Tom Guernsey

It’s kinda Psycho with a full orchestra. If it is What Lies Beneath I’ll get it because it’s Alan Silvestri but I have to admit that the excellent 6 minute end credits suite covers all the best material in a fine concert arrangement.

That’s the name I’m gonna give my French restaurant… But yes Patton is a terrific score although as a listening experience, I favour the original album re-recording. To me it’s performed and sounds better than the original film tracks and has a bit more edge than the RSNO version although I find much to enjoy in that recording. His lack of an Oscar is astonishing if not actually surprising. The plebs love a hit song and a doomed love story… I’m currently devouring the JG book and his Oscar losses are carefully noted. Some are against fine competition where you can’t really fault the winner but several are clearly travesties. Patton, Chinatown and Papillon from that period of his career are film music milestones for highly respected movies. His judicious approach to spotting, artistry and depth is something some contemporary film makers and composers could do with taking on board. When the music appears in those films it’s meaningful but when it’s slathered over every scene like slurry on a field it just becomes wallpaper. I don’t mean to shit on Ludwig Goransson too much but his music in Oppenheimer barely says anything about anything. It just plays incessantly in almost every scene in a droning, vaguely doom laden way. Now he has more Oscars than Jerry, Elmer, Ennio, Alex North… etc.

I do. All you need is some Howard Hanson and the last movement of Mahler’s 9th Symphony and JW didn’t need to write anything else 😜.

As is this one…

One of those British composers nobody seems to have heard of but who I’d say is more interesting than a lot of his more famous contemporaries… this is probably the best place to start if you want to sample his output. Really thrilling stuff.

A few more and I’ll stop. Promise. Doctor Who: Part 1/6 - Invasion of Death. First in an interminable 6 part serial starring Jon Pertwee as the popular Time Lord. This week, five minutes of plot are crammed into an entire episode as Jo and the Doctor traipse around London, slowly revealing clues about the pending invasion and leading them to the head alien being poorly revealed in a badly executed zoom shot during the closing cliffhanger. Doctor Who: Part 4/6 - Invasion of Death. Padding episode of an interminable 6 part serial starring Jon Pertwee as the popular Time Lord. This week, Jo and the Doctor get stuck in a maze solving clues that are entirely irrelevant to the plot and outcome while the Brig is driven around in his jeep and shouts at Benton. Star Trek: Enterprise. Previously unseen pilot of be unpopular Star Trek prequel starring former Tory MP Jeffrey Archer as the deceitful captain of the federation's first deep space exploration ship. This week Captain Archer offends the Klingon Chancellor and then lies about it leading to life imprisonment on a frozen asteroid prison where a shape shifting alien ensures he doesn't escape. Deal or No Deal: creepy uncle figure Noel Edmonds introduces a special edition of the popular dim witted gameshow as a a selection of uniquely stupid members of the public open boxes in an attempt to win the popular Kent seaside town. Quantum Leap: previously unbroadcast pilot for the popular time hopping drama series sees the avant garde Irish novelist leap through time and help avert happy endings. This week, Beckett ensures the wife of a wealthy oil baron drowns in the pool after being caught embezzling money from her husband's business. Deep Space Nine. "The Weakest Link". As part of Star Trek's crossover season, Anne Robinson travels to the Gamma Quadrant to awkwardly hurl poorly scripted insults at unsuspecting members of the Founders as one by one they are voted off as the weakest link. Star Trek: The Next Generation. In an all new crossover episode, "Silicon Avatar Part 2", the crew of the Enterprise must race to stop the crystalline entity and Data's evil brother Lore from destroying the peaceful Na'vi.

If only they could have got Morrissey to do it (before he turned into a massive bellend). I can’t say I like Eurovision much (unusual amongst my people, the gays…) but the U.K. never does well as it doesn’t embrace the cheese or over the topness enough.

