Kasey Kockroach

Guess they’d better make another one! They’ll get it right eventually!

Guess they’d better make another one! They’ll get it right eventually!

“If Harrison Ford can do one more, so can I.”
– John Williams at 110.

Guess they’d better make another one! They’ll get it right eventually!

Guess they’d better make another one! They’ll get it right eventually!

Guess they’d better make another one! They’ll get it right eventually!

Oh I had the most annoying time in Metroid Prime last night.
 
Went to the last part of the snowy area that wasn't filled in on the map and found a boss there, defeated him and got the spider-ball.  Awesome!
 
You need to use the spider ball to leave his room, so I did and ended up in some new area of the lava cave region, which looked difficult... so I decided I didn't want to risk dying in this new area and having to fight the stupid boss again, so I turned around and went back to the boss room, then back out the way I came in to return to the save point not far from it that I had spawned from before coming here.  
 
Well, they filled in the route back with new sentry drones that almost killed me, and then space pirates that DID KILL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I WAS SO PISSED!  It's such poor game design to force you to have to do a bunch more combat just to save your damn game after defeating a boss.  So I had to start over and the fight the stupid boss ALL OVER AGAIN.  This time on my way back I dided to the sentry drones before I even got to the space pirates.  So I had to go back and FIGHT THE STUPID BOSS FOR A THIRD FREAKING TIME and this time the damn BOSS KILLED ME.
 
This is just terrible game design on every level.  I'm so turned off by this tomfoolery, I'm considering abandoning the game.  I get that this is a game from 2002 and they didn't have all the modern game design ideas like auto saving in place yet, but they could have done something about this for the remaster, like adding a save room off the boss room or something.
 
The boss isn't even fun, it's a long, annoying repetitive fight.  I have no interesting in doing it for a fourth freaking time.  What a joke.

Discovered a typo in Pirate’s Curse

I see they’ve learned nothing from how people reacted to Alien 3.

I see they’ve learned nothing from how people reacted to Alien 3.

Have we found anything worth appreciating about Hans Zimmer yet?

I always assumed it was Bill Conti...
 
Karol

This needs to be on display in an art museum.

This needs to be on display in an art museum.

This needs to be on display in an art museum.

Hadn't thought of it like this in pure numbers lol. 
The Indiana Jones series is mostly finales! 

Crystal Skull will finally no longer be the worst Indy movie! Can’t wait! 

Crystal Skull will finally no longer be the worst Indy movie! Can’t wait! 

Crystal Skull will finally no longer be the worst Indy movie! Can’t wait! 

I'm gonna say it, I think CotW is as strong a score as HTTYD... it uses a different palette and instrumentation, but is just as varied, heartfelt, melodic, original, poignant and impactful. And I'm a card-carrying fan of HTTYD, both score and film.
 
Furthermore this score probably is the more accomplished for being from an inferior film, and yet having such comparable quality.
 

I actually have put off listening to this score until it got a CD release and I have to say it has really grown on me in the past week I have been listening to it. Really loving it. While Powell sometimes inserts various pop music riffs, progressions and stylings into his How to Train Your Dragon scores, Call of the Wild uses them fairly regularly which gives it along with the colorful orchestrations a very individual character but never becomes annoying. Powell is one of those composer's who can walk the fine line to make these pop influences palatable to my ears.
 
And again the earnest emotional, melodic sincerity of the music that is found in Powell's best works is very much present here which makes this score very accessible and instantly likeable. A great blend of classic orchestral and modern sensibilities.

My honest pick as Best Soundtrack Release 2022 is, to my own surprise, Goldsmith's 'Hollow Man', Intrada Edition. You need affinity for high-grade thriller and suspense textures to really *get it*, but the thematic and motivic base are laid out in very clear terms, so it's no elusive rocket science. Science though, it is, and the lilting 'Explorers'-vibe combined with the slithery sensuality of the 'Basic Instinct' years plus a good splash of harsh, modernistic spikiness - clearly the biggest surprise of 'Hollow Man' - makes for a thrilling combination. 
 
My fairly pronounced respect for this score's finesse back in 2000 didn't prepare me for the depth and detail of the whole thing. It's truly pearls before swine considering the rotten product it was conceived for, so i guess it was as much a love letter to favourite director Paul Verhoeven (on his last Hollywood legs back then) as well as a final lion's roar from the maestro himself, who surely saw the end of the rope in terms of his career. Be that as it may, the lack of fan favourite checklist material (love theme, theme-driven action set piece, more love theme etc.) is also HM's USP. In fact, the score's most dreary when Goldsmith gets the old crashbang chestnuts out in the final half an hour: the composer even bemoaned this on the dvd commentary he recorded, basically acknowledging that his only real music interest lay in getting the movies three complex transformation sequences right, all of them in the first half of the movie (in a discussion panel with director Phil Alden Robinson for whom he scored 'The Sum of all Fears' 2 years later, Goldsmith visibly sighed in relief when Robinson agreed to leave a big action scene unscored for better effect, 'Ahh, one fight less!').
 
For those who 'know the score' i just marked the before-unreleased cues that enriched the content of the original album for me immeasurably, and for fans of Goldsmith's more populist material there's the revised 'Big Climb', which bangs up the fairly mundane original version to a sizzling degree (this is what additional material always should offer in terms of value!).
 
04. Chasing Isabelle (2:04)
08. I Liked It (1:41)
09. The Buttons (Revised) (3:28)
11. Not Right (4:50)
15. I Can’t See Him (4:31)
19. He’s Here (3:13)
20. Dead Dog (1:31)
24. No Code (4:05)
25. Find Him (Revised) (4:55)
CD 2 Complete Score (Continued)
01. Wet Attack (Revised) (1:23)
03. The Big Climb (Revised) (3:09)
12. Broken Window (Revised #1) (2:53)
17. Wet Attack (1:10)
 

Jerry Goldsmith’s tears.

KFP2 is the best of the three scores and it feels the most balanced to my ears. My favorite cue is this little beauty -which I believe is by Lorne Balfe:
 
 
However, if you listen to this... (watch your ears!)
 
 
You'd think this is a Zimmer cue... but you'd be wrong. It's Powell. 
 
So it's a little harder to tell on this one who did who, at least by ear, compared to the first score which is a lot easier in that regard.
 

I don’t think Jerry’s going to be taking on any new projects this year.