Yavar Moradi

I love Nott's work on Wallace and Gromit but if I'm honest I would never give up the score which Chicken Run ultimately received, which I think is easily among the best work from either composer. I could never love the score less than I do. But I'd love to hear whatever demos Nott wrote... I wonder if that promo reel ever ended up on YouTube or something. Yavar

He's not only directing some, but I think he's one of the two showrunners actually! Yavar

Absolutely! I know that both Goldsmith and Herrmann did a lot of CBS radio scoring I just didn't recall Williams doing any. Yavar

Yes, that was Star Wars (1977). Have you seen this little 1980 sequel film called The Empire Strikes Back? Are you seriously going to tell me THAT is "a fun adventure"? And that was following the FUN movie, not three terribly-executed prequels where a lot of horribly bad shit happens which should definitely have an effect on Obi-Wan. (How, given the setup/background for the character, did you expect Obi-Wan to be "fun adventure"?) (SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, lol...) 1. Opens with Luke being attacked by a monster, his tauntaun eaten...he barely survives thanks to Han and weeks in a bacta tank, but he's still permanently scarred. Up next is the Rebel Alliance utterly losing the battle on Hoth; our heroes split up, barely escape and most of them spend the rest of the film on the run. 2. Han and Leia have a few cute romantic moments here and there while they're on the run, and I guess the brief mynock cave sequence was *mildly* fun in a "haha we barely escaped being eaten" sort of way. Then they end up at Cloud City, where Han's old friend Lando betrays them to the Empire/Darth Vader. C-3PO gets blown into pieces, while Han (and presumably Leia and Chewie too) is tortured at length ("They never even asked me any questions") simply to lure Luke into Vader's trap. Then Han is torn away from Leia and Chewie and put into carbon freeze, a process intended as capital punishment for murderers and such. Sometimes people don't survive it, but he does ("in perfect hibernation") because Harrison Ford hadn't decided yet whether he'd come back for the third movie. (What an iconic fun sequence that was!) 3. Luke spends a long time training to be a Jedi with Yoda... I guess the introduction of Yoda with R2D2 is a bit fun, yes, but most of the Jedi training isn't really fun at all... and sometimes it's pretty damn dark (the cave). Through the force, Luke senses Han/Chewbacca/Leia being tortured by Vader, foolishly decides to cut his training short and go rescue them. This, suffice to say, does not happen. His presence on Cloud City doesn't make anything better; he is easily defeated by Darth Vader who toys with him and then chops off his hand. Oh, and reveals that he is Luke's father. Luke screams that's impossible but he knows it's true, and he essentially chooses to commit suicide, letting go and falling hundreds of feet down the shaft to a port which almost dumps him into the atmosphere of a gas giant. He himself is the one who needs rescuing, and in a neat twist on the original Star Wars film, the no-longer-plucky hero is rescued by the PRINCESS, who forces Lando (who, oh yeah... changed sides again and freed her and Chewie to try and save Han even though that failed) to go back for him. (HOLLYWOOD WOKENESS ALERT! ) The movie ends on a semi-hopeful note but very uncertain/murky future. Now by your criteria, I think the vast majority of The Empire Strikes Back would be considering "all too serious" in tone. I agree Andor won't have the tone of Star Wars (1977) but I think Andor will more take the tone of its sequel, which is equally beloved/revered today (and which many people consider still the greatest Star Wars film of all... containing arguably the LOWEST percentage of "fun" out of all nine films making up the Skywalker saga, no matter how bad the majority of those were in terms of execution.) As I keep trying to express: the Star Wars universe can cover *many* different elements, and types of tone/story, and even the original trilogy showed that. And that's a STRENGTH which will potentially/hopefully lead to it not getting stale. Yavar

Do you mean JG? I wasn't aware of (m)any radio scores by JW. Can you point me towards some? Yavar

Welp now I gotta go listen to Human Target again, thanks…. Yavar

I'm not sure you can judge Kamen's contribution fairly from that very poor sounding 20 minutes of synth stuff that was previously released. I suggest waiting for sound samples from Intrada on Monday night, which will no doubt include some examples from his orchestral score too. Yavar

