Edmilson

That's a great question. But no, based on his concert setlists, I don't think he got tired of conducting the same classic pieces (Imperial March, Adventures on Earth, Jurassic Park, etc) over and over again.
 
As for The BFG... no, it hasn't grown on me yet, unfortunately. Maybe when someone uploads that FYC on the internet...
 
The movie is a huge contender for Spielberg's worst movie ever.

I agree. The concept is simply too good. An adventurer in the 1930s traveling the world to exotic locations to uncover mysteries and retrieve magical items before the villains do. I understand that in Indy's case it's tied to Ford and Spielberg, but part of me kinda wish we still got more in the 90s and 2000s.

According to an insider with knowledge of the project, Reeves “has been sending pages for more than half a year” and the first full draft of the script is expected to be delivered by Memorial Day.
 
https://www.thewrap.com/matt-reeves-the-batman-part-2-script-update/
 
Who is slower? Matt Reeves writing Batman screenplay or George R.R. Martin writing The Winds of Winter?

Yup. Screenwriter(s) hadn't seen WandaVision when they wrote the script.
 
Yavar

I'm annoyed with myself that I can't get excited for this. Like I don't think it looks awful, I'm just meh about it.
 
Was Gunn's Superman supposed to be played by Chris pratt? Because he's acting like Chris Pratt. Where's the stoicism? Also the camera work is awkward a hell to the point where it's just nauseating to watch.

He was pitched the story by the author Jon Baird and came on as a "story consultant". But he was pretty enthusiastic about the project.

The hardback version of the book is a stunning piece of design btw. 
 

I agree. The concept is simply too good. An adventurer in the 1930s traveling the world to exotic locations to uncover mysteries and retrieve magical items before the villains do. I understand that in Indy's case it's tied to Ford and Spielberg, but part of me kinda wish we still got more in the 90s and 2000s.

Superman seems stoic in the Reeve movies.

It doesn't have a wall-to-wall Zimmer-like score full of synths where it seems like it's one cue repeated for the entire runtime of the movie though.

It's up to boomers and their grown up kids to indoctrinate their grandchildren and sons with Indiana Jones, if we want or hope for something half decent to happen with the IP in the future. I've done my part. Kids still bloody love this character, given the chance.

I think it's more like they want Star Wars to be turned into the things they like. 

I had fun with all the Assassin's Creed games I played (Black Flag - my favorite -, Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla). I mean, I enjoyed them for quite a bit, then they became incredibly tiresome.
 
Ubi games tend to be so fucking massive and filled with stupid sidequests that you eventually gets tired of them. Their philosphy for open world games seems to be "let's just make a huge endless map and fill it with the same repetitive side quests so we can charge much higher for the games!"
 
But it was fun while it lasted.

Sooo...they don't like Star Wars.

The cool kids are saying Star Wars is cooler without the luminous sticks and the magic supernatural stuff.
 
https://www.indiewire.com/features/commentary/star-wars-andor-no-lightsabers-1235123111/
 
They've been saying that for as long as I can remember (the number of times that I've seen people say variations of "I want a dark, gritty Star Wars, with no magic mumbo jumbo, just make it all as realistic and relatable as possible" is bigger than the amount of characters in the Star Wars franchise) but to be honest I disagree. The whole mythology surrounding the Force, the Jedi, the Sith, is my favorite thing about the franchise.

Gary Oldman is actually younger than Thomas Newman. Go figure.
 
But Mike Oldfield, I dig, ever since I got the Elements compilation CD as a Christmas gift in the 90s.

Mike is pretty Old(field). 

Black Panther
 
The main story is pretty similar to Thor Ragnarok. Both featuring a previously unknown, and evil, heir to the throne seizing power and....
 
Well Hela wanted to conquer the Universe. Killmonger wants to liberate 2 billion black people.
 
There's a version of this film where Killmonger isn't actually the villain. He's certainly just about the most wronged character in the MCU.
Though I don't think Marvel would ever dream of making that.
The film somewhat hedges its bets by making Killmonger violent and irredeemable in almost every scene he's in.
Michael B. Jordan does a great job though 
 
Wakanda is an interesting place. An extremely technologically advanced and prosperous modern African nation. Which sadly makes it about as make believe as Asgard.
 
The CGI isn't always believable. But once again the art direction is vibrant and colourful. 
 
The action scenes in this film are sadly the weakest part. There's a rather nice car chase, i guess.
 
Chadwick Boseman makes for an excellent lead in a large ensemble cast. Who are all good. Though they're accents aren't always. Serkis' Afrikaner accent is hilarious though.
 
Ludwig Göranssons score, unusually for the MCU, has a real presence in the film.
 
The film has several flash backs to 1992 featuring T'Chaka and Zuri. Unusually for Marvel they used younger actors for these rather than de-aging Forest Whitaker.
 
 

I saw a few sketches of Silvestri's early big scores (Back to the Future, Fandango) and the level of detail was certainly not in the league of a Williams or a Goldsmith sketch. Silvestri is a jazz guy and learned to notate mostly on two-staves, with just the main line and chord symbols (G, F#, D, etc.). What was very detailed however were the many sync points with the picture, which were all meticolously notated. Therefore, Silvestri always wrote himself how the music is shaped to the action and its dominant character, with his orchestrator dressing it up orchestrally providing ornamentations and filigree (I think a lot of those early Silvestri scores were written using the Synclavier, so there may have been some coloristic indications too from Silvestri to the orchestrator). That being said, Silvestri became more specific in his sketches as the years went by and did all the orchestrations himself - in pencil! - on a few projects (What Lies Beneath, Cast Away). He's definitely one of the few these days who does mostly all by himself... and this is one of the reasons he scaled down dramatically his film work. You just cannot do it like that anymore in current studio productions, where the film keeps changing every five minutes and you must demo every cue to a committee.
 
