[Closed] Now Playing - Part XXI

OK, Demetris. I don't like Beowulf.

But remember that Hitman is Zanelli

I agree. Watching the movie so totally helps to appreciate atmosphere and style of this score.

Well you might actually want to save your final judgment after you've seen the movie? Not sure if it's going to change it for you but admittedly ir DOES elevate the movie greatly, works wonders within it and pumps adrenaline hugely. If i was to re-review Beowulf after i've watched the movie, my 3 1/2 would easily be a solid 4 no questions asked

That´s a true shame.


That´s an even bigger shame. You don´t like Back to the Future, The Abyss, or The Mummy returns?

Wow I listened to that like 6 hours later...

NP : UNTIL SEPTEMBER - John Barry


One of Barry's loveliest scores, diverse and full of melody.

NP: SHOOT 'EM UP - Paul Haslinger

Mostly uninspired underscore, probably because all the big, wild, inventive shootouts were accompanied by the rocksongs, with Hasslingers score as filler in between. It can't really captivate me.

Geoff is somebody to look forward to then

I think he wanted to do such a SF project or was friends with the producer.

NP: HITMAN - Geoff Zanelli

Oh man, haha, this is indeed such a shameless ripoff of Powells brilliant Bourne motivs and themes that it's enough to make me go

Yet... when you get past that irritation... I gotta admit that I do like it more then the snooze that was Shoot 'Em Up... Besides, I can't see how this is any less derivative then Steve Jablonsky's ripfest, Transformers (well, okay, at least he ripped several other scores off, instead of focusing on just one composer).

It's all shamelessly unoriginal, and they're all bloody thieves of the talent of their colleagues, but taken that in account... Hitman is enjoyable at times...

Do I go to hell now?

Ah, I'm good then, didn't plan to watch something as satanic as that anytime soon. I'll stick to The Passion of the Christ

Brian Tyler - Partition

Quest for finding a talent of this composer continues. The theme is decent, but still nothing really as good as something John Barry would do, even if it refers him. There are also some Zimmer references too, which aren't too strange to me after some experience with Tyler.

So he is still one of the biggest disappointments I have with the film scoring genre and that *also* regards my opinion whether he's got talent or not. For me, nothing much...

Energetic? Yes.
Arousing? Probably
Neighbor-irritating? - OH YES IT IS
Complex? Yes, it is
Loud? Yes.

With substance? Completely not.
Original? Completely not.
Intelligent? Completely not.
With satisfying resolution? Really, not
Demands much talent to write such stuff? With decent temp-track and good orchestrator? Not.
One of the best scores of the year? Completely not.
Could have been written by a much better composer for whom the same result would be regarded as average? Oh yes.

QED

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. You guys go for the AvsPred 2 broadside, while I slip in under his Golden Compass radar. (Attack on 2 fronts!)



Be careful what you wish for... is complex writing for something other than an action scene really that unimportant? Does it really 'tell you nothing'?



There's plenty of direct themes (and you have a list!), whatever that term means. It's not as though it's Elgar's Enigma Variations, with a hidden theme never revealed directly in the work!
(Seriously, listen to the various themes - how is Mrs Coulter's theme not a description of an alluring but amoral woman? Or the Lyra theme the sound of an innocent child? Or the Iorek-Lyra theme a tender description of a bond between girl and... polar bear? They're all pretty straightforward in what they're describing, and the emotional significance of each.)
I think by direct, you mean they don't appeal to your emotions (yet)?

As to their being so many themes, it's that old genre staple that Erik can no doubt defend much better than I can, whereby characters in a legendary world (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) are defined musically as well as by casting, make-up, etc. There are almost as many themes as characters, and the music tends to be a fast-shifting representation of those ideas. Now Desplat does not tend to write like that - there's a sense of it in The Painted Veil - but for the most part, he'll try to make each piece a meditation on one theme. But that just isn't the way these stories tend to be told musically.

So what he does instead is approach it with a measure of the subtlety for which he's famous. He's not Max Steiner, he's a lot closer to the John Williams of AI or the Star Wars prequels, scoring a film that moves quicker than either of those. When Mrs Coulter talks about how one survives in a world dominated by the Magisterium in 'Sky Ferry', the counterpoint of brass (Magisterium) and violin (Coulter's theme, in a form so arch that's it's hard to recognise it at first) is a demonstration of this personal compromise she goes through - a woman-who-gets-what-she-wants in a world of men who pride themselves on denying the desires of their flesh. And that's just 10-15 seconds of the score...

Say many things, but don't say you can't see why there's so many hidden variations of themes. There are story reasons for that. It's something to be respected, whether it makes for a good listening experience or not.

Perhaps you can answer for me this. What is it that makes Howard Shore's LOTR so much different than this, with all its many hidden motifs and themes and rumbling strings in-between etc? (Concentrate on the first chapter, and try to remember how you felt about the music of it before you saw the film back in December 2001.) About the only difference that comes to mind for me is that Desplat's writing is less linear, and both sound pretty average recording-wise for different reasons?

NP: Alien vs Predator 2 - 3 sample tracks

BTW Demetris - do you know when Kantelinen's Quest for a Heart, or Mongol, will be released?