Michael,
Congrats on joining the 1000th post club! If I had something to give away I would do so.

I just listened to the score CD today.

For a CD that clocks in at 77 minutes (the DCC Raiders was under this length), I find very little to sink my teeth into. There are heavy sprinkles of nostalgia and a couple of cool new musical ideas, but I find this album a very difficult and arduous listen, devoid of the excitement that the first three scores provided, musically.

Also pay attention - are we really listening to REVENGE OF THE SITH outtakes at times?

I don't know guys. I miss Williams serial writing of yester-year.

One other thing to note about the score. Williams DOES deviate from just a straight finish to the ubiquitous END TITLE finish in the last cue, FINALE. I give him credit for at least trying something different.

For me, this had to live up to the expectations of the first three scores. Maybe I will give it another listen tomorrow.

That's hugely disappointing.

And also somehow very unsurprising.

Edmund Kattak wrote:I don't know guys. I miss Williams serial writing of yester-year.

As do I. Truthfully there are some excellent portions in SITH, but I feel THE PHANTOM MENACE was the last TRULY "great" Williams score for me anyway. His Potter scores are all exceptional but TPM was the last Williams "masterwork" for me personally.

What is really disappointing yet understandable is how you say this new score is "arduous." I felt that way about WAR OF THE WORLDS, which was a downright brittle score and had almost nothing thematic to grasp onto at all. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA is another score I didn't care for, and MUNICH had a few nice passages but generally was inaccessible outside of the source and thoroughly overlong as an album.

I'll still take "modern John" over everything else I hear these days, but I agree with you in general that we're moving away from the "golden years" it seems.

John Williams in a wheelchair at a 100 years old will still be better than most of what's out there today, by far.

I definitely agree with both Edmund and Andy on this subject!

AndyDursin wrote: As do I. Truthfully there are some excellent portions in SITH, but I feel THE PHANTOM MENACE was the last TRULY "great" Williams score for me anyway. His Potter scores are all exceptional but TPM was the last Williams "masterwork" for me personally.

I totally agree that PHANTOM MENACE is a Williams classic -- for pure listening it is actually my favorite of all the Star Wars scores. That said, I consider the first HARRY POTTER score to be among John Williams' "masterworks". I felt he was expanding on some of the style heard in HOOK and HOME ALONE as well as the darker passages of the INDIANA JONES scores. I do admit that the HP CD has some dry stretches which ought to have been swapped for some of the fine cues which are only heard in the film, but it contains some of Williams' very finest music. "Hedwig's Theme" is possibly my favorite Williams piece ever.

CHAMBER OF SECRETS and PRISONER OF AZAKABAN also contain some of my favorite Williams cues, although COS partly reuses cues from the first film, and the POA has some goofy moments and the CD is a little heavy on the avant garde cues.

I just finished listening to the Indy IV score also. I'm not blown out of the water and I guess I'm with Ed that it is not in the league of the earlier scores, especially on the thematic side. The new material is okay but it's nothing special and there are liberal doses of Marion's theme at the end...in other words, very well put together but no surprises.

Still it's more than serviceable and even "B" grade Williams at this point is preferrable to everything else out there. Hopefully I'll get a stronger read on it when I see the film, but it does not strike me as a classic. At first listen it is not on the level with REVENGE OF THE SITH, I would say.

Speaking of that, I still can't believe we haven't seen any major reviews for it by this point. All the prior STAR WARS and INDY films were screened for critics WELL in advance -- I recall Siskel & Ebert reviewing them a week ahead of time -- but that definitely does not seem to be the case here.

AndyDursin wrote: Speaking of that, I still can't believe we haven't seen any major reviews for it by this point. All the prior STAR WARS and INDY films were screened for critics WELL in advance -- I recall Siskel & Ebert reviewing them a week ahead of time -- but that definitely does not seem to be the case here.

That tells me all I need to know.

We'll also find out as the movie is screening at Cannes tomorrow. I'm sure they won't be sleeping too much tonight!

AndyDursin wrote:We'll also find out as the movie is screening at Cannes tomorrow. I'm sure they won't be sleeping too much tonight!

