Andy

Scherzo for Abduction and Rectal Probe

The final track on the OST: Government Coverup and Finale 

I mean shit.
 
One of the best cues in KOTCS is the departure.
 
JW writes UFO themes for breakfast.

Steven Spielberg will be making a UFO movie based on an original idea with a David Koepp script. (Variety)
 
Will this bring Johnny back to the scoring stage?
 
 

Steven Spielberg will be making a UFO movie based on an original idea with a David Koepp script. (Variety)
 
Will this bring Johnny back to the scoring stage?
 
 

I did buy it yesterday!!  Alright it was last month, but still I haven’t even spun it yet, so if it’s Starship Troopers, you’re all welcome. 

Locking in on these shit programs on the stupid antiquated format too, lovely

Cutthroat Island comes to mind. It's got some great themes, and it's beautifully recorded, but it's just. Too. Much. You've got thickly layered fortissimo strings, brass, winds, percussion, and choir up the wazoo—and that's just the first cue! I enjoy individual tracks but I absolutely cannot enjoy the whole album, despite years of trying. 
 
I was really lukewarm on Star Trek TMP for a long time, but I finally "got" that score eventually.

Le petit Garçon -Philippe Sarde 

 
That is a beautiful score. Impressionistic three piece chamber ensemble (piano, violin, clarinet) accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. Lovely and never boring. 

Third listen to PATTON today. Hot damn, this score is good!

Not of the anniversary remaster perhaps, but the original release was available on CD from GNP Crescendo:
https://www.soundtrackcollector.com/title/1808/Hellbound%3A+Hellraiser+II

There is no CD release for 2.
 
Karol

It's definitely an acquired taste. I certainty had trouble listening to it back when we only had the bootlegged "film stem" set, but then I got into it a bit more after I'd grabbed an edit someone did (once it became apparent there were gaps in the final edit of the score).
 
It's far more cohesive and thematic than I think people give it credit for, but there's no beating around some of the more abrasive sounds that Kamen likely threw in out of frustration. I certainly have trouble imagining what the more Superman inspired version of this sounded like, because it fits in very well with the other Kamen stuff I've heard (a theme here is straight up taken from Robin Hood!). The action material definitely isn't as cohesive as people might like it to be, but it's got enough energy and personality to it that I honestly don't mind. Really, the highlights are in the dramatic and emotional moments. Very few superhero movies have captured the feelings Death Camp and Logan and Rogue leave me with. They arguably are quite odd for a cape flick, but that's what makes them appealing! You simply will not find anything else with the personality of this, for better or worse.
 
The OST is on streaming if you want a sampler, since it's decently representative of the score (despite some mixes being tailored for the album). The LLL certainly gives a much fuller picture on what Kamen managed to achieve, but I think that'll just depend on if you like any of it beforehand.

Christopher Young - Hellraiser 2
 

 
In celebration of Young's very busy month, I went back to what is considered his best horror score. It's still great! Both the dark choral parts (even though the main theme is now somewhat an evergreen - kinda like a horror equivalent of the Star Wars Main Title) and the more abstract and sound design (I'm in the mood for some ambient horror music these days). However, I do need to point that some of the synths are still very "80s horror". I could almost picture Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers in VHS quality chasing some teens...
 
Tyler Bates - Watchmen
 

 
Back in 2009, Bates had become some kind of persona non grata among film music critics and fans due to the whole Goldenthal/300 disaster, and his score for this movie (Zack Snyder's best movie IMHO, alongside Dawn of the Dead - not a fan of 300) didn't help improve his reputation. 15 years later and I think it's kinda underrated. Some beautiful tragic moments in there and rather impressive choir material.
 
The only problem is... it doesn't have much of a personality. There isn't nothing particular to this score that makes people say "oh, these are the Watchmen!", unlike many superhero scores. If I didn't know from which movie this music was and you told me it's from a Punisher or a Batman movie I would've believed you. The music goes everywhere, from big choir and orchestra to dark ambient sound design, seemingly inspired by everyone from Hans Zimmer to Danny Elfman to Don Davis to Vangelis to prog rock, and yet nothing is unique to this particular superhero group. I guess it's hard when you're trying to compete with Snyder's songs and Phillip Glass needle drops.
 
Either way, as pure music itself, it's rather good and the fact that it's "everywhere" in terms of style wasn't a problem to me.

Sometimes, I'll discover sex comedies etc that have been 'snuck onto' YouTube uncut and the YT overlords haven't cottoned on yet. Always fun, hehehe. 

Private Resort (1985)

 
 
I felt like watching a shitty Spring Break style teen sex comedy. So my wife picked Private Resort, probably hoping to see some early Johnny Depp.  From the box art, you could assume it’s a Depp vehicle, and you’d be wrong.  Oh he’s in it a lot, but it seemed like he was Rob Morrow’s sidekick. 
 
No matter. You get two horny guys with zero backstory looking to get laid at the resort.  Hector Elizondo plays “The Maestro”, a bumbling jewel thief who…
 
Ah, who cares?  There’s plenty of bewbs, bare ass from both Depp and Morrow, lots of physical Benny Hill style comedy, no tattoos, zero diversity (unless you count the two Sumo wrestlers), and the large chested woman from the Police Academy movies.  
 
Did I mention there’s bewbs?
 
How the hell do I give this a number ranking out of 10?  I’m not gonna even try.  Sad fact is, I laughed at this stupid but entertaining time capsule.  A throwback then even to those old ribald Euro sex comedies.  They don’t and can’t make them like this anymore. 
 
