It's a Wonderful Life Rescored

[John Johnson]

https://www.joblo.com/its-a-wonderful-l ... omination/

[Monterey Jack]

This is why it's more important than ever to build up a good physical media collection.

[Paul MacLean]

What's saddening is that a lot of people will watch this movie and not realize how much the new "score" compromises the film.

Sadder still, some people will say the new score is better than that "old fashioned music".

[Monterey Jack]

Sadder still, some people will say the new score is better than that "old fashioned music".

Here's what Owen Gleiberman had to say about the new movie The Boys In The Boat...

"'The Boys in the Boat' has a musical score, by Alexandre Desplat, that’s thick with traditional cornball valor."

Whenever a critic singles out a score like this today, I know it's gonna be one of the best of the year. It's just sad that the few genuinely "old-school" film scores being written these days always get slagged off like this by critics, even if it's written for a movie that looks like an Oscar-bait drama...from 1981.

[Paul MacLean]

Whenever a critic singles out a score like this today, I know it's gonna be one of the best of the year. It's just sad that the few genuinely "old-school" film scores being written these days always get slagged off like this by critics, even if it's written for a movie that looks like an Oscar-bait drama...from 1981.

Critics tend to pick on scores when they can't articulate what they don't like about a movie.

"Pauline Kael fried me for twenty years until Under Fire." -- Jerry Goldsmith

Gene Siskel savaged Goldsmith's "cornball" score for Night Crossing -- yet praised Mike Oldfield's "ding-dong-ding-dong" music for the evacuation scene in The Killing Fields...

[Monterey Jack]

Critics tend to pick on scores when they can't articulate what they don't like about a movie.

"Pauline Kael fried me for twenty years until Under Fire." -- Jerry Goldsmith

Gene Siskel savaged Goldsmith's "cornball" score for Night Crossing -- yet praised Mike Oldfield's "ding-dong-ding-dong" music for the evacuation scene in The Killing Fields...

"The soundtrack sounds too much like MUSIC...!!!"



Meanwhile the bludgeoning Wall O' Sound "score" to Oppenheimer is almost certain to win an Oscar in a few months.

I remember a review of the Schindler's List soundtrack in Entertainment Weekly magazine thirty years ago that said something to the effect of, "John Williams puts down the baseball bat he usually smacks us around with..."

The idea that JOHN WILLIAMS was accused of assaulting the audience with noise...we didn't know how GOOD we had it back then.

[AndyDursin]

Gleiberman occasionally had some opinions that were "out there". To be fair there were a few critics who would occasionally complain about Williams' music being excessive, typically on Spielberg's "dramatic movies". The only time I felt they had a legit point was AMISTAD where the entire courtroom climax had music going under it. It wasn't the music itself, it was the use of it there that felt unnecessary; Anthony Hopkins was certainly capable enough to carry that without the music spoon-feeding the audience.

I still think it's a great score, I just didn't think the placement of music throughout that scene was needed.