Paul MacLean wrote:How To Train Your Dragon. A terrific, fun adventure, half-fantasy and half-misunderstood animal story, with lots of thrills and genuinely touching moments. Beautifully rendered as well (Roger Deakins was "Visual Consultant"). John Powell's score was also good, though not great (James Horner could have added so much more to the film).

I just read this and I have to disagree with you Paul! A terrific movie AND SCORE.
James Horner could not have done better! ALL and I mean ALL of Horner's scores
to animated movies sound exactly the same, like Star Trek : The Wrath Of Kahn!

Three of our kids have plans tonight. My wife wants us to take my youngest daughter to
see HOP!! I know I am not really going to enjoy this evening!!!!!!!!

Mike Rhonemus wrote:I just read this and I have to disagree with you Paul! A terrific movie AND SCORE.

James Horner could not have done better! ALL and I mean ALL of Horner's scores
to animated movies sound exactly the same, like Star Trek : The Wrath Of Kahn!

But Wrath of Khan is a better score than How to Train Your Dragon!

I liked John Powell's score but didn't think it was great. Too "Zimmer" for me. I'd have preferred something more in the style (and with the technique) of like Krull, The Land Before Time or The Spiderwick Chronicles!

Paul MacLean wrote: I liked John Powell's score but didn't think it was great. Too "Zimmer" for me.

I actually think Powell is the least "Zimmer-esque" composer to graduate from the Media Ventures sausage factory. He's the only one who realizes the importance of counterpoint and melody. I've never heard a Zimmer/Gregson-Williams/Jablonsky score make such intricate use of harps, chimes, and "shimmery" strings as Powell tends to do. Powell almost never settles for that crushing "wall of sound" thing where are you can hear are strings, horns and synths, doubled on top of each other ad nauseum.

Monterey Jack wrote:

Paul MacLean wrote: I liked John Powell's score but didn't think it was great. Too "Zimmer" for me.

I actually think Powell is the least "Zimmer-esque" composer to graduate from the Media Ventures sausage factory. He's the only one who realizes the importance of counterpoint and melody. I've never heard a Zimmer/Gregson-Williams/Jablonsky score make such intricate use of harps, chimes, and "shimmery" strings as Powell tends to do. Powell almost never settles for that crushing "wall of sound" thing where are you can hear are strings, horns and synths, doubled on top of each other ad nauseum.

I couldn't have said it any better, thanks MJ. I like Horner's scores when they are different and
he still has the same theme in most all of them! Yes, Star Trek II is a great score, but everything
he has done has sound just like it and Krull. If Horner would have scored HTTYD, he would
have ruined the all around grandeur of the picture. Just my opinion, but HTTYD is the best
animated movie in many years!!!

Well I'm with Paul. I have always liked Powell the best of the Zimmer clones but I've never liked any of his scores enough to seek out on their own outside of the movies they were written for. FACE/OFF was a solid score, I liked X-MEN 3, and there are others I think he's done a perfectly good job on -- as MJ said he does incorporate a melody in many of his scores. Yet at the same time I get the impression, like all the other Zimmer clones, his scores are written on keyboards and then taken by orchestrators because they still have a "basic" sound to them that doesn't, for me, make me want to listen to them on their own terms.

He's like the best apple out of a mostly rotten bunch in my mind, but when it comes to comparing him to an actual honest-to-God, classically trained film composer whether it's Horner or Williams, his music comes across as transparently simple.

AndyDursin wrote:Yet at the same time I get the impression, like all the other Zimmer clones, his scores are written on keyboards and then taken by orchestrators because they still have a "basic" sound to them that doesn't, for me, make me want to listen to them on their own terms.

Like I said How To Train Your Dragon was good...but I agree has a "composed on a keyboard" feel, as if Powell (like Zimmer) composes by playing directly onto the keyboard. That process always results in music of a more simplistic nature because it is limited to the dexterity of ten fingers, as opposed to a composer using a pencil, which can arrange a complex schematic of notes anywhere on a page at will.

Cues like Williams' "Superfeats", Corigliano's "Hinchi Mushroom Rite" or Horner's "Riding the Fire Mares" could never have been written by playing into a keyboard.

Source Code (2011): 8.5/10

Fascinating sci-fi mindbender boast an excellent performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, stylish visuals, and a downright terrific score by the totally unknown (to me) Chris Bacon, which sounds like a particularly lush effort from Alexandre Desplat or Howard Shore and had me grinning with delight as the opening credits played out (holy crap, WOODWINDS...! ).

From my perspective Shore and (more particularly) Desplat epitomize much of what's wrong with film music today. The last thing we need is a composer who writes like both of them.

