HANS ZIMMER

i heard 80% of what you wrote, thank God for movie-watching and spotify cause you know whoever heard of listening to modern film music anywhere else besides ifmca? and liked 3-4 scores. Not the elfmans, hated the Gerrard, the promise is gorgeous, alien is very very weak, their finest is standard portman, etc etc, but nothing truly big and good this year so far. All the major film scoring (holly blockbusters) trends in 2017 are severely disappointing and you will see them establishing themselves further in the years to come. You can be sure about it.

And it's not the films themselves merely, the biggest disappointment are those trends. People like Johannsson being tossed for the same bassy drone sound design zimmer now wants to push around as music.

Yes, they are representative. There's more to film music than Hollywood, after all. Doesn't really matter if only a few people have heard them; they're there for the taking.

As for the rest, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Glad we have at least ONE common score that we liked this year (THE PROMISE).

Does it really matter how many people listen to it, or are even aware of it? The point is that it EXISTS, and is there ready to be taken for those willing to explore beyond Hollywood.

I think so too.

My issue with D's statement was the notion that somehow interesting film music doesn't "exist anymore", the type of sweeping generalization that only takes its point-of-departure in mainstream Hollywood film music, and hence a logical fallacy.

But even if I were just to limit to big blockbusters, there's plenty of interesting variety to be found there as well.

So if we were to omit DUNKIRK and BLADE RUNNER 2049 (both of which I liked on some level), there's still good things to be found among the "big stuff" in 2017: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (OK, mostly new versions of the 1991 score), LOGAN, IT, GHOST IN THE SHELL, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT, THE DARK TOWER. And some of those I mentioned in the earlier post.

My issue with most of this criticism is that it focusses almost EXCLUSIVELY on a particular sub trend (mostly the action-oriented ostinato/RC style in mainstream genre movies), and then from that, draws the conclusion that "everything sucks these days". How about just evaluating a score on its own terms?

Also, sometimes trends appear from smaller scores or "sleeper hits"; they don't always have to be big blockbusters to set an agenda.

That might not be the best list to convince Demetris, I’d say War for the Planet of the Apes and what Giacchino’s doing in general, Daniel Pemberton’s King Arthur and his career, and then there’s Desplat, or Brian Tyler’s big thematic orchestral works for the Fast and Furious films or recently The Mummy, and the scores for Disney like Debney’s Jungle Book. Or Danny Elfman replacing Junkie XL on Justice League. I know you, Thor, don’t like most of these, and maybe not all of these succeeded to the same extend in terms of quality, but combined with the MCU scores they all show that there’s still room in Hollywood for scores that adhere to themes and orchestra and negate the whole “film scoring is dead” cliche of factless negativity.

As a wise man once said - you can't polish a turd, but you can put it in an envelope and send it to Michel Platini.

Will try as soon as I delve into the score a lot more now, as I have to write my review. I hope I'll also make time to actually rewatch the original film. Due to other obligations I couldn't do that before 2049.

I wonder how much better it would be if it wasn't just called Blade Runner. If they even made the references they made, even gave Ford a role, but not actually use that universe.

I'm enamored with the film on a formal level.

I mean, if they just made a film featuring the visual references to the original Blade Runner and even had a part for Harrison Ford (I would actually wonder how he would handle a character like the one Jared Leto played or have him instead of Robin Wright), that'd be brilliant.

The problem is that it will be always compared to the original (and no, I don't think it's better as some reviewers do) and its thematic sensibilities. If it was planned as a standalone, without the shoulders of a beloved classics on it, I think it would benefit philosophically and definitely in terms of general perception.

Deckard was an organic part of the story, but the seeds of his appearance could have perhaps been planted better (both more often and more subtly) earlier.

What I really love about the film is that it's so meditative. My favorite films this year are this one, Scorsese's Silence and Jarmusch's Paterson, I think!

You kept Almost Human? Don’t you find that song horribly out of sync with the score, and not fitting for the film at all? (It also probably didn’t help the singer/songwriter hadn’t seen the film before creating the song). It was the first thing I deleted.

Interesting list by the way, might give it a try, but right now I’m quite happy with the presentation and don’t find it too long at all.

I know it’s not in the film itself, of which I was incredibly relieved, but thought it was created for commercial album reasons. Is it in the shorts? Just realized I haven’t seen them all yet, but that would’ve been an awful decision of that director.

Review of the Live in Prague album:

http://www.movie-wave.net/live-in-prague/

I think At World's End is Zimmer and Co's best score, and it's one of my top 10 of all time