Fancyarcher

My review of Avengers Endgame.
 
https://dailyuv.com/978171

My review of Avengers Endgame.
 
https://dailyuv.com/978171

Well Endgame is about to be the highest grossing film of all-time. So the producers knew exactly what they were doing. 
 
Its why the MCU has been so successful all these years and DC failed to copy them. It’s because it was deeply seeded from the start what the plan was. How each film would fit in place in the larger puzzle. Audiences eat it up. 

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Avengers: Endgame - Loved it. By the end I was in tears, It was like following a 10 years saga, and seeing it progress as much as it did was fantastic. I really enjoyed Hulk's comedic beats, and while the film was three hours, it never felt like it was too overlong for its own good. - 9 / 10

Avengers: Endgame - Silvestri 
Ferdinand - John Powell 
Chicken Run - Powell &  Gregson
Empire of The Sun - John Williams - First time listening all the way through. Genius. Imaginary Air Battle had more of an effect on me, then I expected it to. Such a great uplifting piece, and The Return to the City, wow, that piano! 

It's time for a modernized remake of that - The Jungle eBook.

Avengers: Endgame - Silvestri 
Ferdinand - John Powell 
Chicken Run - Powell &  Gregson
Empire of The Sun - John Williams - First time listening all the way through. Genius. Imaginary Air Battle had more of an effect on me, then I expected it to. Such a great uplifting piece, and The Return to the City, wow, that piano! 

Avengers: Endgame - Loved it. By the end I was in tears, It was like following a 10 years saga, and seeing it progress as much as it did was fantastic. I really enjoyed Hulk's comedic beats, and while the film was three hours, it never felt like it was too overlong for its own good. - 9 / 10

Avengers: Endgame - Silvestri 
Ferdinand - John Powell 
Chicken Run - Powell &  Gregson
Empire of The Sun - John Williams - First time listening all the way through. Genius. Imaginary Air Battle had more of an effect on me, then I expected it to. Such a great uplifting piece, and The Return to the City, wow, that piano! 

Great teaser, but how is the end of the saga, if you have rise in the title? 

Great teaser, but how is the end of the saga, if you have rise in the title? 

perhaps im a bit too late into the party, but what a surprise this score is!
 
Judging from the content of the movie, i expect an unhearable-dissonant-your-typical horror score,
but this score somehow blew me away, espcially when you hear it in tandem with the movie. Escpeciall the opening title, i mean who still does opening title? Only a pure cinemaphile director would give us such a gift.
 
anyway, Abels clearly has created somehat an homage to classic Horror/thriller score.
the result is quite fascinating
 
First, the opening title music, came in a full force in the theatre, the thetered "Anthem"
love when the bass and percussion starts to kick in at 0:53. The combination is really unique, i really dont expect this. There is that hiphop kinda feeling in it
clearly, the track is inspired by Goldsmith's Omen, and quite reminiscent of Akira ( which i cant find any relation with the movie)
 
yes there is always a dissonant string. wouldnt be complete without it, but i like how it only supports the main motif of the track. And i also am surprised of how action-oriented the "scary music" are. like this one
i love how there is a recognizeable main motif to bind the track and the music also sounds like as if Thomas Newman or Desplat handled it
 
another action music:
A timpani in a modern horror score!
The music sounds Desplat-y, and even Powell-y!
 
this is also great:
the use of Taiko drum and the following music, sounds like Desplat's Godzilla. i also like the choir
 
and:
1:35 onwards sounds Elfman-ish
 
so, what do you think of this score?
not that great actually, there are still a lot of "filler"cues, but a surprise horror score that can be listened on repeats

Thanks for the feedback, both of you!

And hot on the heels of the Newman interview we are releasing another one I conducted shortly after, just in time to tie in with this Saturday evening's performance of Rudy in Concert in LA! Join me for my conversation with Justin Freer, founder of CineConcerts and a friend of Jerry's during the last couple years of his life. We do discuss some of his insights about the score to Rudy to be sure, but this wide-ranging conversation goes far beyond that, with lots of insightful Jerry tidbits! If you enjoyed the last conversation don't miss this one...
http://goldsmithodyssey.buzzsprout.com/159614/1012976-odyssey-interviews-justin-freer


 
Give it a listen and please feel free to share your thoughts, 
@Fancyarcher @Brundlefly @Display Name @TownerFan @Disco Stu @Mr. Breathmask @Faleel J.M., & @publicist!
 
Yavar

Let me give you my perspective on Williams and his "decline"...
 
I'm in my mid-30's now and I already often feel like I'm running out of energy. Williams wrote his first Star Wars score in his mid-40's... 42 years ago! And now he's still writing them and they are both twice as long as that first one. So, if you think about it, he wrote, 4 times the amount of music in those couple of years for two films with another one coming out soon. After 40+ years it's quite a normal thing to take Williams' contributions for granted and, yeah, they are probably not as "fresh" anymore. But the fact itself that we're still getting music quite this good is amazing. They might be bit underwhelming if you put them in context of his larger body of work by, make no mistake, this is highly accomplished music and any of his colleagues would agree.
 
