Tom Guernsey

Ugh I knew I shouldn't have added Dante's Peak to my order... bet they're waiting for that to come into stock before they dispatch it!

Cool. And random that I listened to the Roy Budd version today. So that’s a third (at least) score for this version of Phantom to go with Budd and Carl Davis. Be interesting to hear this one.

Phantom of the Opera (Roy Budd) - Score for the 1925 version. I have to admit that I don't know much Budd but always enjoy his music and this is a fine effort. It looks like both he and Carl Davis wrote music for this version and, much though I enjoy Carl Davis' music, some of his scores for silent films are quite old fashioned and overwrought but Budd's actually sounds considerably less melodramatic. In fact, one of the major motifs reminds me (albeit fleetingly) of Cliff Eidelman's Star Trek IV: TUC score. It certainly doesn't sound like a silent movie score in the same way that Davis' do. Worth checking out.

...only when he wakes up and we see reality, he's Renton and in rehab.

Omni must have started shipping the scores ages ago as it usually takes a week or two to get to me. My order of the two Elfman Batman scores took absolutely ages. Unusual for a company to dispatch quite so ahead of the official release date.

Nor here, although my Omni score arrived much to the my partner's surprise (he'd ordered it as a random present for me!). Now just have to wait for the CDs to read along...

I dunno, I think for that for the kind of movie and score they are, they’re pretty hard to beat. Tuneful, expertly crafted and some fun classical riffs here and there. While I’m still a little sad for David Newman that he didn’t get to enjoy the success of the series after his fine initial effort, I can’t imagine he’d have written anything better than JP. Indeed, David Newman’s comic action writing can get a bit grating at times (something he largely avoids in Ice Age) and his various animal re/united scores are a fun alternative if you’re looking for some more animated D Newman.

Ugh how I have to decide between yet more amazing cover options! Super stuff.

Gosh I used to love Belle & Sebastian but can’t say I’ve listened to any of their stuff in years but might have to check this out.

With the recent bit of discussion about John Carter (of Mars), I decided to give it another watch via the magic of Disney+. I found myself really enjoying it and even more disappointed that it turned out (relatively) to be a massive flop. There was clearly quite a lot of hubris, from director Andrew Stanton downwards and I can totally understand why general audiences would have felt it looked like something they’d seen before via Star Wars, Dune and so on. Having said that, Barsoom (Mars) is superbly realised with plenty of epic location filming and absolutely terrific FX which sell fully realised characters as much as they do the usual creatures and flying ships. Only a couple of oddly poorly composited blue screen sequences stick out. Seems like lead Taylor Kitsch got some stick at that time but he’s perfectly decent enough and surrounded by a fine supporting cast (and frankly his acting is massively better then some of the leads in classic creature features like the 80s Clash of the Titans for example). Michael Giacchino’s score is great and remains a favourite. Shame we never got to see the sequels.

OK that's quite random but cool... released by Rhino Atlantic, yet another label!

Gotta agree with all of that... it's very odd to release almost all of it, but still have some stuff missing. Ah well, I need to give it another listen but, I just don't have the time, so much else to listen to.

Having given it a full listen, I found the songs are pretty average musically, compounded by weak lyrics which are either trite or cheesy or both (My Myopia is particularly naff). Disappointing given how sparky the dialogue is in the original movie. Musically it's kinda exactly as expected, mixing rockier numbers with pretty typical musical style ballads. This is probably the first musical where the underscore is better than the songs as bits of the original score appear, arranged for the smaller theatre orchestra of course, at a few key moments. Must be quite a challenge to play night after night, that stuff isn't easy. I'll give it a few more listens but as I noted earlier, I would be amazed if anyone coming out of the show without having heard the new songs beforehand would remember anything new, most likely humming the BTTF theme, Johnny B Goode and The Power of Love (which, annoyingly, is ruined with a dialogue excerpt - fairly standard on cast recordings, but it's such a great performance, it's annoying having it on the album).

In amongst all the other stuff released and announced today, the cast recording for Silvestri's Back to the Future: The Musical is released today (digitally at least). Couple of tracks in and it's fun, if pretty insubstantial stuff... I rather think everyone will remember the original BTTF theme, Johnny B Goode and the Huey Lewis tracks by the end. Sure I'll see it eventually anyway!

In amongst all the other stuff released and announced today, the cast recording is released today (digitally at least). Couple of tracks in and it's fun, if pretty insubstantial stuff... I rather think everyone will remember the original BTTF theme, Johnny B Goode and the Huey Lewis tracks by the end. Sure I'll see it eventually anyway!

Ooh... twist!

I'm guessing this'll sound like typical Desplat in the same way that Silvestri's will sound like typical Silvestri... that having cynically being said, I like them both so looking forward to them anyway. At least this version looks like it'll be less of a slavish live action copy of the animated film, which I imagine is how the Zemeckis version will turn out

Something threatens the entire galaxy. The Enterprise is the only ship in range. Some of the doors don't work. The Enterprise intervenes and beats the threat. The end. Let me know how close I am ;-)

It's great that we all get to live under the auspices of global capitalism where big businesses can make so much money trading all over the world yet god forbid a consumer might want to buy something they can't get locally for, in the grand scheme of thing, a vanishingly small amount of money, and ends up having to spend over the odds to get it.

Gotta say that £23 for a double CD is pretty steep and the postage isn't cheap, but hey, this is one of my favourite scores so absolutely a price I'm willing to pay! Just lucky that we don't get hit with any kind of import taxes or duty in Guernsey (sorry everyone else).

But not super exciting... fortunately there's endless great HTTYD custom artwork floating around the interweb.

Agreed... the thing I dislike the most about the first two films is that they pretty much include every scene from the books and so the narrative ends up being kinda plodding. I used to say that Harry Potter would have been much better as a big budget miniseries, especially the earlier films which are very episodic; he gets the letter, he travels to Hogwarts, he learns to fly/make potions/cast spells/play Quidditch etc. but of course it was pre-GOT and so it got turned into kinda enjoyable, but fairly slow moving movies. It was only with the third and fourth that they were essentially forced to strip out chunks from the books in order to make them into coherent movies and, for my money, much better movies. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire thing gets remade as a lavish multi-part miniseries at some future point, you can get all that trivial detail from the books into a long form version.

HTTYD2 Deluxe has landed: https://5catstudios.com/httyd

https://5catstudios.com/httyd Finally announced... seems like they were keeping everyone waiting for HTTYD2!

https://5catstudios.com/httyd Finally! HTTYD2.