[Closed] Now Playing XLV

Is that the sequel to Man of Steel?

Peter

I agree with the Peter! Highlights are really good but in between I have problems with listening to it.

PACIFIC RIM | djawadi

Good stuff for a background listen with now and then an outburst that begs some attention. Nice main theme, very Remote Control/Media Venture style, with a lot of blaring brass in there. Anthems not so much (it doesn't hum that well so far). But it's fun.

Since God agrees with me, I shall henceforth be known as "The Voice of God"!.... Though "The Prophet", with a capital P, is also acceptable.

Timmer, an excellent piece, that I hadn't heard before, especially the string stuff. Any other good tracks from this album I should be made aware of?

Peter

Here's another gobsmacking piece...

REQUIEM FOR A CITY


p.s. David Bedford was the choral director on Morricone's The Mission


p.p.s. I remember Mario Nascimbene being interviewed in Soundtrack Collector, he was very impressed by Oldfield's score, probably because he was such an experimentalist himself.

Lets start with Apostle. Can I call you Jezebel, the First Apostle?
How are your stenography skills?

NP : A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS - Ennio Morricone



The Maestro

I think it's a damned good album. Glad you've enjoyed some of it

Your orders, sir?

Thought I'd get in their with a youtube Star Wars reference before Martijn did...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DopGxUAoAY

Peter

God would love to discuss this with you, but he's currently busy.

Peter

SUPERB!

:approve:

NP : PLAYING BY HEART - John Barry



I've not played this for a while, such a good late listen, a marvellous work that as an album works seamlessly with Chet Baker's original tracks. John Barry really was something very special.

According to my friend, who is among the co-runners of the website tubular.net, which is in contact with the man himself, it came from his misunderstanding of the process of creation of film music.

It seems that he thought that he'd just write a piece and they would accept it as-is. As far as I understand, he had to write basically two scores, deciding to put the orchestra in into the second score (after the first versions weren't quite accepted, though they never were rude about that, he asked if he could get an orchestra budget and he was granted it) he wrote. The problems also came through when several revised pieces weren't used in favour of the original first pieces...

To me two things happened. Oldfield was in no knowledge and experience of writing a film score. Basically he thought that he would do his album thing and it would fit into the movie (same thing happened to huge classical composers, which were commissioned to write film scores, they seemed to think, among them no-one else than Igor Stravinsky who got rejected by Hollywood twice, that they would write the score on their own - in many cases just based on reading the script! - and they would edit the movie according to the score, which of course could never happen; while Rozsa didn't discuss Stravinsky, he discussed another composer who thought that, Rozsa basically said, OK, we'll see and he was right) according to his liking. The fact that he had to adapt to the film in the end and the fact that he wasn't granted the right to select the pieces of his liking made it frustrating to him.

That said, while my friend is a bit wary about that, I am not a person who would only blame Mike Oldfield. Of course, Roland Joffe isn't exactly a director famous for awful scores to his films, having later worked (at least!) twice with no-one else than Ennio Morricone and him delivering the singular masterpiece that The Mission was among others, but look at this. Morricone is a famous film composer, who, when scoring The Mission, had a lot of his own experience. Oldfield was a huge star of his own, though I can't tell which album of his was the last thing he released before embarking on this score, because of my little memory of his chronology. Joffe was making his directorial debut (a very harrowing and brilliant movie at that).

The lack of experience on the side of both men, I think, led to major communication issues, when Oldfield, with his specific personality and with his lack of film experience, thought it's the same as album work, and Joffe expected (probably) that he's working with a normal film composer who knows his stuff. So I would say it's a bit of both, which led to a frustrating experience especially for Oldfield who is a very strong artistic mind and personality.

The score works brilliantly in the film and the weirder tracks... Evacuation, while odd and difficult, is a brilliant piece of music. I never found a blunder in the film, so whoever put the music in the movie, did it in the right way. But still I can imagine that for an artist so perfectionist in his approach, having to deal with the fact that pieces he regarded as "unfinished" (probably early drafts) ended in the movie, because they fit the movie better must have been painful and frustrating.

What I know for sure is that Oldfield was very frustrated at the end and vowed never to score a film again.

Instead of "no-one else than" substitute for 'none other than' or 'no less than'

Thank you Pawel, I really didn't know any of that.

Re: Stravinsky. I believe he also wanted at least a year to write a film score.

The Great Fantasy Adventure Album - Various Composers / Erich Kunzel

This is one of the very best albums the Erich Kunzel and his band have called into existence and it is a memento of what great work Kunzel did with the Cincinnati Pops.

I only just don't understand what business "Henry V" has on a Fantasy themed album except that the Bard had a big ton of it.

Volker