stewdog1

I've finally caught up with THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR.
The only thing I can say is: "Thank fuck that's over".

Fuck me, appears to be true! It's only two years since we had our massive 3-hour Vangelis retrospective podcast at Celluloid Tunes, and I felt like I was in a new Vangelis groove, the first in many years. One of the most important musical figures in my whole life; I'm gutted right now.

They were definitely breaking the fourth wall, complete with that cringeworthy character who mocked Hollywood's obsession with reboots, remakes and sequels (only for the film to end up being exactly the thing it was seemingly self-aware of mocking). 
 
It was borderline satire at that point, reminiscent of the Scream films and the way they poked fun at the horror genre. The key difference being those films were actually fun.
 
 
And that's fine, good luck to anyone who found enjoyment out of this! All I can say is, as someone who really liked the original films, this one did nothing for me. 

That was, without doubt, the worst film I've seen this year. An excruciating misfire for everyone involved.
 
A hopelessly disinterested Keanu Reeves looking like he'd rather be anywhere else, a completely wasted Carrie Anne-Moss, the shockingly bad replacement actor for Agent Smith (about as threatening as an Abercrombie & Fitch model), and the all-round terrible acting from the rest of the cast, playing a bunch of nobodies with zero characterization we're given no reason to care about, delivering the most inane dialogue since the Star Wars prequels.
 
Some of the cheapest cinematography I've seen in a "big budget" Hollywood movie (made-for-TV movies have looked more filmic). Incessant flashbacks to past movies are especially jarring against the pristine digital photography of the newer film. Action scenes are shot and choreographed with all the skill of an amateur director, with lazy Bourne-esque editing to match.
 
The score is as generic and underwhelming as you're expecting. Everything iconic about Don Davis' scores has been stripped away, leaving only the same mediocre dreck that underscores every Hollywood action film these days. Once in a while the film teases you with fragments of Davis' masterful scores, cruelly reminding you of what could have been.
 
But the film's biggest crime? It's excruciatingly boring. Whatever story it's trying to tell, there's little meat on the bone. The film's opening act is so desperate to be "meta" (literally referring to Warner Brothers and the existing trilogy in dialogue), you can't help but spend the first hour wondering when the story will actually begin.
 
As the credits rolled I asked myself, that's it? After two decades, that was the most interesting story they could come up with? To call the film a pointless waste of everyone's time would be the greatest understatement of the year.

Definitely NOT film stems, no. I was planning to save this story for an Odyssey Soundtrack Spotlight, but now I feel like I have to silence the speculation about sources...
 
Varese searched high and low for complete session tapes and really did their due diligence. Warner Bros, Taliafilm, Mike Ross-Trevor, Bruce Botnick...nobody had more music from this score. Nothing in Goldsmith’s own archives either. All Varese had to use was their original Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 album masters (thankfully those had been preserved in pristine condition and sounded fantastic.)
 
So Varese actually reached out to me many months ago to see if with my Goldsmith Odyssey connections, I knew anyone who might have more music from the sessions. I bothered a bunch MORE people, on the slim chance they might have something. (I.e., did Mike Lang happen to help do the keyboard overdubs after the Hungarian sessions, and might he therefore have a copy of the full score as recorded? Nope, he didn’t, and nope, he didn’t. But he IS a super nice guy and suggested even more people I could try.)
 
Finally, I remembered something at almost the last minute: Intrada’s re-recording of Islands in the Stream was done as a piggy-back fifth day of sessions at the end of four days of Lionheart sessions in Hungary. Doug Fake himself was there in Hungary, in 1986, for the original Lionheart sessions leading up to the first rerecording he produced with Jerry. And in multiple conversations with me, Doug has said, “I save everything I can.” Surely, Doug would have made himself a copy of those original Lionheart orchestral sessions, I thought! After all, this is the guy responsible for preserving copies of City of Fear and Studs Lonigan, for *decades*, which would otherwise be lost to time.
 
