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And that, I wholeheartedly agree with!

I will offer a more serious response to Pawel's thought-provoking post when I get home tonight.

I did have two initial thoughts--

(i) It's hard not to remember the story about Miklos Rozsa spending a similar (12-18 month) time working on Ben-Hur, touring academic institutions of Europe to find out as much as he could about Roman music, and ending up writing a score which sounds like his others. (And also, that the score he wrote is almost universally considered one of the all-time-greats.)
(ii) I wholeheartedly disagree that Horner is of the "old school". His approach to film music - for better or worse - has always been about only one thing, which is deciding what emotion any particular scene is meant to bring out in the audience and then trying his hardest to manipulate that emotion from the audience. That's not "old school".

Horner is old-school in his approach to orchestra, not to movies. He is symphonic (not electronic, rockman-like). Symphony orchestra is the first thing always. Of course he DID do scores like, say , The Life Before Her Eyes, though his electronic (purely electronic) scores always sound more like The Forgotten than Life Before Her Eyes. He is a dramatic composer above all.

Rozsa, of course. But remember that Rozsa lived in different times. When Bernard Herrmann panicked that his scoring schedule was shortened from 12 to 8 weeks he panicked, Horner or Zimmer, or even Goldsmith for that matter had to bring in a two hour score in 2 weeks. Also musicological research except notable exceptions, like Horner on Four Feathers (you have to know Qawwali music to write it like Four Feathers) or Zimmer on Last Samurai is "out of fashion" right now. Even Horner is hated by Scotsmen for using Irish bag pipes on Braveheart (I know that from a few Scotsmen). Ben Hur of course IS one of the greats, even if I am not really much into Rozsa (I much prefer Al Newman or Bernie Herrmann, Rozsa is a bit too fanfare-y for my tastes).

Zimmer encourages to see the first twentysomething minutes of Gladiator as a prelude of sorts. Compare it to Rozsa's overture material. Without passing judgement what is better and not musically, try to notice the difference of what the music tries to say. Rozsa's triumphant fanfare as opposed to what exactly? As I say, don't review the music, just compare the approach.

And that's one reason people don't like him (see the quotes from House of Sand & Fog director at the FSM post for instance).

I mostly agree with that but am not sure what point you're making with it in relation to Avatar. Do you think a primarily orchestral approach is wrong?

Arrangement-wise? Not really. But if your primary concern is symphonic development, you don't think of the general atmosphere you need to achieve. You think of the intricacies of voice leading, cool instrumentation. This is why I think for such a project, Zimmer's "band" approach is the one to take, because you think of the sound in general - orchestra is a part of a bigger ensemble, rather than soloist being parts of the orchestra. I think, where Horner fails often in context of the movie (as opposed to other great orchestrators, like Williams for example) is that he sometimes rather concentrates on getting a neat orchestration than fitting the movie emotionally and his technical approach to string writing makes him so saccharine.

House of Sand and Fog (an underrated score to me) is a prime example of him leaving his tricks aside and working on THE MOVIE. Though, the score DOES get overly dramatic in the end of the movie. I believe Perelman, though, that it was his fault not Horner's. That was a nice thing to admit.

Really? Max Steiner would have loved that description on his gravestone!

Sherlock Holmes - Hans Zimmer

I don't want to listen to the entire score, I leave that to when I'll have the CD in my hands. But the tracks I listened to are quite good. It's refreshing to hear this side of Zimmer. Sounds so much better than Angels and Demons. I especially love his use of the violin. Played like Sherlock Holmes could have played it...

Who is Jones From Hell?

NP: Anastasia (Complete) - David Newman

Talk about being underrated. What a magnificent score!

Trevor Jones, From Hell.

Insane!

So it's like a Hans Zimmer score....

Quite enjoyable.