AndyDursin wrote:I think Sony, to be honest with you, are the ones who are "prejudiced" against the original score because they were the ones who dumped it from the 2004 extended version. That decision is really the one you should be more fired up about Eric, because TT is really just releasing whatever Sony provides to them.
Andy I really think in ordinary circumstances, all of what you say would be dead right. It's just by an uncanny coincidence TT is run by the man who just happens to be the man who was responsible for the replacement score in the first place. It was Nick Redman, Grover Crisp etc. who prevailed upon Sony to come up with the replacement score and in a lot of respects that replacement score has become their baby. I think what troubled me further was all their comments in which they all but assert that if they'd had their druthers they would have done for DVD what they're doing now which is theatrical cut and extended cut with replacement score only. If Nick's comments of explanation were, "We're really sorry for those of you who are used to seeing the film this other way. We would have liked to have accomodated you on this point but that factor was out of our control" but every one of Nick's comments don't even hint at something like this. He keeps stressing the idea that the original score *shouldn't* be part of the extended cut, and that what happened in 2005 was something unfortunate that it was even part of the extended cut, and that somehow what's happening now is the true "win-win" for everyone and I think maybe what this really gets down to is how his spinning of this issue is bothering me. It's really taking the view that a customer like me has an insignificant view that can be easily dismissed from the whole equation. I think probably a little more humility and understanding on his part would have helped me put this matter behind more quickly. This is not the only title on Blu-Ray I've passed on ("Greatest Story Ever Told") but this is the first one I've ever seen the PR spin make it seem like that this absence of something is really doing us all a favor when it isn't.
Only owing to the fact that I have received a windfall that lets me wipe out my credit card bill and leave me with extra cash left over in the balance ledger am I considering something I said emphatically I would not do which is get this Blu-Ray, but the reason for it is based on one consideration only: This is probably the only way I can rip my own CD of the Amfitheatrof score.
We have seen previous TT releases of Fox movies with isolated scores end up with new CD releases (though sometimes up to a year after the fact as we saw with "Fate Is The Hunter") but I have yet to see this happen with any Sony/Columbia release of theirs. No one's talked about a release of "Experiment In Terror" for instance, and given the general contempt that is held for Amfitheatrof's work I can't picture the powers that be interested in doing a CD release. And given the fact that the original LP reissued on CD is not something that fairly represents the score with its added songs, sound FX and strung-together out of sequence cues, I'd probably be better off ripping the score and arranging it in the right order which I can do by hooking my portable DVD player to the computer and using Audacity to create mp3 files which I can then convert back to CD.
I've rewatched the long cut with the original score again this past week and my views on the wrongness of what's been done on this Blu-Ray project remain the same but given that I am interested in hearing the original score in a proper listening setting, I am willing to back off my emphatic no-sale declarations earlier (though once the score is ripped the Blu-Ray would never be played again)
Well my copy arrived today and I have begun the process of ripping Amfitheatrof's score. I've done about ten minutes worth of music so far and it is IMO like discovering once and for all that the negative stigma attached to this score was caused by (1) the title song and (2) the LP album. The underscore for the opening scene of Dundee and Amos Potts inspecting the carnage of the Rostes Ranch massacre is brilliantly done when heard by itself (and seeing it accompany the visuals with no dialogue).
I was watching The Fury with only Williams isolated score playing ... I must say I like to watch the visuals with the music. You really see the skill and talent of the composer.
At some point I'll probably get this release ... it's not in the budget though!
I ended up with 81 minutes of isolated score so I had to trim two minutes of music (repetitive stuff from the Fiesta sequence) in order to get everything to fit on a single CD. Unfortunately the isolated track includes random bits of singing which is okay when its Brock Peters doing "Shall We Gather At The River" but there's a brief ten second moment where I have to hear a drunken James Coburn slurring something indistinguishable that I couldn't cut at all without disrupting the flow. The last 12 minutes is wall to wall music for the final two battles so that ended up as the longest cue overall.
This score needs a proper CD release because it needs to be given a fair assessment at long last.
The pity is that I had to watch a worthless cut of the film while doing this and get a reminder that it was a waste of time to give us the theatrical cut. Narrative wise, the film needs those extra scenes at the beginning (capturing the escaped prisoners) and towards the end (finding the scout's body and finally developing a strategy against the Apache) that it made no sense to think the theatrical cut had any notable value whatsoever.
I ended up receiving also the paperback tie-in which is based on the first draft of the script before Peckinpah was part of the project. The differences are quite extensive showing that Peckinpah did improve some things (the underlying elements of tension between Dundee and Tyreen) but he also was directly responsible for some of the worst things in the final narrative. In the original, the only engagement with the French is at the end with the crossing back into Texas, and instead the focus remains on multiple fights with the Apache. Also, the token female is a white woman previously enslaved by both the Comanche and Apache who is rescued during one of the skirmishes only to get killed later (also something better than the final version).
Peckinpah was clearly trying too much to make Dundee more objectionable and the whole "Captain Ahab" approach to interpreting Dundee is not what the film needed. This film could have been a textured, nuance look of a traditional kind of story but one thing it shouldn't have been was the Wild Bunch in training.
