Recent Viewing Part IV

I agree. I was thinking maybe a split second long, total running time.

In case you haven't seen this yet... this year's THR's round table interview with the composers.
Silvestri, Zimmer, Price, Jackman, Beck and Newman (Thomas, that is) take part. It's good fun.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/1 … ers-666107

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Yeah, I've watched it. Excellent, as always, even though the questions aren't the most insightful and the topics aren't the most revolutionary. The pleasure lies in seeing these great guys interact in a rather informal setting.

See? They're the same these days, i mixed them up

Yes sadly, they are.

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom

On the one hand it's a lot of fun, with some great cinematography and some great set pieces and of course a GREAT score. On the other hand, it's just plain awful. I know that might irk a few die hard fans of the series (I'm thinking of no one in particular), but it is pretty bad. And it's largely due to the two most annoying characters in movie history: Shortroundgodiwanttopunchhisstupidface and Mrs. Spielberg.

It still holds a certain amount of nostalgia for me, especially the end scene in the mines up to the mine car chase itself, and it's fun revisiting a film I often watched when I was a child, but the grown up part of me can't ignore the fact that it's just not a very good film.

I haven't watched the third film in quite a while, and I'm worried I'll have a similar reaction. (The first, thankfully, will always remain a favourite. Even with all its mistakes, it's still perfect.)

Of course, in my opinion.

I love Temple of Doom.

Okay, you can stop feeding him now.

Aside from Harrison Ford I am not in the least interested in who starrs in these popcorn movies. For all I care they could collect them off the streets at random.

So, I just saw Man Of Steel for the first time as well (well, it's Christmas, so a movie about planetwide genocide and loads of things getting obliterated just seemed right), and I have to say: like the seminal 1978 film it gets a lot of things right!

For one thing, the casting is just great.
A thoroughly likeable Cavill exudes just the right kind of sincererity for the job (strongly echoing Reeve, I think), and even though I prefer the psychopathological take of Terence Stamp Michael Shannon (of Boardwalk Empire fame) makes an excellent three-dimensional villain as General Zod.
The supporting cast is uniformly very good, including Lawrence Fishburne as a black Perry White and Diane Lane and Kevin Costner as Martha and Jonathan Kent.

The story is a long but engaging one (even if the exploding trains and rockets and crumbling buildings do wear out their incredibly noisy welcome after a while), with even the obligatory and universally known origins story being handled cleverly (the time in Kansas handled mostly through flashbacks) and aesthetically pleasing, especially on Krypton.
With many of the designs coming directly John Byrne's Superman reboot (yeah, no one but Timmer will know what I'm talking about), it's a feast for the eyes.

The photography is excellent, and I really enjoy the attention to physics (what with Supes' punches creating shock waves, and his take-offs creating small craters).

In fact, I'm quite happy with this well handled, well considered re-imagining, except for one thing.
Zimmer's score.

Oh yeah, baby. Here it is. The rant you've been waiting for.

This may well be the worst score for any blockbuster film ever.
It was so bad that the people I was watching it with -none of them in the least bit interested in movie scores- actually started getting very vocally annoyed about it.
There isn't a single aspect it didn't get wrong.
Exposure scene?
Dark, doomy synths, and thunderous percussion.
Pivotal plot change scene?
Dark, doomy synths, and thunderous percussion.
Action scene?
Dark, doomy synths, and thunderous percussion.
Heroic scene?
Apocalyptically doomy synths and insanely messianic choir intoning minor power chords.
Dramatically moving scene?
Piano tinkling.

I get that apparently Zimmer's walking papers apparently stated "dark messiah" (and not much more), and while I thoroughly object to this perversion of the Superman myth (I won't go into details but am happy to expound if anyone is interested, which I cannot imagine, to be honest), even that might have been at least interesting, if it weren't for two things:
1) YOU DON'T NEED TO BE SO BLEEDING OBVIOUS ABOUT IT
Choirs, long-winded psalm-like minor chords and instruments mimicking church organs.
We get it. Throttle off for just a fucking second, OK?
2) (and by far the most important one) Where the HELL are the heroics?
Superman is not a god. He's not a saviour. He's a superhero. He's the actual ORIGIN of a superhero. The WORD superhero didn't exist until Supes came along. It's kinda expected to give him at least some heroic sound at some point. If even once.
But no.
At NO point WHATSOEVER do we ever get a musical identity that suggests 'hero'.
We get armageddon-pregnant doom, drawn-out minor key droning and the Percussion From Hell.
And at the end of the day, very much like with Batman, NO recognisable musical identity whatsoever.

