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James Newton Howard's A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV series with additional music by Chris Bacon & Sven Faulconer)


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According to IMDB and a bunch of new reviews, James Newton Howard is now scoring Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events.  My excitement for the series has just doubled!

 

Especially good news considering that Nick Urata was previously attached to score (his most prominent score being Paddington, which nearly ruined the film for me).  

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Wow!  The first season debuts on Friday the 13th. They must have started recording months ago! 

 

How was this kept a secret? 

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Cool! Hadn't heard about this show, but I enjoyed the books when I read them a while ago and I loved JNH's Fantastic Beasts score! Might have to watch this!

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Oh shit this is a thread now I guess.  It turns out "several reviews" was only one review and the one review has since removed any mention of James Newton Howard.  I'm guessing they got their info from the IMDB page without checking to see if it was real.  

 

Shit.  If Urata's score for Paddington is any indication, this will sound like chipper royalty-free stock music and will play over every scene in separate 30 second bursts.  

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2 minutes ago, RPurton said:

Disappointing is a colossal understatement, but in my mind, nothing will ever touch Thomas Newman's great score.

I didn't think it would have either but it seemed to be a major step in the right direction for Netflix Original productions, which have had poor-to-"meh" music up to this point (Stranger Things).

 

Oh well.  At least we still have John Williams' Lost in Space to look forward to!

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Yes, aside from the Main Titles music and a handful of good moments, the score for Stranger Things was a bit bland.

 

I hope they use the original title music for Lost in Space and not the series 3 version!

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Is this now the new thread for what JNH isn't scoring?

 

Because I've heard some news that he isn't scoring Episode 8. And apparently (although this is pure speculation) he's been tapped to not score The Incredibles 2 as well. 

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Update:

http://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=38643

 

Quote

So, it looks like I was half right and half wrong. There's a reviewer on Reddit who got to see an advanced screening of the show to review, and he confirmed that James Newton Howard is indeed involved in the show, but he appears to have only worked on the first episode. It also appears that his frequent collaborator Chris Bacon is credited for scoring a couple episodes.

So while JNH isn't involved in the entire series, it's at least promising to see him lay the musical groundwork for future episodes. I'll be interested to hear what he comes up with and how it compares to Thomas Newman's version!

Here are the Reddit threads where it's confirmed: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/5meo7u/so_about_the_music_and_who_composed_it/ 
https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/5m7qip/review_despite_its_warnings_do_not_look_away_from/

 

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God that is hideous.  Why does he still run his website that way?

Anwyays, anything you paste into this forum makes a little message popup you can click that removes all foreign formatting.  Or, if you're using Chrome on a computer, simply use Ctrl-Shift-V to paste with the formatting removed for you.

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We now have official confirmation of JNH's involvement! (from the opening credits)

 

"Original Score by James Newton Howard"

 

That's the only music related credit here:

 

 

Might only be the first episode's credits though. 

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Great! 

 

That's a great opening credits sequence too! 

 

Looking forward to starting the show tomorrow! 

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7 hours ago, alextrombone94 said:

Only a few minutes in and I can already hear Fantastic Beasts in the score

 

Yay! I hope to watch tonight.

7 hours ago, Thor said:

Thanks! Is that opening song by JNH? Sounds like a mix of Astor Piazzolla and Yann Tiersen (AMELIE).

 

Haven't listened to it yet but I thought I read that it wasn't.

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Awesome that he's doing the first show and then Bacon is taking over. 

 

Bacon is essentially JNH's protégé. He has worked under him for about 10 years and even casually done additional music, until he was ready to branch off on his own. Like Source Code which was great, but he clearly was massively influenced by JNH on that score, especially Signs. And I love his work on Bates Motel too.

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Indeed - James Newton Howard scores episode 1, and Chris Bacon scores all the rest

 

I really like some Chris Bacon scores I've heard - notably Source Code and High Ground - and look forward to checking out the show and the score within it.  Hopefully there will be a score CD put out; A lot of the original Netflix series seem to get one.

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Looking forward to checking the show out and its music, but none of it seems like it'll be much better than Newman's brilliant score and solid film.

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We just finished the second episode, and both have the same music by JNH credit.  So maybe he actually did score the entire show, and Bacon just did some additional music

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Just watched the first two episodes. Songs are pretty great. Score is OK. Nothing particularly amazing but pretty well done. 

 

Credits are just about the same for both episodes. In the opening titles, there's "Original Score by James Newton Howard," and in the end credits there's:

 

Main Title Theme

Music by Nick Urata

Lyrics by Daniel Handler

Performed by Neil Patrick Harris

 

The first episode also has:

 

Original Songs

Music by Nick Urata

Lyrics by Daniel Handler

 

EDIT: LOL @Jay, we posted about finishing the second episode at the same time! :lol:

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I was hoping the show would be better than it is. It really drags. Everything that happened in these two episodes could have easily fit into one.  They were right to make the first three books into one movie it seems. 

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@Jay, I was hoping too that this meant JNH had done everything ... but it seems he probably just did one and two since they're part of the same story, just split into two parts.

 

I just checked episode 3 and there's no music credit in the main titles...

 

Only the main title theme credit and songs credit of course plus "Original Score by Sven Faulconer." Who the heck is that?!

 

EDIT: Here he is:

 

http://www.svenfaulconer.com/

 

EDIT #2: It seems he's worked a lot as an assistant to JNH -- the Hunger Games films ("additional music"), Fantastic Beasts ("arrangements"), etc. He's only credited for episode 3 on his site. Maybe Bacon did some later episodes. 

 

7 minutes ago, Jay said:

I was hoping the show would be better than it is. It really drags. Everything that happened in these two episodes could have easily fit into one.  They were right to make the first three books into one movie it seems. 

 

I don't watch much TV so I don't have a good sense of what a good TV show is, but this certainly isn't a show I'm desperate to keep watching or anything. Might not watch any more, particularly if JNH is no longer involved. It was pretty fun though. 

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Well, instead of watching a lot of TV, I just post here all day. Not much better. Well, maybe slightly more engaging and mind-developing. :lol:

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

I was hoping the show would be better than it is. It really drags. Everything that happened in these two episodes could have easily fit into one.  They were right to make the first three books into one movie it seems. 

Didn't the film adapt 4 of the books? If I remember correctly, there are 12 books, and there was supposed to be a film trilogy adapting 4 books per film. 

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28 minutes ago, Koray Savas said:

Didn't the film adapt 4 of the books? If I remember correctly, there are 12 books, and there was supposed to be a film trilogy adapting 4 books per film. 

 

Nope. In order, the film did: Bad Beginning (Part 1), The Reptile Room, The Wide Window, Bad Beginning (Part 2)

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35 minutes ago, Koray Savas said:

Didn't the film adapt 4 of the books? If I remember correctly, there are 12 books, and there was supposed to be a film trilogy adapting 4 books per film. 

 

No. There are 13 books. The movie was the first three of them in 100 minutes. The Netflix show is the first four of them in eight hours.... 

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