So very last minute (they were finalizing the track list), I asked Cary at Varese for permission to reach out to Doug, and thankfully (though skeptical there would be anything) he agreed to let me contact the head of another film music label about a high profile upcoming Varese edition, even though all my other avenues of inquiry over the previous week or two had come up empty.
 
Did Doug have tapes as I suspected he might? Yes, he had 84 minutes of Lionheart spread over three tapes he’d had made for reference purposes. These were not commercial audio cassettes, they were professional grade tapes. But they were still copies and never intended to be a source for an album. Doug told me this and warned me they wouldn’t be up to the quality of the album master tapes Varese had. In fact, he didn’t even know how they would sound because he hadn’t listened to them in decades. But we had no other avenues to check; this was a last ditch effort to include more music that would otherwise never get out to Goldsmith fans. So I put Cary and Doug in touch, and Doug generously had his tapes transferred to digital and sent to Varese.
 
It turned out the unreleased music totaled almost four minutes spread over two cues that went unused in the film. But I figured out where those cues should go in the film, and David at The Goldsmith Odyssey edited them in for the scenes they should have scored, and they were a perfect fit to the final cut of the film! These cues are in fact very important ones because they clearly establish the thematic material for the villainous Black Prince, before it gets incorporated into the action cue “Children in Bondage”, mixed in with a lot of other stuff. That cue was never meant to be the first appearance of the theme, and IMO its development makes so much more sense now, with those two cues preceding it.
 
One problem: since the two previously unreleased cues were definitely in inferior sound quality to the rest of the score, Cary wanted to put them at the end of disc 2 (after the end credits) as bonus tracks. I lobbied hard for them to be included in chronological order and just labeled with asterisks that they were in lower sound quality, but Cary didn’t like the thought of having great sounding cues on either side of poorer sounding ones. This is where Lukas Kendall, who also assisted Varese on this release, came in with a good compromise: keep the full score in chronological order which I felt so strongly about so that the thematic development can be preserved...but have the new cues end Disc 1 instead of Disc 2. That way they were still bonus tracks at the end of a CD rather than interrupting in between great sounding cues. So for those of you wondering why disc 1 is 22 minutes and Disc 2 is 62 minutes, this is why. It wouldn’t all fit on one disc, and it actually does work out well as a split because Children in Bondage is actually a great opener to Disc 2. If the extra music had survived the ages in pristine sound, The Road from Paris is where I’d have started Disc 2. But given the circumstances, I think the split makes total sense and I hope everyone else enjoys this new presentation of a top 10 Goldsmith score as much as I do.
 
I’ve probably gone on about this longer than I should, but I wanted to head off a bit of the Monday night quarterbacking (“I would have done it THIS way!”) I was seeing here and at FSM. Rest assured a ton of work went into this release and no decision was made lightly.
 
 
 
Chas Ferry did remaster this actually. In fact I haven't even heard his work on it yet -- its very likely that he made the two new cues from Doug Fake's tape sound better than when I last heard them in the album mock-up I made. I'm very interested to hear what his new mastering sounds like.
 
 
I think you mean Nic Raine? Nick Redman is no longer with us and was not a conductor but an album producer for Fox. In any case, I would definitely be up for a re-recording of this score someday, and I know it's one Tadlow reconstructionist Leigh Phillips *almost* did a few years ago (Thriller narrowly beat Lionheart in a poll he ran, and thank goodness because those Thriller volumes actually made back their money which Lionheart probably couldn't due to how immense the expense would be.) But for now, let's celebrate the fact that the original (and still quite good) Lionheart recording under Jerry's baton has been reissued (and even expanded with two more cues) after being out of print and unavailable for *decades*! A lot of people are going to have the chance to own this masterpiece of a score again. I'm so glad Varese decided to revisit it.
 
Yavar

My son and I were talking tonight about the Marvel movies and the music and got us thinking about what if Jerry Goldsmith was in his prime when the bulk of these movies were made. 
 
Thinking back on how only Goldsmith could get away with the bold and over the top First Knight score, and what he did for The Mummy, just think of what he could have done with Iron Man, Captain America, and the Avengers films. 
 
