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


Ollie

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Boring on first listen, sadly. Broad and impersonal with thick electronically enhanced drums - think JNH ca. 2005 - playing trailer-friendly tribal rhythms with harmonically stale horns on top. Technically accomplished but that's showering with faint praise. The 5 minute end title is the only cue that vaguely breaks out the general mold with a folksy violin soliloquy but that's about it. Nah...

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Hans Zimmer et al.: HANNIBAL recording sessions

Partly a warm-up for DA VINCI CODE, partly cute classicist exercise, another less becoming part coarse thriller score, HANNIBAL is nevertheless a noteworthy addition to the Zimmer catalogue if only in this version because of the fucked-up Decca release.

Due to the - for Hollywood standards - rather pervert and silly carnival atmosphere of Scott's mock-stylish filmization of Harris' likewise flimsy book, the score too does some welcome turns left (european composers like Morricone or Rota are never far off). What starts as a fairly trite and amorphous thriller score - Julianne Moore's Starling gets into a drug bust gone awry - fairly soon makes way for a pacing/soothing classical tone heavy on cellos and basses (Bach and Wagner are the obvious points of reference, Mahler in smaller doses) that is fueled by a typical Scott travelogue style (Firenze, in this case) and doubling for the city's patina and Lecter's/Hopkins transcendent persona.

The silly bits, involving a mind-boggling Gary Oldman as decadent freak creature who, brace yourself, trains wild armenian boars or something for eating Lecter alive. Don't ask. All this nonsense sets a kind of jaunty tone that makes way for the inevitable Strauss waltz (creating an effect not unlike Goldsmith's BOYS FROM BRAZIL, though that is on an altogether different plane, musically) and an unlikely finale that sees Hopkins and Moore united while eating Ray Liotta (i can't really place it but i guess this is may be the long string soliloquy called 'Let My Home Be My Gallows', by far the most imposing piece of writing).

If you eliminate a sizeable number of strictly functional and unappealing suspense cues - as often with Zimmer and cohorts, this is droning and formless stuff of precious little musical value - you are left with a good 40 minutes of stylish if rather european pieces that do not necessarily form a very coherent score but are certainly more interesting than many other bread-and-butter scores from that period either by Zimmer or by others.

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A Streetcar Named Desire by Alex North

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Alex North

The Five Sacred Trees (Bassoon Concerto) by John Williams

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La Belle Et La Bete - Pierre Adenot

The tone is rather melodramatic, with an air of mystery and flightiness. Adenot is clearly working from a temp track (lots of Desplat influences), including a gorgeous waltz. Not a bad listen.

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Treasure Planet :music:

Sadly, this one has always been a little "meh" for me. There are a few fun moments but the rest is fairly anonymous.

Spirited Away :music:

Very nice. Suspense and action music is lacking, like in most Hishasi scores, but less so than something like Princess Mononoke which might as well have gone scoreless in those scenes.

Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon :music:

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Treasure Planet :music:

Sadly, this one has always been a little "meh" for me. There are a few fun moments but the rest is fairly anonymous.

Silver Comforts Jim makes it top tier JNH for me.

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James Horner - Deep Impact

Before surrendering the cd to eBay i gave it a final spin. While it's run-of-the-mill Horner basically retreading and foreshadowing other, better scores it has some things to recommend. The movie was one of those Dreamworks headscratchers of the time - the world held its breath waiting for clunkers like PEACEMAKER and this?? - and only gained notoriety by outracing Di$ney's ARMAGEDDON at the box office as pastry family alternative to Bay's testosterone adventure.

When the film tested bad Spielberg took over parts of the post-production and part of this rescue job was having James Horner doing what he arguably did best, which was to pump up the noble schmaltz factor with 1000 weepy strings and lots of americana horn soliloquies.

The wide-eyed americana theme is simple but as usual, few composers could have come up with such an effective tune based on 4 simple notes. APOLLO 13 looms large for the movie's big rescue mission but while the joy of having an architectural sound 13-minute cue like 'Our Best Hope' is undeniable it also must be said that the ingredients are familiar, to stay on polite terms.

There are select moments, mostly where you wouldn't look for them, like the painterly polyphonal brass evocations of the post-acopalyptic (of course) american landscape in the final weepy 'Goodbyes' cue that has its interesting textures anywhere where the obvious musical cumshots aren't (the main theme sung by children's chorus is an aesthetic disgrace) and some of the dire cues in the middle actually need some patience to take in but they subtly weave in long-lined dirges that are not as well-trodden a path for Horner.

All in all this is easy-to-digest and while i find the 80-minute album unbearable with its share of 8-minute tracks that barely rise above a whisper, there is a good 40 minutes to recommend for anyone who isn't afraid of the basic Horner ingredients of the post-TITANIC period.

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Cinderella Liberty by John Williams: Gotta to love that bluesy Nice to Be Around melody and all that funky groovy stuff in New Shooter and Neptune's Bar. Paul Williams' inimitable crooning is bearable and brings the right kind of slightly ragged edge to Williams' two songs Wednesday Special and Nice to Be Around. Toots Thielemans performs soulfully on harmonica (and would reunite with Williams a year later for the composer's first Spielberg collaboration The Sugarland Express) which gives another bluesy urban element to the score which slips in and out of source music territory throughout its running time. Something entirely different from Williams and certainly not for everybody but worth checking out for a totally different side of the composer, closer to intimate 1970s popular music sensibilities of The Long Goodbye territory than symphonic grandiosity of Star Wars or Superman.