Paul MacLean wrote:From my perspective Shore and (more particularly) Desplat epitomize much of what's wrong with film music today.

There is so much wrong with this statement it boggles the mind.

Monterey Jack wrote:

Paul MacLean wrote:From my perspective Shore and (more particularly) Desplat epitomize much of what's wrong with film music today.

There is so much wrong with this statement it boggles the mind.

Well lets see, Shore writes melodically simplistic, often-morose, depressing music, and is at best a marginal dramatist.

Desplat writes music which is surpassingly bland, melodically unengaging and dramatically impotent.

They both have good, solid musical technique...but little talent with which to exploit that technique.

I submit that their appeal is mostly to do with their association with "cool" or "prestige" movies (The Fly, LOTR, The Aviator, Deathly Hallows, The King's Speech, etc.).

Paul you are being too kind.

Since I watched it last night, I can now officially say that Desplat's HARRY POTTER score was an utter disaster. 100 minutes of themeless noise -- and I would chalk that up as everything that's wrong with film music today. To all these film music people who think the guy is the second coming -- would it kill him to write a freaking THEME? Is he even capable of that?

That score was simply pathetic. In fact it was so weak I actually was hoping Nicholas Hooper would come back.

I don't get Desplat's appeal. If I want to listen to orchestral music without a theme I'd listen to new age instrumentals, which frequently have more texture than HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

I just understand what people hear that gets them excited. John Williams to Alexandre Desplat is such a comedown it's hard to even put their names together in the same sentence.

How anyone could listen to Benjamin Button, Lust, Caution, Girl With A Pearl Earring or Cheri and think Desplat is incapable of penning a memorable, melodic theme just astonishes me. I admit his Harry Potter score was a crushing disappointment, but that probably stems more from Warner Bros. insisting he use as little Williams material as possible than anything else.

I admit his Harry Potter score was a crushing disappointment, but that probably stems more from Warner Bros. insisting he use as little Williams material as possible than anything else.

That makes no sense. Why would they do that? They own the publishing rights to Williams' music, it's all "in the family." I thought his whole plan was to re-incorporate some of Williams' themes -- almost none of which appeared in the finished film.

It also doesn't excuse the fact he wrote nothing whatsoever on his own to take their place.

Actually, he gets no excuses. That score sucked.

MARIE: A TRUE STORY (1985) 8/10

Proof that Dino DeLaurentiis would, every once in a while, produce a fine film, MARIE is a film ripe for rediscovery. Sissy Spacek is terrific in this true story (scripted by GHANDI's John Briley from Peter Maas' book) about a single mother who ends up getting her degree, works in the Tennessee state government, and uncovers corruption involving the governor handing out clemency deals to prisoners. Jeff Daniels and Fred (Dalton) Thompson -- playing himself (and launching his career in acting with this performance) -- are both superb in this Roger Donaldson-directed film, deftly shot on location in full 2.35 widescreen, which chronicles the truly harrowing experience Marie went through, blowing the whistle while trying to keep her family -- including her sick young son -- together.

At times the movie seems a bit choppy, as if it was struggling to get the running time down under 2 hours, but it's certainly worth seeing (Morgan Freeman also appears in a role that seems like it was probably reduced in the editing room). Francis Lai's sometimes heavy-handed score would've been fine if it was all orchestral but unlike Goldsmith's use of electronics, Lai often relies on the synths in place of the orchestra, resulting in a dated sound.

This is now available from the Warner Archives. Very recommended.

TOMBSTONE: 8/10

Watched TOMBSTONE last night for the first time all the way through-usually catch it in the middle or right after the OK corral shootout. Got the Vista 2-disc DVD (refuse to get the Blu-Ray because-like their disc of ARMAGEDDON-Disney did not include the longer version on the disc, like Fox did with INDEPENDENCE DAY) and really enjoyed the performances and especially Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, who was robbed of an Oscar nomination for his performance, IMHO.

This has to be director George Cosmatos best work, which isn't saying much when you consider that his two best known films besides this one are COBRA (one of the few films I have walked out on) and LEVIATHAN. Interesting tribute (or ripoff) of/to Leone in the build-up to the OK corral shooting, and perhaps Kurt Russell's best work to date, along with solid work from Sam Elliott, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Stephen Lang (who plays the ultimate bully here-all talk and no action) and even Dana Delany, who is kind of goofy here but so damn gorgeous when she smiles.

Broughton's score is reminiscent of SILVERADO without seeming like a direct copy, and the final third of the film when Wyatt and his men go after the cowboys is the kind of full-throated action music that no one seems to write anymore-a shame.