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

[Koray Savas 2,254]

Should be interesting to hear how Ottman revisits the themes for next year's Days of Future Past.

Do we even know if Ottman will reuse any of his themes in Day Of The Future Past?

Feel like this was asked before, but most likely. When my brother interviewed him he said he was disappointed that he never got further develop his X2 music.

[crocodile 8,408]

Superman II

Romeo & Juliet

X-Men

EDIT: Speaking of Ken Thorne's work - it feels literally like disc 3 of Superman: The Movie and as such it is almost seamless continuation of that score, a little bit more goofy, but still. (in fact that gives me an idea for a playlist). And even more impressive given the orchestra is probably only half of that size.

Karol

[The Great Gonzales 6,199]

DOS - Howard Shore

the score summed up in one sentence?

Fast and Furious.

[Bespin 8,673]

 

 

[crocodile 8,408]

Welcoming December with:

Turbulence

Die Hard

The Nativity Story

Karol

[The Great Gonzales 6,199]

Star Trek III

Star Trek II

Home Alone

The Hobbit: DOS

Star Trek VII

[BloodBoal 7,541]

[Bespin 8,673]

 

 

[Matt C 461]

The highlight of the score, of course, remains The Return Of The Nightwatchman. 6 minutes of pure music bliss. The last 30 seconds or so of that track still are to this day probably one of my most listened bits of music. Such an uplifting piece of music! Love it!

9/10

P.S.: This needs a fucking official release.

I e-mailed La-La Land Records and MovieScore Media to see if they had any plans to release any volumes (or re-press the EMI disc). Only MV Gerhard replied back, telling me "there are no plans to, but I would love to see it happen. Great show and music". Mikael Carlsson hasn't replied back at all, which has me wondering.

[Trent B 340]

The complete score for Aliens Vs. Predator Requiem. A score I really like!

[BloodBoal 7,541]

[crocodile 8,408]

Yesterday I listened to Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre and Jane Eyre.

Today it's the non-Hollywood musical epics: Brothers Grimm, The Hole, Pan's Labyrinth, Evil Dead, The Ninth Gate, Daybreakers and Copernicus' Star.

Karol

[crocodile 8,408]

Thor: The Dark World

Brian Tyler is a perfect match for Marvel films - not a household name to be tarnished by this studio's mentality, nor a complete waste of space to make your ears bleed (too hard, anyway). The score sounds like dozen other things (from Gladiator, previous Thor, to his own Iron Man 3) and an exercise in personality it certainly isn't. But it's still entertaining on a very basic fashion, perfectly painting the never-ending and.vast Marvel universe, colourful enough to be positioned above some other blockbuster soundtracks. I won't be analysing it's musical merits (as there is no real point) but at least it tries to supply its film with some a sense of wonder. While the main theme is completely generic, if serviceable, the rest of this work is actually better than Iron Man 3. Entertaining in the most unsurprising of ways.

Karol - who didn't know this album was widely released on CD in Europe by Hollywood Records (not by Intrada)

[crocodile 8,408]

A Good Day to Die Hard

License To Kill

The Challenge

Patriot Games

Pet Sematary

Karol - now listening to Turbulence

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

Karol - now listening to Turbulence

Windy there too?

[crocodile 8,408]

It is actually extremely windy today. To the point you can actually hear this scary howling.

Karol

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

That's Shirley Walker!

[crocodile 8,408]

Do you think she is still feeling cross over the fact Elfman made her use his theme for Batman: The Animated Series?

Karol

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

Did he do that?

[crocodile 8,408]

Well... not exactly. But there was a legal requirement for them to do it, for whatever reason. She didn't intend to and no one working on the show liked Elfman's theme.

Karol

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

It's one of the more overrated themes out there. I like Walker's Batman theme.

[crocodile 8,408]

Goldenthal's is better too, to be honest.

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,254]

But we all know Zimmer's is the best.

[crocodile 8,408]

Oh yes, the only one that is bold enough to adress the duality and complex nature of this character.

Karol

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

But we all know Zimmer's is the best.

Thats not a theme, it's barely a motif.

[lonzoe 19]

It's one of the more overrated themes out there. I like Walker's Batman theme.

To each his own. It's better than a ton of the superhero themes and movie themes in general out today, imho.

