[DIAGON ALLEY TRACK MOVIE vs SOUNDTRACK ALBUM]

2 hours ago, Holko said:

My mantra while writing it out was "make Daddy Jay proud"

 

When I first saw the length and meticulousness of this post, I assumed it was Jay!

 

4 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Mind, I don't understand why JKR had to be difficult about a separate release. Her books made people read, why couldn't they make people listen to the orchestra?

 

I don't know this story.  What happened?

[An Evening with John Williams and Yo-Yo Ma: One Night Only at Carnegie Hall (February 22, 2024)]

It’s going to be fun to watch Williams switch out Harrison Ford’s medical procedure every time he tells that Raiders March story for the next several concerts. 
 

“He was going in for an acupuncture treatment…”

”…a hip replacement…”

”…a bowel resection…”

”…a scowl lift…”

”…right in the middle of his vasectomy…”

”…he was getting new hair extensions put in for Han Solo in Purgatory…”

[Mark Graham just picked up a John Williams sketch and is "in a rush"! Any ideas?]

Imagine being such a master of your written craft that people thousands of miles away get excited when your notepad runs out...

[John Williams Reimagined Album (Arranged for flute, cello & piano)]

YES! This is what I wished for when I broke the window on 320 Sycamore! It’s like Night After Night for Williams. 
 

And can it be that this will finally be my access route to a gorgeous cohesive performance of the tonal melody from Images? Nah, with my luck, they’ll use the cello to simulate those drunken werewolf grunts from the OST…

[John Williams is becoming a Disney Legend]

What a farce. Disney has gone so acquisition-mad under Iger that they’re now sending Bishop from X-Men (company employee!) decades into the past to inform various titans of pop culture that they’re actually working for Disney, who will own them forty years hence. 
 

I can’t quite articulate why this feels so icky to me, but it’s the same feeling I got when The Sound of Music and Miracle on 34th Street showed up in their respective decades on the Disney100 section of Disney+ last year. They were not affiliated with you! They were, in fact, directly competing with you!

 

Disney is basically Mother Gothel now.  

[Images (1972) - 2021 remaster by Quartet Records (CD and LP)]

I just realized this score would be a perfect candidate for a Mutter arrangement.  Give us some of those sumptuous melodies without all the overcaffeinated-cannibal sounds!

[New 20 minute audio interview: John Williams At The Movies]

The other two concert pieces need to be released as "Nazuite" and "Archisuitees" respectively.

[John Williams In Tokyo - New live concert album coming May 3rd, 2024 from Deutsche Grammophon]

Promising, but weird!  On my end it says it's releasing on Monday.  I thought all music releases have moved to Fridays.

[The MCU - Marvel Cinematic Universe]

The Deadpool & Wolverine trailer made me sad.  I wasn't a child when the MCU was in its glory days, but I thrilled vicariously to the fact that movies for 9–12-year-olds were having such an incredible run—movies that barely earned their PG-13 ratings but delighted in adventure and heroism without being stuffy or portentous.  Marvel truly had the magic formula for a long, long time.  Now, with the MCU having overstayed its welcome, devalued its brand through overexposure, and misread fan appetites in equal measure over the past five years, this is what we're left with: a cynical, sophomoric, hyperviolent middle finger of a movie that leans into everything the great Marvel movies managed to avoid for so long.  And if you're a kid who loves superheroes, that's your Marvel option for the year.  A once-great kid-movie empire is behaving like the kid in middle school who can't wait to show off the dirty books in his locker.

 

If there's a silver lining, it's that Endgame was long enough ago—and the intervening movies and TV shows so disparate and haphazard—that they've probably lost most of the kids by now, and the only people lining up for this will be Fox-era nostalgics and frat boys.  I just remember a time when Marvel didn't have to court that audience because they had a four-quadrant formula that still managed to feel fresh almost every time.

 

When I was eight years old, I loved Wolverine, and I didn't need or want Logan levels of violence to do so, much less Logan levels of violence delivered with a nihilistic smirk and a side of dick jokes.  I hope this flops and leads Feige to some soul-searching, but I'm not optimistic.