Charlie Brooker, now of Black Mirror fame, used to write a fake tv listings magazine called TV Go Home (it’s online and very funny). According to my Facebook, 11 years ago, I went through a spate of doing my own. Sorry/not sorry for repeating them here. I don’t think these have dated too badly aside from the ones which are clearly references to much older shows. I’d definitely watch the Murder, She Wrote one. Why hasn’t anyone made that yet?! High Concept: Brand new high concept sci-fi show in which an improbable event occurs, the reason or outcome of which never gets aired due to being cancelled midway through the first season as the audience quickly realise the writers haven't a fucking clue where the plot is going and stop watching. Dexter, She Wrote: Prequel showing the early life of Jessica Fletcher during which serial killer Dexter Morgan shows a young Jessica Fletcher how to get away being a mass murderer and frame seemingly innocent people while visiting nieces or nephews. Jeremy Kyle: Intervention! In a twist on the classic formula, Jeremy Kyle is put in front of an audience of mocking peasants as members of Kyle's own family are brought on to confront each of Kyle's own personal failings as the audience jeers at him like a monkey in a zoo. Followed by Jeremy Kyle's Little Brother. Dara O'Briain asks Jeremy Kyle's little brother how Jeremy must be feeling about the vicious mocking he has just received while watching Jeremy Kyle weep uncontrollably in gloriously lo-def CCTV footage. The Culture Show: Lauren Laverne compares the growth rates of Bacillus anthracis and cyanobacterium Synechococcus while discussing a new production of the Cherry Orchard starring a small tub of Activia. Torchwood Late Night: Spin off from the unpopular sci-fi show. Episode 3/13 "The Shagging". Human dick machine Captain Jack Harkness must copulate with every human in the greater Cardiff area in order to prevent an alien invasion of some sort while the rest of the team go looking for a less conspicuous van to drive around in. Whicker's World. Episode 3/6 The W(h)icker Man. This week, globe trotting documentary maker Alan Whicker visits a Scottish Island with surprising results.

I’ll watch it because it’s Star Trek and if it’s good then I’ll be happy. The thing is, origin stories for certain aspects of Star Trek mythology would almost certainly be better as flashback episodes of shows set in TNG and beyond era. Even if the reason for the flashback was a bit cheesy… some “contemporary” issue where the origin provides a parallel that informs the “present” being the most obvious approach. Or time travel. Or a long lived alien they encounter. Or whatever someone with more imagination than me can think of. That way you get little glimpses of the history of the Star Trek universe without it being the sole reason for the show or film’s existence. I mean First Contact effectively did that with the first warp flight and meeting the Vulcans. It didn’t need to be an entire show or film set in that era (ie with a brand new cast).

This one is also excellent… http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2011/May11/Stravinsky_Rite_BISSACD1474.htm

I don’t have it to listen to but I recall it being kinda stodgy. Not enough spikiness for Stravinsky. Better for stuff like Strauss where all that Berlin Phil lustre is put to better use!

Agreed but I have to admit that even just playing stereo recordings though a surround sound setup gives a bit of depth to the sound field even if it’s not a true 3D space.

Alas I’m away so can’t check for all 15ish recordings i have but one of the first I got was Dutoit with the Detroit Symphony and it’s still a favourite performance (and an equally excellent Firebird). For a slightly more recent but also superb account Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Philharmonic is well worth a listen. I recently checked out Boulez and that’s definitely worth a listen. I don’t know if I have the Rattle recording. I feel I need to stop adding to this particular collection… however I concur that the Karajan one is not some of his best work.

Australia is definitely real. I followed a chemtrail down a perfectly flat road to get there.

Guess that goes for a lot of expansions. There's obviously the improvements to sound quality where, even if the new material isn't much, you get to hear things anew with a far greater level of clarity and detail. Even if you don't get much music, it can still be quite an experience. However, with Stepmom, I can't imagine any new music would be of any great import nor is there any great scope for material sound upgrades.

I try to take the same approach of positive discussion so appreciate that! However, agree that you can't always just say stuff people agree with. Guess it's nice to find a score where someone else feels that JW wouldn't be the final word in choice of composer! Agreed, it's lovely, but doesn't stand out much against his other more introspective scores. I'd take Stanley & Iris over Stepmom any day, for instance. I would also agree that there are more interesting JW scores to expand. I guess Stepmom will see the light of day eventually as it'll still sell, but I don't imagine it'll be a revelatory experience!

