JAMES HORNER

Couldn't agree more; i am listening to APOCALYPTO again today and really, i am thinking that nobody else could have written the shocking "To The Forest..." that closes the album in the way Horner did. Amazing.

Interesting thoughts there Michael, if a little anal for my taste.

Apologies for my choice of words there, that doesn't exactly conjure a particularly nice image.

As for SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES, frankly i am not a big fan; it has some good points in it but despite the unoriginality, the whole first half sounds fragmented and too much mickey-mousing carries through it; i can see the points some raised about the refinery and organic way of Horner when approaching the musical side of this but still, as a listen on album he has produced so much better than this, imo.

True true! I'm being very armchairish here.... forgive my arrogance. I just hate it every time characters fall in love in a film and James Horner wants to tell us what's really going on.

One of the strong things about A BEAUTIFUL MIND's score is that for the scenes of decoding, there's a score there that's linking the audience to the energy in Nash's mind that not even Russell Crowe could've gotten across. And the slow scoring of that car chase... beautiful choice. The moments I speak ill of are more the underscoring of Nash's speech at the end, which is more in the tradition of what Williams did with that final Anthony Hopkins speech in AMISTAD.

By the way, this is going to sound really strange, but I think Hans Zimmer would have won the battle against Wagner in THE NEW WORLD. There's a strong sense of Wagner in 'Journey to the Line', and in many of his more recent scores ('Am I not merciful?' and 'The Dark Knight' from GLADIATOR and DARK KNIGHT, respectively). I don't think he would have displaced Mozart though... if Horner couldn't do that , Zimmer wouldn't have. (Horner's piano work can have a more classical sound that Zimmer's, I feel.)

Remind me to come back to this. I must sleep now, but I agree, I didn't explain myself well.

I don't agree here. For me, this would situation was a deadend for Horner. He may have had two possibilies. He could stick to his musical ideas (and get rejected by Wagner), or he could start imitating Wagners musical voice. But I'm quite sure, this would have left him being accussed again for stealing ideas and musical textures of other famous composers.
I don't think a Zimmer score would have matched the delicat voice of The New World (and I do like The Thin Red Line, but for me, The New World is a complete different movie).

Oh crap, not again.

Feel free to disagree Basil, but don't take it out on the thread!

(By the way, I'm not sure you are disagreeing, since I'm saying Zimmer would've been closer to Wagner in the first place, something which you say Horner would not have been capable of. (Something you're right about, incidentally. Horner has sounded like many composers over the years, but never Wagner that I can recall.))

Someone done messed up d' thread?

fixed it. It was BasilB's quoting Franz.

Well, the guy's only made four films, and only three of those have any original score, and one of those three saw the majority of the film scored with classical pieces, so I don't think one can extrapolate that Zimmer's the only one who can do it. Days of Heaven has a perfect score.

I don't agree that The Thin Red Line and The New World are close enough films that they could have had similar scores, by the way. On the surface, perhaps, but I actually think that what ended up in each film was perfect, and nobody working on New World would really have beaten what Malick did in the end. Likewise, nobody could have written a better score for Thin Red Line than Zimmer did.

Well, for any directors reading all this: if it ever comes down to the choice to have Zimmer and Wagner-esque approach, and actual Wagner, always pick actual Wagner. Don't even for a second consider the alternative.

For anyone else is The Spiderwick Chronicles hard to hear? It's weird, for me it seems like everything is very guiet and it's hard to hear the details in between the highs and well...the silence (lows). Maybe it's a setting on my computer or iPod, but my other scores are totally normal. But maybe it's just me...

All this talk of Spiderwick recently has made me revisit the score, as I hadn't listened to it since its release. I'm enjoying it a lot more now that expectations are gone, and I can honestly say this is one of the better score albums of this year IMO (although a little trimming off the total running time wouldn't go amiss). Horner's scores can make such great albums simply because of his approach to film scoring, a certain kind of elegance as Mikael has mentioned.

It may be yet another culmination of past scores (bits of Krull, Casper and Willow most notably), but I really don't think it's as much of a rip-off as some reviews make it out to be. Okay, it's not exactly new either, but that doesn't matter, it's Horner doing what he does best, which is a helluva lot better than what most composers do.

Yes, when wanting something to sound fantastic and you have high hopes, when it reality it's more restrained I'm always disappointed, especially with Horner as he's just so hit or miss these days. Yet when revisiting the score (like Spiderwick) at later moments I can find ways to appreciate it much more than on that first disappointing listen (by find those little moments of beauty or disguised ingenuity). Same happened with The Four Feathers which I'm able to enjoy more nowadays. Of course repeated listening can make you more comfortable with such a score but when you accept the music for what it is, and not for what it could've been, there's always more enjoyment to be had.