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James Bond 23: Skyfall FILM Discussion


Greg1138

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Bond music needs anthems?

Well, not literally. What I mean is memorable, rip-roaring, 'f yeah!" melodies that make your hair stand on end. Not merely repackagings of the Bond theme. The kind that Barry, Goldsmith and Williams once wrote.

Indeed. Arnold is not Barry, nor Williams, nor Goldsmith. Yet, he is one of few actively working major western film composers who actually write distinctive melodies. There are much better educated, much more technically skilled film composers than him who have never in their career written anything as characteristic as Arnold did for Stargate, ID4, Last of the Dogmen, Tomorrow Never Dies, Godzilla, The World is Not Enough, Four Brothers, Stepford Wives or Casino Royale. Most of these scores include not one, but plenty of such melodies. Even latest Chronicles of Narnia consists of five or six easily indentifiable themes, some of which are probably the best written for a fantasy film in some years.

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Eric Serra's GoldenEye is the best score in the franchise!

So what cue stands out most for you?

Personally, I like "Ladies First", "Whispering Statues", and the percussion-led unreleased piece in the hotel pool.

"Goldeneye" sung by the wonderful Ms Tina Turner is a million times better than a single blot on Eric Serra's "score".

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Eric Serra's GoldenEye is the best score in the franchise!

So what cue stands out most for you?

Personally, I like "Ladies First", "Whispering Statues", and the percussion-led unreleased piece in the hotel pool.

"Goldeneye" sung by the wonderful Ms Tina Turner is a million times better than a single blot on Eric Serra's "score".

It's a nice homage to Bassey, but Serra's score is considerably richer. A lot more daring.

Bond music needs anthems?

Well, not literally. What I mean is memorable, rip-roaring, 'f yeah!" melodies that make your hair stand on end. Not merely repackagings of the Bond theme. The kind that Barry, Goldsmith and Williams once wrote.

Indeed. Arnold is not Barry, nor Williams, nor Goldsmith. Yet, he is one of few actively working major western film composers who actually write distinctive melodies. There are much better educated, much more technically skilled film composers than him who have never in their career written anything as characteristic as Arnold did for Stargate, ID4, Last of the Dogmen, Tomorrow Never Dies, Godzilla, The World is Not Enough, Four Brothers, Stepford Wives or Casino Royale. Most of these scores include not one, but plenty of such melodies. Even latest Chronicles of Narnia consists of five or six easily indentifiable themes, some of which are probably the best written for a fantasy film in some years.

Too many melodies you could argue, but none of them being especially memorable (or hair raising) or expressive. Very few cues having a life outside of the film. Distinctive? Well, occasionally distinctive of John Barry. Though more often resembling generic CSI underscore.

I guess I preferred Barry's more abstract approach of affiliating with about three or four well developed themes with moods and ideas, rather than concrete characters and locations - something that you could probably trace back to Herrmann.

After the advent of Williams and Shore's LOTRS scores, the later's become a bit hackneyed, and in the hands of a hands of a lesser composer - can result in inconsistent and chaotic handling of underdeveloped themes. Due to that over-abundance of thematic material.

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Arnolds method of scoring the Bond films is somewhat akin to Goldmsith's thematically unified approach. In that he tends to avoid "setpieces" and follows a more thematically consistant style.

....aside from the first and best one, that is. Tomorrow Never Dies is very setpiece-y, and themtic consistancy is not one of its main features.

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Arnolds method of scoring the Bond films is somewhat akin to Goldmsith's thematically unified approach. In that he tends to avoid "setpieces" and follows a more thematically consistant style.

....aside from the first and best one, that is. Tomorrow Never Dies is very setpiece-y, and themtic consistancy is not one of its main features.

It's got thematic consistency all over the place. Unfortunately, it quotes "Surrender", which is a piece of music that the audience does not hear until the end credits (duh!!!) so, from the audience's POV, there is no theme. I believe that, if "Surrender" - a much better song than what underscores the main title - was allowed to be "the Bond song", then the score - and the film - would be a much more unified piece of work.

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Licence Revoked is brilliant, the rest not so much. I really like the film, though. Great piece of action flick. Damn, I miss John Glen as a Bond director. (and Alec Mills as a DoP)

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License to Kill is another score I just couldn't get into all that much. I usually enjoy Kamen's stuff, but maybe it was the crappy little amount we got on the soundtrack album that soured me towards it? I don't know. I think it works fine in the film itself, but yeah we needed more score on that soundtrack. Instead we got to "enjoy" crap like "Wedding Party". Ugh.

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....aside from the first and best one, that is. Tomorrow Never Dies is very setpiece-y, and themtic consistancy is not one of its main features.

It is actually. For instance many of the themstic and rhytmic material for the scenes on the stealth ship are already hinted at during the Sinking Of The Devonshire cue.

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It's still not what sticks out for me in that score, and not what defines it, whereas that is the most striking element of Casino Royale.

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I just listened to a few tracks from Goldeneye on spotify..... hoooly crap.

It sounds like some sort of strange ambient album written during the 80s. Very rarely does it venture into actually being a normal film score.

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I'm glad he didn't continue.

Strangely enough, I'm sort of glad too. I honestly think after Barry, each Bond film should have a separate composer to give each film that distinct musical identity. So Arnold would have done TND, and not be hired again.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

No crush, just admiration for blokes who carry themselves off like that. Grant, Connery, Ford. A few more years you can add DiCaprio. Not Clooney though; he's an unoriginal pretender.

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Anyway, I'd also like to add I definitely prefer Clooney to the likes of Norton and such. He might be a pretender, as you say, but at least he makes some impression. Besides, he's much better director than actor.

Karol

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  • 3 months later...

I quite like QOS for what it is, but Campbell is pretty much right on the money with his comments. It was a sorry follow up to Casino Royale, especially as it was supposed to be the second half to the story. It feels more like a rather uninspired and rushed epilogue tagged on the end of Casino Royale than any kind of serious attempt to conclude the masterful story set up in CR.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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