[Closed] Now Playing XLV

Dykes, Demetris. Those ones are called dykes.

One learns a new thing every day

n..p PHILIP GLASS - fog of war

Absolutely gorgeous and spot-on; the best close-alike score by Elfman would be his excellent Standard Operating Procedure

NP: THE LONG GOODBYE (John Williams)

One theme, repeated in various guises. It's a great, sultry jazz theme, but I'm glad there aren't any MORE versions, to put it that way.

And following on from Eyquem's Copperhead, I'm wallowing in a bit of nostalgia:

NP: Fingerbobs - Michael Cole & Michael Jessett

I used to love this as a child and my fondness for the songs and incidental music - which was part-and-parcel of the programme - is still strong.

Link to clips: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fingerbobs/dp/B … p;sr=301-1

Link to YouTube and an episode of Fingerbobs: http://youtu.be/mU32lw4WXZw

And the music of Man of Steel is just washed away!

So do I. Special thanks to Timmer for providing me with two belly laughs last night in this thread. Laughter has been all too rare for me just lately.

Man of Steel Hans Zimmer

I'm quite enjoying it. (Though I've managed to avoid all the hype because, well...)

Man of Steel

It's not as bad as I had feared based on the stuff we've been fed over the last few weeks, but it is rather bad. The piano theme is quite nice in a plinky-plonky kind of way, and I like the fact that it pays no dues to past Superman music (which would have been a big mistake), but it does feel like self-parody at times and it's relentlessly humourless and free of any real cheer. I assume this must come from the film, but surely there must have been a way to avoid it being so blandly monotonous.

The synthetic sound is again so very, very cheap-sounding - it's frequently hard to tell there are any live instruments at all. Even the much-vaunted "sixteen drummers" sound quite synthetic at times. The last track is the obvious one to grab on to, but even that is harmed by the cheap sound (the equivalent cue in the brilliant Inception sounds like a million dollars, this one sounds like $0.99). Zimmer's worst album? No, probably not, even if you exclude the terrible ones with his name on that he probably didn't really work on. But his worst album from a truly major film? Probably.

What a disappointment.

Are you listening to the spotify version or one of the fake upconverted rips floating around on the web? I wouldn't assume that the real sound quality is representative...I can't imagine that the original album really sounds that bad based on all the positive comments about the score and its emotional impact in reviews of the film...I really hope I'm not wrong....

While they share a significant amount of material, I feel like The Hobbit and presumably its sequels are a separate work spiritually, they have a whole different feel and mood, and the original trilogy was written with nothing but itself in mind. So I'd only listen to the original trilogy. Besides, I think anything more than 11-12 hours would be stretching it...as you said, doing it at all would be a stretch...

On a related note, has anyone ever noticed how some of Shore's racing string passages sound somewhat reminiscent of Hovhaness? Particularly the build-up to the big statement of the Gondor theme in "The Lighting of the Beacons" just suddenly reminded me a lot of some of the pieces on Mysterious Mountain / And God Created Great Whales...not sure what particular piece on the latter though...it was just a weird sudden connection my brain made...especially interesting considering both what Shore wrote and what Hovhaness wrote are sort of about mountains and the vastness of nature...

Man of Steel - Hans Zimmer

Coming from a classical background, I'm obviously not the target audience for this but couldn't they have found a way to make it sound less cheap? Why hire a large orchestra if you're going to make it sound this tinny and fake? The music itself is wallpaper. It serves to cover a certain frequency in the film but makes no other impression and there's practically nothing that makes it stand out from any of the other RC blockbuster scores.

There is indeed whale song. I happen to love that...I wish there was more classical music that was interspersed with beautiful natural sounds. But as I usually don't like dialogue and sound effects mixed in with my music, I can certainly see how it would be uncomfortable.

I believe Thor said it better than anyone eles some month earlier: Hans Zimmer just isn't a symphonic composer. He never really made that transition from Pop to Classical, the way other film composers did. There is nothing wrong about that, since composers with a "pop-musical" approach have always been part of the scene and have written beautiful scores. The comparison with John Williams leads astray. Zimmer much better compares to Vangelis, Tangerine Dream or even Giorgio Moroder.

What is the problem is, that Zimmer has become so stereotypical over the years and now he is being typecast again and again. To some degree the same happened to Williams after "Star Wars".

My question is, could Zimmer free himself from this viscious circle? Could Zimmer have delivered something unexpected for "Man of Steel", contradicting the expectations of the producers, without getting fired?

Volker

Yes I have. Very nice eye candy. And it obviously a film made with 3D in mind (or at least the trailer).

Apparently, there have been a few liberties taken with the story (e.g., so many elves, and Legolas?) but all the films have taken liberties with the story.

But the film is still 6 months away!