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New Spielberg movie: The Fabelmans (2022)


Once

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7 hours ago, AC1 said:

Just saw the trailer, perhaps a tad too sentimental?

 

Yeah, was expecting something smaller with a more 400 Blows vibe; but guess I'll have to adjust my expectations to what it actually *is*, not what I expected it to be.

 

We'll see.

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13 minutes ago, BB-8 said:

his is mother like a bleached Irina Spalko.

 

Hair pretty accurate to his real life mom

 

Spielberg Childhood Photo

 

 

5 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

 

Yeah, was expecting something smaller with a more 400 Blows vibe; but guess I'll have to adjust my expectations to what it actually *is*, not what I expected it to be.

 

We'll see.

 

image.png

https://twitter.com/davidlsims/status/1568986703297232896

 

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9 minutes ago, KK said:

Spielberg was a class act on stage. The film itself was disappointingly lightweight, though it has some nice moments (the critics seem to be eating it up).

 

Having read your thoughts on movies for years now, I think this means I'll at least like it :lol:

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I wouldn't be surprised, and I hope you do!

 

I don't hate it. And it's not without moments. I just wish Spielberg had opened himself up more in this film. He mentioned on stage that he always tends to put a camera between himself, his movies and the people around him, and having co-written this, this was the first time he felt he didn't do that.

 

Ironically, it feels exactly like he did, where he took these stories he lived through, and turned them into a technical cinematic exercise. Honestly, it reminded me a bunch of Catch Me If You Can in certain ways, just without its emotional heft.

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Nope. That's definitely trailer music.

 

The music in the film never really soars to that kind of level. It's mostly pretty somber, save for the source background music for the movies the Sammy character makes (couldn't place it...so maybe it's original?) and a little bit in the end. The film's key sequences are underscored by classical piano pieces that Sammy's mother plays. One of them felt like a variation of Satie's Gymnopedie, so that could have also been an original treatment too.

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1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

How close is this supposed to be to Spielberg's actual life?

Semi-autobiographical.  Anything profound and amazingly articulate goes with the "semi" part, the boring stuff, autobiographical--you know, like everyone else's life.  

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On 12/09/2022 at 2:39 PM, publicist said:

 

So not one bigger musical set piece that Williams owns?

 

There's a sequence where the mother has this dance solo in the night and that's probably the only purely, original musical set-piece. And it is of a certain subdued quality, though quite elegant.

 

There are these idiomatic orchestral "source music" interludes that underscore Spielberg's school screenings of his adolescent films...and that could also possibly be new Williams, if only because I couldn't quite place them at the moment. But they could just as easily be bits of old film music too.

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

Thanks for that write-up, and I loled at your final joke :)

 

I wonder if that end credits cue will be the album opener, or the album closer

 

Knowing Williams OSTs, it could be both ;)

 

EDIT: Haha, ninja'd! 

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

I wonder if that end credits cue will be the album opener, or the album closer

 

Yeah, not sure what the construction will be like. If I had to guess, I'm thinking the OST will be a mix of the classical piano, which I suspect Williams may have even lightly arranged to fit the film, interspersed between a few actual score cues and any other potentially unused pieces or suites. Again, there's really not a lot of Williams music, but that combination would form a coherent listening experience and probably bring the album to around The Post length. Keep an open mind and we'll see! The credits cue is a lovely summary and maybe the only significant full piece aside from the first appearance of the main theme.

 

I forgot to mention, but after the ovation for Spielberg's credit, John Williams also got some modest but noticeable applause (plus cheers for David Lynch). Oh, and it was announced this morning that the film won the TIFF People's Choice Award. Cool!

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If this were almost any other composer we'd potentially get a half hour digital album with the original material as heard in the film.

 

But we're talking about the king of concept albums who is very protective of his programming for more personal films so I'm betting we get an album which barely resembles the score as heard in the film. In a sense that would please JWFanners as it means thematic material will be expanded upon but I also reckon people should prepare themselves for epic disappointment in terms of unreleased film cues.

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17 hours ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

as well as some diegetic Western music heard on records during the movie screenings (I recognized the villain theme from Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven and the title melody from Newman’s How The West Was Won, credits also listed something by Victor Young, Max Steiner’s The Searchers, and more Alfred Newman- Captain From Castile may have been it). 

 

Well spotted! For some reason my brain was not registering these in the film.

 

While I personally thought little of the film, TIFF really ate it up. It won the people's choice award at the festival today. Which means it's the "feel good" film of the year, which over the last few years, tends to pick up the Best Picture award.

4 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

If this were almost any other composer we'd potentially get a half hour digital album with the original material as heard in the film.

 

But we're talking about the king of concept albums who is very protective of his programming for more personal films so I'm betting we get an album which barely resembles the score as heard in the film. In a sense that would please JWFanners as it means thematic material will be expanded upon but I also reckon people should prepare themselves for epic disappointment in terms of unreleased film cues.

 

I don't know. Was The Post like that?

 

I imagine this OST will be similar to that one.

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The Post is overall good but not great.  All the “procedural” kinda stuff about how the story came together and all that was great.  But of course Spielberg in that mode is very geared to my taste.  Like, I'd watch The Post 50 times in a row before I'd watch RP1 one more time.
 

