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What Is The Last Score You Listened To? (older scores)


Ollie

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Wolf Totem. My hankering for Horner in preparation for The Land Before Time expansion hasn't faded yet.

 

The final track really moves me. It was the last track on the last Horner soundtrack produced in his lifetime... and it's called Return to the Wild. Very bittersweet air-conducting going on.

 

 

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This score is a loudness war in itself. Even string pizzicati in loud cues are hot-mastered like a cymbal crash! The rest of the roughly 45 minutes of additional material don't add or detract (except for a few minutes of negligible filler stuff). It remains a conventional but well-written blockbuster score that stands out because its main task is to solve narrative puzzles with broad-shouldered musical solutions, instead of trying hard to eschew them. It really comes to the limelight here how much movies have de-learned to employ music and its many forms of expression as vital tool in the ingredient, instead relegating such tasks to all kinds of source music. The brass writing alone gives testament to that.

 

All in all, my favourite cues remain the (now much extended) 'Train Heist' and 'Mine Mission'. All that's good about Powell's updating of SW mores comes to boil here.

 

 

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Today's program:

 

Danny Elfman - Fifty Shades of Freed OST

Jerry Goldsmith - Rambo III OST

Howard Shore - Silence of the Lambs OST

Bernard Herrmann - The Day The Earth Stood Still (re-recording)

Al Silvestri - Roger Rabbit

John Williams - The Last Jedi

 

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5 hours ago, Bespin said:

Bernard Herrmann - The Day The Earth Stood Still

(re-recording)

Is that the Varèse, Bes? The one with Gort, on the cover?

I like that one.

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Bespin said:

Ok, ban me.

NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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9 minutes ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Is that the Varèse, Bes? The one with Gort, on the cover?

I like that one.

 

I don't know, I didn't listen to it! :P

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Even more pop/rock-oriented than S1. No amount of lip service can cover up the fact that they don't want to continue Williams' idiom(s). It's better here than in the single-episode releases for the first season, condensed to its essentials. Not overly exciting musically, it brings to mind current video game scoring. It's certainly not bad for what it is, but kinda buries the hope Disney would allow the scoring to its new SW franchises to be a departure from current én vogue-trends.

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On 11/21/2020 at 2:13 AM, publicist said:

All in all, my favourite cues remain the (now much extended) 'Train Heist' and 'Mine Mission'. All that's good about Powell's updating of SW mores comes to boil here.

 

Mine Mission is not extended at all on the Deluxe Edition; The track called "Extra Deluxe Mine Mission" is simply the OST tracks "Mine Mission" and "Breakout" combined with a crossfade.

 

Similarly, "Deluxe Train Heist" is basically OST tracks "Train Heist" and "Marauders Arrive" combined with a crossfade, though the DE does restore 20 seconds of music trimmed out of the OST version and the final 18 seconds are very slightly different.
 

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I've just listened to this latest episode from 99% Invisible, which covers their composer Sean Real, and how she wrote and performed a really nice score using a music box:

https://link.tospotify.com/cPQqE8PrEbb

 

An alternative way to listen to the episode is through their main website: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sean-exploder/

 

Sean Real has also produced her own record from the music that she has written for the podcast, which is available in many different formats, both physical and digital: https://seanreal.bandcamp.com/album/sean-real-their-99-orchestra

 

I highly recommend listening to this! The podcast in general is also one of the best out there.

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Aside from Solo... over and over...

 

The American President (Marc Shaiman), Dave (JNH), JFK (JW), LBJ (Shaiman again), Nixon (JW again) and Frost/Nixon (Hans and friends). Can you see the pattern!? All pretty great scores to be fair. Might have to work my way through House of Cards again, some of Jeff Beal's scoring is pretty great.

 

NP: The Coolangatta Gang (Bill Conti) - great mix of orchestral bombast, cheese, that weird baroque style thing that Conti does and, well, more cheesy bombast. Lots of fun.

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Davies/Gordon/Tognetti - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Manfredini/Molin - Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood (LLL)

Williams - Memoirs of a Geisha

Williams - War of the Worlds (Intrada)

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I listend to TOD and LC back to back. 

Temple never ceases to amaze me. In many ways it is an equal to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Its very light and yet extremely dark. It has the very best endtitles of the four film series. 

LC is a Very exhausting score. I no longer try to compare it to the first two films and let it rise in ifs own merits. One thing you can say its a John Williams score. 

 

I loved listening to TOD.

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HILLBILLY ELEGY - HANS ZIMMER & DAVID FLEMING

 

Wow... this has taken me by surprise. Lovely textural Americana... with an unexpected quantity of actual melody. The cue Rust is a definite highlight.