[HOOK (1991) - NEW! 2023 3-CD Ultimate Edition Produced, Edited, and Mastered by Mike Matessino featuring all Williams/Bricusse songs]

12 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Maybe JW put it on the album because he just likes Banning Back Home. 

or maybe he just didn’t like banning Banning Back Home. 

[Williams nominated for two 2024 Grammys - wins Best Instrumental Composition for "Helena's Theme"]

Woohoo!  I love this category, and I love that they so frequently honor film pieces in it.  That's an even dozen for Johnny, although I have to say, giving it to "Angela's Ashes" over "The Egg Travels" from Dinosaur was a cryin' shame.  But then again, skunking Hedwig was an equally cryin' shame, so I guess it's a dozen either way.

 

P.S. Your humble correspondent had the dubious honor of adding Johnny's name to the chart on this category's Wikipedia page!

[A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - 2021 20th Anniversary Edition (reissue of 2015 3CD set) from La-La Land Records]

Everyone uses the word "minimalism" to describe this score, but I'm not musically literate enough to venture it myself.  I'd say expect something that starts out somewhat austere and reserved, takes detours into darkness and drama, and ultimately arrives at a place of warmth and beauty that somehow, in places, still retains a whiff of futuristic austerity—not in a way that diminishes the warmth, but in a way that keeps the sound rooted in science fiction.  Even when the score hits its emotional heights, you won't mistake it for E.T.—which is also science fiction, of course, but of a purely Spielberg variety, rather than the Kubrick-Spielberg alloy that is A.I.

[ACROSS THE STARS - Williams / Mutter collaboration album]

Technically this doesn't fall directly under the umbrella of this thread, but I happened to hear the violin arrangement of Helena's Theme on a playlist today, followed very closely by a track from Jenny Oaks Baker's superb Disney album, Wish Upon a Star, and it got me thinking about the several folks who have mentioned they don't care for ASM's playing/tone/sound/insert correct musical term here.  My euphoria over the existence (and increasing multiplicity!) of these new arrangements has blinded me to it thus far, but I'm starting to agree, and it makes me wonder if we'll ever hear other violinists attack these arrangements.  (Baker's playing, for example, seems much smoother and less "harsh" than ASM's.)  Does anyone know if they've been published as scores or made available for others to perform?

[John Williams YouTube tributes thread]

My dude, Enguerrand Etc. Etc., is back! Looking rather like an Indy villain himself, here he is with a rather slickly shot Motorcycle Scherzo!

 

 

[What Makes Return of the Jedi sound the way that it does?]

On 20/01/2024 at 7:44 PM, Trope said:

 

 

Wow, that's striking.  Makes me wish I'd picked up the ROTJ disc when the used bookstore had them all sitting there individually priced!

[What Makes Return of the Jedi sound the way that it does?]

This fascinates me as well, actually, as a SE lifer who doesn't know any better.  I bought the ESB disc of the Anthology used because I just love that score the most.  Can anyone point to any YouTube videos or anything that illustrate the quality differences between the releases?  Is the current OST on Spotify the awful remaster or the 2016 one (or are those the same)?

[Sony dedicates its music building to John Williams]

The John Williams Music Scene and End Credits

[Sony dedicates its music building to John Williams]

15 hours ago, Badzeee said:

Ah. This is… lovely.

 

Spielberg:

 

”Without you, the films are running around with no clothes on; with you, they’re completely finished. I’ve often said that if my movies can bring a tear to your eye, your music makes that tear fall down the face.”

 

Well… yeah. 

 

Spielberg never runs out of brilliant bon mots about JW's film scoring!

Also, with J.J.'s presence here, can we finally put to rest the notion that Williams has some sort of lingering distaste toward him?

 

Also also, your move, Juilliard!  Do they have yet to name anything after him?

[The Last Jedi vs. The Dial of Destiny (film & score)]

Great question! What a leprechaun's dilemma.