Well... not exactly. But there was a legal requirement for them to do it, for whatever reason. She didn't intend to and no one working on the show liked Elfman's theme.

Karol

News to me.

[crocodile 8,408]

It's one of the more overrated themes out there. I like Walker's Batman theme.

To each his own. It's better than a ton of the superhero themes and movie themes in general out today, imho.

Well... not exactly. But there was a legal requirement for them to do it, for whatever reason. She didn't intend to and no one working on the show liked Elfman's theme.

Karol

News to me.

From her last interview

JT: Right. Danny Elfman’s Batman theme...first of all, did you do the credits arrangement?

SW: Ooh...I know Mark McKenzie was involved in arranging Danny’s theme. I think...boy, I would have to research that, but I’m pretty sure that’s correct. So I...I didn’t do any arrangement of any of Danny’s theme.

JT: It appears in some of the early episodes, and although it continued to be used regularly for the credits sequences, in the episodes themselves it was—it seems like it was very quickly supplanted by your original theme. Was the plan, originally, to use Elfman’s theme more extensively?

SW: No...the producers on the Batman series did not like Danny’s theme.

JT: Oh?

SW: They met with him. And at the meeting with him, they really didn’t like him, either. They were basically forced to use his theme. It was a situation where Danny’s agent, I think, Richard Kraft, threatened to, um...because Danny was doing another film with Tim Burton...I forget the sequence here, but they were calling up and threatening that if they didn’t use the theme, then they were gonna, you know, Danny was going to quit working on the movie, and all this...you know, just silly, typical Hollywood stuff.

Karol

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

What a tosser!

[lonzoe 19]

It's one of the more overrated themes out there. I like Walker's Batman theme.

To each his own. It's better than a ton of the superhero themes and movie themes in general out today, imho.

Well... not exactly. But there was a legal requirement for them to do it, for whatever reason. She didn't intend to and no one working on the show liked Elfman's theme.

Karol

News to me.

From her last interview

JT: Right. Danny Elfman’s Batman theme...first of all, did you do the credits arrangement?

SW: Ooh...I know Mark McKenzie was involved in arranging Danny’s theme. I think...boy, I would have to research that, but I’m pretty sure that’s correct. So I...I didn’t do any arrangement of any of Danny’s theme.

JT: It appears in some of the early episodes, and although it continued to be used regularly for the credits sequences, in the episodes themselves it was—it seems like it was very quickly supplanted by your original theme. Was the plan, originally, to use Elfman’s theme more extensively?

SW: No...the producers on the Batman series did not like Danny’s theme.

JT: Oh?

SW: They met with him. And at the meeting with him, they really didn’t like him, either. They were basically forced to use his theme. It was a situation where Danny’s agent, I think, Richard Kraft, threatened to, um...because Danny was doing another film with Tim Burton...I forget the sequence here, but they were calling up and threatening that if they didn’t use the theme, then they were gonna, you know, Danny was going to quit working on the movie, and all this...you know, just silly, typical Hollywood stuff.

Karol

You've refreshed my memory on the subject. I do remember reading about this feud over the theme.

[Matt C 461]

I got the feeling Walker and Elfman enjoyed working with each other (Elfman did write a very nice tribute to her in the liner notes for Volume 1), and I think Walker was caught in the middle of that spat. I don't think they had any hard feelings towards one another.

[crocodile 8,408]

No, of course not. I exaggerated a bit.

Speaking of Elfman, I'm listening to Oz the Great and Powerful right now - one of my favourite scores of 2013. Not sure why people dislike it so much, I think the execution is absolutely masterful. Stylistically probably predictable, but very mature work. The development of main theme is simply amazing.

Karol

[publicist 4,647]

OLD GRINGO, Lee Holdridge

Really, quite beautiful in a polished Hollywood kind of way. Foreshadows Horner's work on ZORRO and LEGENDS OF THE FALL.

[Incanus 5,787]

To celebrate Finland's independence day some Sibelius:

Karelia Music and Press Celebration Music (Tampere Filharmonia and Tuomas Ollila (including our very own antero (aka Pasi aka hornist from JWFan))

The Violin Concerto

Tapiola

and finishing things off with

Finlandia

[Bespin 8,673]

Freshly bought from iTunes :

• Themes from The Phantom Menace and Other Film Hits, Frederic Talgorn conducting The Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
• Movie Legends: The Music of John Williams by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (US)

[crocodile 8,408]

Karol - who wants this released

[Bespin 8,673]

 

 

[Trent B 340]

The complete score for Back To The Future Part 2. I hope some point Intrada or even La-La Land releases the complete score for it.

