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The Highlights of Expansions of Recent Years!


Brundlefly

What is your highlight?  

36 members have voted

  1. 1. What is your highlight?

    • Harry Potter The John Williams Soundtrack Collection
      13
    • Dracula The Deluxe Edition
      2
    • The John Williams Jurassic Park Collection
      16
    • A.I. - Artificial Intelligence Expansion
      4
    • Something else (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Cowboys, E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, Home Alone, Jaws, Jaws 2, Saving Privage Ryan, Schindler's List, Stanley & Iris)
      1


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They're all highlights! Seriously. I hate to put one over another.

 

But right now, of course, I'm most stoked about "The Harry Potter John Williams Collection"! 

 

Yeah, that and "The Jurassic Park Collection" for sure!

 

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It's between Potter and JP, two franchises whose music (at least for the first installments) are very personally important.

 

No idea.

 

One thing strikes me reading the options though - it looks like one of those wishlist threads at FSM when a Varese batch is announced. Only every one of those has actually happened :o

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For me it would be either A.I., Dracula or Jurassic Park set...because these all came out of the blue. I will probably need to go out of the way and pick JP set. It's because I never expected a boutique label be allowed to tackle franchise this massive... and certainly not with two scores being released at once. Harry Potter set is certainly the biggest projects out of them all but we've heard rumours about it for years...and then there's precedent already set by said JP set.

 

Karol

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I mean, I love love LOVE the Harry Potter set, it's amazing.

 

But the Jurassic Park Collection is just legendary; Those were the scores essential to my film score fandom as a young lad.  The HP scores are great, no doubt, but none of them are in my top 5 Williams while both JP scores are.


The Lost World must be my most-listened to expanded release ever.

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So far, it's the Jurassic Park collection. Holy moly. The complete TLW never gets old, and of course there were some unreleased goodies included from the absolutely stellar first score, as well.

 

I'm interested to see how the HP set compares for me on an emotional level, though. I suspect it'll be somewhere close behind, just for the unreleased POA material alone. Jaws, ET, CE3K, and The Cowboys would all follow not far after that, around roughly the same level as each other (though I do like some of the scores themselves better than others).

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1 hour ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

The Cowboys? Really?

 

While I haven’t heard Dracula yet, much like The Cowboys, it was basically a premiere release for me.  That’s why I rated The Cowboys so highly.

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For me, the HP and JP boxes are tied and nothing short of Star Wars or Indiana Jones will ever top either of these releases.

 

2 hours ago, Jay said:

The Lost World must be my most-listened to expanded release ever.

 

It's definitely my most played Williams expansion as well.

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Hook is conspicuously missing from the list. Even if it was not a perfect release, I have never been more excited for a JW announcement since! It's still my favorite score and my most-listened expansion. We'll see if HP changes that...

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4 hours ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

The Cowboys? Really?

 

In my particular situation, I'd never owned the score - I just knew I loved the thematic material. I'd been waiting for an expanded release in order to add this score to my collection, and then out of the blue, boom, there it was. Jaws, ET, and CE3K are certainly more iconic scores, but none of their releases were first-time listens for me, so they automatically weren't as exciting as they would have been. Not a bad thing...I'm SUPER happy that we've gotten all these expansions in recent years, and I haven't regretted a single purchase.

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I listened to The Cowboys way more than I thought I would have.  It ended up on my regular rotation at work.

 

I think I've listened to Saving Private Ryan twice only so far.

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9 hours ago, Jay said:

I listened to The Cowboys way more than I thought I would have.  It ended up on my regular rotation at work.

 

I think I've listened to Saving Private Ryan twice only so far.

I agree, the expansion really opened up Cowboys for me.  I listen to it a lot.  Once a week, or more. 

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3 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

CE3K, ET, S&I, HA, SPR and SL just have too little new music to compete with the four releases I mentioned in the main post.

 

Really? CE3K has a bounty of alternate cues, plus all the source music and "Inside" from the SE

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I can't really pick either. To me especially the Williams/Mattessino combination is just pure bliss, simply because no other producer works at his level of dedication and quality, preserving these scores at perfect archival quality.

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Easily Harry Potter for me. Grew up with the movies, adore the scores. Prisoner of Azkaban in particular is an expansion I've been waiting on for years (there's so much material noticeably absent from the OST), and getting the other two as well is just the icing on top of a frankly mind blowingly-awesome cake.

 

I don't normally like to drop lots of money on expanded releases, but for HP they could have charged me anything and I'd have happily paid it.

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1 hour ago, rough cut said:

For me, it’s Heidi.

 

Rosewood is also missing (same as Hook as previously pointed out).

 

How come so many great releases are lumped together except for your personal favorites?

Hook is a quite flawed release and therefore excluded.

Generally the releases I mentioned are the ones that add the biggest amount of music/open completely new perspectives on the scores/ were many people's holy grails for years/are a big surprise because the were believed to be lost/to expensive for special labels.

I was thinking about including Rosewood, but it's "recent" releases.

I mean, look at the releases "lumped together". They've got one vote.

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Looking at the results, it just seems like something’s not right.

 

What is your “highlight”?

 

Dracula beats CE3K, ET and Jaws??? I mean, come on...

 

There’s definitely something else at play here.

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Reconsider it? How many had even heard the Dracula OST, though?

 

I’ve had a copy for years, but how many can say that?

 

I haven’t received my copy of the expansion yet, so I can’t really comment if it drastically alters the whole, but I doubt it. The OST was very good. The expansion will be very good and slightly better, both due to improved sound and new material. I don’t doubt it.

 

And as has been pointed out, HP is a favorite in the results gaining the most votes and it hasn’t even been released yet. Huh?

 

But, ok ok, I won’t be a dick, I’m not trying to get in a fight, I get what you’re after.

 

But I think it’s interesting to discuss the results and reflect upon whether they truly represent fact or if they are influenced by something else (ex, phrasing of the question, available answers, timing, overall popularity of the franchise etc).

 

It just seems to me that if this poll had been done a year ago, with (for example) CE3K at the top of available answers, we’d have completely different results. And now it’s no one’s favorite.

 

No doubt, the HP-franchise is a more popular one overall than CE3K is currently, so it makes sense it’s more popular now that the expanded score is released.

 

But that also begs the question: Do the results reflect people’s love for the music in the franchise or the expansion of the music?

 

Curious, or not?

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