially in the third act, where the CGI noticeably stepped down in quality? I’m not sure if it was more the bad set my up in my rural, struggling theater or if they ran out of time to polish it. Could also have been that I didn’t see it in 3D… I wish I would have waited to see it in my home theater. I think it would have been more of a spectacle.

AI AINEC The drama of the mistakenly released tracks only makes it better.

Maybe he only just caught up to the Force Awakens trailer… he’s been so busy scoring every other film and TV series!

I don’t particularly care who does Rogue Squadron (as long as it’s not Rian Johnson), I just want it made. Disney and Kennedy are clueless if they think that a Rogue Squadron film wouldn’t have a good chance of being commercially successful and a fantastic film. Of all the “legacy” Star Wars media, Rogue Squadron, from the books to the comics to the video games, probably had some of the greatest reach.

2 CDs - JNH’s King Kong expanded 1 CD - Shore’s rejected score One can dream.

My soundtrack interest was formed when iTunes was first released, and for the longest time, I’d check every Friday/Tuesday for new soundtracks from Films, TV, and video games. A lot of my limited teenage income when to digital albums in those days! But now, I’ve got a large library with lots of good music, Spotify, etc… and I feel like I’ve lost touch with new releases. I’m not talking about expansions, deluxe editions. Just new music. I get a lot of info from this forum. Sometimes my interest gets piqued and I’ll check something out. Spotify seems to be useless for finding new scores unless I’m explicitly looking for a specific album. Unless I’m looking in the wrong place? Do you have a favorite or frequently used resource or website to discover new soundtracks?

What’s the Spider-Man no way home more fun stuff if not an extended cut? Genuinely asking, I’ve not seen anything else about it. I suppose it’s coming out in theaters, not D+.

Well, episode 2 was back to being Mando-esque travel to a new planet and dink around for the whole episode just to leave it at the end. The pacing of the first episode, different locations, beautiful cinematography, showing the sacrifice and dedication of Ben’s monotony… it was the best Disney+ SW episode yet. But then right back to bad chase scenes and just plot getting jerked along. Also Leia better hit her head real hard and forget this whole thing happened otherwise her holo message to start ANH is just ridiculous. Are they going to shoehorn a fix, or just continue to ignore the reason that all this exists in the first place - A New Hope. That’s what Rogue One got right. It didn’t mess with a single thing about the OT. It filled in the gaps and made the story MORE powerful. I hope this series doesn’t force a story where there clearly shouldn’t have been one.

The final chord also sounds like it arrives just a bit too early. Doesn’t have the space to arrive at the culminating moment. It’s anticlimactic for me actually. JW wouldn’t have done this, but an editor might have… EDIT - just listened to it again, it really sounds like a poorly spliced edit. Wonder what it was supposed to do.

The theme itself is exquisite. It’s instantly memorable, hummable and versatile. But the application in the concert work is missing a great B section or development. It’s just a little too repetitive. Don’t get me wrong. I love it, especially the individual elements. The ostinato when it comes in gives me chills and captures the turmoil of Kenobi.

Revisiting the OST, and immediately, I’m struck by the rubato of the piano introduction. It is such a breath of fresh air to hear artistic expression and phrasing rather than a rigid, metronomic attempt to recreate a virtual mock-up with pesky human performers who need to be purged of their individuality. Something that is missing in most of today’s modern scores, or at least the ones that I try to familiarize myself with. I am really quite hopeful the remaster brings to life some of the churning bass strings, which have this early A.I. quality to them.

Ugh. I had much higher hopes before seeing this. Seems… quite derivative.