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THREE. Three. Three.

Excellent one-sentence summary.

NP: Pirates of the Carribbean - On Stranger Tides

Once I saw this movie, I realized why this score is so crappy. The movie was lifeless, crawling from one forced story point to another, trying to be as exciting as possible without any dramatic motivation. The direction was incredibly bland, and completely fails in comparison to Verbinski's energetic work.
I hate how the score is essentially a temp score redux, marrying distinct and unique themes from the original trilogy together, thus completely undermine the original contexts under which those materials were realized.
This was atrocious.
The ONLY good thing about it was the new thematic stuff for the Mermaid, the short choral passages for the Spanish conquistadors, and the Spanish materials. No wonder Hans passed this onto others to handle. It's still shameful to see his name on this pile of junk.

HOWEVER, as far as junk goes, it's exciting enough to turn off your brain and listen to it as a sort of best-of-Pirates-mish-mash musical compilation. But if you have any respect for the original POTC trilogy, especially At World's End, stay away and not let it tarnish the good impression that the latter score provided.

PS. the complete demo recording that I'm listening is amazing in its sound quality. The synth samples are extremely well made, and could have been passed off as the real deal, if you didn't hear the difference in fidelity and crispness that the final version provides.

Ha! Just last night I was playing a Badalamenti compilation, and the VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT theme was on. My girlfriend suddenly was taken back 6 or 7 years to when she saw the film, and remembered the theme, which is used ad nauseum throughout the film. It seemed for both of us, this music had killed the film back when we each saw it. (Somewhere around the 8th or 9th reprise, I mentally checked out of the film.) The only thing that could cancel the theme in our heads was to skip a few tracks to get to the themes of TWIN PEAKS. (Which are lovely.)

NP: STAR WARS V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (John Williams)

I'm gonna be the contrarian again and say that this is actually my LEAST favourite of the three original scores. A bit too gritty for my taste. I prefer the third. Again with the all-too-common "the darker, the better" mentality that I've never understood. But by all means....it's STAR WARS!

Sure. But it seems to be most widespread of the arguments. My favourite bits from this score are actually the ones that are NOT dark!

Not my cuppa tea, but yeah, it's fine. Listening to "Battle in the Snow" now and it's really a wild powerhouse of a cue.

So are you suggesting this is only the third greatest score in history?

and quite appropriate considering how STAR WARS'ified this thread is right now, Lukas was influenced by this film in the first film, called STAR WARS if memory serves.

EMPIRE is rightly regarded by many score fans as one of the greatest film scores ever written, an opinion I agree with 100%

Always prefered this to Empire myself as well.
And yes, I only play the "Fox Box" myself too.
I like having the RCA book sets, though, but that's more from a collector's point of view.

I'm just finished listening to Pinar Toprak's beautiful score to THE WIND GODS. Head over to her site and click on MUSIC to hear the complete score album. http://www.pinartoprak.com/

This could be the first time in my 15 years of being on the air that a documentary score has cracked my Top 10.

-Erik-

She's a beauty isn't she.

-Erik-

Check out her score to THE LIGHTKEEPERS which won last year's IFMCA Best Comedy award.
http://www.moviescoremedia.com/lightkeepers.html

-Erik-

the emotional music sounds wonderful, especially with the fiddle parts. the themes sound lovely. i think i will buy this score.