 

I like!

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Shirley by Tamar-Kali

 

Half an hour of meandering plucking noises and vocal textures. Every now and then, there'll be a 30 second flash of an interesting colour that teases a far better score than this one, if there was just more musical direction. Albums like this prove that more and more films are just looking to assemble "new" sounds together, rather than any real interest in music itself.

 

 

 

Ammonite by Dustin O'Halloran

 

The anticipated gay romance of the year. There's a nice melancholic idea for piano and strings. Otherwise, not a lot to write home about. It is thankfully a pleasant short listen (just 20min!). if you're in the mood for simple Jóhannsson/Richter-esque fare. The opening cue is really all you need though.

 

 

 

The Pathless by Austin Wintory


There is some fantastic action writing here. Dynamic counterpoint is sorely missed! And plenty of delicious Goldsmith-esque dancing figures. But I am admittedly growing a bit weary of these long Wintory albums without stronger musical hooks to tie them together. I know that this is more symptomatic of the video game medium, but as accomplished as they are, they can be exhausting. Still, some fantastic stuff here.

 

 

 

The Life Ahead by Gabriel Yared

 

If you're longing for a proper long-lined melody, the kind that has been all but banished from modern Hollywood, Yared supplies one here with commendable reliability. It's elegant Schindler-esque central theme is supported by some pleasant underscore that makes a solid half hour album.

 

 

 

The Social Network by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

 

Remind me again why people here hate this one so much? It's a lot of fun! And it's definitely aged a lot better for me.

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Spellbound by Miklós Rózsa (Allan Wilson Rerecording)

Joined @Holko and @SteveMc for an impromptu listening session yesterday. Lovely score this, and a fantastic recording to match! A few notes:

 

- the main title is an all-timer: gorgeous lush romanticism with a great theremin introduction worked in

- Holko, being more acquainted with Rózsa than I am, was able to draw some parallels to, I believe it was, The Thief of Bagdad, among others

- love how nearly the whole wind section gets a go at the theme throughout the score: oboe, flute, and clarinet solos

- the 17 minute track that covers the love scene is quite an amazing piece- feels a lot shorter than it actually is and has a solid sense of structure considering it's a combination of cues!

- the latter half of the score has a "train-like" rhythm in stretches, helped by instrumentation, most notable for a literal train sequence, as well as some travelling scenes before

- the Ski Run revelation is such a masterclass in building tension!

 

Thanks to the fellas for joining in!

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Home Alone 2: Lost in New York - John Williams

 

85% of it is copy-and-pasted verbatim from the original score (much like the film's screenplay). There's some attractive new themes, like the Pigeon Lady, but it's too much of the same ("Setting the Trap" and "We Overslept Again" could've just been tracked in from the first film).

 

Stick with the original. Do a 10 minute suite of HA2 and stick it in your track list.

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2 hours ago, Matt C said:

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York - John Williams

 

85% of it is copy-and-pasted verbatim from the original score (much like the film's screenplay). There's some attractive new themes, like the Pigeon Lady, but it's too much of the same ("Setting the Trap" and "We Overslept Again" could've just been tracked in from the first film).

 

Stick with the original. Do a 10 minute suite of HA2 and stick it in your track list.

Or you could stick with this one, and have a 10 minute suite of the original! 😎

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I read a super interesting PDF file about Stare Wars themes and leitmotifs.. and I came up with these two playlists.  It focuses on great "BIG" repetitive themes of the Prequel and Sequel Trilogies. .. released on the OSTs...

 

That's interesting.

 

And so I was not crazy about the use of the Force Theme in TLJ! :lol:

 

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From a recent episode of the generally excellent Sound of Cinema on BBC Radio 3, which focussed on "Secret Places" I gave the below a spin. On a random aside, he described Howl's Moving Castle as being about a girl who gets lost and whose parents are turned into pigs and then turned into a witch... now I've not seen either film for a few years, but I'm pretty sure that the first part is actually the plot of Spirited Away. If so, a rather odd error.

 

The Secret Garden (Zbigniew Preisner) - lovely but also quite quirky, not heard Marianelli version although the clip sounded charming).

Pan's Labyrinth (Javier Navarrete) - one of those "really enjoyable while it's on but don't remember much afterwards" scores, but always worth a listen.

Howl's Moving Castle (Joe Hisaishi) - classic Hisaishi, although I think enjoy the above mentioned Spirited Away more, especially the Sibelius (5th Symphony last movement, inspired quite a number of film scores) inspired Reprise (even if it's not, in fact, a reprise...).