Indeed.

AndyDursin wrote:I just finished listening to the Indy IV score also. I'm not blown out of the water and I guess I'm with Ed that it is not in the league of the earlier scores, especially on the thematic side. The new material is okay but it's nothing special and there are liberal doses of Marion's theme at the end...in other words, very well put together but no surprises.

Still it's more than serviceable and even "B" grade Williams at this point is preferrable to everything else out there. Hopefully I'll get a stronger read on it when I see the film, but it does not strike me as a classic. At first listen it is not on the level with REVENGE OF THE SITH, I would say.

Speaking of that, I still can't believe we haven't seen any major reviews for it by this point. All the prior STAR WARS and INDY films were screened for critics WELL in advance -- I recall Siskel & Ebert reviewing them a week ahead of time -- but that definitely does not seem to be the case here.

I would clarify and say that the darker parts reminded me of outtakes of REVENGE OF THE SITH. I have to say that I liked the REVENGE OF THE SITH score much better because it seemd to have a better musical flow than the Crystal Skull album.

There are many Williams scores within the last ten or so years that are interesting. With that said, I still gravitate towards Williams serial writing style of the late 70's and early 80's.

If you listen to the scores for SUPERMAN, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, et. al., apart from the films, it is simply brilliant the way the music almost teslls the story on its own. Also, the music has a natural and ingenious flow that compels you listen in its entirety as if it were one complete work - almost a complete symphony. Very rarely do you get a musical score that functions like this any more.

It's sad. I wish someone would ask Williams some questions now concerning how film scoring has changed for him - in that how much has his style changed to meet the demands of the modern produced film versus his own natural evolution as a composer. What relationship (if any) and to what degree does he feel that this has impacted his approach and execution.

One could argue that the STAR WARS prequels are examples of an evolution of film-making to the degree that Williams didn't even need to write and record as much music for Episodes II and III (It doesn't even sound like he recorded new versions of the Main Titles for each picture, as he did for EMPIRE and RETURN.), as Lucas probably felt it expedient to cut and paste from the previous PHANTOM MENACE for use in CLONES and SITH. I don't know that much about what happened on the back end, but it seems to me the only rational explanation for why this practice was employed.

Even Goldsmith once commented in an interview from within the past ten years about how he rarely recorded any end title music any more - that it would essentially be "patch-jobs" from exisitng cues because there was this perception (from producers maybe?) that nobody cared about the end credits of a movie any more.

If this is the current mindset in filmmaking, then it is no shock to me that there is nobody in the current crop of film composers that can live up to the musical artistry of a Williams or Goldsmith. Or is it something deeper. Could it be that the older schools of thought concerning classically-trained composers are no longer in vogue? I hear a great deal of atonality and Mickey-Mousing in much of the scoring these days. Are producers so misled by the perceptions that audiences essentially have ADD and need sequences just to be loud with music, without any concept of what the music should do or how the music should work?

Also, not to go on a complete rant here, but I'm getting really tired of these "kids" on FSM and other boards ranting and raving about how "great" some of these horrible scores by journeymen composers are. It's hard and unfair to criticize (and simultaneously take seriously) many of these efforts, but many of them could not approach the level of thought and ingenuity that went into the great scores of yester-year that we like.

Any way, enough. This is am Indiana Jones thread, not a general rant thread.

I wonder if this movie is really as bad as the rumors keep inferring. I wonder if the "E.T.-like" ending that I keep hearing about is true.

Hmmm.

The one thing I have felt about Williams and this particular score for INDIANA JONES is -- hasn't he already "said" everything that he could have with this series?

The Indy movies are admitted Saturday matinee cliffhangers. They are fun, escapist entertainments and while the STAR WARS movies are obviously also, the latter have a mythological element and involved story line that the Indy movies simply don't have.

