Trope

That’s a good thing… I may consider picking this up next year.

I’ve addressed some issues with the album cover by using a high-resolution scan of the original poster and doing additional touch-ups and restoration. The layout is modelled after Intrada’s cover design, so it should be a suitable alternative to the official version. I've kept the colours from the original scan rather than Intrada's version because I'm not a fan of the orange colour grade they've applied to it.
 
https://flic.kr/p/2qA5CMM

That’s a good thing… I may consider picking this up next year.

You know, this morning, I woke up thinking about this, and I realized that the "wrong" melody did survive into the first JP score in at least one cue: The History Lesson. The cue's first statement is the usual form, but the second is the one heard in JPIII.
 
JW does sometimes create a few similar versions of the same melody. You hear that tendency in E.T., Harry Potter, etc. My feeling is that this happened with the island fanfare as well, and he genuinely did mean (at one point) for the first couple statements to have that slightly different melodic contour. But he later decided to mostly move away from that variant.
 
Still, life finds a way, and it can be heard not only in Davis's end credits, but in The History Lesson as well.
 
I wonder if there are any other spots I'm not thinking of …

C&C is pointless when a perfectly good OST exists.

World War I (one)?
 
Woodwind Intro?

Blink the percussion pattern of Rescuing Sarah if MV or Neil or Mike are holding a gun to your head.

This is really fantastic work!

Honestly, the only audio flaw that bugs me about this release (apart from a few less-than-perfect performances from the ensemble) is the clipping at the climax of Star of Bethlehem (which is not present on the OST). Everything else sounds good to my ears, and it is a wonderful score that I've really enjoyed getting to discover in its complete form.

the what now

I was hired by MGM a while back to make some transcriptions of Tom and Jerry episodes.  I often wondered if I could write in the style of Mr. Bradley.
This is my attempt. Comments welcome.
 
 

I like reverb (even rather heavy reverb as long as you can still hear the details - the problem of the lousy Shawn Murphy recordings/mixes around 2000 isn't the reverb, but the cloudy mix of the instrument groups), and yes, HA2 is very dry. But it's still a good dry sound. I'm more bothered by it being so hot, but I guess if that's how it was recorded, there's not much you can do against it.
 
And yes, it does rehash a lot of stuff from the first score - but it adds new twists to some of them (even Holiday Flight), and it adds a lot of wonderful new material, beyond the two new songs. It also has the better version of Star of Bethlehem.

Indeed he did. 
Not every cue though. 
 
The following cues were orchestrated by Thomas Pasatieri: 

Horror
Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde
A Narrow Escape
Towards The Open Sea...
Swallowed Alive!
The Wonder in Books
New Courage
The Magic of Imagination
 
Davis did all the others. 
 
For Apollo 13: 
Master Alarm
Manual Burn 
(both action cues)

Just had my annual Home Alone watch with the family.  The movie never disappoints.  It is rare when a movie nails both the big things and little things so perfectly (like Fuller and the annoying kid talking to the Airport taxi driver).  The old man storyline elevates the whole thing beyond the childlike-aspects.  His hand healing as the movie goes along to symbolize his family healing--damn.  The whole cast--how did they get so many A-listers for what had to look like a trifle of a movie on paper?  
 
As always, Williams's score turns the whole affair into art.  So many timeless themes (Star of Bethlehem continues to be my favorite) and Setting the Trap--who else working then or now would use Carol of the Bells as part of an action fugue?  Mel Torme singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and everything else.
 
I love this movie, and I love John Williams.  

Boy, if workers as essential as air traffic controllers or post workers were to go on strike you’d think their employers would come to the table and work to resolve the issue instead of saying “no you can’t strike.”  

Right. That explains why that sound suddenly appeared in Courage Under Fire, was replicated in Titanic and never appeared again. I reckoned it was Horner's attempt to respond to the ostinato-like style Zimmer brought in with Crimson Tide the year before, but perhaps it was a Zwick-mandated change that Davis worked on? Zwick would go on to work with Zimmer afterwards.
 
And totally take on board that these things go both ways - there is a LOT of Horner in early Don Davis (and his compositional DNA) and it's difficult to settle on who did what.
 
Overall, I was always curious when Horner did not re-use an idea as he would inevitably do that, one way or another - there's for example the WoodHouse Helicopter Finale from Clear and Present Danger (1:10-) that was never replicated (the flute stuff especially) but found it's way to The Matrix
 
 
For example, this is more or less a rewriting of a lot of Clear and Present Danger (not the above track) but still very Davis
 
 
The Beast is very interesting as a score - it's got most of the Matrix DNA in it, but it also uses a lot of Goldsmith mayhem from Congo and other similar stuff. But it still sounds uniquely Davis - and what he would do on Jurassic 3 a few later.

In the opening very first score track, there's a transition to an action cue that sounds suspiciously like Don Davis:
 
 
Or it could be that segements like this really influenced David who then later contributed similar swashbuckling material for Warriors of Virtue and The Matrix Reloaded.
 
Regardless of whoever wrote this, Balto is a terrific score. I absolutely the main theme and this passage has a really cool statement starting at 3:12. It's a shame Horner abandoned what he perceived to be inferior film genre for more Oscar-bait drama right after this came out (not counting The Spiderwick Chronicles many years later). Some of his most enjoyable work came out of animation.
 
Karol

Buzz Lightyear's cameo in Balto:
 
 
Plus, the action music in Grizzly Bear sounds kinda Matrix-y...

.

Exsultate Christmas (just to prove a point that these pieces do share similarities, I'm not completely mad):
Exsultate Christmas.mp3  
 

Well, the movie's name starts with an M, so...
 
Nicholas Britell should've changed his name to "Micholas Britell" or "Nicholas Mritell"

Maybe not completely...

Exsultate Christmas (just to prove a point that these pieces do share similarities, I'm not completely mad):
Exsultate Christmas.mp3  
 

These consisted of almost 50 files that needed to be meticulously stitched together. There's about 7 minutes of additional music that Gordy wrote.
 
 

Well, I’ll never hear either of those the same way again! Thanks!