[Closed] Now Playing XLVII

What everyone has missed though is answering another particular question: where does "Thrain" fit in the The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (SE) set?

Cease your rubber daggers fools!

John Williams - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

It's funny how a recent film score can get you in an interesting mode of revisiting films AND scores connected to a certain theme.

Interstellar made me watch two classics, one space-related (Contact) and one metaphysical masterpiece - The Double Life of Veronique (finally!). This actually led me also to pursue my wish to revisit some Spielberg.

After having a conference paper on Saving Private Ryan, I noticed that Spielberg is a master of what filmmakers call blocking. Basically it's the film set version of staging, but involving (stronger than in the case of theatre) set design and adding camera to the mix. I started to really observe the way the actors move in his films. My birthday (I threw a small nice party on the Saturday after my birthday) was the opportunity to get the massive set called Ultimate Edition of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which I've seen for the first time in AGES), featuring all three editions of the film and many, many other extra features (a special interview with Spielberg, the DVD Making Of documentary... and a making of made in the 1970s). There's some other stuff I haven't explored (storyboards, trailers and stuff like that).

My website for some weird reasons doesn't have Close Encounters reviewed, so I basically informed my co-editors that I'm doing this one this week (I'm almost done with the introduction), but analyzing that score led me to explore some more Williams: E.T. (the complete edition which I own, I know the preference to the re-recording here, but I have this thing that if I really love the score, I want it to have it as complete as I can, partly in case of Williams due to his impeccable sense of structure) and revisit the movie (which ages amazingly, the story is not as saccharine as it is generally seen today, because it starts from quite dark place and by that I don't mean just ET's loneliness, but also Elliott's loneliness, harkening at Spielberg's own biography). Then the original Star Wars.

So... I'll go with the whole trilogy after listening to the first score yesterday (I could say a lot about how the popularity of Star Wars and Indiana Jones made many people forget how dark a composer he's been in the 1970s and how actually rooted in Silver Age he was). Empire Strikes Back is obviously amazing and all has been said about this score. But I'm so glad I got to revisit this series and later I'll do the same with Indiana Jones, I think, just because Williams is so good.

With all the love for John Williams, which is understandable, I think Williams can be severely misunderstood by film score listeners. On this board I probably don't have to explain that. But the lecture in Golden Age scoring techniques that Star Wars and Indy give make people forget Williams' Silver Age roots and that really his genius as a composer comes from combining both. Williams can say whatever he wants about synchronization points (I don't know if he seriously thinks that scoring a picture is purely about timing or he is just simply overly modest, which I know he is from many interviews). What he does is taking the leitmotif technique and actually using it in a Silver Age way, where themes are more connected to the storyline's subtext than scoring the action directly, which he ALSO does amazingly.

There is a major, really major and generally loved Williams score (for a quite maligned Spielberg film) that is so popular, but I've never been really much convinced by it, even if I return to it once a year to check if my opinion about it changed. I didn't, I hasten to add, check out the expansion (now sold out), because I'm not convinced by the original. I'll keep it to myself for now, but feel free to guess. No, it's not Jurassic Park. There I just don't like the album sequence and I guess next time I'll just toy with it by reprogramming the playlist

Yeah, exactly. I've been trying for ages. I actually hated it at my first listen.

I actually hated Conan the Barbarian at my first listen (the Milan release) then the Varese convinced me otherwise. I ended up blaming it purely on Mako's introductory monologue.

As in case of Captain America (yes, I'm not that hateful of that score as the rest of the world seems to be), my favorite bit of it is the piano cue at the end (I also loved the piano cue at the end of the Captain America *film*, I'd say that giving such a low-key resolution to such a film is today a quite brave move, but there seems to be a newish trend to do such resolutions low-key recently, I loved the Let Her Go cue in TASM 2 in film).

Plays like a chill out, new age album but without the wetness.

If I'm making sense?

Dragonslayer Alex North

I understand why this polarises people but I think it's absolutely terrific!

I think it's GREAT!
Maybe they turned the Epic scale to eleven a bit too often (and yeah, the ambient cues don't do anything), but for the rest it's massively (emphasis on massive) entertaining!

I like the main theme, but the score is very irritating in the film. John Barry and sci-fi do not go well together.

I've not decided between a wet piece of toast or a fly swatter.

Don't know if anyone's seen the Red Letter Media review of Disney's The Black Hole recently but Mike had unkind words to say about the film (fair enough) but says it has "one of the worst scores in the history of the world! Extremely repetitive!" I just shook my head.

The Perfect Storm

Yes please

This perfect score. Its complete form is worth the effort in my opinion. Fact.

Peggy Sue Got Married - John Barry

Gorgeous

Just check out Anthony Perkins death. Nothing Disney about that! It isn't a great film but it's also not that bad. I agree with you on the superb casting, production design and effects which were top dollar at the time. John Barry's score to this isn't a favourite of mine though Intrada's release revealed a wealth of excellent material that really elevated it for me personally, I think it's a fantastic sci-fi score that perfectly fits this film. The main title theme I do find wearing as a CD listen and the Overture is obvious studio execs saying we want a "Star Wars" theme, and it is totally out of place ( even if I think it's good ), before Intrada's complete release I had Barry's The Black Hole score very low down on my favourites of his, now I rate it very highly.