So in thinking of What Ifs, what if Goldsmith was around for the Marvel movies? 
 
What if David Arnold was to do a Star Trek film? 
 
What are your What Ifs? 

As a Vangelis fan, the release is nice, but as a Blade Runner fan, it's frustrating. And many tracks STILL have the wrong speed!
 
The highlight of the Trilogy is CD 2, and the highlights of CD 2 are "Dr. Tyrell's Owl", "At Mr. Chew's", and "Leon's Room", imo

Wow was that another train wreck of an episode. So let me get this straight. The Doc is in space prison for 19 years yet we have to see the humans whine that they were left for 10 months the entire episode and the Doc was sorry about that? 
 
Then contrivance after contrivance. Oh let's contact the really militant daleks to take out these new mutated daleks. And to get rid of them I have this nifty back up tardis ready to go. 
 
Then the final 20 minutes was trying to milk the companions dry and trying to make us care about them. Ugh

Getting back to the topic
I would absolutely love it if we have a Luke Skywalker centered story played by Sébastien Stan and him being hunted by Mara Jade.
 

It was an absolute mess. That is what it was. The writing is just horrible. Trying way too hard to manipulate emotions on a premise that should have been developed so much better. 

Definitely. I almost turned it off during one of the three lectures about plastic. Probably should have. 

So far JJ has remade three movies. A New Hope, The Wrath of Kahn, and Return of the Jedi. 
 
I'm just hoping one day to have a reboot of the sequel trilogy and get a proper Skywalker story, see Luke actually be a Jedi instead of a homeless man. That's what irks me the most about all of this. How they treated Luke. That's unforgivable. 

So far JJ has remade three movies. A New Hope, The Wrath of Kahn, and Return of the Jedi. 
 
I'm just hoping one day to have a reboot of the sequel trilogy and get a proper Skywalker story, see Luke actually be a Jedi instead of a homeless man. That's what irks me the most about all of this. How they treated Luke. That's unforgivable. 

When I saw that trailer about the return of Palpatine, I said to myself: "This is the kind of stuff that would have constituted a big reveal inside one of the movies. Why are they giving it away in the trailer??". And that's the reason: so they could avoid building up to that return. It feels as if they have realized too late that there wouldn't be enough time to tell the whole story that JJ had in mind within the space of one movie, so they cut away as much as possible. This brings us back to the main problem of the ST, namely, there wasn't a clear direction for the complete story to which both directors agreed. Otherwise, the buildup to Palpatine's return could have been done in the two previous entries. Or, alternatively, JJ could have dropped the idea, since it had not been prepared in the previous movies. 
 
I see an analogy with the end of Game of Thrones. In both cases, long stories that required many movies and many years of work were hastily wrapped up at the end, just because the creators either didn't know from the beginning, or didn't agree along the making, on how the story would end. 
 
   
 

And this is my main gripe. It is not difficult to make enjoyable SW stories that do not contradict the existing lore, that do not undermine the classic characters' legacies. And yet it seems like Disney is practically going out of its way to do just those very things. Luke Skywalker was supposed to be the one to restore the Jedi Order; according to Disney, he failed, and Rey will no doubt get to go down in SW history as the one who does that. Anakin Skywalker was supposed to be the Chosen One and destroy the Sith; according to Disney, he failed, and Rey gets to go down in SW history as the one who does that. It's insulting and feels almost like a personal attack on fans who have loved and invested themselves in these characters over the years. It seems like Disney will not be content simply owning SW; they must remake it in their image, and they must put down the legacy characters to prop their own characters, up. It's ironic; for all their branding of these films as "The Skywalker Saga", they sure do seem to like dismantling the actual Skywalkers and handing their legacies over to a new Disney character who is in truth a Palpatine by blood, who merely "identifies" as a Skywalker. It's sort of depressing to think about.
 