It is awful.
It is misguided.
It is wrong.

I have no idea who is to blame for this horrid musical fiasco -whether it was Snyder, Zimmer or a studio executive- but I sincerely hope this person will never, ever work on a Superman-related musical project EVER again.

The film should be a 4/5, but drops to 3 due to the truly debilitating soundtrack.

Honestly, I don't get riled up often by a score simply not working.
But this is the most wrong thing I've heard in years.
A huge creative mistake.

Weird. I didn't mind it at all. Don't get me wrong, I think it could have done with a much better score, but I was still able to enjoy it for what it was - a noisy action score for a noisy action film. (I rather like 'Flight'.) I just don't care enough about Superman or comic books in general to worry whether the character got the score he deserved, and although I do care about film music and completely understand the film should have received a better score, I wasn't angered by what it ended up with. It is what it is.

But I do sympathise with your thoughts. If this is a precursor to what all blockbuster scores will end up like (and in some regards already are), I too will join you on the soapbox. But I have faith that there will always be a place for quality film music, and traditional symphonic scoring will never go out of fashion. So when I hear something like this, I'm not so worried by it.

Hmm. It surprises me you were angered by Zimmer's musical embodying of Superman as a messiah, while the film itself didn't annoy you in this respect as much. I thought it was mainly Zack Snyder who repeatedly had to ram that point down my throat - either in handily placing him in front of crucifixes in the church, or the insanely obvious Jesus-pose while floating away from his father - we GET it!

Zimmer's score, meanwhile, basically gave the film what it demanded: gloomy, heavy handed photography and a plot pointing towards terrorism, with hardly any sense of fun, the music is a fine reflection of Snyder's approach while the final moments (indeed, 'Flight') is a perfectly acceptable power anthem for a figure like Superman. It may not be a traditional theme in the classical sense, but it nonetheless oozes power and energy. I like the fact it's a completely different approach then what went before, actually. If he wrote another traditional theme again people would start comparing it to John Williams' - and you never win that.

God, the Doctor Who Christmas special was awful. Self-indulgent and incomprehensible. I hope the writers have been regenerated also. Matt Smith was not served well.

Ok, since I'm on my phone it's quite a chore to properly quote, but here goes:

- The superhero-anthem
I must admit one major gripe of me against the film (NOT a fan, by the way) was the lacking of (as I see it) 'power anthem' Flight within the film itself (and no, the end credits do not count). Having heard it on CD before I was completely expecting this to be the final moments of the film while we saw Supes doing his fly-thing through the sky, universe or wherever he does his flying thing IN 3D and Zimmer's final track would've made it totally awesome. Instead, we got a leap to that moment and JUST WHEN THAT MOMENT STARTS, the credits kicked in. Talk about anti-climax. Still, I love that final piece and Snyder should've gone all the way to give his audience that final rush - don't hold back, the man just became the superhero he had built up to. I felt Zimmer had written the piece though, it just wasn't used properly. Nowhere in the film beforehand did Zack give Hans a moment of clear victory to place it (hell, even the final villain face off SPOILER ends on a grim note). Still, superman's first flying moment came close.

- On me (sigh) comparing Zimmer to Williams
Well, ok, true, you hadn't taken Williams in your keyboard, but it felt like he was in the subtext. You're missing 'a musical superhero moment', which for superman before has been translated into a bold, melodic theme, yet Zimmer takes the crescendo-anthem approach. I feel like everybody attaches too much to that previous way of scoring for a superhero, meanwhile not opening up to other ways. Just to make sure, are you ranting against the superhero-quality in the track Flight and should that have been more recognizably melodic, or do you think that track should've been used more often within the film?

By the way, I chat really remember a bit with an 'Indian Ocean Smasher' (?) but maybe you're talking about something scored by the Arcade-track (the villain's theme)? I don't believe the flight-theme features in the film more than once (said first flying exercise).