karelm

He's an interesting composer who himself teeters on the edge of romanticism and modernity. I know some composer friends who loathe him for being too traditional!!

Aww, I was mentioned in their presentation!! Though completely unexpected, that meant so much to me!! Love these legends! I've been fans of them since the early 1990's! They are legends.

I enjoyed this documentary...sort of a modern retrospective.

Maybe it's the nostalgia kicking in but damn, this movie looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

I think they should make an all women Star Wars movie with Rey as the hero, Third Sister as the villain, outtake/b roll for the obligatory flashbacks of Leia as mentor, Zorii Bliss as the love interest directed by Deborah Chow with a score by Joan Williams.

Even where you say both were in sync, those wave forms look quite different! They are timed correctly but details in the original are missing in the remaster but you can see compression was applied. The Disney Remaster is louder int he green section right channel but both are quieter in the orange. There are also timing issues. What does this mean? Different takes?

This ad makes me want to hear the remastered set but then I remember how much hated them. Did they even listen to the final mix? Or perhaps they need to bring in a musician next time and not just audio engineers. I will say Star Wars sounds good in this ad.

Imagine being in the audience of this concert with a list of unknown composers. For me, only three names I recognize, JW, Stan Kenton, and Emil Richards who I knew and conducted! He was everywhere! In nearly all Jerry Goldsmith percussion sections all the way through Giacchino's scores! As far as I can tell, this was a short lived pickup band with only 9 concerts.

There is no soundtrack release for Spidey 3 either. Lots of his scores don't have a soundtrack release. Composers aren't the ones who own the material and for each of his projects, he produces a soundtrack and submits it but the studio might say no if a film tanks or something. Sometimes the composer has a clause in their contract that after a period of time, the rights to a soundtrack go to them but this is usually not the case in big budget studio films.

And Picard S3 is great!

Retro games are fantastic. Maybe because for me they were games of my childhood, but they really nailed game play, story, immersion. It's probably my favorite genre. I see remakes as a trying to bring those classics to a new audience and I'm in favor of that. Not to say genre's can't be innovative but something to be said for those classics too and why they are so loved.

When did you see the original? I wonder if my seeing it only recently and absolutely loving the slow burn because the ending was devastatingly moving. I don't think the same would be true if it wasn't such a slow burn. It's a very, very good movie so much so that I thought even Spielberg was crazy to remake something so flawless. But I think I liked it even more if just slightly.

My intro to the original WSS was LTP. It was fantastic but the singing isn't live, only the musical accompaniment. I would assume the same with this remake.

Switch to video game scores.

That must have been a thrilling program! Beautiful hall too! Neilson 4 is a work you need a very good seat for and I can see from the pics you have a great seat! I last heard it at Disney Hall - such a great work. How was the Langgaard 6 ending?

That is the Hymn to the Fallen theme. Through out the film, you don't really hear the theme till the credits. You only hear snap shots.

But at its time it was very minimalist. No score at all for Normandy. No theme other than Hymn to the Fallen which I think is only the credits.

I liked the score but it follows a trend of minimalism. Even JW's Fabelman was minimalist but had themes. AQOTWF was literally just ambiance. Effective for this sort of film but very lousy listening experience. Being attuned to audio, I did find the score effective in the film as was the sound design. The sense of impending dread at the approaching tank for instance it does well. Think about this, at its time, Saving Privat Ryan was a minimalist score for a war film. This might be the modern version of that. Many composer friends said they found the score effective as did I. That must be what the Music branch of the Academy is looking for, how a score fits the film like a glove rather than musical quality. That might not be a problem.

I saw the final episode in ...get this...a packed movie theater! I can't imagine how a tv show can pull that off now. After the show, everyone was either teary or just stunned silent.

Over the weekend, I saw Requiem for a Dream for the first time. Jared Leto must have been Timothee Chalamet of twenty years ago. Very strong performances and distinctive directing. The film was very hard to watch, so dark emotionally at a time that feels somewhat idyllic in hindsight. So would spectators find our current darkness amazingly ideal twenty years from now? Perhaps that is what the march of time looks like. If you don't like the trailer, you won't like the film.

I finally saw Tar. I enjoyed it. Very fine performance by Cate Blanchett. She was way better than many pro conductors. I know John Mauceri was an advisor so I wonder if she was mimicking him or actually learned the craft but the end result was impressive. Script was pretty good but musicians would find some of the music dialog cringy. I realize after seeing it, music conducting is not what it is about...

Yes, he generally uses his 8 stave short scores with two systems per page. Here is a close up of his conductor score - clearly the short score with two 8 stave systems but it flashes by quickly. I'm sure there are times he conducts from full scores such as the main title (if he even uses a score at this point having conducted it a million times) I believe is from the Hal Leanord score, but the original underscore is generally from his sketch. The recording and mix engineers use the full score prepared by JAKMS. The reason why he uses sketches makes sense. He is considering it the definitive version of what he meant and doesn't require as much score study.

Lovely interview. I also really enjoyed the music from Flaberman's they played. Very enjoyable. Good luck at tomorrow's Oscars, Maestro!

Looking forward to it. I remember that when it premiered. At the time ANYTHING that said Star Wars was gold and even at 5 or 6 was like what the hell is this shit?

I don't think so. I attended classical concerts prior to this with the SF Symphony where they played Sergei Eisenstein's (1898-1948) films Ivan the Terrible and Battleship Potemkin with music by Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. They were projecting Soviet era propaganda films from the 1930's and 1940's Soviet films, but the accompanying score was live with a large symphony orchestra. I'm certain even that wasn't the first time. JW doesn't conduct from the orchestral scores. He uses his 8 stave sketches which as you point out have the tempo but even then, prefers punches and streamers as much as possible. Basically, as close as you can get to free time but also making the necessary hits. I don't think anyone does that now other than JW. Tempo in film scores can go from 101.3 to 102.9 a few bars later to 98.72 a few bars later to nail a hit. Too hard for any person to notice. Getting rid of tempi like this and just making sure you land at the right spot lets the musicians speak and feel the music more. But if you stripe a score which is much more common now, you need each separated recording session to fully align.