Exactly what was the point of this trilogy, plot-wise? The galaxy is in virtually the same state it was in at the end of ROTJ, except a different character is now getting to take all the credit going forward. This trilogy doesn't add to the PT or OT; it was not needed in the least. At least the PT, for all its faults, added valuable context to the OT and was still at least the authentic vision of the series' original creator. But we know from Bob Iger's recent book that Disney threw George's story treatments for the sequels, in the trash... A fact that I get the feeling many casual fans are unaware of; they seem to think that Disney is honoring his stories and wishes, when that really couldn't be further from the truth. When I found that out, I lost a lot of respect for Disney and their handling of this franchise, and this trilogy lost a lot of legitimacy in my mind. This is not George Lucas' STAR WARS. George may suck at writing dialogue, but his stories are still worth telling. It's a shame they're sitting in the trash instead of being told.

Not even a competition.  Endgame by ten miles.  Rise of Skywalker is complete garbage, which depresses me mightily to say.

Hey everyone, 
So I have been a member of this forum from practically the beginning. Before my son was born who is 16 now. 
 
His dream is to be a film score composer and works day and night writing music. I got him into film scores ever since he was born. Playing music all of the time. 
 
Anyway, was of his first completed works he posted today. Just a three minute film that he also acted in. He wrote this music in two days. Including going to school. 
 
I hope you all enjoy. I'm quite proud if you can't tell
 
https://youtu.be/ZbgMyqlZROs

Nice score!

Hey everyone, 
So I have been a member of this forum from practically the beginning. Before my son was born who is 16 now. 
 
His dream is to be a film score composer and works day and night writing music. I got him into film scores ever since he was born. Playing music all of the time. 
 
Anyway, was of his first completed works he posted today. Just a three minute film that he also acted in. He wrote this music in two days. Including going to school. 
 
I hope you all enjoy. I'm quite proud if you can't tell
 
https://youtu.be/ZbgMyqlZROs

So giving some thought and I know that it will change... 
 
TMP, ST:V, Mummy or Rudy 
 
Rudy is just pure joy to me. It is extremely infectious and just lifts you up. 
 
Mummy I believe is the pinnacle of Jerry's action writing. 
 
TMP is a classic. 
 
ST:V though is rock solid. Introduces two new sublime themes that are used later in the franchise and the action is spot on. 
 
Believe it or not, I'm going with ST:V
 

So giving some thought and I know that it will change... 
 
TMP, ST:V, Mummy or Rudy 
 
Rudy is just pure joy to me. It is extremely infectious and just lifts you up. 
 
Mummy I believe is the pinnacle of Jerry's action writing. 
 
TMP is a classic. 
 
ST:V though is rock solid. Introduces two new sublime themes that are used later in the franchise and the action is spot on. 
 
Believe it or not, I'm going with ST:V
 

Hey everyone, 
So I have been a member of this forum from practically the beginning. Before my son was born who is 16 now. 
 
His dream is to be a film score composer and works day and night writing music. I got him into film scores ever since he was born. Playing music all of the time. 
 
Anyway, was of his first completed works he posted today. Just a three minute film that he also acted in. He wrote this music in two days. Including going to school. 
 
I hope you all enjoy. I'm quite proud if you can't tell
 
https://youtu.be/ZbgMyqlZROs

This is a really tough topic. I'm going to have to think about it for a bit. 

Hey everyone, 
So I have been a member of this forum from practically the beginning. Before my son was born who is 16 now. 
 
His dream is to be a film score composer and works day and night writing music. I got him into film scores ever since he was born. Playing music all of the time. 
 
Anyway, was of his first completed works he posted today. Just a three minute film that he also acted in. He wrote this music in two days. Including going to school. 
 
I hope you all enjoy. I'm quite proud if you can't tell
 
https://youtu.be/ZbgMyqlZROs

This series is just so painful to sit through.  I'm sure Jodie Whitaker is a fine actress, but she does not fit at all.  It could be that the writing is just that horrible and she's doing the best she can with what she has.  There's just no presence there to the character.  All that she is doing is providing exposition, throwing her hands around and that's about it.
 
My son and I struggled to get around to watching the last episode for a few days and watched a few episodes of DS9 first until we got around to it.  It's like we are watching it out of obligation at this point.