These are cliffhanger adventures -- outside of the main character this isn't a series with a great deal of recurring mythology or side characters or a wide, all-encompassing story that it's telling. I'm not putting RAIDERS and the other series films down, just saying they don't exist -- at least to me -- on other levels aside from being sheer, fabulous popcorn-munching adventure flicks. With the STAR WARS films there's more dramatic involvement in seeing the arc of the story being told, which to me, afforded Williams a wider canvas of emotions to play his music on than -- COMPARATIVELY speaking -- the Indiana Jones movies usually provide (especially Temple of Doom).

With that in mind, Williams has already -- brilliantly -- scored three films in this series. What ELSE could he possibly do here that would be that much more innovative or fresh or different? It's all been said and done by now.

Also, not to go on a complete rant here, but I'm getting really tired of these "kids" on FSM and other boards ranting and raving about how "great" some of these horrible scores by journeymen composers are. It's hard and unfair to criticize (and simultaneously take seriously) many of these efforts, but many of them could not approach the level of thought and ingenuity that went into the great scores of yester-year that we like.

Do you think anyone in 20 years will be eagerly awaiting a 3000 copy limited edition box set of SUPERMAN RETURNS? Nah, didn't think so...

I could not agree with you more. All I know is that if film music, as it stands today, was in the state that it was in when Lukas was looking to start FSM in 1990, there wouldn't have been any FSM. The kinds of scores that inspired Lukas to start the mag, and which inspired me to help him at the beginning all those years ago, just aren't being written these days -- or in nearly the numbers they once were.

Eric W. wrote:

AndyDursin wrote: Speaking of that, I still can't believe we haven't seen any major reviews for it by this point. All the prior STAR WARS and INDY films were screened for critics WELL in advance -- I recall Siskel & Ebert reviewing them a week ahead of time -- but that definitely does not seem to be the case here.

That tells me all I need to know.

You know, it's kind of sad that people now automatically assume secrecy = suckitude. Personally, I LOVE that Spielberg has managed to keep the film almost completely under wraps until now. Remember how awesome it was to see Jurassic Park "fresh" 15 years ago, and seeing those trend-setting CGI dinos for the first time on the big screen without getting spoiled for all the "good bits" in countless trailers, TV spots, and general internet chatter? I actually kind of miss the "good old days" when the ONLY way to get pre-release information about a genre film was to buy one of those glossy tie-in magazines or read articles in Starlog or simply hope to catch a lone trailer or TV spot (back in the days when there weren't 7 trailers and 50 different TV spots starting a good eight months before a movie's release). What plot surprises are left for The Dark Knight at this point? I'm sure I'll like the film (caveats about the running time aside), but how cool would it have been to have NO idea what Heath Ledger's Joker makeup looked like until opening day? Instead, we got the "Full Monty" back in December, when the trailer was released with I Am Legend. Same thing with Peter Jackson's King Kong. Pretty much every action sequence was heavilly plundered for the advertising campaign. I'm more than willing to give Spielberg/Ford/Lucas the benefit of the doubt on this. If we'd gotten trailers for the film beginning late last year, people would be complaining that they've already seen the movie! Come Wednesday, and we'll start seeing reviews trickle into Rotten Tomatoes. Don;t open your presents until Christmas morning, people.

Edmund Kattak wrote:Even Goldsmith once commented in an interview from within the past ten years about how he rarely recorded any end title music any more - that it would essentially be "patch-jobs" from exisitng cues because there was this perception (from producers maybe?) that nobody cared about the end credits of a movie any more.

I find it interesting that John Williams, who used to write self-contained end titles, now creates end titles by editing together his "concert" versions of the primary themes. My suspicion is that this has more to do with his not receiving "locked" reels / knowing how long the actual end credits are going to run. I know it is a lot easier and cheaper to make last minute editorial changes since digital editing came along, and this has made it harder on composers.

Also, not to go on a complete rant here, but I'm getting really tired of these "kids" on FSM and other boards ranting and raving about how "great" some of these horrible scores by journeymen composers are. It's hard and unfair to criticize (and simultaneously take seriously) many of these efforts, but many of them could not approach the level of thought and ingenuity that went into the great scores of yester-year that we like.

There's an interesting thread on FSM right now in which people are arguing this...

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/p ... &archive=0