[Lewya 360]

[publicist 4,647]

Hobbit, Smaug, Shore

First complete listen (whatever version WB put up there), sobering. There's a lot of music (well over 2 hours) and sadly, HOBBIT 2 plays more like TWO TOWERS than FELLOWSHIP or RETURN, meaning it's better than the AUJ, but still full of mousy incidental scoring in the first half that would have yielded ass-whips for composers like Williams, Goldsmith or Horner if they would have tried it on film music fans (Wilderland, House of Beorn). Exception is the cue Forest River, that picks up the pace and sets a (presumably) new, more urging theme for the journey into an exciting up-tempo action cue (for Shore standards).

It gets better in the second half when Shore is either able to illustrate ancient folk villages (Thrice Welcome, not unlike the robust Poledouris offering from similar genres) or the dragon himself, whose creepy, unstable, snarky-sneaking music is the only distinguishable new feature of the score (like the Radagast material, fleeting as it was, in the first). What the score lacks is variety and color, minus all the fanciful soloists and choral embellishments of the original trilogy that SMAUG mostly does without, it's just an album in dire need of a good editor. Bring on a well-edited 65-minute version!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f40UsjakMUw

á propos: Jägarna 2, Johan Soderqvist

Howard Shore meets Michael Nyman meets Chris Young. Not bad thriller score that balances the required suspense and lurking-around stuff with more soulful material (either of the heavy adagio variety or the more light-on-its-feet ethnic flute travel-through-landscapes-backings). Nothing that makes a lasting impression, but nice for a quick listen (and maybe even an invitation to check out more of Soderqvist, who did more substantial work with i. e. Let the right one in or Kon-tiki).

[Naïve Old Fart 10,297]

"The Book Thief", then "The Book Thief", and then...er...oh, yeah, "The Book Thief"!

I really like this score; small, subtle, unassuming, and intimate. A late-flowering masterpiece.

[Jay 39,156]

Exception is the cue Forest River, that picks up the pace and sets a (presumably) new, more urging theme for the journey into an exciting up-tempo action cue (for Shore standards).

I think you're talking about either the Woodland Realm theme or Tauriel's Theme.... For whatever reason, there's no theme for the company at all in DOS.

[Bespin 8,673]

 

 

[Trent B 340]

I've browsed through some tracks of the La-La Land release for Superman Returns just to mainly hear the sound quality and such.

Oddly enough "Closet Case" and "Daily Planet" are swapped around in order on this release as well as "Genesis Project" and "Like Sea Monkeys". The way how they appear in the film is correct as well as the cue list: http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20819&p=759000. This wouldn't be the first release that LLL swapped a couple of cues around in order which they how appear in the film / cue list.

Another interesting thing to note...I ended up getting a promo of Superman Returns directly from John Ottman a few years back (I think a couple of years after the film and OST were released) which had previously unreleased music on it. This promo had "Parting Words / Fly Away" but the thing about "Parting Words" with the promo is that there's choir from 0:36-1:14 (going off the promo time) which is NOT present on the LLL release. Also "Dying Wish" on the promo had choir which the LLL version does NOT have. I was sort of disappointed that the choir was not on the LLL but it's something that can easily be over looked.

Hearing the mock-up for "Return To Krypton" is rather interesting. Parts of it you can hear in a couple of other cues and I heard some bits quoted from X2. It is too bad the piece didn't actually get recorded with a real orchestra but it was nice that La-La Land included it with this release.

Other than the few things I mentioned, I think if no one knew about bootlegs or just never bothered with the bootleg/sessions but saw this and bought it, they would be very happy with the release. It is a very solid (no pun intended) release. I'm very happy to own a copy (signed) of it in my collection!

[The Great Gonzales 6,199]

Its nice to see the labels releasing mockups/demos of unrecorded cues as well

[Trent B 340]

Its nice to see the labels releasing mockups/demos of unrecorded cues as well

I agree.

