[Closed] Now Playing XXXIX

Yes you are biased. Here are a few better ones that come to mind:

Grandstand

Test Cricket

Wimbledon Tennis

Sportsnight

Snooker

BBC Athletics

Superstars

Ski Sunday

Ah, the memories....and one more. A sport of sorts:

It's A Knockout

The people who put together the title sequence for Grandstand (consisting of a montage of clips) always seemed to have fun trying to sync the kettle drum hit (at 23/24 secs in the YouTube video I linked) with some sort of sport-related action - a car crash, football strike, etc. Though I can't seem to find a clip so maybe it was just my imagination?

Watching on the red button now (on BBC) the BBC Philharmonic playing great film scores. Just caught the end of Goldsmith's Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

And next up The Magnificent Seven.

JP: KUNG FU PANDA 2 - Hans Zimmer & John Powell

As was evident on Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Hans Zimmer doesn't do 'chaos' well. John Powell, however, excels in it, as does KFP2 show in its wild action tracks wherein chaos reigns in a structured way. How he does it is anyone's guess, but when heard in 5.1 surround the instruments fly around your ears before either the heavy percussion or melodic strings bring it all together again to a centric place. What Powell and Zimmer do well here, is the balancing of both, since they rarely lose you in their musical cartoonery.

In the final act, thematic development makes the score more cohesive to end on a satisfying note, without betraying the Chinese sound of what came before (Powell and Zimmer do not all of a sudden go all western on the listener). If there's one downside, it's the lack of a full statement of a theme. A final grand thematic performance (instead of just portion A that's interrupted before getting a snippet of it's counterpart B and so on) would've made it truly memorable.

Still, whats on display makes for an extremely colorful and joyful effort with its moments of exhilaration, fun and stylish emotion that got clearly the better part of Hans' attention compared to the rush-job that was Pirates 4. Even though KFP2 smells the most like a Powell score. Hmm. That might be it.

A surprise next, "Main Theme" (the string ostinato tango) by Shigeru Umebayashi from 2046.

JP: X-Men: First Class - Henry Jackman
I like this. Quite a lot, actually. The main theme is good and I really like the drums that come in at 1:40 or thereabouts in "First Class". Magneto's theme is simple, but effective and the end credits-version ("Magneto") kicks ass :D

Interestingly, I think the score makes for a better listen outside the film. Or maybe the spotting was just off - at least there were several times during the (otherwise excellently entertaining) film where I thought the music was a bit too much and perhaps even unnecessary.

NP: Green Lantern - James Newton Howard

EDIT: A very JNH-esque score, though is heavy on electronics, which sometimes drowns the orchestra, the main theme is just a 5 notes motif. There's some good choral parts.

Off to have a coffee and a pastry before embarking on a Joseph LoDuca marathon - yesterday I discovered his scores to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.

Already though I am wondering if a little more research should have been done beforehand. At least one Xena disc seems to be a set of songs (including cover versions).

I may start off instead with Trevor Morris' The Borgias.

Scream - Beltrami

This new Varese edition drags in places but there are some fantastic moments.

I really was unsure about this one. I have the original Scream/Scream 2 Varese doubleheader and I find that that drags in between some great high points. So I decided to pass on the expansion. Sounds like there's more highs and lows in equal measure in the expanded version?

What really frustrates me about compilations like these is that they are not original tracks. The majority of these themes I've grown up with and the original orchestrations, etc are all part and parcel of the themes. It is very rare that these compilations that feature re-recordings satisfy.

It's got a great Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass sound to it.

And what might those gaps be?

Here's the REAL pain: with the loss of the tapes, all my commentary notes were lost as well... so I wouldn't be able to find those records again. And -never having seen the actual shows, obviously- I have no idea of many track names either.

I guess my biggest annoyance is having lost the quite hard to find theme to the 1971 (?) TV series Elizabeth R., which may even be an early medieval tune rather than specifically composed fore the series...