Jules

Tár was fucking incredible

Tár was fucking incredible

Tár was fucking incredible

lol i got halfway through this before realising it wasn't JNHFan's spoiler free review

Decision to Leave (Park Chan-Wook)
 
Incredible camerawork and a riveting romantic police procedural, plus great score!
 
After Yang (Kogonada)
 
Gorgeous calm sci-fi with another great score and a great soulful Colin Farrell. 

I think you worked through it all there, glad we got to the bottom of it.

Eternals is top 10 MCU for me, maybe even higher. I think it was a victim of the declining enthusiasm for Marvel from critics. Plus it had a lot of hype as a potential oscar-player with Zhao and from statements made by Feige and early rumours. Which in hindsight is all ridiculous. But I keep throwing Eternals on, I'm always in the mood for some sad robots. 

My thoughts on the film and score:
 
Spielberg’s usual knack for sentimentality and wide-eyed wonder manifests itself so effortlessly in this tender autobiography about the healing power of art in a broken family. It feels like he’s been making movies for decades with this in the back of his mind, not as some grand end goal per se but as another big piece to fit comfortably into the later chapters of his oeuvre. There has always been a little spot in his filmography left open for this one. Those skeptical about the material will be happy to know that it plays less like the stock coming-of-age-meets-homage-to-cinema vanity project that you’re probably thinking of and more like a warm and fuzzy flicker of home movie memories from the all-time great.
 
The first hour or so is as close as the film gets to saccharine, not so much sweetened as it is a little corny, but never cloying. For anyone allergic to Spielberg in that general mode, this won’t change your attitude. The film fittingly grows up over the runtime, but still skillfully walks the bittersweet line between the dramatic weight and the tongue-in-cheek dorkiness of Spielberg’s youth from the get-go. It’s never self-serious and has a good sense of humour about itself without compromising the emotional resonance of the familial tensions. If anything, the lightness authenticates it. I’m not sure if it was just emphasized by the receptive festival crowd, but this might actually be one of Spielberg’s funniest, filled with lots of naturalistic sibling banter, interjections from old Jewish relatives, and the usual awkward teen moments. The monkey is good too!
 
After the wide-shot flourish of West Side Story, which naturally saw him throw his whole cinematic toolbox up onto the screen, Spielberg’s direction scales back and excels in the light touch of his patented formal economy. He’s still bringing the goods as necessary, from a couple of lasting compositions to one incredibly memorable visual gag, but don’t go in expecting any show-stopping long-takes. Ultimately the heart of the film is the script, co-authored by Tony Kushner but so clearly a personal outlet for Spielberg. Sure, the recreated anecdotes will be familiar to admirers of his work, but there’s a whole groundwork of thematic subtext there to deepen the scenes that would otherwise have us pointing at the screen DiCaprio-style. In fact, it's pretty remarkable how well so much of the stuff I "recognized" translates to the screen without that embarrassing feeling that it’s only there for the sake of it.
 
The performances are really solid in an ensemble sort of way. Obviously Paul Dano and Michelle Williams as the parents goes without saying, but the main guy who plays Spielberg at high school age is actually really good too. I recall some of the early reactions mentioning Licorice Pizza as a reference, which makes some sense considering how certain characters will just wander in, own the movie for a few minutes, and then leave (Judd Hirsch and David Lynch, baby!). Fortunately, that’s as far as the comparison goes though. I didn’t like the rose-coloured glasses the PTA film insisted on wearing but no matter here. 
 
Just as my film brain is always focusing on the camera movement and editing, my film score ears are tuned in to catch and place as much music as possible. Williams’ score is sparse but thoughtfully spotted and quite elegant in a sombre way, as KK has already mentioned. My estimate is probably not much more than a half-hour of original music, if even that much. It’s possible Williams wrote and recorded some other suites or arrangements intended for the album, but otherwise I imagine the OST will be a combination of licensed music and original score. There are a couple period needledrops from the radio, a number of classical piano pieces played by his mother (credits listed Satie’s Gymnopedie, and others by Beethoven, Haydn, and maybe Bach), as well as some diegetic Western music heard on records during the movie screenings (I recognized the villain theme from Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven and the title melody from Newman’s How The West Was Won, credits also listed something by Victor Young, Max Steiner’s The Searchers, and more Alfred Newman- Captain From Castile may have been it). As far as Williams’ score goes, there’s one main idea for celeste, strings, harp, and what I think was an oboe or clarinet. It appears about three times in the film proper, and is also the basis for the 4 to 5-minute end credits suite, which is a unique recording and the longest piece of music altogether. That one is sure to get a lot of plays. All the players are listed, including a standard string section, french horns, and soloists on piano, celeste, and guitar. Whoever drew the Book Thief comparison was about as close as they could have gotten, even though this is still pretty unique territory from a functional standpoint. Being reminded of Williams' grace and deftness after the sequel trilogy years of wall-to-wall tentpole scoring is of course another testament to his genius. Certainly worth a closer listen.
 
Anyway, it was really cool to attend a TIFF screening for the first time and to have it be the new Spielberg/Williams collaboration of all things. I’ll definitely be seeing this again in November. My favourite part was the post-credits stinger where a silhouetted man clearly wearing a turtleneck appears in a doorway and we get a booming, "Hey Stevie, baby!" accompanied by a bass pizzicato Jaws theme before it cuts to black. Seriously though, count me as a Fabel-fan.

