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What? That's lame too, score-wise (i haven't watched the film but i don't have high hopes either)

Hancock was REALLY solid!

-Erik-

OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH

Finished watching this 9-episode drama on DVD tonight. I loved it, from the four leads (Chris Eccleston, Gina McKee, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig) to the wonderful supporting cast (Peter Vaughan, Donald Sumpter, Malcolm McDowell, Alun Armstrong among many others), but in particular the ambition of the series - to tell a long friendship saga against the backdrop of 30 years of British politics. Like the best of TV series, it offers the right kind of satisfaction without indulging the audience too much. (The fate of Peter Vaughan is a nice example of how to handle that kind of situation - the scriptwriter of THE NOTEBOOK should have watched.)

Not perfect at every moment, but for performances, ambition, emotional involvement, and the fact that the story is still going in my head... MUST SEE, 10 out of 10, 5 stars, call it what you will. Now if more TV was conceived with such ambition and fine writing.

And they complain about my starting a thread. What is all of this wasted space?

It's called "Maintitles".
It's some sort of internet messageboard thingy where geeks go and discuss such things of life altering import as film scores and movies.

It's all a bit sad, really.

:pawel:

About Iron Man : I really can't understand how a so bland movie could reach the 300 million mark.

about Indy : Who decided it's more ridicoulous indy in a fridge than Indy doing a slalalom with no parachutes or Indy driving a car in a tunnel with a plane next to him?

I think the last Crusade and Raiders are in another level....far , very far from temple or Kingndom. But honestly, between Temple and Kingdom I prefer the last one. I simply can't stand with willie, short round, the dinner sequence, and for sure the Khali ritual is not so fascinating like aliens in the maya civilitation

Anyway, I understand Temple of the Doom, is now a classic. And all this ridicoloous elmenets are part of our culture. ( the last 20 minutes of pure macho man action pieces with a superb direction of steven spierlberg helps a lot to consider, temple as a good movie )

Harry Potter And the Prisoner Of Azkaban

Another one of those movies you just have to watch to see how the score fits in. I only read the first three books when I was young, and I couldn't remember the story at all when watching this. The middle of the movie lost me completely but the whole "time" thing at the end was quite neat. I also liked how it felt more like it was set in "our world". Having a lot of the colour drained out was great. As for the score though; it almost felt too epic for the film it was accompanying. But who cares - we have an excellent album from it. Williams outdid himself again and for that I applaud him.

Btw, is the cue from when Harry and Hermione are running from the werewolf (when they've "gone back in time") on the CD? Williams goes absolutely INSANE with the timpani! (WANT) I know there's the cue titled "The Werewolf Scene", but I think that's from when we see the scene first the "first" time.

I thought the soundtrack + score worked very well for the movie. Electronics meets raaga and hip-hop, with a dash of Bollywood thrown in for good measure. I didn't find the sound levels so high (perhaps my theater turned it down) but I recall reading that Danny Boyle wanted the music to be loud and upfront. The movie was quite nice, though being Indian it (story/setting) wasn't too much new or exotic for me. I was amused to see almost everyone in the theater clap and rejoice at the ending.

I like Boyle's music sense for all his movies (that I've seen) so far. I'd say Trainspotting and Slumdog are quite alike in that respect-- pop/rock/hip-hop, loud, pacy and in your face.

Man on Wire
A documentary about Frenchman Philippe Petit's high wire walk between the WTC Twin Towers in 1974. Excellent and exciting! Petit is a great storyteller and very animated.
The score was intrusive in some parts but good otherwise. I was dismayed to learn that nearly all of the score was from Nyman's previous scores (and of J. Ralph)

Oh yeah, it is.

Yeah. I will watch a DVD for sure today, so probably I might start it!

Why is it disappointing? I thought the music from the Greenaway films actually was more enjoyable in MAN ON WIRE than in the films it was written for.

If you're for purity of method, then there may be an argument for being totally original. To me the result is all that matters. MAN ON WIRE is just another in a long line of films where the music works fantastically, but wasn't written for the film. Others include 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Jean-Claude Petit's AMELIE (the best parts were taken from Yann Tierssen albums, and the composer wrote some original pieces to fill out the score), THE THIN RED LINE (with its Arvo Part, Charles Ives, Gabriel Faure, Arsenije Jovanovic, Polynesian hymns, etc), HEAVEN (Arvo Part), and even something like OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH (which uses popular music classics to fantastic effect). There's definitely cases where it doesn't work, and where the lack of stylistic integration sabotages the smooth progression of musical ideas in the score, but MAN ON WIRE felt very consistent to me. (Though I do wish something other than the very familiar Erik Satie Gymnopedie had appeared at the climax of the World Trade Centre wirewalk.)

I actually prefer it if original pieces are used in this way than if a composer is asked to retread the temp track in their own compositions. That nearly always ends up being little more than an imitation of the original music, and has difficulty achieving the kind of magical accidents that come from putting film and music that were never meant to sit together. (I know this from experience, as my best short film kept its temp track after two failed attempts at scoring it by different composers, admittedly neither of them were Michael Nyman.)

It's more likely to happen in documentaries than dramas incidentally, as the music often gives the editor a kind of skeleton around which to structure a montage.

The other point about getting Nyman. Apart from the budget reasons, I don't think they would have got Nyman writing again in the extroverted, minimalist style that obviously interested them. Like John Barry, he seems to have found a very different style in the latter half of his career.

Side-note question, mostly towards Bregt: are the PART II threads really necessary? I mean we have the fabulous search for a specific post function, don't we?