[Closed] Now Playing XLVI

To me.

A very merry unbirthday!

Yes!

...even in GERMAN

Like what? I think we're all emotional creatures, regardless of gender (how we show them and act on them is what generally differs between the sexes I would imagine).

Clearly it makes no difference whether a piece of music was written by a man, a woman or an aardvark, though it does strike me as odd that it's still predominantly male. I can see why classical music is overwhelmingly male given how women have been viewed over the course of history, but are women still afforded less opportunities as men? Is there a great untapped source of female musical talent? And do we need to tap that?

Huzzah! Women should leave composing to the men, and stick to making me sandwiches!

-said Trevor Rabin throwing stones from inside his greenhouse.

I'd mostly and with few exceptions go with Rabin?

How can we really assess the female talent if we don't get, e.g., Rachel Portman to score a project like Gladiator? We won't know anything.

Next year Pinar Toprak is doing a big disaster movie from the writer of Independence Day. Only then we can assess the talent. If women are relegated to Jane Austen adaptations and that sort (Anne Dudley, Debbie Wiseman and Deborah Lurie are getting more diverse assignments, though Lurie got her only "more masculine" project probably only because Elfman agreed to write the theme...), we won't know much. I know a couple of girls who want to get into film scoring.

Also I just googled Toprak. I was pleasantly surprised.

She's married with children

NP : THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR - Bill Conti



For me this doesn't beat Michel Legrand's version, not by a long way, but it's still a bloody good score in it's own right.

Forbidden fruit and a milf? Great, now she's even more attractive.



Playa...



My underlying point was actually that owning a particular type of genitalia need not matter, and it's unfortunate that it appears to be the case. I also think it's a fallacy to state that women are capable of a broader emotional range, especially given what male composers have written throughout history.

What I meant to communicate is that more individual women are, in all probability, capable of a broader emotional range than their individual male counterparts. In about 100 years or so, possibly sooner, what I am trying to say that I can't find the words for, will become the status quo. Women will be taking over the planet. More importantly, qualities that are traditionally associated with femininity - gentleness, nurturing, the giving of affection, physical beauty, so many more, all good things - will increasingly become the dominant qualities of life on planet earth, replacing the "male" qualities of force, taking, physical roughness and ruggedness, the need to control, etc. I'm not talking about genitalia. I'm talking about broad philosophical concepts here. Concepts that both men and women will change the world with. But more of them will be women, because those qualities generally come more naturally and comfortably to them. As good old Captain Jack says, "the 21st century is when everything changes," and that will apply to women in film music as well. So back to the point, there's going to be some bloody great film music created by women in the future. Rivaling any of the best stuff we have up to this point in history. For all we know, one of them is already lurking as a temp worker in Hans Zimmer's studio. Or staring enviously at Conrad Pope as he dances across the spectrum of Hollywood composers, making their music better. And maybe some of them haven't even been born yet. But they are coming.

Then again, I'm probably bloody mad, so don't listen to me

I think women deserve to be elevated a bit higher than men at some point in the future. It's only fair. Historically speaking.

And I think there are a quite a handful of women already in the industry who could write amazing big bombastic music. I mean, Cornish wrote "Island of Lost Souls" 6 years ago already. So of course they can. It's just that stereotypes endlessly prevail in the minds of studio execs. Isn't Rabin still writing sports scores for crying out loud? The girls-can-write-big-music meme just needs to build a little more momentum. I'm really excited to hear that Toprak is doing something big. I didn't even know that. Her "Wind Gods" score is one of the most delightful hidden gems of the last few years.

I find that score really enjoyable, too.

Volker