I think Marvel have been bringing some strong content recently. This phase feels a little more unfocused I guess because of the sheer amount of projects - it's been only 2 years and we've had like 10 projects, more than Phase 1 or 2, and there hasn't been anything to bring them all together yet. Ranked em all for fun
 
Movies
 
1. Eternals (might be personal preference lol)
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
3. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
4. Spider-Man: No Way Home
5. Black Widow (liked this one when I saw it but it's really soured in my mind since) 
 
Shows
 
1. Moon Knight
2. Falcon and the Winter Soldier (no idea why people hate this one so much, I understand the villain complaints but I thought it was pretty well written and looked fantastic)
3. Wandavision
4. Loki
5. Hawkeye
6. What If 

I think Marvel have been bringing some strong content recently. This phase feels a little more unfocused I guess because of the sheer amount of projects - it's been only 2 years and we've had like 10 projects, more than Phase 1 or 2, and there hasn't been anything to bring them all together yet. Ranked em all for fun
 
Movies
 
1. Eternals (might be personal preference lol)
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
3. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
4. Spider-Man: No Way Home
5. Black Widow (liked this one when I saw it but it's really soured in my mind since) 
 
Shows
 
1. Moon Knight
2. Falcon and the Winter Soldier (no idea why people hate this one so much, I understand the villain complaints but I thought it was pretty well written and looked fantastic)
3. Wandavision
4. Loki
5. Hawkeye
6. What If 

Great album, the main theme has really grown on me. 

Still having a blast!  Obviously I was wrong about the identity of the hippo - Ammit only has the ass of a hippo, apparently!

lol i got halfway through this before realising it wasn't JNHFan's spoiler free review

I went away for a few minutes and then resumed reading without realising I had scrolled down lol

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the movie or the girl.
 
The first Disney I saw when I was young traumatized me, it was Bambi.
 
Many (many!) years later, I decided to give Disney a second chance by watching The Lion King.
 
What a bad idea!

My cover of the last cue !
(with an extra horn solo )
 
 

Watched The Green Knight a couple weeks ago and I'm still not sure I can gather together more than a very positive "wow".

The entire track is just one melody repeated over and over again. Even the middle part is the same melody just with additional accompaniment.
 
This is the Riddler theme - 
 
     a
g# a C
a# a
g# a D#
 
9 notes. That's it. Repeated over and over and over again. He adds and subtracts accompaniment - but this is the theme.
 
Maybe Reeve placed a limit on the number of notes per theme? Like it can only be extremely short, and extremely simple.
 
Now mind you, simple can work.
 
I think this track is similar in construction to The Stone by Williams for HP1. It is a simple short theme of repeated notes which is repeated through the track non stop.
 
 
Though I would argue Williams did more with it. And had more variety and truly built it up in dread and menace. And had more interesting accompaniment.
 
This might be a simpler track for Williams. But in the same score Williams also wrote some of his most complex music. And even this track in Williams version - is not simple.
 
But you see where I am going with this? Gia is in the extreme "simplistic" territory now. His music is simply not complex anymore. It is kiiiiiiinda just dumb and your regular extreme banal blockbuster sound.
 
I mean I have just heard it, so I don't want to have strong feelings about the track but I just wanted the highlight again the direction he's headed in.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier
 
I finally watched this a few months back but forgot to mention it.  I dunno why I didn't watch it when it first came out, but I am glad I finally caught up with it - I ended up liking it the most of of all the MCU shows (well, this was before Hawkeye started, and I still haven't seen What If, so I guess that means I liked it more than Wanda and Loki)
 
I thought the story was good, the characters were good, the interaction between them was good, and the action was extremely impressive, absolutely full on movie quality level.  And it all led somewhere and wasn't just about the action, I liked Falcon's big speech at the end of everything.
 
I am a bit iffy on what they did to Sharon Carter, but she was so underdeveloped anyway, it was nice they gave her SOMETHING.
 
Wyatt Russel was super good as the new Captain America, and I love that him and Valentina teamed up at the end.  The Flag Smashers were a decent bad guy, but it's a bummer their virus plotline had to be completely removed.  Even bringing back Zemo worked.  The only time the show go boring was the stuff with Falcon trying to get a loan for the family or whatever, just went on too long.  Most of the time, the show was just great!

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that this is how Willem Dafoe showed up to the premiere? Like I can't even right now.
 

An abridged playlist for Nicholas Britell's The Underground Railroad is the latest subject for our Discord listening sessions. 
 
This score was one of my most anticipated of the year, and while I was initially underwhelmed by the three (!) volumes released back in May, it was clear that there was a good score hidden somewhere in there. Thankfully, I think I found it!
 
This latest collaboration with Barry Jenkins is centered around a handful of core themes and largely based on clever deconstructions of seemingly simple chord progressions. While much of the material is situated in the deep and rumbling realm of string dirges (cellos at the ready!), there are several heightened payoffs where Britell's rich harmonies, inspired instrumentation, and lush string arrangements coalesce wonderfully. 
 
The gang took to the foundation suites immediately, and greatly enjoyed the classically-infused intermissions provided by The Pursuit of Happiness, Social Waltz No. 1 and Valentine Trio No. 2 to boot. Other standouts include the House of Baal and Aria pairing, several lovely variations on Bessie, and This is Science, a longform abstract ambient piece that, among other things, just sounds really cool.
 
So, while the release format certainly doesn't do it many favours, this remains my top pick for the year (given what was offered). Thanks to @Holko, @HunterTech, @Stark and company for listening (and you too, @Jules)!

LOL now it looks like I bumped this thread after a month with no posts just to make my stupid white hair joke.

No, because you already posted it on Friday. 

From the article @Sweeping Strings posted
 
This is also my view on Bond and why I dislike the Craig era. 
 
 
In my experience the kind of art/culture a person likes has very little to do with their intelligence.  In fact, often I find that thinking escapism is stupid is its own kind of simple-mindedness.