GerateWohl

Yes. It starts with the OST track and ends with the finale.

A rejected score or what?

Then rather go for Rush Hour 2. That is the orchestral version of Rush Hour.

Three more remarks on the score from the album. Even though everyone calls Helena's Theme "Golden Age" style, I think epecially in the tracks "To Moroko" and "To Athens" it reminds me in style somehow on some 50s or 60s Henry Mancini style music or how for example Williams treated main themes in his 50s comedy scores like the Penelopé theme for example. So, after all it doesn't feel that golden age anymore to me. Secondly, this is a score with, even on album, a lot of quotes, not only of prominent themes from past films but even quotes from the background/action music. Therefore#, it really feels a little temp tracky at times. Anybody else the impression? Third, it is great and I love it!!!

I must confess, I bought this just for the Adagio. But yes, it is a good album. Despite this I can't help thinking sometimes, that man wrote about 300 amazing hours of music. Why does he always perform the same two hours in concert?

Platinum.

My favourite Isham score remains Black Dahlia. If you liked Goldsmith's L. A. Confidential you will love this. And the recent Dirk Bossé album of Isham's suites is great. As usual. I really like this album series. Concerning jazz writing he can't really compete with Terence Blanchard, I would say. I would always rather go for Blanchard. By the way also a stellar Bossé album.

Hm. I think, it depends. For me it was an eye opener, when I read in the liner notes of John Barry's score for Dances with Wolves, that he wrote the whole score from the perspective of John Dunbar, what he sees and what he feels. There I understood, that film music always takes a perspective in a movie and that should somehow be consistent. In western movie the middle east authentic cultural music as background movie score might make little sense and not trigger the intended associations because the movies look at the middle east from a western perspective, at least in most of them. Even in a movie like Kingdom of Heaven the story is completely told from the perspective of the western main character. There the music can demonstrate his process of adaptation to other cultures, but it is basically a western perspective. But in a movie taking place in the middle east with a middle east main character told from his or her perspective would do good working with a middle east colored score that does not just fulfill western clichés of middle east music. Looking at the far east, then Williams' score for Memoirs of a Geisha would be an example of a well adapted score to musical culture of the movie's subject. At least I live in that illusion. I am not an expert on japanese music.

Wow. That sounds like good stuff for some dramatic musical moments. Thanks.

Sounds interesting. What is the libretto about?

That's really a brillant article. I am just afraid it comes about 20 to 30 years too late as John Williams is the last of the dinosaurs who still write filmmusic at that complexity and who can stand the comparison with Strawinsky etc. and he declared some time ago Dial of Destiny his last score. If now a movie goer reads this and thinks, interesting, next time I go to a movie I will pay more attention to the music, he or she might be disappointed experiencing the music just as another kind of sound effect. So, maybe just one sentence missing in this otherwise great article. "This is how they used to do it but don't anymore."

TLW has two marvellous scenes and a great soundtrack. But like JS wrote: And I guess, that is something, that one could also state about The Rise of Skywalker. And it applies to almost every modern blockbuster. Still many of them are terrible movies.

I said it before. My biggest issue with all JP sequels was, that JP showed us in a believable way, that the raptors were super efficient and smart hunters and you know, when you see them face to face you are already dead. Then it went a little bit like with the stormtroopers in Star Wars. These super predators became more and more ridiculous with every movie and were no real threats anymore. When chasing one of the main characters, these escaped them by foot these dinosaurs stumbled around in a way that seemed to illustrate that these animals we're wiped out by evolution for their stupidity. The only sequel that dealed with that in a believable way was the first JW movie. We obviously watched a completely different movie with the same name.

JP III is really a bad movie. People on a search for a mobile phone on some dino island with not one suspenseful or exciting moment. Easily the worst in the series. Even though I haven't seen the last one. And JW II was already a hard contender for the worst. But at least I would call JW I much better than JP III and even better than TLW AS a movie.

Hm. I am not sure about that. Yes, in case of CE3K it worked out well. But very often such tone poems suffer from many inevitable ommissions. Mentioning E.T., the concert suite of Adventures on Earth always goes on my nerves as I consider the original version really as perfect. And this change the order of parts or even just cutting them in the middle for time reasons hardly ever work out for me. Last example is listening to some of the suites on the recent DG album of Joe Hisaishi's Studio Ghibli suites. Same thing here. Sometimes it works out well like Williams' concert arrangement for Dartmoor 1912, where he merges the opening with the finale or the DE3K suite. Also his Far and Away suite, that he played in Berlin is great. But it can badly fail sometimes. Wouldn't it be a welcome challenge for our passionate editors here in the forum to distill the perfect Force Theme concert arrangement from the hundreds of renditions in Williams' Star Wars scores? My advice: Start with the beginning of the TESB finale.

I listened to the album on Spotify. Great bits here and there. But I must admit, I don't like most of the singing. And some pieces in the suites feel very rushed, especially in the suites. Like this wonderful piece from Howl's Moving Castle that only gets shortly quoted in the suite:

That's why we are here.

Concerning film scores even the tin age seems to be history.

Besides all this talk about pity oscars and "this is not the best Indy score, and the others didn't win either" I have not doubt, that this score is already the best film score of the year. And wouldn't that be worth an award? And that is what matters, right. What is the best score of the year. And not, what is the best Indy score, or, did John Williams not win with better scores.

I am thinking sometimes, there are some great themes in War Horse, that really could use a dedicated concert arrangement. On the other hand, it is already great, what we have there in the score. But it just has great themes. From Tin Tin we have the Main Title, The Duel and Snowy's Theme. But I am also sure here, that there is more to explore for concert suites. Apart from that I realized, that we are really blessed concert arrangements of Williams themes. There is actually not so much missing. One of the best concert arrangement in the category that we didn't know we missed before we got it out is the Adagio from The Force Awakens for me.

I believe that latest since The Force Awakens the academy really wants to give him the trophy, BUT... 2016 Morricone was the older one, so last opportunity for him after all the missed opportunities before. The Last Jedi might have been the best score, but it wasn't as popular as TFA, so no chance. The Rise of Skywalker was just unvotable for a trophy for anything related to the story as this was probably the worst blockbuster ever made. The Fabelmans fulfilled hardly any criteria for an oscar nominated score. It is almost a miracle, that it was nominated. But this time, at last... it is possible.

That's kind of a Chewbacca defense for the album. But even that poor assembly could not prevent the score from shining. At least we can agree that it's a great score.

Jurassic Park OST has too many repetition to really count AS a perfectly assembled album. For Dial of Destiny I would also go for an OST just consisting of pure album arrangements of the major themes and a handfull of film tracks, like E.T. for example or The Eiger Sanction or Jaws. And a little later a well curated C&C edition, but not 10 years later. We don't always know the history of these decisions. Maybe the shortened version was the first one Williams created and he had to extend it for the re-edited movie. But he liked the initial version better because it was in his view the original and not a shortened version.

People today just have too much time to listen to music. Probably that is why these albums are so long.