One of my first reactions to hearing some of the busier passages in The Last Jedi while attending the midnight showing was: "That doesn't sound like a guy in his mid-80's. Is he doing coke now?" 😂
 
Karol

We've had a bit of a hiatus, but I'm very proud to bump this thread for the latest Odyssey Interview I've conducted, this time a very extensive and varied conversation with composer/conductor David Newman, who also had the distinction of playing as a session violinist on multiple Goldsmith scores including Contract on Cherry Street and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which he gives an important behind-the-scenes view on here. He also spends some time comparing Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams, and discusses his experiences conducting the music of the latter live to picture:
http://goldsmithodyssey.buzzsprout.com/159614/1000935-odyssey-interviews-david-newman
 

 
Give it a listen and please feel free to share your thoughts, 
@Fancyarcher @Brundlefly @Display Name @TownerFan @Disco Stu @Mr. Breathmask @Faleel J.M., & @publicist!
 
Yavar

I've said for years that for all its hoopla about "bringing back the Golden Age scoring", Star Wars is a score that could have only been written in the 70's.
 
As a more general response to the topic, Star Wars--particularly Williams' score--has always been a tricky subject to discuss. Its massive popularity has always guaranteed that there would be suspicion from other musicians, particularly those who saw themselves as either more "serious" or "on the edge".  Depending on who you talk to, the score is either held as a poster for the creative bankruptcy and thievery of "Hollywood", or a retro populist gumball designed to be easily chewed by as many saps in the world as possible.
 
Just the other week, I was talking with one of those self-appointed Guardians of the Classical Orchestra who said he could never be a film composer because he would have to write so much music that he would have to steal like John Williams did for Star Wars, which is obviously just a blatant ripoff of Holst. (I was able to respond more diplomatically, but my emotional response was something more akin to "How many 5 min YouTube videos did you have to watch to come up with that daring conclusion, you ignorant-ass douche?" The dude even had _THE_ accent, you know the one I mean!)
 
And then you have musicians such as Morricone and Frank Zappa, who once said, "[Star Wars music] is fine...for Star Wars-type consumption", the implications being very clear. (Aside: Djuh'all know Zappa was in the running to originally score Star Wars?) These musicians, as we've been saying, have more of a point, especially when seen from a personal viewpoint.
 
But as fans we know the score, we've listened to--not just heard, as in the case of my DoucheMaster General associate and his ilk-- the music. We know the score was crafted as a desire to ground the faraway setting as a "fairy tale", as has been so succinctly stated above. We know that the leanings from the likes of Holst, Stravinsky, etc. represent not the whole of the score, and is far from being there as a sign of laziness or cynical graverobbing. We know that through all of the hype, all the medals and curses the score--and John Williams--has been given for 40 years by countless groups of people as heralding this or reviving that, Star Wars is a unique entity, one both of its time and beyond, the result of a talented, skilled composer deeply steeped in American and European traditions, with decades of experience honing his skills, a consummate professional humbly writing scores and giving his all for films that mostly have been forgotten...the fate that Williams predicted for this Star Wars popcorn movie, that didn't stop him from working six-day weeks to deliver the best damn score he could. At the end of the day, Star Wars was a film score, and it could have only been written by Williams. 

I think basically what Ennio's saying is that he disagrees with the choice to use an established style of score ("standardisation of stylistic choices") for such a prominent movie (this is probably what he means about it being "commerical"). He's also probably viewing Star Wars through a personal rather than historical lens, meaning that he personally remembers the classical-Hollywood-style score being popular in films of the 30s and 40s and so regards it as a nothing new even though, as @SteveMc points out, that kind of score really wasn't in vogue at the time. So essentially he doesn't like the stylistic choice because he feels it impinges on a film composer's desire for innovation. Fair enough.
 
Personally, I feel that when people criticize Star Wars, it's for its old-Hollywood orchestration and the late-Romantic harmonic leanings. Funny thing is, there's actually a lot of modernism in Star Wars that is somehow never mentioned despite its very prominent role, e.g., Luke's theme and the use of "quartal harmony", the Stormtrooper chords and their use of "bristling" notes that don't agree with the rest of the chord, or the use of polytonality by having the bass disagree with the chord above it.
 
But it's also probably worth mentioning that Morricone regards tone colour as one of a film composer's greatest resources, and of course this is one of his own greatest achievements. So he probably hears old-Hollywood orchestral scoring as more backward-looking than other composers might even if it includes significant modern qualities in the realm of harmony.

John Williams is the least of the film score industry's issues, to put it lightly.

I believe Morricone has a point.  New artistic ground must be broken.  But, I think he errs when he thinks that Williams's musical direction for the first Star Wars was "commercial."  Orchestral film scores, for one thing, were not very much in vogue at the time.  For another thing, the choice to use a march is the artistically appropriate choice.  Lucas wrote and filmed the movie based on mythological callbacks, a la Joseph Campbell.  He even set it, despite the sci-fi trappings, in a distant past.  Using music that calls to mind a sort of familiar heroism is just the right musical approach to match this filmmaking approach.
 
 
For later Star Wars efforts, perhaps Williams could have attempted to get more daring, but, then, the movies themselves did not go in this direction.

Saw How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World last weekend. Thought it was quite good. My review.
 
https://dailyuv.com/975879

If the only thing he ever wrote was the main title to Dead Ringer, he'd still be a fantastic composer. RIP.