Bryant Burnette

funny but I remember the film being a huge boxoffice and critical success. I specifically remember it was given thumbs up by Siskel and Ebert (who likened it to a Bond film). I find the film today to be considered by people, especially here to be the weakest of the three films. The score on the other hand has always been the Holy Grail of scores by films score and JW score fans as one of the most in need of a comple score. I think my unabashed love for this film can be found here What I remember is people hating Kate Capshaw and Short Round, and finding it to be overly dark and violent. (It's one of the movies that gets credited with inspiring the PG-13 rating.) I never understood any of the complaints, personally, and I'm gratified that they've withered away over the years.

In anticipation of Crystal Skull, I rewatched Raiders last weekend, and am looking forward to rewatching Temple of Doom and Last Crusade this weekend. I've seen Raiders probably 50 times, so I remember it well; the others, I haven't seen in probably close to a decade, so I'm especially excited to revisit them. It's interesting how the status of Temple of Doom has grown through the years. I remember it being seen as a big disappointment when it was released. Now, though, people seem to remember it quite fondly. Which is cool, because I do, too.

That's debatable. I think it will remain a polarized affair. A.I. is a masterpiece now . . . no need to wait for the future, it's already here. no it will never be, the public will never embrace that piece of **** as a masterpiece. Joey, why should I be bothered to respect the opinions of somebody who doesn't take the time to capitalize words? You barely seem to know how to type; why should I assume that your capacity for critical analysis is any better than your typing skills? Your tastes are not necessarily indicative of the public's, nor is the public's necessarily indicative of what will and what won't be considered a masterpiece. That status will be determined by people who think and write seriously about film. Lots of people don't like Shakespeare or Moby-Dick or Blade Runner, too. That doesn't mean that theirs is the only opinion, or that it's the better opinion. Eventually, Spielberg will be widely considered to have been a serious artist, and his films will be viewed in that light. And in that light, the complexities and virtues of A.I. will be better appreciated than they seem now to be.

I've seen the cut of the movie with the Goldsmith score, but I don't remember it well enough to have an opinion. When I watched it, it was with somebody who was a big fan of the movie from her childhood, and she was highly annoyed that the Tangerine Dream music was gone.

I liked the first movie, but saw no need to buy the score. I doubt it'll be much different this time around.

Spielberg was the 1st to do it :cool: Really?!? Details, please.

Though you may have been joking, there are people out there claiming that Giacchino is the next John Williams. (Wasn't there a controversial thread here with that title at some point?) And Joey is right -- there IS no next John Williams, and even if there were, it'd probably be somebody other than Giacchino, anyways: Shore or Elfman or maybe Howard or Zimmer. But I don't even think any of them (with the possible exception of Shore) have that kind of consistent brilliance in them. That said, I don't really understand why so many people have such antipathy toward Giacchino. The guy has done some great work -- The Incredibles, Lost and Alias on tv, Ratatouille, Speed Racer -- and will undoubtedly continue to do great work. He's still more or less at the beginning of his career, and is already kicking ass, which doesn't happen with too many composers. There's no reason on Earth to think he's incapable of writing a Star Trek score that's even better than what Goldsmith, Horner, Courage, etc. have done in the past. It's unlikely, in the same way that creating an instant classic is always unlikely. But impossible? Certainly not.

For one thing, let's stop this odd notion that music has to be "original" in order to be worthwhile. Just because Giacchino didn't personally compose the theme to Speed Racer, it doesn't mean that he didn't use that theme in a brilliant and artistic way in writing the score for the movie. Really, he made the theme better than it was to begin with. The music plays great on its own, and MORE IMPORTANTLY it plays great in the movie. How is that disappointing? As for his Star Trek music, I've read interviews that indicated that he woul dalmost certainly not be using any of the Goldsmith or Horner themes, because the movie takes place (at least in part) prior to the series, so it would be inappropriate to use music from any of the movies. (Although Horner's Spock theme might work, in my opinion.) I'd bet on themes from the original series getting used. And as long as he does work that makes the movie a better experience, I don't really care whether or not he writes one single new theme of his own. If he does, that's fine too. It's all about what works for the movie.

