[Closed] Now Playing XXXII

The pain was a bit better this morning but is now coming back with a vengeance. Ouch ouch ouch.

And Angels and Demons can be quite enjoyable too, INDEED. When played loud especially.

The action music in the new trilogy is horrible when it´s not based on a theme. When it is, it´s fine as usual. The rest is as spectacular as the classics.

Depends on how it's done and who's doing it, I can like both and sometimes hate both.

The Williams track is fantastic though!

Speaking of action music:

NP: Total Recall - Jerry Goldsmith
Apart from the Main Title, this is not my cup of tea. Goldsmith has never been among my favourite composers, even though there are a couple of his scores in my collection that I truly enjoy. Total Recall is not one of them. I miss the melodies.

NP: Adventures of Pluto Nash - John Powell

An extremely fun score that would benefit from a complete release. Though the 30min+ version I'm listening to is great as is. Much much better than Evolution.

It certainly has its melodic and sweeping moments. They don't come much more sweeping than "The Mutant" or the last cue (whose name I forget - "A New World", is it?)

I admit that there are good, melodic tracks on the Total Recall CD, but far too few for my taste. Goldsmith could write two kinds of action music: one quite melodic in addition of his usual rhythmic writing (Star Trek comes to my mind) and very heavy rhythmic material with little melody in it, like Total Recall. I definitely prefer the former.
And as to your question, lp, yes, I do like First Knight - but I have to admit I needed multiple listens to really appreciate that score.

Excellent points!



I'd rank it even lower. IMHO, The Phantom Menace is probably the best Star Wars prequel score. It's the only prequel score that really, to me, followed in the footsteps of the originals - meaning there were themes a plenty and the writing was just as strong. I was disappointed that AOTC and ROTS managed to only produce 2 new strong themes - The Love Theme and Battle of the Heroes - where the originals and The Phantom Menace had 3, 4, 5 new themes each. And what in the bloody hell was Williams thinking when he spewed out the End Credits for ROTS. But then again, maybe he didn't have time to compose another end credit masterpiece like he did for the original trilogy. I mean, a General Grievous concert suite would have made my day.

-Erik-

Word.

To me, they sound as if they were based on nothing but pure chaos matter, warpstone, or whatever. Absolutely NOT my cup of tea.


I agree with you that TPM is the best of the newer three because of its handful of new themes. On the other hand, to me, they are not as good as the themes of the original trilogy, but still spectacular compared to what other composers try to sell us as "themes". But the biggest disappointment for me was the fact that Williams didn´t reuse that truly heartwarming new theme he wrote for the SE finale of RotJ (the track that was used instead of Ewok Celebration). Just try this: Imagine it without the rhythm and exotic instruments and the childrens choir, give it a slower tempo, and you have a terrific theme. I was sure this was the theme for the Republic introduced to us that Williams wanted to use in the new trilogy, but nothing. I´ve never been so dissappointed with a first listen like that of TPM. It grew on my with later listenings, of course, but still, I think it could have been better.

I know which material you mean, and I think compared to what you like about Chase, Chase is even better than Hoth. On the other hand, I never liked those parts of Hoth anyway and was much more fond of really rhythmic action tracks like Hyperspace or thematic ones like The Asteroid Field.


You´re right. Those two are terrific themes. I also like the theme for the droid army, but it suffers from its similarity to the Imperial March, and Anakin´s Theme is too sugary for me; it would have made much more sense if Williams would have reused and rewritten it for Episodes II & III. So it stands as that bloody awful kid´s theme.


No, no, look what you´ve done. You´ve agreed with something I said. You know what they say about paradoxa destroying the universe, don´t you?

No, really, I´m glad you like it. It could have been a fantastic theme for the new trilogy. A shame.

I agree with you both. I had assumed from the moment I first heard it in the ROTJ special edition that it would be a major theme in the prequels. Would have loved to have heard it in the kind of arrangement Ralph describes.

Add me for being the fourth admirer of the new Ewok celebration theme. I like both the old one and the SE one on equal basis. It would have made absolute sense to use that as a sort of secondary main theme throughout the prequels. But then again it was essentially the music that was performed by the Ewoks themselves during the festivities so that was probably why it wasn't used after all, it would've made no sense using that Ewok music when they don't appear in those flicks.