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A 3 star Horner score indeed.

I never actually finished listening to this album. It just never ends.

I was listening to three big 2014 blockbuster scores yesterday during my flight: Godzilla, How To Train Your Dragon 2 and Maleficent.

Karol

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A 3 star Horner score indeed.

I never actually finished listening to this album. It just never ends.

Karol

:lol: True!

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Angels & Demons

Interstellar

Backdraft

Chinatown

Spartacus

Cleopatra

This is so utterly gorgeous, and ahead of its time.


I think that's one of my favorite moments of film music as a whole. Pure movie magic.

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Krull by James Horner: Uncomplicated big and brassy adventure music with a fistful of catchy boisterous themes for action, heroism, villainy and romance. As per usual Horner paints with a broad brush and the music contains at times such abandon it is like the players were trumpeting as if their lives depended on it. It is infectuously enthusiastic.

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How to Train Your Dragon 2 by John Powell: I still love this score. There is something unbridled in the melodies, rhythms and emotionalism of this score that gets to me every time.

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Everest by Dario Marianelli

Another very solid score from the European. These kind of thrillers present their own limitations for a composer, and often churn out more bland efforts, but I think Marianelli's score largely avoids this pitfall. To be clear, it won't rank among his top-shelf material, but once again it shows his knack for craftsmanship while playing within the expectations of the genre. It's a nice blend of of Jane Eyre's echoes of solitude, V for Vendetta's modern action rhythms and tension writing, and some of his more playful dramatic tendencies. Marianelli seems to reflect the environment with an respectfully colourful, yet modern array of taiko drums, tibetan bowls and rhythmic synths that sometimes borderline the Newman sound or Frost/Nixon's highlights. He even manages to sneak in another one of his signature emotional crescendos ("Summit").

It doesn't necessarily bring anything new to his career output, but it's a good score, and one I think I'll be coming back to more often in a year largely lacking in distinctive scores.

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Sicario by Johann Johannsson

Now that's more like it! From the man that brought you the bland, predictable but "pretty" Theory of Everything comes something much darker, raw and challenging. Borrowing a page from Williams' Munich, much of the score is based on a tense electronic loop rhythm layered with, electronic thumping, dense clusters, churning basses and Goldenthal-lite aleatoric brass wailing in the climactic action sequences. The score only allows for some brief moments of "levity"; one being "Desert Music" which takes a dry sounding cello solo and builds it into a surprisingly evocative elegy with delicious shifting harmonics and wind colours. Rather beautiful actually. This is followed by "Melancholia", which is more disappointingly, just a guitar strumming on a bland guitar progression. And the score ends on a somewhat moving passage of distorted vocals.

Don't let my colourful descriptions ignite your imaginations too much though. All of this is actually very subdued in the score, and probably by necessity. The album could definitely be shorter, as it borderlines on the aimless at times. And there's a nagging voice in the back of my head that makes me wonder how much more surreal and crazy this score might have been in the hands of someone like Howard Shore. But this is a very admirable effort, one that makes me look forward to his future output.

Definitely not a JWFan score though.

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Borrowing a page from Williams' Munich

Curious, where do you hear Munich? Didn't catch that I think but I only had one listen to it. I really the score, i'd imagine it works very well in the film, but yep, it is very dark mostly! Doesn't feel like a JWFan score for sure!

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The Last Airbender is best in its complete form.

This is really nonsense. There is so much padding while the OST has all the best cues and edits out a lot of dead space. This obsession with complete for complete's sake betrays the bottlecap collector!

I was referring to electronic loop beats that recur throughout the score.

There is something wrong when you can fast-forward to 01:30 in nearly every track without anything substantially happening in between. I haven't listened in depth but would advise to severely cut this down to a few minutes of dramatically sound pieces.

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Does that one have good action music? Does it also have the Hiashsi-signature lyrical music too?

Yep, and yep.

Make sure you check the US version of the score, though (Hisaishi was asked to redo it completely with an orchestra for the US release, as the Japanese version of the film was too sparsely spotted and too synth-ish to please US audiences, according to Disney. And the result is overall a much better score, in my opinion).

Actually, you could check the tracks I uploaded at the end of this post: http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25569&page=2#entry1168045 (listen to Prologue - Flaptors Attack, The Chase, Robot Soldier ~Resurrection & Rescue~, and The Invasion Of Goliath for action music, and rest for lyrical music).

I'll probably go with the tracks you posted for now, as the album is a little pricy and the only trace of the score to be found on Spotify is in the dreaded "Relaxing Piano Music" swarm (seriously, how are there so many of those things?! :blink:)

Castle in the Sky :music:

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I was referring to electronic loop beats that recur throughout the score.

There is something wrong when you can fast-forward to 01:30 in nearly every track without anything substantially happening in between. I haven't listened in depth but would advise to severely cut this down to a few minutes of dramatically sound pieces.

Oh the album definitely needs some trimming. But there's some very effective stuff on there.

Have you heard Marianelli's Everest yet pub?

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