Glad someone could explain as I couldn't work out the other one as the YouTube clip isn't available. Have to admit that neither of them do much for me. Flying Dreams is the only bit about NIMH I don't like (else it's more or less a perfect score of Ravel-ian loveliness). The song is incredibly cloying, with sickly sweet lyrics and performance/production that only makes it worse. Best enjoyed as an unsung melody. I had totally forgotten about A Star Beyond Time... the lyrics are pretty bad, but the the guitars and orchestra arrangement is actually pretty effective. Whereas the Flying Dreams arrangement makes the melody sound more syrupy, this one actually cuts through it. The only analogy I can think of is like adding acid to cooking... it enhances the flavour by making it a little less rich. So I hope that's helped. Jerry's themes, a bit like JW's (of this sort... the lyrical, could be a song, type), are almost too rich and expressive on their own so adding words is very much a lily gilding exercise so it all too easily to descends into schmaltz.

I only made my slightly tongue in cheek comment given that I'm posting this here and there are enough people who believe JW can do no wrong and not be bettered that I felt I should qualify my statement a little, albeit a bit whimsically! But glad I'm not the only one with such an opinion. And yes, Rosewood is a terrific score although it seems surprising that a more experience black film composer could have been engaged, I reckon Terence Blanchard could have written a terrific score. Or Quincy Jones... but then again his score to The Colour Purple sounds like Georges Delerue so who knows?! I don't think either of us are saying it's a bad or uncharacteristic score, merely that there are some films where there are a number of other composers who could have written something equally as fine (the names I mentioned in particular) but there are some JW scored movies that pretty much only he could have written something as good.

Exactly my point. I would hope there's some places where consumer and "reasonableness" laws are written in such a way that if you click to "buy" something, your "reasonable expectation" is that you have therefore bought it and if challenged in court, could potentially rule against the streaming service that they are misleading. I don't mind paying £3 to "rent" a movie to stream for a known period as it's an understood concept, but I only have one film purchased as a download and that's an I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue stage show! Another reason why I only buy music from places where I'm very certainly downloading a digital file which is mine to keep rather than Spotify or Apple Music or whatever. I highly recommend Get iPlayer Automator if you want to download BBC stuff, works for both TV (including movies) and radio shows.

Agreed although, in defence of those annoyed by it, some services (Netflix I think) did make a point of saying how much they didn't care a few years ago but.... now they do. In fairness, the cost of adding an extra household to your account means you could quite reasonably spread the cost across a few family households. Both my parents and sister's family have most of what we have... really should suggest it. That is super annoying. I got about halfway through the 4th season of Babylon 5 on Amazon's advert services (before they fully embraced having an advert tier - can't remember what they called it, think it was in association with IMDB) but it suddenly wasn't on that any more and I had to pay to watch the rest. Funnily enough, as B5 had kinda reached the end of the main story before the show was unexpected extended for a further season, I was less inclined to rush to pay to watch it any more so still haven't seen how it ends! On the flip side, we were watching The Middle (not Malcolm in the Middle, just "The Middle"), which nobody seems to have heard of despite it running for 9 seasons, and that disappeared of Amazon (I think) literally the day after we watched the final episode. We had no idea it was leaving so were quite relieved to have scraped through. Shame though, it was one of those lovely, easy watching, long running sitcoms that provides a nice end of evening watch. Current show that takes that honour is Seinfeld, fortunately still on Netflix... Quite agree. This thing of deleting stuff when people believe they've bought something should really be illegal. If you've paid for something under the impression that you own it, you should be able to keep it. Of course companies hide behind the 39,105,304,423 (approx) pages of T&Cs to say "well, you really don't own them and we did tell you on page 925,234,234 in 1 point font so you really should have known...". It really ought to be regulated in a way that basically forces companies to say call it a "long term rental" or something. If meat produces can be up in arms about veggie burgers being called burgers, then consumers have every right to be pissed off at companies where "bought" doesn't meant "own".

All reasonable. Let's face it, if streaming services start to piss people off too much, people will just go back to file sharing. Kinda feels like the streaming services are getting to that point quicker and quicker at the moment, what with things disappearing too quickly - especially when it's the studio's own content, which always struck me as one of the significant bonus features of subscribing to Disney or Paramount or whatever - as well as the password sharing crackdown and the increasing cost of each service.

