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  1. My review of THE NICE GUYS, for anyone who's interested:

    https://moviemusicuk.us/2016/06/05/the- … d-buckley/

    Jon
    •  
      CommentAuthorDemetris
    • CommentTimeJun 6th 2016
    Edmund Meinerts wrote
    "...with James Newton Howard rather obviously seeping through from the temp-track" - I never knew JNH did The Shawshank Redemption! wink

    I must say I'm surprised you like this one so much. It's certainly a step up from Days of Future Past (not a difficult bar to clear) but it still suffers from Ottman's two greatest flaws. First, there's the inevitable temping: besides Shawshank in "Erik's Rebirth" (spell it with a K, Ottman!) and the continuing Lifeforce-ness of his main theme, you've got some actual, genuine JNH in the form of The Hunger Games in "Like a Fire", the action music in "You Betray Me" pulls from Brian Tyler's Expendables scores and I get the impression that the choral stuff in the opening few cues (as well as the Apocalypse theme) are inspired by Jupiter Ascending - at least he ditched the Inception nonsense from the last score! The fact that Ottman is his own editor and picks the temp himself just makes things that much worse; you can't even use the "director made him do it" defense! rolleyes

    Of course, all those temps would bother me less if it wasn't for Ottman's second and far more damning flaw: he struggles more than almost any film composer I know to write cohesively. It's all rattles and crashes and sudden moments of dissonance that come out of nowhere and it just doesn't flow at all. It reacts to the movie rather than adding to it or driving it. Sometimes that approach has led to a fairly entertaining score (e.g. Jack the Giant Slayer - which this is nowhere near), but I think it's that more than anything else which makes him such a frustrating composer for me. It's a shame because he can orchestrate well and has creative ideas, but they're always mushed together in such an incoherent way.

    Okay, rant over. shame


    Indeed. I don't know, i always thought he had strong connections (personal and business) or must be a hell of a good and pleasant guy to hang out and work with, otherwise his purely music-writing and compositional skills alone, can't explain all these high profile projects all these years. He's not the first one who generally doesn't really have it (with few exceptions)..for instance there once was Tyler Bates and others, but they gradually vanished from the scene (at least the big projects).
    Love Maintitles. It's full of Wanders.
  2. I think Ottman is leagues beyond Tyler Bates, mind you. freezing

    I imagine the allure of hiring him might have a lot to do with the fact that he can handle so many aspects of a production at once (scoring, editing, which makes things both simpler and (probably) cheaper for the production, although I wonder if all that multitasking is the reason why his music feels like it's squeezed into the cracks so much (and it's almost definitely the reason for all his ghostwriters). Of course really it's mainly Bryan Singer who seems to be keeping his career afloat, at least with major blockbusters.