Tom Guernsey

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.

Have to say that I liked Patrick Doyle's score and I don't imagine the film would have been substantially better or worse with his score. I can't imagine there's much of note missing from the release of JW's score though... it's not one of those albums I listen to and think it needs to go on longer, nice though it is.

I believe he did make such a claim at one of his film scoring classes. Hint... he doesn't ;-) but I like his stuff anyway. He also taught James Dean to play the piano, hence him scoring Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, both of which are great. There's a recording of suites from both conducted by John Adams (don't think it's that John Adams although happy to be corrected on that) which is well worth checking out. His LOTR score is pretty great, very different from Shore, but also different from innumerable imitation JW fantasy scores - it's only from 1978 and Rosenman was very much the iconoclast, doing his own thing anyway. I rather like his Robocop 2 score, even if the female chorus singing the titular character's name is kinda weird and a bit cheesy, but it's not as terrible as it sounds (and I agree it sounds terrible as a concept). However, the rest of the score has plenty of striking moments. I have to admit that I never enjoy Basil's score for the original as much as I want to (he wrote much better scores in this style, peaking with Starship Troopers) but am always pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy Rosenman's.

JP to HZ.... “When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master.” It certainly has better characters and makes more sense ;-)

Always two there are. A master and an apprentice. Alas John Powell just isn’t a Jedi Master name.

So as not to derail the Danny Elfman thread with a “yeah that’s great but I want this” comment, the release of his percussion concerto and the fairly decent rate of concert work output alongside his film work reminded me how much I wish JP would get on and write something else! His Prussian Requiem is such a brilliant work (as is The Prize is Still Mine) it’s a crying shame he’s not been busy writing more. Perhaps inspiration hasn’t struck again but it seems unlikely. I can’t imagine what he might write but hey, concertos are all the rage, why not one of them?!

Wow sounds like it’ll be a cracking album. Can’t wait to hear it and to experience the percussion concerto again. The live performance in London was terrific and it was a brilliant work.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is there a recording of his first symphony?

Just had my contribution taken and email confirming that it was all funded. Hurrah! Now just need to wait to see my name in lights (well a thank you in the credits). Oh and can't wait to hear it, obviously. Decided to give all the clips a miss, feels like one of those things I will enjoy more when the whole thing is there to enjoy.

The one movie where they could do all of the scenery in CGI and it would be literally fine... and they build physical sets. Genius.

I've alerted Bono. He's literally on the edge.

Superman Returns - Surprisingly decent follow up to the first two original Superman movies and one which feels charmingly old fashioned compared to Batman Begins (from the same year and which it apparently outperformed, the internet "reliably" informs me) and later DC/Marvel films. Having said that, the leads in the shape of Brandon Routh doesn't quite have the natural presence and charisma of Christopher Reeve or Henry Cavill, and Kate Bosworth isn't energetic enough as Lois (one review said Lois needs to have more manic energy, which I can go with). On the flip side, Kevin Spacey feels much more dangerously unhinged as Lex Luthor than Gene Hackman. His bonkers scheme makes only slightly more sense than in the original movie, but is well executed through a fine combination of CGI and model effects. Indeed, the effects are generally top notch and even when they aren't, it's done well enough not to matter. You really will believe a man can fly (and the effects in that regard aren't any better in Man of Steel). The airplane rescue near the start is especially terrific, you know it'll all be fine (Superman, duh) but it doesn't make it any less exciting or occasionally terrifying. John Ottman's score is a fine homage/sequel to JW's original and, fortunately, the horrible re-harmonisation of the love theme doesn't actually appear too many times, and on a couple of occasions, it has a nice extra phrase added to the end of it which is quite lovely. One big mark in Ottman's favour is his menacing motif for Lex Luthor which I find much more convincing than the March of the Villains from the original, which kinda makes Lex Luthor sound like he was played by an Ewok. His other themes are somewhat on the basic side and simplistically orchestrated, but actually quite effective, especially the hymnal 5 note melody which seems to represent the more mythical side to Superman. Somewhat amused that in the opening credits, JW is credited for the Superman theme which somewhat forgets the numerous other themes that appear in the score...

Il Postino - Luis Bacalov or "the score that somehow beat two of James Horner's best scores to the Oscar" (hint... it probably split the vote and if he'd just been nominated for one or other, most likely would have walked it...) In fairness, Bacalov's score is absolutely charming, almost entirely based on variations on its charming main theme. Having said that... I'm sure the theme sounds like something else, kinda Ennio in Cinema Paradiso mode (but I don't think that's it). Is it just me or is it just one of those timeless themes that makes you think it's from something else?!

It's the day after TV theme song day.

I still kinda feel that something like "the target is $50k and the backers will put in up to $10k to reach the target" seems entirely fine to me and is effectively more transparent since it's not some nebulous amount outside of the system. That way, even if it's super popular, people can still invest even if it's effectively fully funded, especially if they specifically invest to get perks that may not be available any other way such as attending a scoring session or whatever.

It's just a ruse by Big Oxygen to make you breathe. I won't have it.

I don't tend to buy much on Blu-Ray these days, typically reserving those for films I really like or have a special meaning for me (usually in terms of the music, i.e. the HTTYD trilogy and ST:TMP, that kinda thing). However, I do always have a quick skim through any Blu-Rays they may have in charity shops just on the off chance there's something of interest. They used to price them quite a bit higher than DVDs but now they're usually 50p or something. We also subscribe to Cinema Paradiso for discs by post which has a pretty decent selection, albeit not as wide ranging as the much missed Lovefilm which seemed to have almost every DVD ever released (including lots of things I imagine nobody ever borrowed). Our local library has a pretty large DVD collection to borrow (for free of course) which includes a number of more obscure things like filmed plays and other stuff that I guess could be counted as educational. However, they haven't moved to Blu-Ray yet, presumably on the basis that pretty much everyone has a DVD player but Blu-Ray is still too niche (maybe?!). I'm amused that you still have to unlock DVD cases when you borrow them... I hate to break it to them but I'm pretty sure most DVDs are worth less than a book these days.