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NP: The Hobbit (Erik edit) (Howard Shore)

Or mostly the Erik edit. I think I threw one more track in -- a Gollum one, just because it felt strange to imagine this story without the Gollum episode. Maybe you've stuffed the second half a little too heavy with wall-to-wall thunderous action (even that can get boring!), but mixing up the order of the cues would probably ameliorate that a bit.

But anyway... what of all of this? It helps immensely to slim the material in this way. I have no idea if great music has been cut out, but the resulting music feels stronger than the album did on first listen, so I'm calling it a massive improvement at this point. And is that a surprise? Better composers than Shore usually play better in edited form. (Richard Wagner anyone? Tell me -- how often do you go past the 'Ring Cycle Highlights' disc to meditate on the whole thing?)

It helps also to hear this on proper speakers. The various streaming things listened through headphones definitely did not serve Shore's murky connective tissue well. Now the innumerable repeated three, four and five note motifs start to become clearer. The sort of stuff Doug Adams and others (and once I) devote paragraphs uncountable to interpreting. It's here. I wish I could say I liked that stuff, but I can respect the thought behind it a bit more. There's some thoughtful twists on the body of themes that was built up over the Ring trilogy. I just wish it made my heart sing, and it really doesn't. I don't know whether that's Shore's judgement as a dramatist or his limitations as a composer, but how I wish I just felt anything other than bored for large stretches of this. The heart just wants to sing.

Ah, yes, the singing heart. The emotion I have at times been accused of lacking in my appreciation of the music we all listen to. Look that's all well and good, but I'd be amazed if anyone was shedding tears to this as pure music. That's either a film doing the heavy lifting, the weight of past associations giving it all a nostalgic familiar edge, or the audience putting their hearts into the gaps in a work (the latter something many artists aspire to).

The opening of 'Radagast the Brown'... and 'Roast Mutton' to some extent also -- which both feel quite new in the music of Lord of the Rings -- make me wish that rather that the music had been able to start from scratch this time around. That rather than pay hommage to every theme and texture of Lord of the Rings at every conceivable foreshadowing, a new approach had been taken. Equally rich, but new at every turn. This score mostly feels a little too much like the 10 hours of music that preceded it. There's not much elbow room for new feelings when you feel like you must have heard the last 8 bars before.

But maybe there's two kinds of people. Some who are endlessly frustrated when new art doesn't formally integrate with what has come before. These people wanted Prometheus's score to sound more like Alien, wanted Desplat and Shore to do more with the Carter Burwell theme in Twilight, bristled at the lack of musical integrity in the Harry Potter films, disliked that Danny Elfman did not tilt the hat to Marco Beltrami in Hellboy, mildly begrudge Lalo Schifrin for not following-up Michel Legrand's best day, and now even a few diehard fans of the Middle Earth music have taken up the banner of 'offended composer devotees'* due to the sort of slapdash musical tracking and looping that most films have to do at some point.
* This is what I refer to there.

And then there are the other sorts of people. They might have liked the former things, respect their existence. But they're equally happy to see equally talented people offer their own spin on classic material. What stands in favour of this view is that there's such a diverse history of new approaches yielding classic material in and of themselves. (e.g. James Horner's follow-ups to either Jerry Goldsmith's Alien or Star Trek scores.)

But then I was most excited about this film when Peter Weir was a potential directing candidate. Who knows how that would have worked, and he probably would have done too much of his own thing for that to have worked with Jackson supervising, but one thing we can say for sure -- it would be hard to second guess what THAT film's music would have sounded like, even if Howard Shore had been writing it.

You're weir.
d.

Yes, I can. They -- and other less retarded 'story deconstructions' -- are as easily countered as they are constructed. However, I'll not go into that all over again. At least not in this thread. It will simply envelop a discussion. And besides -- the story was less important than the audiovisual/visceral experience of the universe it draws up (just like ALIEN).

I thought she was able to walk/function because of those strong anti-inflammatory and pain-killer injections? No doubt some adrenaline boosters was included as well....

I had a bigger issue with the underwhelming aspect of the overall story not giving me enough reason to care and underused/over edited character/arcs. The visuals were great, but not enough.

Well, like ALIEN before it, PROMETHEUS poses some very 2001-like questions, so the interesting thing about it -- and what appeals to me about it before anything else -- is the way it stages these questions through symbolism in visuals and sound. The literal story (which all the 'de-constructionists' obsess over) isn't that important to me. Nor was it with ALIEN (the 'base story' being people running away from monster in dark corridors). Its effectiveness and value operated on a whole other level -- creating powerful, visceral symbolism through production design, music, acting.

This is one of the reasons why I don't want to engage in yet another de-construction of PROMETHEUS' basic storyline. I could do that, and it is oh, so easy to counter all the 'artificially constructed' plotholes with equally viable 'what ifs', but it moves the focus away from its REAL mission, and so I don't want that.

Sat here at the moment trying to focus on listening to The Hobbit but it seems to be too hard a thing to do.

I am finding myself being easily distracted to other things with there little to draw me back to the music for long passages.

I think Prometheus was, with the danger of sounding a little off topic, too much an orgy of aliens and smooch.

I am listening to "Batman Begins" by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. This is shurely the strongest of the Nolan Batman Trilogy scores. A very good listen provided you are in the appropiate mood.

Just got the "sent-notification" for Bruce Broughtons "O Pioneers!".

Just to be contrary, TDKR is actually my favorite of the three :P

Godzilla - Akira Ifukube

I am enjoying this very much.

There were multiple special edition releases. Here are the bonus tracks available on each.

Special edition bonus disc
No. Title Length
1. "ENCOM, Part I" 3:53
2. "ENCOM, Part II" 2:18
3. "Round One" 1:41
4. "Castor" 2:19
5. "Reflections" 2:42
Total length:
12:53

iTunes bonus tracks
No. Title Length
23. "Father and Son" 3:12
24. "Outlands, Part II" 2:53
Total length:
6:05

Amazon MP3 bonus track
No. Title Length
23. "Sea of Simulation" 2:41
Total length:
2:41

Nokia Ovi bonus track
No. Title Length
23. "Sunrise Prelude" 2:50
Total length:
2:50

Vinyl edition bonus tracks
No. Title Length
23. "Sea of Simulation" 2:42
24. "ENCOM Part 2" 2:18
25. "ENCOM Part 1" 3:53
26. "Round One" 1:41
27. "Castor" 2:19
28. "Reflections" 2:42
29. "Sunrise Prelude" 2:51
Total length:
18:21

-Erik-

The score is fantastic, i am sure when years pass, it will most probably be considered as one of our times' classic scores.

"O Pioneers!" by Bruce Broughton.
What a fine TV score indeed! The Main Theme belongs to the finest things BB has ever written.

Just ordered:
"Lonesome Dove" (Sonic) by Basil Poledouris.
Another great TV western score.

`

Maybe (fear of the "Other" and all that), but not as explicitly as ALIEN, especially with the sexual connotations in the production design, the music etc.