True. An even better example is Poltergeist -- which Spielberg may not have physically directed, but he was totally in charge of all the post-production, so it was him working with Goldsmith on that one.

It's definitely a stand-out scene in the movie. A lot more emnotional than you might expect from a Speed Racer movie.

I wouldn't assume that John Williams will be scoring Tintin. It could just as easily be Howard Shore, or James Newton Howard, or somebody else altogether. I'm always up for more John Williams, but I've also always been a little curious to see what Spielberg would do with a different composer.

Hmmm...! I'd never heard that Poledouris was attached to Dances With Wolves, but it definitely would've fit his style. Although I love John Barry's score, one of his very best, so I'd be reluctant to wish it out existence.

I think Conan the Barbarian is clearly his best, with Lonesome Dove following it up, but really, I love all of his scores that I'm familiar with. Les Miserables, Conan the Destroyer, The Hunt for Red October, Starship Troopers, RoboCop -- great scores all. I hope to at some point be able to afford to track down the rest of his work; he's one of the small list of composers whose scores I'd definitely like to build a complete collection of. I've always been confused as to why Poledouris didn't get better assignments. Just on the basis of the scores listed above, most of which were for very successful projects, you'd think he'd have been able to get hired for high-profile movies on a more consistent basis than he was.

4.5 Great score, and an underrated movie, too.

Yeah, between Gump, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, and The Shawshank Redemption, 1994 was really a pretty great year for movies.

Bring 'em on.

For me, the first thing I think of at the words "Peter Pan" is the Disney cartoon. I like it more, even, than the book. I haven't seen the new version, but I love JNH's "Flying." It was used in a Disneyland commercial once, and it really worked brilliantly. The rest of the score is listenable, but not the most interesting soundtrack I've ever heard. Are you positive that in the Disneyland commercial you're referring to, it was the JNH piece playing? Because "Flying" sounds an awful lot like a section of "Reflections of Earth," a lovely piece composed by Gavin Greenway for the Millennium Celebration at Epcot. In which case, it greatly predates JNH's Peter Pan.

That's debatable. I think it will remain a polarized affair. A.I. is a masterpiece now . . . no need to wait for the future, it's already here.

You say that as though the movie James Newton Howard scored -- a decent movie, but nothing more, in my opinion -- is the real Peter Pan movie, and the Disney version is some sort of also-ran. It isn't one of the better Disney movies, in my opinion, but the Disney Peter Pan is far and away the best-known, best-loved film version of that story. The version you're referring to will forever be reduced to living in its shadow. (It's not even one of my favorite JNH scores; rather bland, to my ears.) 216 It's the number of my life. Take my full name (Charles Andrew McKnight) and translate it to numbers using the standard system of A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Add them all together and you get 216. My social security number. No, I'm not going to tell what my SSN is, but suffice it to say that 216 shows up in multiple different ways. My birthday is November 16, which means 11/16. 1+1=2, so in a way my month is 2, and thus, 216 is my birthday. That one is kind of stretching it, I realize, but consider this. Exactly nine months before then would be February 16, or 2/16. So it is conceivable (lame pun) that I was actually conceived on 216. The year of my birth is '88. '88 is a 2-digit number which when you add the two digits, equals 16. 216 All right, I know what you're saying. The full year is 1988. Well, 19 divided by 88, and rounded to the nearest thousandth, equals .216. Beyond those, the number just constantly shows up everywhere for me. Some other interesting stuff I've found about the number 216: It is the smallest cube which is also the sum of three cubes. 2³+3³+4³=6³=216 It is also the product of two cubes. 2³x3³=216 It is an untouchable number. It can not be expressed as the sum of all the proper divisors of any other integer. It is used in the movie Pi to represent God, and it is used in the Left Behind series to represent the Antichrist. There is a great episode of The X-Files called "Improbable" (I think) that deals with numerology, and features Burt Reynolds playing God. Ah, what a strange episode . . . good stuff, though.

