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AVPR fucking rules, but I haven't really found another score by him that I love.

AVPR, War, Rambo, Fast And The Furious and Constantine.

I really like Tyler. The only problem I have are with his albums and their lengths, and to cut them down to a more enjoyable running time means carefully listening to the whole CD and cherry picking the best cues... which I usually can't arsed to do.

oh and replay WAR, loud ;0

Dune's like a bastard child of Goldsmith and Gladiator with some Lifeforce theme put in. Thematically his best work for sure.

War I heard once and wasn't amazed. My warming up to Tyler isn't because of the merits of his music in and of itself (which for me there aren't many of them, no compositional technique makes up for the fact that he's just messy in his action scoring, even if complex you just don't pick the parts and get wowed by each part and its thematic material like you do with the masters), but because of his functionality. I think actually Rambo was the first Tyler-scored film I saw. And, ironically, originally because of his assignment I actually planned to pass on the movie.

I disagree dear Tim, i could never understand how could anyone like Toto's original score over Tyler's!

Many people actually do prefer Toto's version. I think even that one is preferred to both TV scores to Dune taken together, though that would be definitely unfair towards Tyler's unoriginal, but good score.

Actually, I haven't heard the Toto score outside of the film except the great Desert Theme. but the score was very fitting for the movie, probably the best thing about the rather weak (and my first David Lynch) film.

MAGIC

This Richard Attenborough film is quite disappointing. While it's nice to see a chamber piece from the director, and the score by Goldsmith is very interesting, this doesn't quite work. Corky's reason for fleeing to the country doesn't seem credible, and it's a shame that thereafter it had to descend into a cabin fever movie. And the ending - are we meant to see Fats as some mad supernatural creature? Some very good sequences though - including the opening scene - and Burgess Meredith gives a strong performance. (Hopkins hams it up a bit, but it's good-tasting ham.)

Annoying feature in films: A character in the film is an artist/performer, and the other characters in the film are impressed far out of proportion to the audience of the film. There's a scene like this quite early, where two characters keep commenting on how wonderful a performer Corky is, but Corky isn't really THAT good.

I don't suppose anyone has seen the Ealing studio film that this one was clearly inspired by, DEAD OF NIGHT? (Michael Redgrave plays a man like Hopkins, a puppeteer who becomes possessed by his puppet.) SECRET WINDOW seems to have borrowed a few ideas from this film.

I've seen DEAD OF NIGHT, you're spot on Michael. ( so you're wrong....someone has seen it! )

I saw MAGIC when it was released but not since....says it all really

I like the score though!

I thought CHILDREN OF DUNE was one of Tyler's better scores. It is a bit long, but I found I listened to it a lot around the time I watched the miniseries. Certainly was quite a step up from Revell's score.

Last night I saw...

Last year at Marienbad (Renais) - Yes, again! My first viewing put me to sleep owing to a couple of glasses of white wine consumed with pasta beforehand. My second viewing was quite different - I picked a chair that would not make me drowsy, and tried to concentrate more on the subtitles (what the characters are saying) this time. And I made it through... and I started to see the humour in it.

Mirror (Tarkovsky) - Also a repeat! My first viewing last weekend had been split in two, and I really hadn't concentrated as much as I should have. Unlike the other Tarkovsky films I've seen - Solaris and Ivan's Childhood - there doesn't seem to be a straightforward story to follow here, but I think I've started to figure out what's going on. Tarkovsky was such a superb director of the camera.

LOL. Let's avoid the fulminations, as they will be most unfruitful. I think if nothing else you'd have to admire the camerawork of MARIENBAD - no painful ineptitude there. It makes that castle set feel like a never-ending maze of rooms. I've seen enough of Renais' other films to know there's always a bit of parody of melodramas going on. Hey, these guys can't all be wrong:
http://www.filmforum.org/films/marienbad.html
You don't often get Rosenbaum, Ebert, and Andrew Sarris agreeing on a film so positively. Of course, that might be because Kael hated it.

Suffice to say, for anyone who thinks THE FOUNTAIN is challenging viewing, MARIENBAD is your next marathon.

CHILDREN OF DUNE is not an 'orchestral beast'. There is not a lot of action music - a lot of it is more emotional and atmospheric material with ethnic influences.

Not at all!

I like Tyler's score but it's luke warm compared to Toto's more original music.

p.s. The 'Desert Theme' was written by Brian Eno.

I disagree. It is some of Tyler's best work, but the originality problems (Gladiator especially) and I think not the best performance ever (want a good New Age/restrained performance - try some JNH, preferrably Atlantis) don't make this work "passionate"