 

I say DoD for film because, while I was rarely, how you say, entertained by it as I should have been, I spent way less time actively frustrated and angry while watching it. Also, each movie has one really big idea (send Indy back in time and tempt him to become one with his life's work rather than work through his family issues in the present; tempt Luke to lose hope in his life's work and redeem him last-minute with a noble sacrifice that inspires the future). DoD features a deeply flawed execution of a big idea I rather like, while TLJ features a mostly competent execution of an idea I abhor.  Both films feature overhyped side characters who divert or muddy up the central plot, or just make no impact whatsoever where it would be reasonable to expect one (hi there, Benicio and Antonio).  Both feature characters we're apparently supposed to like who come off as obnoxious (Helena and Holdo), and both fail miserably at comedy.  (I do like Rose's line about "doing talking" with a Resistance hero.)

 

For score, I'd say DoD for a couple of reasons.  Frankly, my expectations were lower, because JW was six years older when it came out.  But also, astonishingly, it features more new melodic material than TLJ, where you get past Rose's theme and Luke's island half-theme, and you're gnawing Harry Potter and prequel leftovers in the action music and trying for years to successfully hum Holdo's theme.  DoD, on the other hand, has several notable minor motifs that actually feel like crafted melodies rather than riffs of a handful of notes.  (I can't name any of them on the spot, but I just rewatched the CGI prologue a week or so ago and kept thinking, "Oh, there's that one again!  Something about the Nazis/the Greeks/the Dial!") Both scores have more needle-drops than I'd like, but TLJ's are more obnoxious because they're straight from the concert arrangements (Leia and Yoda) or from extremely famous pre-existing score setpieces (Jedi Steps, the Emperor) or both (Here They Come!).  I don't know the depths of Indy action music well enough (nor, I would argue, does the culture) for those drops to be egregious, especially for a 90-year-old composer.  Finally, hearing Williams play around with Helena's theme, a new melody, in a million wonderful guises, is another gulp of the same oxygen I've been breathing as a JWFan for decades.  TLJ had far fewer moments of that.  You could also argue that, because of the prominence of Helena's theme in the score vis-à-vis Rose's in TLJ, DOD owes far less to previous Indy films than TLJ owes to The Force Awakens, where most of its melodic material comes from.

 

 

[Quartet Announces: HEIDI/ JANE EYRE (2CD)(John Williams) Remastered and Expanded]

Anybody else’s booklet have missing and duplicated pages?

[Fugues!]

I've been wondering about the minimum requirements for a true fugue since March of the Resistance was released.  Let's see if this works like in the commercials:

 

Like a good neighbor, @Falstaft is there!

 

Maybe he'll appear out of thin air and explain fugues to us!

[The Most UnWilliams like Score/Piece?]

Wow, that temp track-itis on “Banning” is BAD. Just license the cue as a needle-drop, Spielberg! Why make the greatest composer of his generation put on a chimp suit and squeal when you can just buy a real chimp?

[Deadline's December 31st Article on John Williams]

The hypertensive shysters at Giant Freakin' Robot jumped on the un-retirement train a couple of days ago with this juicy bit of conspiratorial confection...

 

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/superman-legacy-composer.html

["Anakin's Theme" and "Scherzo For Violin and Motorcycle" - two new 2023 Anne-Sophie Mutter arrangements by John Williams]

17 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

Williams's ode to southern breakfast food?

Beat me to it!
 

It’s his first breakfast-related composition since “A Toast!”

[Home Alone - 25th Anniversary 2CD Edition by La-La Land Records (2015)]

The Chicago PBS affiliate played a Christmas concert from DePaul Univerty the other night, which ended with “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” blissfully transitioning to instrumental for the credits. I commented to my brother that it sounded like Dustin Hoffman swordfighting a T. rex on Christmas, which I proceeded to input into an AI image generator, and here’s what I got. 
 

I also highly recommend “Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animal” by the Black Flamingos if I haven’t shared it here before.  A surf guitar Home Alone medley—what’s not to love?

 

Merry Christmas to the filthy animals of JWFan!