As for Bill Ross writing cues for Dial of Destiny, he was properly credited in the end credits for the sole original piece he actually composed ("Pulse of the City"), while the rest of his contribution was adapting and collaging together bits and pieces from the previous Indy scores, plus some more oddities like Minority Report, War of the Worlds and even a bit from 1941 (!). I don't know the specifics of how things were planned, but I seem to remember that originally JW agreed to write and record only a few themes, with Ross using them as template to score the entire film, but then JW ended up scoring several scenes himself, doing a lot more than what he planned (even at his age, the man remained a workaholic). My guess is that the scenes in which we hear those collage-type cues, i.e. the whole prologue, were probably temped by music editor Ramiro Belgardt and used as a guide track for Ross to conjoin cues and provide the occasional transitional bit here and there. I don't really think this can be called "ghostwriting" at all, but it's more of (a hell of an) arranging job--it says a lot that he ended up sharing with JW the credit "Music Orchestrated and Conducted by" in the end credit roll. Again, much different than the routine of contemporary composers who must have a whole staff of helpers in order to get out alive.
 
 
 
I believe Williams is one of the very few who still writes with pencil and paper these days, and not just among film composers, but in general. I only know of Bruce Broughton and Eric Whitacre who still prefer at least sketching on paper with a pencil. Anyway, it's not a matter of who uses old school tools vs. who uses the most recent software and hardware. I think the outcome is what matters. And these days the outcome is often depressing.
 
As for surrounding yourself with helpers and arrangers in order to get out alive, it's common practice and nothing one should be scandalized about. It happened even back in the 1930s and '40s, where there was so much music to be produced. That being said, the work was mostly the product of one single creative mind, at least compositionally. Someone like Goldsmith, who ended up writing even 6 or 7 scores per year back in the 1970s, was truly an exception because a) he was a workaholic whose music literally spilled out of his hands and b) he was a genius. Same discourse apply to Morricone, who cranked like 20 scores per year (even though they were just one theme and a few variations in most cases).
 
What happens today instead is that film composers are businessmen who run their own companies and have many people on staff to work on multiple projects at the same time, because the industry scale ramped up dramatically, with all the streaming services and the likes. I won't name names because I don't want any trouble, but look at the resume of some of the most in-demand composers for film and television and tell me how it would be humanly possible to take care of everything just by one person. I mean, surely some of them are workaholics who burn the midnight oil all week long and don't take holidays, etc. in order to deliver all the cues, including reworks. But it's not a healthy choice of life in the long run, and if you're paid a million dollar per movie, you can definitely allow yourself to use some help from others. Yes, there are extremes of people literally not doing anything but just giving indications to staff and review their work later on, maybe filling in a few bars and then taking all the glory themselves. The industry is full of such tales and sometimes it's hard to sift truth from gossip... But it's a much less romantic job that many of us fans want to believe.
 
Composers who always did it all by himself for the most part don't work for Hollywood anymore these days. It's just not possible within the current system. And sure, for one John Powell who still is capable of writing memorable themes and sophisticated action cues (even within such paradigm and with help from others), there are dozens who compose anonymous stuff that just sits in the background "unobtrusively," as a lot of filmmakers like their soundtracks when they're not made by their needledrops.
 
 
I don't particularly like what's being shown here. Visually, it looks like every other superhero flick of the last 15 years. Perhaps a little more dashes of colour, but nothing particularly stimulating to my sense. Digital cinematography truly ruined what movies look like.
 
Story-wise, it seems another twist on the Donner/Mankiewicz approach, i.e. putting Kal-El as a God-like being among humans, trying to be accepted as one of them and struggling with the temptation of using his powers to right all the wrongs. I mean, it's basic Superman mythology which has been retreaded countless times in comic books, films and television shows (with incredibly varied results, of course). I was chatting about this with my brother @Poor_Man_S_HirschFeld earlier, as we share a common love for the character since our early childhood days--the issue of putting Superman on screen is that, despite you can amp up to 11th the scale of the threat he has to face, what will keep audiences engaged is his own vulnerability and how he manages to use his unlimited powers just for doing good and not becoming some kind of monster. Here, there seems to be at least a hint of something interesting that may have been explored, i.e. "I'm Superman, I can end wars without giving accounts to anyone." It's the old trope of "the end justifies the means," but on a superhero scale. We'll see how it will play out.
 
Also, there seems to be good chemistry between Corenswet and Broshanan.
 
The less is said about the trailerization of Williams' theme, the better.

STAR WARS
STAR WARS '75
STAR WARS '77
STAR WARS '79: THE CONCORDE

This is the laziest route they could have taken. Both direction and composition wise.

JWFan and the rest of the internet's answer to that:
 
"Yes. Otherwise, we'll make their lives more miserable than we did to Jake Lloyd".

These were children when they were cast. How many children are truly outstanding actors? And even if they can pull something off in one film (e.g. Haley Joel Osment), how many can keep it up over eight films, spread over what, a decade? With those scripts, multiple directors, and acting in front of a green screen. What do you guys want from child actors, Shakespeare?
 
Most actors, much less child actors, would have difficulty expressing the range of trauma and emotion those roles truly call for. There's an expression...by the time you're ready to play Hamlet, you're too old to play Hamlet.
 
They did fine, and HBO will be lucky if they find three leads who do as capable a job, and grow into the roles the way those three did.
 
 

At least they based the theme in williams music but oh boy, i would have preferred a different approach.