There may be only minor tweaks to the Mancini, but I'm expecting the Kamen to be a major upgrade, to justify getting its own album... Yavar

So if we get a Season 4, will The Orville be thrown to the other side of the Galaxy and have to start a long journey home? Yavar

“Supposedly” is a pretty big red flag on that whole thing… Yavar

I don't know why that would be (she'd be at very different ages and played by different actresses, for one thing). But I agree her presence would make much more sense (and not be fan service) in Andor. Yavar

I mean, I love lightsabers and Jedi too! I just don't need *all* Star Wars stories to feature lightsabers and Jedi. There are *many different things* which make Star Wars wonderful! Han Solo is many people's favorite character from the original films. Not a Jedi at any point; he's essentially a space cowboy smuggler. (There's also the buddy dynamic with him and Chewbacca.) Of the three main original trilogy characters, only one is (well, becomes) a Jedi. Leia is introduced as a freedom fighter from the beginning and yes we eventually find out she has the Force too (not originally planned, of course), but that's not a defining element of her character as it is for Luke. In many ways Andor seems to be taking up the Leia-in-Episode 4 side of things, with all of the politics included in that too. ("The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this!") I think it's very interesting if some Star Wars stuff is Jedi-free (after all, weren't they supposed to be rare, if not merely legends, at this point?) Maybe this comes from devouring a bunch of extended universe Star Wars books back when I was a teen, but I just loved further explorations into this universe, whether it be Force-related, WAR-related, bounty hunter/smuggler/crime underbelly-related, or what have you. Yavar

It certainly is, but Intrada has also been trying to put out Conan the Destroyer for the past *decade* (or longer...it was shockingly a decade ago that they put out the complete Conan the Barbarian, and before it came out Roger had shared that they had licensed both titles). Of course they could have more than one Poledouris in the works, just like they had more than one Safan (and more than three Horners, lol...) Yavar

That seems very likely. The ~20 minutes previously released hardly felt like it could sustain its own album. Let's wait for a tracklist but I think we should all be prepared for some level of surprise, here. Yavar

