Yavar Moradi

Awesome! Yavar

It was produced by 20th Century Fox, wasn't it? I think the last Fox release from LLL was in 2022 (Goldsmith at 20th Vol. V) and from anyone else was Varese Sarabande in late 2024 (The Other: The Deluxe Edition). Maybe not totally off-limits, but the Disney purchase of Fox really seems to have thrown a wrench in the works for releases from that catalogue. Yavar

With Leigh's blessing, I am pleased to share the now-live Kickstarter URL for this campaign which will be launching soon: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lpfilmmusic/record-jerry-goldsmiths-thriller-vol3-the-cheaters Bookmark this page folks, and get your credit cards ready! This is one of the very best Thriller scores; I think Jerry was keen to impress with his very first series outing in late 1960, after his CBS contract had ended. Hear the Goldsmith Odyssey podcast's episode digging into every cue, here: https://goldsmithodyssey.buzzsprout.com/159614/episodes/1077269-episode-18-thriller-the-cheaters-1960 So excited that Leigh chose this particular score to launch his Vol. 3 project to record all the remaining unreleased Goldsmith scores for the series! Yavar

The Adventures of Batman and Robin? Yavar

You seem to be focusing on @neumation's third sentence, and missing the first two: "Horner didn’t keep everything. There are gaps in his collection." Seems pretty clear to me that not every Horner score exists in written form. Or, if they do exist, they're not in the collection that Horner's widow donated to UCLA. (Maybe something like PK and the Kid still exists in some studio archive or something.) Yavar

Thanks for clarifying; I didn’t want this to become a new game of telephone. Too bad about PK and the Kid; I guess that probably won’t be a future project from Lukas. But I’m very glad that all four of these fine TV scores survived in written form! Yavar

Do we actually know this for sure? Yavar

Yup, same here — and Lukas’s recent update announced recording dates in mid October and said they’ve accessed all the written scores. This is going to be GREAT. Gems from Horner’s peak period. Yavar

I think Warlock is one of Goldsmith’s most underrated scores, and I think the synths sound GREAT in it! I think their sound and integration is almost as well executed as in Total Recall a year later. What’s wrong with them, exactly? On the other hand, go half a decade earlier and I’m not really a fan of most Goldsmith synth usage. I think the synths in Supergirl, Gremlins, and Runaway sound really abrasive and unpleasant. I like the composition for Runaway which is why I’d love an orchestrated version. Heck, I don’t even like most of the synths in Under Fire, a score everybody seems to love! I think the earliest Goldsmith synth sounds I found unpleasant were in Logan’s Run in 1976 (but I love them in Damnation Alley and Star Trek: The Motion Picture later that same decade). And the latest Goldsmith synths I found detrimentally unpleasant were 11 years later in Extreme Prejudice. Yavar

And the source Wagner (Tannhauser) + Alexander Courage score for the movie-within-the-movie. I do prefer the new Disc 1 listen to the old disc, FWIW. But yeah I wouldn't call it a revelation or anything. There are a handful of really interesting alternates on the second disc, "The Construction" (heard in Joe Sikoryak's soundtrack trailer) probably foremost among them. Yavar

Are you asking me? (I said I *wouldn’t* call it “Orchestral Music for Dummies”. Like what you like, even if it’s pop music! I certainly don’t hate all pop music.) Yavar

I’m not one of those people. Classical and film music is over 95% of the music I listen to. I managed an independent classical music shop for over two years and I’ve spent almost two decades working for performing arts organizations like the L.A. Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, and Santa Fe Opera. I’m very well versed in even the most obscure concert hall composers and I’m very familiar with all eras of film music. I don’t think it’s at all controversial to say that McCreary’s work on Rings of Power belongs in any conversation about the great works of film music, much less highlights of the past decade. Does a whole lot of pop music develop dozens of extremely varied themes with choir, specialty instrumentation, and orchestra, over the course of 16 hours? 🤔 Hah, that’s what I’d say about the vast majority of post-1980 John Barry. But I still wouldn’t call it “Orchestral Music for Dummies” even though a lot of it is just song forms orchestrated for mainly strings. Yavar

Badass. More power to 'em! A decade ago Gerald Fried also conducted his final feature film score (Unbelievable!!!!!) sitting down, at age 92: Quite inspiring. Love these old masters. Yavar

Many film composers wrote for TV then. The likes of Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, and Franz Waxman all composed for TV back in the 50s and 60s when they were at the height of their powers. Heck, Jerry Goldsmith kept scoring episodic TV up until the mid-70s (basically until he finally won an Oscar, I guess!) How so, exactly? If that's what it is, I guess I'm a Dummy because it's certainly for me. Yavar

I think the worst time for film scores in the last 100 years was just under 100 years ago…the early sound era, to be exact. There are a few bright spots, like Odna (written between 1929-1931) by Dmitri Shostakovich… the first film score to feature a theremin! But particularly in Hollywood, it was fairly slim pickings for great original film music in the late 1920s and early 1930s. While great orchestral scores had been written to be performed live to silent films, when the sound era began I guess Hollywood just hadn’t figured out the technical stuff of how to properly match score to film on the soundtrack. Or maybe it was the silly argument “but where’s the music coming from?” that made full orchestral scores a rarity for several years. I don’t think great orchestral film music started to become common in Hollywood again until 1935, when Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold had their first original Hollywood orchestral scores. Yes, there are some earlier examples like Steiner’s King Kong in 1933 (sorry, not a big fan) and The Most Dangerous Game for the same team the year before. But the vast majority of Hollywood films usually got just a main and end title! I don’t see any indication from @Johnnyecks that TV is excluded from his inquiry, so yeah my #1 recommendation is easily Bear McCreary’s Rings of Power. Yavar

I watch Simon Wincer’s Quigley Down Under. It’s got Laura San Giacomo, Alan Rickman, and Basil Poledouris contributing one of the best scores of his entire career… Yavar

The Ron Howard Grinch is mostly bad, I agree (the original animated film is better in every way). But Jim Carrey alone makes it watchable, for me. He really commits to the part and makes it his own. And Cindy Lou is cute! I think the two of them, + Horner, are responsible for most people’s fond memories of it. But so much throughout the film is just super 🤢. Yavar

Where Are You, Christmas?

Are we sure he’d feel so strongly about acknowledging Horner? They seemed to have a falling out, over The Missing. They never collaborated again after that, and I don’t think it was a matter of budget or scheduling like with JNH/Shyamalan. Yavar

I mean, scoring the 25th film in a series in which all previous films included a recurring theme is one thing. What Grinch 2 and Amazing Spider-Man 2 have in common is that they're both *first* sequels, with no pre-existing "franchise". Much easier to discard thematic material and start over, if there's only been one previous film using it. Yavar

Surprised John Carter isn't on the list. It's my favorite box office bomb. Really wish it had made a lot of money and spawned sequels! Yavar

Well, Zimmer ditched Horner’s Spider-Man material when he scored that sequel (while Giacchino *did* appropriately use the Horner theme in the most recent film). I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s similar on this. Yavar

Roger told me Doug Schwartz had to do a bunch of work on the new suite of alternates because they were in somewhat rough shape. He smoothed things over a lot, got rid of room noise and chatter, etc. Yavar

Oh I still think Mads is the best. Yavar

My specialty! Oh if anyone is curious to see the first depiction of Bond on screen, here is the longest version with often-cut ending restored: Personally, I think Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre is inspired casting, even if “Jimmy Bond” totally sucks! An interesting curio, and the only Bond video thing with less of a score than Dr. No. Yavar