MARC STREITENFELD

No... she love this score, and I would like to give it to her as a birthday gift... Is it possible to find it somewhere?

He's not Michael Kamen, John Barry, or Erich Wolfgang Korngold!

-Erik-

Needless to say, I disagree. I thought it was interesting that Ridley Scott went with primarily score not songs for American Gangster - not necessarily the obvious choice - but very disappointing that the score was so bland. I thought the score was one of the things really holding the film back from becoming as good as it might have been. Ironically, I've often found in the past that the music in Scott's films is so disarmingly up-front it doesn't work very well (certainly the case with most of his 90s films, I think) - and now he's gone to the other extreme with Streitenfeld, whose music is very much content to sit in the background and not really do much at all. I wish Scott could find a happy medium!

In my opinion, there wasn't anything "in-your-face" with Scott's earlier work either. In fact, they're some of the most organically integrated scores I can think of. I'd have to re-watch AMERICAN GANGSTER and A GOOD YEAR (or whatever the title was) to give a proper evaluation of the music.

Is there actually any Streitenfeld score out there that comes even close to what he has to do for the Hood movie thematically that would actually help us to decide whether he is good for this particular job or not?

Who knows, the time and setting of the movie might make him do things differently. I suggest we wait for the actual score before we strap it on the table and torture it to death before it´s even born.

Absolutely, well said.

So we don´t want to give a composer a chance just because he hasn´t composed stuff like this before?

We do not hire composers who´ve had no experience yet? But how can they get it then?

I hope you see where I´m getting to with this.

BTW, maybe Streitenfeld begged Scott to give him the opportunity to score a big medieval adventure movie to show a different side of his. Cutthroat Island, anybody? Who would have thought of that before it happened?

So where are the soundclips from the new Robin Hood movie to listen to?

Or are you seriously suggesting that a composer can´t rise to a different challenge?

So he has written bad contemporal thriller scores (which BTW is, again, a matter of personal taste), and that makes him a bad medieval adventure composer, too?

I absolutely agree with the point you are making, I think, but I also think it's fair to ask "why Streitenfeld?"

Most people who end up scoring big movies do so because they build up experience on smaller films and display how good they are at them. How has this guy managed to do it? It's baffling to me. Being disappointed that he is the chosen composer is not the same thing as saying his score will be bad. I'm certainly not doing that - who knows, perhaps his ability to score swashbuckling action films will be in completely inverse proportion to his ability to score gangster films. But that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed that composers who HAVE shown aptitude in the past at scoring films are left doing direct-to-video Disney sequels while someone who has connections in the right place but has never shown any particular ability to write film music of any kind is scoring one of the year's biggest movies.

Absolutely. Of course I would have loved to hear a Robin Hood score by Zimmer, or by JNH, or by Desplat or Debney. But that´s not what we´ll get, so I´m all for waiting what will happen.

Who knows, maybe he and Scott have become great personal friends. May be the only reason.

It wouldn´t be the first director/composer relationship that didn´t satisfy the enthusiasts (Yates/Hooper).

Oh, BTW, I watched "Einstein & Eddington" this weekend. It had a GREAT, rich and thematic score by ... HOOPER!!!

What about the MUCH ABLE composers who are out there - older and younger, and have a WIDE, RICH MUSICAL CANVAS, proven, and get no (significant) work these days?

They should be used TOO! But there's room enough to give oddball composers a chance on new territory now and then, such as when Danna was slated to do HULK. Or even Shore on LORD OF THE RINGS. Or Johnny Greenwood on THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Etc, etc.

My friend, being the collaborator of RIDLEY SCOTT doesn't constitute a change on new territory now and then. It's something that, normally - should be earned.