The final track of the OST is one of my most listened to tracks of any kind of music of the last 5 years.  Top tier Williams.

 

 

17 hours ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

something by Victor Young,

 

I'd bet that it's music from Shane if it's a Western.  It'd be funny if it was The Quiet Man :lol:

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My mistake! I looked at Young's filmography to see if I could remember the title and it's actually from The Greatest Show on Earth, although there may have been othersThe track from The Searchers was definitely Ethan Returns.

 

I think that's the last bit of info I've got in my head more than 24 hours later, so hopefully this will tide everyone over until November when we find out I completely misremembered everything :lol:

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

The Post is overall good but not great.  All the “procedural” kinda stuff about how the story came together and all that was great.  But of course Spielberg in that mode is very geared to my taste.  Like, I'd watch The Post 50 times in a row before I'd watch RP1 one more time.

 

The Post is a much stronger film than RP1. It's also a much more interesting film than The Fablemans, imo.

 

The music however, was pretty uninteresting to me.

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There's no handwringing for me here, i haven't watched a Spielberg movie in the cinema since Indy IV with the exception of 'Ready Player One' out of pure boredom during a Bangkok layover (it was dumb, but watchable and was a great fuck you to modern directors that can't film and edit a good action sequence).

 

And this sounds like the kind of nicy-nice Stevie Spielberg, safely in the no-offense zone, which i tend to yawn myself through. So my actual hope is Williams stops aging and has a final Spielberg in him that better utilizes his talents.

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16 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

If this were almost any other composer we'd potentially get a half hour digital album with the original material as heard in the film.

 

But we're talking about the king of concept albums who is very protective of his programming for more personal films so I'm betting we get an album which barely resembles the score as heard in the film. In a sense that would please JWFanners as it means thematic material will be expanded upon but I also reckon people should prepare themselves for epic disappointment in terms of unreleased film cues.

 

What does this mean? I get you almost despise how JW assembles his albums and that's okay. But, frankly, I find hard to fathom statements such as above that spill prejudice and self-entitlement. We don't know what the album is going to be and how it's going to be assembled, so at least let's wait before starting shooting the cannonballs. I get we live in an era where fans and collectors feel entitled to get everything from the get-go and assemble their own custom versions, but why JW should always be treated as an evil mastermind who wants to keep his fans away from accessing their preferred music, it's just ridiculous. I was listening to the E.T. album just yesterday and I am grateful that I experienced the music from that film that way for many years. Sure, I am as grateful that nowadays we can listen to the music as heard in the film as there is a lot of gorgeous stuff that needs to be out there and enjoyed, studied, appreciated etc., but the musical journey that the OST album gave to people was a wonderful way to reminisce the feelings of the film and give you something musically satisfying, with an arc of its own.

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My post was actually slightly in jest, but humour doesnt travel well.

 

I was merely commenting that with others seeing the film or reading reviews of the score and how it works in scene A or B and hence looking forward to that music, it seems unlikely to me that we'll get the music in that 'raw' form because it being a personal film. Hence it was more about expectation management about what form this music will be heard on album and what it means for unreleased music.

 

It definitely feels like you and I are at opposite ends of the album preference scale, because I did not expect such a strong reaction to my observation.

 

I must admit though, that I don't understand how merely preferring film takes to arranged ones is a sense of entitlement. I'd actually see it as the exact opposite - wanting the composer to put more work into making their music play better as an album (probably requiring reorchestrating and re-recording).

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I'm not very familiar with either of those scores, but would it be fair to say that everything in those films is musically represented in some way on the album, be it concert versions or 'cleaned up' takes of film cues?

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14 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

I have no idea about The Post. The score wasn't for me and I turned the film off after about 20 minutes out of boredom.

 

Wow, 20 minutes! I gave up after 5 minutes, not out of boredom, but because I couldn't stand the tone of the movie.

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It may have been less than that... I have no idea. It was when Hanks and Streep were talking about something across a table that I realised I didn't know or care about what they were talking about.

 

I wonder if it's one of those films where enjoyment is helped by some interest in the subject matter. The music similarly did absolutely nothing for me, but I think it's because JW's serious, character drama side is not for me. (his adventure/fantasy is more me, generally)

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On 18/09/2022 at 8:48 AM, Once said:

Or both!

 

*shudders*

 

Don't inspire him! There is still time for him to have an edit of the first half of the suite/credits be at the start of the album, then a repeat in the middle with the entire track, and then the second half at the end of the album that is just an edit of the end but call that the "credits" when the full version in the middle of the album actually is. HMM... does that sound FAMILIAR?

 

*screams*

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On 19/09/2022 at 1:26 PM, Richard Penna said:

I wonder if it's one of those films where enjoyment is helped by some interest in the subject matter. The music similarly did absolutely nothing for me, but I think it's because JW's serious, character drama side is not for me. (his adventure/fantasy is more me, generally)

 

No, i had a good knowledge about the political/journalist background of the story and it didn't help much. It was just waxworks standing around, spouting pieties. But once in a while the Spielberg magic comes through, for instance in a spinning shot elegantly depicting how lost Meryl Streep is among the men whose boss she is supposed to be. It's hard to endure the rest for such moments, though. 

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5 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

Empire Magazine is a British publication, where the movie is being released later than in the US

Oh thats right, I'm a dummy:lol:

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