The only thing I would have done differently is have "Reprise" as a separate cue and put "Fly Away" at the end of "Parting Words" like in the film. It's a bit weird not hearing "Fly Away" directly after "Parting Words".

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

Hobbit, Smaug, Shore

First complete listen (whatever version WB put up there), sobering. There's a lot of music (well over 2 hours) and sadly, HOBBIT 2 plays more like TWO TOWERS than FELLOWSHIP or RETURN, meaning it's better than the AUJ, but still full of mousy incidental scoring in the first half that would have yielded ass-whips for composers like Williams, Goldsmith or Horner if they would have tried it on film music fans (Wilderland, House of Beorn). Exception is the cue Forest River, that picks up the pace and sets a (presumably) new, more urging theme for the journey into an exciting up-tempo action cue (for Shore standards).

It gets better in the second half when Shore is either able to illustrate ancient folk villages (Thrice Welcome, not unlike the robust Poledouris offering from similar genres) or the dragon himself, whose creepy, unstable, snarky-sneaking music is the only distinguishable new feature of the score (like the Radagast material, fleeting as it was, in the first). What the score lacks is variety and color, minus all the fanciful soloists and choral embellishments of the original trilogy that SMAUG mostly does without, it's just an album in dire need of a good editor. Bring on a well-edited 65-minute version!

I agree that a two hour presentation is quite taxing if you don't plan to get to know this score inside out and soak up every theme and nuance.

These 2 CD releases means it's harder to get into The Hobbit scores compared to their LOTR 1 CD counterparts.

Also lacking in Smaug I feel is a theme or set of themes that stand out on a first or second listen. There are a hell of a lot of themes in this score, but all of them treated more or less equally. There's no Fellowship/Rohan/Gondor theme to act as a hook to the rest of the material. If someone asked me at this point what the main theme for Desolation Of Smaug is, then I would not be able to tell them

[Incanus 5,787]

Hobbit, Smaug, Shore

First complete listen (whatever version WB put up there), sobering. There's a lot of music (well over 2 hours) and sadly, HOBBIT 2 plays more like TWO TOWERS than FELLOWSHIP or RETURN, meaning it's better than the AUJ, but still full of mousy incidental scoring in the first half that would have yielded ass-whips for composers like Williams, Goldsmith or Horner if they would have tried it on film music fans (Wilderland, House of Beorn). Exception is the cue Forest River, that picks up the pace and sets a (presumably) new, more urging theme for the journey into an exciting up-tempo action cue (for Shore standards).

It gets better in the second half when Shore is either able to illustrate ancient folk villages (Thrice Welcome, not unlike the robust Poledouris offering from similar genres) or the dragon himself, whose creepy, unstable, snarky-sneaking music is the only distinguishable new feature of the score (like the Radagast material, fleeting as it was, in the first). What the score lacks is variety and color, minus all the fanciful soloists and choral embellishments of the original trilogy that SMAUG mostly does without, it's just an album in dire need of a good editor. Bring on a well-edited 65-minute version!

I agree that a two hour presentation is quite taxing if you don't plan to get to know this score inside out and soak up every theme and nuance.

These 2 CD releases means it's harder to get into The Hobbit scores compared to their LOTR 1 CD counterparts.

Also lacking in Smaug I feel is a theme or set of themes that stand out on a first or second listen. There are a hell of a lot of themes in this score, but all of them treated more or less equally. There's no Fellowship/Rohan/Gondor theme to act as a hook to the rest of the material. If someone asked me at this point what the main theme for Desolation Of Smaug is, then I would not be able to tell them

To me the most central themes are surprisingly the ones for the Wood-Elves and the new theme for the House of Durin. I on the contrary think Smaug's theme (and its different components) are very prominent during the final quarter of the score. Assigning one theme a central position in these scores isn't really even meaningful as they are so differently constructed than your average adventure movie score. The ebb and flow of the rich thematic material is perhaps too dense for that. Some enjoy this and some find it enfuriating.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

Possibly, but its a contrast to the LOTR scores

[Incanus 5,787]

Possibly, but its a contrast to the LOTR scores

Well I still feel the the Woodland Realm material is the central theme of the score but I guess journey is so briskly paced no one sound can establish itself dominant now that there is no company theme to give the heroes unity.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,376]

I would not say the Woodland Realm theme is in any way dominant in the score, certainly not in the second half.