Of course, this is all a matter of opinion and you're welcome to yours... but I think that's nonsense. To me all of the prequel films are far more unrecognizable (than the sequel trilogy) as "Star Wars" compared to the original trilogy. In fact, I don't see how they followed at all, from the bits Alec Guinness relayed about the Clone Wars in the original Star Wars. It felt like a completely different universe, to me, and I didn't like it at all. It's funny because, to me, most of the problems with the sequel trilogy actually came from them (really the two Abrams films) trying to be TOO MUCH like the original trilogy, rather than something new (my eyes rolling at the even bigger Death Star in TFA, but also of course the return of Palpatine in TROS). Which is why TLJ is easily, EASILY my favorite of those three. Because it did try to do something new, while still having a lot of the familiar. I don't follow your reasoning on this at all. It was a new trilogy. Each of the three trilogies is pretty independent from the others, IMO, in large part stemming from how they are separated by so much time (both in-story and when they were made). It made sense for the *first* film of the sequel trilogy to be an homage to the original trilogy (though again I think they took it too far). So much time had passed and audiences needed to know "Star Wars is back!" The bad taste of the miserable prequel films needed to be washed away, by a return to the familiar. But the second film of a trilogy is ABSOLUTELY the best, maybe the ONLY time, to do a "shake up" film! (It's not as if it would make sense for the very last film, right?) In fact that's what the original Star Wars trilogy did to great success, with The Empire Strikes Back! If it was going to happen AT ALL, this was the only time it made sense to "kill the past" to some degree. I don't agree that it should have been relegated to a spinoff or TV series; that would have entirely defeated the point and made no sense. Happy to do this exercise with you if you like, but believe me based on MY Star Wars criteria, The Last Jedi wins out and the horrible prequels (and I include Revenge of the Sith in that assessment, absolutely) do not. One of my criteria is having likeable characters I give a damn about. Got that in the sequel trilogy, don't in the prequels... not even for a moment. Actually, taking away the gadgets, women, larger than life villains, martinis, luxury whatever, and seemingly limitless budget... and it can still be fuckin' awesome. Allow me to introduce you to... YMMV, but for me more consistently strong than the Bond series in every way. Most of your list I'd consider liabilities in my enjoying Bond, rather than features. But for the record my favorite Bond film is easily Casino Royale (2006) and before that my favorite was The Living Daylights (1987) so I assume we are coming at this from very different tastes. Your need for the Star Wars universe to be so limited is what would inevitably doom it. Look at the MCU, continually managing to avoid superhero fatigue by giving us *different* approaches with each new project, and making some attempt to keep it fresh (even when it misfires). Jedi/lightsabers were but a small part of the *original* titular Star Wars. Luke didn't even fight with a lightsaber until the very end of the sequel film (and that was just Vader toying with him after he'd had only a little bit of training!) One lightsaber duel per movie is not a war. The original trilogy opening crawls were never about lightsaber duels, but the larger war and political situation in the galaxy! That IS a central part of Star Wars you cannot deny! In the original film Luke was just a decent pilot, who in the very end was able to "let go" and use the force, yes, but he didn't blow up the Death Star with a lightsaber; he used a ship, in an attack run with a bunch of other fighters! That and the earlier key sequence of TIE fighters attacking the Millennium Falcon were obviously inspired by 20th century world war footage. There are *multiple* different components of the universe of Star Wars, and that's great! It doesn't always have to be Jedi and lightsabers; and refusing to explore other nooks and crannies of this cool universe is incredibly short-sighted and would doom the franchise. So yeah, even if the execution isn't always great I'm glad to have something like Andor being introduced to this world... as happy as I was to get an expansion on the world of bounty hunters on the fringe in The Mandalorian (clearly the most successful and widely-beloved piece of live action Disney Star Wars... and the beloved first season didn't have a single Jedi). Maybe it won't be for you, but it will be for many of us. For me it looks like what the horrible prequel films SHOULD have been, if they were going to go for the political intrigue angle (which they tried and failed at miserably). Maybe I'll hate it but I'm going to be cautiously optimistic for now. It certainly LOOKS and FEELS like Star Wars, to me. Yavar

True, but I also prefer A Close Shave over Were-Rabbit. Yavar

Nott wrote and recorded a score for Chicken Run??? I had no idea, if so. Yavar

No way. Curse of the Were-Rabbit is good, but it's not even the best Wallace & Gromit thing. Also it doesn't have John Powell. I'll take the wonderful Chicken Run ANY day, and Mel Gibson for all his faults is WONDERFUL in it. Yavar

I’ll take it. Everybody watch on Hulu (and soon on Disney+)! Let’s make this happen! Don’t let the current best sci-fi show on TV die after only three seasons! Yavar

Yavar

Whoa, nice work! If you ever feel like identifying the missing score cues (where/what they are, how many, or even the length if you're willing) I'd be very interested! Yavar

The opening cue in the movie itself was very horror-sounding, so I doubt it. But if you're referring to what I think you may be referring to, you should know that a previous concert piece by Abels was part of the inspiration for the more "cowboy" aspects of this score... and it's actually apparently the piece by which Jordan Peele discovered Abels in the first place! Pretty badass piece IMO. Yavar

Despite a few minor issues... probably my favorite film (and feature film score) of the year so far. Both are SUPER eclectic... I would describe them as "genre-fluid" (it's a sci-fi/western/horror commentary on Hollywood? but that doesn't even quite cover it...) But wonderful. The finale features the best Morricone western pastiche I've heard since Kundo: Age of the Rampant: I'd be curious which cues Cameron Moody did. Yavar

I noticed Moody’s name as one of three “additional music” composers at the end of Nope when I saw it last night (primary composer: Michael Abels) Yavar

At most, Shore recorded an hour or so of score. No way it would require more than one CD. And why would Intrada only reissue the existing JNH album? Yavar