[Closed] Now Playing XLIV

Steven wrote
^FICTION.

Cristian wrote
For Greater Glory - James Horner

Great! I can't stop listening to this.

Kevin Scarlet wrote

Fascinating how some people consider it "bland" and "weak." On the other hand, I've been playing the score more or less non-stop since December.

PawelStroinski wrote
I really, really liked Skyfall. I didn't find it generic at all and in fact I found it to be one of the most intelligent action scores written in recent times.

I particularly enjoy the fact that he decided to hint at the Bond sound rather than making it purely a Barry rehash, which I believe was Arnold's basic method to write a Bond score. It's very much a Thomas Newman score, but featuring references to the sound that are subtle, yet noticeable.

I'll give two examples - first, the beginning of the film. The thematic brass hit that starts the film put me more in the 007 world than anything Arnold has written for the series, to be honest. It's a bold reference, saying, yes, this IS a James Bond movie, even without the gunbarrel sequence (which, as they said, couldn't fit into the beginning shot, so they put it at the end of the film). Subtle, bold, noticeable and very telling of what world are we going to enter.

Second big moment (except the song quotation in Komodo Dragon, a very Barry-like track conventionally, too) is the cue New Digs. This is pure Thomas Newman in harmony and melody (possibly recalling scores like, for example, Road to Perdition) and yet very Bondish. How?

Stephen Woolston once commented about Barry's action music structure, noticing how he built his action cues around a 3 + 3 + 2 pattern. It's more simple than it looks here - Barry basically wrote his action cues in the 8/8 meter, rather than 4/4, which may explain why his action music isn't such high on tempo as some action music, especially recently is. An 8/8 piece is simply two times as slow as its 4/4 counterpart. Now, where is the subtle difference? In accents. In 4/4 you have two accents falling at the first and third quarter note (I apologize for not knowing the British terms anymore, I used to but things like semiquavers and all are just too difficult for me to remember ) of the measure (or if you prefer, bar): TA ta TA ta. In 8/8 and that's what Barry used beautiful, it's the first, fourth and seventh note of the measure/bar, having three accents falling like that TAtata TAtata TAta. Barry has based a lot of his action music (up to as long as at least Across the Sea of Time, cf. Subway Ride) on this pattern.

Thomas Newman takes the general Bond approach in the track, using a subtle, yet pronounced of the 8/8 pattern and adding subtle electric guitar to it, while in the string writing retaining his own style. It's these little moments that make the score stand out as being Newman's own and yet a part of the family to me.

Also, one last thing. Christian Clemmensen complained how the Severine theme (the closest thing to a love theme the film got, but if you look at the movie, the closest thing to a Bond girl the film would get, would be actually M, not Severine, who is dispatched as soon as it gets) doesn't appear anywhere except the eponymous track... He didn't properly listen into it - the theme has very nicely pronounced contrapunctual appearance (under the song's melody, that is) in Komodo Dragon.