 

Intrada announces the premiere release of Christopher Young's stunning score for The Piper. Writer/Director Erlingur Thoroddsen sought out the veteran composer not only for the task of scoring The Piper, but to compose the three-movement Concerto for Children, which is rehearsed and performed in several pivotal scenes in the movie and whose motifs haunt the soundtrack of the movie and its characters. The filmmaker tasked Young with creating a work that was sophisticated enough to convince as a concert hall composition, maddening enough to compel characters to stab their ears as it unfolds, dynamic and dramatic enough to work as underscore during some of the film’s most frightening and powerful moments, and so compelling in its unearthly beauty that it seems capable of holding characters—from unscrupulous conductors to innocent children—in its spectral grip.
 
“It turned out to be a 30-minute, three movement concerto that I had to write in advance,” Young says. “Erlingur basically told me that he needed one movement that was going to be crazy, because it was going to be played toward the end of the movie when the whole theater is going to pot. But beyond that, it was pretty open ended." The concerto employs standard flutes with the performer providing more exotic timbres through his playing. “I used piccolos through the lower C flute, alto flute, into the bass flute range, for these lower chords. For the Piper himself, when we see him play, it’s a normal flute that has been completely altered through electronic modification.” As Young notes, all these factors add up to one problem: “My flute concerto can never be performed as written. I’d have to make changes because the performer is required to move from the alto flute to the C flute to piccolo all within a handful of bars. It was easy to punch in and record them, but I’m going to have to make some revisions if I ever want to have this performed live.”
 
The result is a powerful and sophisticated work that would stand up well in the concert hall ... if only it could be performed as written!
 
Thoroddsen’s supernatural horror film follows Melanie Walker (Charlotte Hope), an ambitious young flautist, composer and single mom working under the auspices of imperious conductor Gustafson (Julian Sands), who leads the orchestra at the fabled but financially troubled Virgil Hall. Struggling to maintain her first-chair position in the orchestra, Melanie hopes to impress Gustafson with a flute concerto she’s composed, but she’s being undercut by the equally ambitious flautist and composer Franklin (Philipp Christopher), who has his own concerto in front of the demanding conductor. Gustafson also has a connection to another troubled composer—the late Katherine Fleischer, whose Concerto for Children No. 1 was given but a single, disastrous performance in 1975. That uncompleted rendition resulted in the Virgil Hall Tragedy, a fire that killed over 100 children. Katherine had been Melanie’s mentor before the elder composer took her own life by burning herself to death—after Gustafson tried to browbeat her into another performance of the concerto. Struggling to maintain her position with the conductor, Melanie Walker insists that she can find Katherine Fleischer’s written music so that Gustafson can conduct it at a crucial upcoming fundraiser for the hall and orchestra.
 
FLUTE CONCERTO: A Concerto for Flute, Children's Choir and Orchestra
01. Movement 1 (11:12)
02. Movement 2 (07:33)
03. Movement 3 (11:24)
Concerto Time : 30:11
 
THE SCORE
04. Suite (21:11)
CD Total Time: 51:13
 
THE PIPER (intrada.com)

Alien

 

 
The Black Hole

 

 
John Carpenter's The Thing

 

It’s my favorite as well! Probably due to when I saw it and the score.  That Amstel art is gorgeous too. 

I just won this in an ebay auction for €64.36 (incl. shipping and VAT).

 
It's my favorite of the Mad Max films. I didn't like the first one, and I cannot remember the second. Maybe I should watch it again?

We should create a thread: Top 10 scores for movies you didn't grow up on and only fell in love with it after you were out of your formative years

I think that is a GREAT idea for its own thread!
 
 
 
I've never liked the Superman score as much as many people here do.  Partly it could be a wrong place wrong time thing; The movie and score came out before I was born, and while I saw the film on pan&scan VHS at some point in my childhood, it wasn't a favorite of mine; I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen it a second time (most likely I did around 2000 or so when the DVD came out, but not sure).
 
The score was certainly one of the first I got when I began buying film scores in 1994.  I bought the Rhino expansion, the FSM blu box, and the La-La Land.  I've listened to all these presentations multiple times.  It's a good score.  The main theme is redonkulously iconic.  I think the first few parts of the score are GREAT - all the Krypton and Smallville scenes, actually the Fortress of Solitude and early Metropolis scenes too.  But some time after the flying sequence, nothing else has managed to really WOW me, not any of the times I've tried. 
 
So yeah, it's really not top 50 worthy for me.  Every score I listed in that post I have definitely listened to more times than I have to Superman.  It is what it is!
 
 
 
It is?  (this is referring to The Fifth Element by Eric Serra).

I love that score! You don't like it?
 
 
I've never been able to get into the Conan The Barbarian score at all either.  I have heard it all, I love the main titles of course.  This is another film I didn't grow up on; I've only seen it once, on DVD around 2000ish or so, and didn't care for the film.  I do plan on revisiting the score at some point - I bought the 3CD Intrada and I LOVE Poledouris' scores to Starship Troopers and Robocop.  Some day.
 

Oooh, that's an oversight!  I LOVE Dances With Wolves.  That's a masterpiece of a score!  It might not have occurred to me, because it's another one I didn't grow up on.  While I did see the film when it came out, and have since seen it at least 3 more times (all the extended cut, I believe), I never actually owned any version of the score until the LLL came out.  And I loved it immediately and have listened many times since.

that would be in my top 10 themes list.

The Abyss on the new 4K disc. Can't tell you how it compares in terms of look because I've never seen it before. Very enjoyable movie, very impressive technically. It's probably bit less than sum of it parts as it feels like some better Cameron films but it certainly does not stop me from enjoying myself tremendously.
 
Karol