People who say that nothing happens in 2001 are just off-base. I really don't even see how somebody could see the movie and get that out of it. I can see being bored by it, but that's a different thing altogether. It's not even accurate to say that there are scenes of the movie in which nothing happens. Some scenes take longer than they might, strictly speaking, need to take in order to advance the plot. But Kubrick is creating a mood; he wants the audience to have to live inside of a scene, to have to come to grips (even if only very temporarily) with what it's like to be in a certain type of situation. Outer space feels really, really empty in that movie; but that makes the presence of the monolith that much more alarming, when its presence comes about. Every scene has a specific purpose, and achieves that purpose. I think that it's in the methodology of those achievements that the movie loses a lot of people. I saw 2001 as a small child, and I hated it. But the next time it came on TV, I watched it again. And hated it. But the next time it came on, I watched it again . . . and hated it less. But still, I watched it the next time I had an opportunity. I had no idea why, but there was something in the movie that drew me to it. And by the time I was old enough to start appreciating it, it became one of my favorite movies. It still is, and probably always will be.

I like the prequels well enough. I don't think they work terribly well as prequels; they feel like they come from a different universe than the original trilogy (although Revenge of the Sith makes up for that in some ways), but they work well enough on their own. The problem is, The Phantom Meance is a bad movie. I like some parts, and even love some parts, but as a whole, it is a wretched failure, both as a Star Wars movie and as a movie unto itself. The Nimoydians, or whatever they're called, are cringe-inducing; Boss Nass is embarrassing; Jar-Jar is a chump's idea of humor; the pod-racing sequence is a narrative waste; Jake Lloyd is alarmingly inept, considering he is playing the main character of the series. For every thing that works well -- Liam Neeson, the score, the majority of the effects, the lightsaber duels -- there is something else that fails to work in greater proportion. I remember being incredibly excited to see the movie, and about five minutes into it, my stomach had just sunk, knowing that I was watching a Star Wars movie that not only wasn't awesome, but was actively bad. And yet, I still saw it eight times. Go figure. I don't hate Attack of the Clones the way so many on this board seem to. I think some of the dialogue is terrible, and the love scenes between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman fall somewhat flat, but I love most of the action scenes, and it's hard to find fault with the vast majority of the effects. Williams' score was butchered, but most of it is still great. Revenge of the Sith is just a notch beneath Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, for me. It's still got some problems, but I love the vast majority of the movie. The thing I dislike about the prequels isn't what they are, so much as it is what they aren't. Leaving out the vast majority of the Clone Wars was a serious narrative error. Unforgiveable, really. We should have seen more of Anakin as a Jedi. As it is, I feel like we really only barely got to know him, and never got to like him very much; a serious flaw in a tragedy. The entire plot of The Phantom Menace should have taken up only about a third of Episode I, with the build-up to the Clone Wars being the rest of it. Episode II should have been nothing but the Clone Wars, with Episode III being pretty okay as is; it just needed to be set up better. But in a way, it's unfair to take movies to task for what they aren't. They'll never be satisfying to me as a Star Wars fan, but do I still like the prequels? Definitely.

From that review, it sounds as if some good cues have been left off of the album, which is a shame. But I'm still going to buy it when I buy the (2-disc!) Lost season three soundtrack.

Never one single time in the history of movies has a monkey in a movie been annoying. They are ALWAYS gold.

Well, any score to Disney feature animation can't be called "obscure." That's for certain. Masters of the Universe and Quigley Down Under are obscure; even the least successful of Disney's "real" animation (meaning that the direct-to-video sequels are not included) has been seen by millions upon millions of people, so regardless of whether or not it's well-liked, it ain't obscure. Not even Home on the Range can be called obscure, much less Atlantis. I voted four stars. I love a lot of the score, especially the main theme, but there are a few points where it does indeed become a bit generic. And the end-credits song is about as bland as a song can get. Still, it's a quality score from JNH, and the movie is pretty good, too.

Not familiar. I enjoy games, but I just don't have the time for them. Therefore, even though I'm a Giacchino fan, I haven't heard this, and probably won't unless I win the lottery or a heretofore unknown relative dies and leaves me a vast sum of money.