True although I can't imagine the average library DVD borrower being someone so attuned to such things... Well we have quite a bit in iTunes that's ripped from DVD which leads me to... ...yeah, it can be, but I usually rip DVDs and put them in iTunes and watch them at leisure. To be fair, these days our list is down to have a couple of dozen films on blu-ray but we add stuff fairly often. I don't know how it would compare to the cost if we rented via streaming, but it's more for the stuff that isn't available at all and, as much as anything, I'd be disappointed if Cinema Paradiso closed down completely so I don't mind spending a modest amount to support it and have access to stuff that isn't otherwise available. I don't know if it's ever been tried, but I always thought that a DVD/blu-ray rental place for charity could work, but more in the style of a book swap than an orderly rental place. Basically people "buy" the disc for a couple of quid and, if they want to keep it, they can, but if not, they can bring it back and someone else can rent it. If you had a decent database, you can see what was in stock so people could browse online as well as come into the store. Maybe it wouldn't work, but rather than every charity shop having a few dozen discs, it could be one big store with a much bigger collection that people could also feel free to add to. Plus, you know... charity.

Totally sympathise. I always imagined that streaming would be like in Star Trek where they just have anything in the database and you'd be able to access it... such a fool! I do, however, highly recommend JustWatch (https://www.justwatch.com/) which at least gives you a fighting chance of finding stuff, even if it's just to pay to watch it. It has a website and an app, all free (although obviously there's a paid for option, but the basic is more than sufficient for most people I'd guess). There's a range of options. You can either have a certain number of discs per month or a certain number of discs at a time. We currently just have 1 disc at a time for £10.99 a month and I guess you could probably get through 5 or 6 discs a month, maybe more, if you lived in the UK (as we're in Guernsey, post takes longer and I think they sometimes get stuck in customs for a couple of days). We were previously on 2 discs at a time for £14.99 a month but didn't watch them that quickly. Not as good as Lovefilm where we used to have 4 discs at a time for the same (or less), but a good alternative to streaming for hard to find things. Honestly very few discs have had any issues. Fingerprints can be wiped off and only a couple have had scratches that makes them skip (none have been totally unplayable), but no worse than renting from Blockbuster I'm sure. The unlock of DVDs from the library is a magnetic thing that locks the case shut, a bit like the tags they have on clothes to stop people pinching them. As I said before, I assume it's a holdover from when DVDs were expensive, but I don't imagine they are worth stealing. Yes, I loved Lovefilm... fucking A*****n.

My understanding is that it was that JW was unexpectedly available/interested so they asked him if he'd do it, and he did. I feel bad for Doyle as I'm sure there's some minor stigma to having a score "rejected" although I guess it didn't substantially hurt his career, which I'm grateful for. I've always felt there are a few scores JW has written where his considerable talents weren't really needed for the film in question and Stepmom is perhaps a prime example. You can probably count on the fingers of one hand the composers who could have come close to writing something as good as Star Wars, CE3K, Raiders, Jaws, ET, Schindler's List etc. etc. (and they're all dead...) but there's plenty who could have written a great score for something like Stepmom - Elmer Bernstein (probably my first choice), Randy Newman (second choice to Elmer), Alan Silvestri, Carter Burwell, Thomas Newman, either of the Danna brothers, Danny Elfman (in Good Will Hunting mode), Aaron Zigman, Alexandre Desplat etc. I'm sure there will be some pearl clutching to think that someone could write a score as good as JW, but I think this is one of those (admittedly rare) cases.

Sometimes I surprise myself with my own laziness... I really should have done a Google, thank you! Interesting though. It never would have occurred to me that he'd have take the time to record music by Rosenman especially as he's not really a conductor of other people's music (and only occasionally seems to conduct recordings of his own stuff) and doesn't seem much of a fan of film music as a medium. That's a good album though. Shame Nonesuch didn't do many film music albums as this, the Alex North, Toru Takemitsu and Georges Delerue ones are great. I guess it's hard to argue that it's the weakest of the original six movie scores, but when you have Jerry and James Horner producing some of their best and career defining works, it's a tough crowd! I wonder if Rosenman's score would be better regarded if it had actually been for a more dramatic film. His lilting 6/8 theme (rather than the LOTR-esque march theme) is really lovely but it's not really used that often so it's not really developed. I've always liked the comic chase music, I'm not sure they demanded anything more serious given the tone of the scenes. I almost think James Horner would have been on a hiding to nothing had he scored TVH. While the idea of "completing the trilogy" is a nice thought, I can't imagine it would have lived up to TWOK or TSFS given that it's a very different type of film. I can almost imagine the "he lost interest by TVH" complaints now.