Lost Horizon (Dimitri Tiomkin) - suite from the Gerhardt album. Not sure I'll ever get that much into Tiomkin compared to Herrmann or Rozsa, but still good stuff.

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Ehhh, yes, but it's written very small and I though it was written "by the composer of SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, CITY SLICKERS, ETC."

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Ludwig Göransson - The Mandalorian Season 1

 

I quite enjoy listening to every single one of these 8 OST albums.  He did great work for this show


Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu - Front Mission Gun Hazard

 

Wowzers, there was a time in my life where I listened to this somewhere between daily and weekly for what feels like over a year straight.  This was my first listen in months - and I still managed to pick up one some new things I hadn't noticed before.  Amazing.

 

Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata, Soshi Abe, and Hajime Wakai - The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild

 

I have a playlist of just relaxing music from this that I enjoy listening to some mornings, it's perfect

 

Jake Kaufman - Shantae 1, 2, 3, and 4

 

Been listening to random tracks from all four of these a bit lately.  Very fun stuff.  It's a bummer that Wayforward booted him from the 5th game

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John Williams - The Patriot

 

Well.  I watched this film last weekend, first time seeing it since I saw it in theaters over 20 years ago.  I was expecting to be blown away by the score in it based on all the hype its been getting in this forum lately, but I wasn't.  The main theme was nice on its own, but didn't seem to jive well with what was happening on screen often, nor really capture the tone of the actual movie, and the rest of the music was just kinda there.  I dunno.  Anyways, I listened to the OST album twice afterwards to see how I'd feel about that.  It also didn't make much of an impression on me.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess this score just isn't for me.

 

John WIlliams - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

 

I've been listening to this score a lot in the past couple weeks.  It's an utter masterpiece, and one deserving to be listened to in complete form, as there isn't a single moment of dead space and every cue adds something to the overall picture.  However, the lack of having this music in consistent quality is quite frustrating. The OST sounds like a poorly made 1989-era digital file missing lots of richness an analog master would have retained, the extra cues on the Concord somehow sound worse, and then all the bootleg leaks sound even worse than that, and anything you have to rip from the film is covered in sound effects.  This is rising to the top of the scores I most hope Mike gets to give us a proper version of ASAP.

 

James Horner - The Rocketeer


One of my favorite Horner scores, one of my favorite 90s scores, and quite frankly just one one of my favorite scores of all time.  Fantastic from start to finish with no dead space at all.  The Flying Circus is one of the finest action cues ever composed

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John Powell - Solo (Deluxe Edition)

 

Wowzers this release blew me away.  This is one of the most genuinely fun scores there is to listen to, it's just full to the brim with joy.  Much of the action music continues to blow me away every time, too.  My only qualm with the release as it is is that I don't care for the 4 source pieces to be mixed in between the score tracks (I'd prefer them as bonus tracks at the end to occasionally listen to if desired), and I don't get the logic behind crossfading "Maul's Call" into "Parting Ways".  The version I listen to fixes both these issues.

 

John Powell - How To Train Your Dragon (Deluxe Edition)

 

I always liked this score, but the Varese DE made me LOVE it.  Great stuff.  I listen to an 80 minute program of just the main score, no alternates, demos, or that terrible song.  I love scores like this that both has GREAT themes, and USES those themes in great and wonderfully different ways throughout.  This score is fantastic!!

 

Ludwig Göransson - The Mandalorian Season 2 Volume 1

 

I love this score to this show, and the new OST album is a decent listen.  There are moments I remember hearing in the show that aren't on it, and the album just kind of ends with no resolution.  Hopefully in the future one can just listen to both Volumes together as if it were one album and not have this issue.  As it is, for now Season 1 has much better OST albums

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Ah! In that case...

STAR TREK VI: THE UNDIS-

geez, you know what I'm talking about.

Believe it, or not (I wouldn't), this is the first time I've ever heard this score shorn of it's accompanying voice tracks, and sound effects, and, boy oh boy, is it an ear-opener?!

It really is a genuinely great Star Trek score, and one that can easily, and proudly, stand right next to "the giants"; THE MOTION PICTURE, THE WRATH OF KHAN, THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, THE FINAL FRONTIER, FIRST CONTACT and NEMESIS.

I really, really like this score. He seemed to have a great career in Hollywood lined up. Pity.

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Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Mank

 

A nice enough little score that is not presented with with its 93 minute OST program.  A 45 minute would be really nice to listen to.

 

Bear McCreary - Ava

 

Extremely boring.  You can't even hear Bear's voice at all.

 

Austin Wintory - The Pathless

 

Some nice stuff here!

 

 

There, all caught up Richard!

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