just a thought....

NP - yes...Gladiator (Zimmer)

Jeron

But yeah I'm sure its in alot of stuff. And I think the use of it in the "The Battle" is appropriate.

--Kyp

I must be the only person on Earth who doesn't hear The Planets in Star Wars. Once again, I hear more Stravinksy than Holst.
Holst wasn't the first to use dissonant chords. Star Wars and Mars sound like to COMPLETELY different things to me, so I see no similarity, other than the crunchy chords.
even then, the rhythm is totally different.

but that's me.

It's from Gustav Holst's THE PLANETS. From STAR WARS, though there could be other examples, "Imperial Attack" and "The Death Star" are two pieces that come to mind which share rhythmic similarities to "Mars" at the beginning of each piece.

If Williams or Goldsmith is influenced by a piece like Mars or O Fortuna, they will compose a piece of music that may share superficial elements, but which are fundamentally different.

Horner and Zimmer and their ilk, on the other hand, will compose a piece of music that may be superficially altered, but is fundamentally the same.

This is the key difference between an "homage" and a "rip-off." In terms of musical integrity, the former makes for a superior score.

Tom Scofield: your turn to rematerialize.

Wedge, re: everything you said above: I basically agree. Although Horner has disappointed me so vastly in recent years, I'd probably rank Zimmer above him. They do have one thing in common: they deal almost entirely in surfaces, as do the majority of directors who choose them -- at least in that sense, they complement each other.

I haven't yet heard a note of GLADIATOR, and probably won't until I see the film (or unless I stumble over a super-cheap CD copy. I'm not sure I'd buy that one blind, however.)

NP: THE OMEGA MAN (nearly the end of it, the first time I've played it, and I'm in love!)

I guess what I'm saying is that after U-571 (Jeron, I'm ashamed of YOU; temp track fiasco) and now Gladiator, my hopes for the new summer film scoring season have been dashed. When a score is released before the film, especially if it's more than a week before, and especially if the score sucks, my hopes for that film (see also The Phantom Menace) are dashed. Let's hope John Travolta's career-ending Battlefield Earth can at least yield a good Elia Cmiral score.

Where's my "fingers crossed to the point of cutting off blood flow" icon?

Where are the COMPOSERS?

1) I never said Gladiator was a good score. I said that it was interesting how Holstzian and Wagnerian it sounded in places.

2) I think it is VERY derivitive of Zimmer's previous material (Backdraft is the primary predecessor of this score).

3) There seem to be only two tracks I listen to at all on this disc...the aforementioned tracks 3 and 13...track 3 BECAUSE of it's Holst Mars resemblence and track 13 for it's Wagnerian references.

4) The other tracks are supremely unremarkable and just don't do anything for me.

There...I am officially on record as giving Gladiator **/***** one star each for tracks 3 and 13.

Anyway, about the "Gladiator" score. The second I started listening to the sampler about a month ago, I knew the score was doomed to pure Zimmerian mediocrity. I had to break down and buy the CD anyway though (it's impulse, I tell ya'). As prior mentioned, there are a couple of good tracks, with The Battle being the best by far. Just seems strange that with all the dramatic sounding track names that ALMOST NOTHING DRAMATIC HAPPENS IN THE MUSIC. It's boring as hell.

Can you imagine...at this time, we could be holding in our hands a new epic score with "Music Composed by Basil Poledouris" written on the front. Why oh why does it have to say "Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard". It was a bad choice from the get-go in my opinion.

I shall buy it saturday.

Dan (UK)

Misleading track titles.....that's a good thread......

And as you see, Rutherford, 90 % of the people on this board likes the Gladiator score.

You are alone.

As for the score, I can definitely hear the influences that Joe is talking about. I don’t have any real problem as I think that they are very appropriate “inspirations” Mars is perfect for the Roman martial spirit and Wagner is perfect for the barbarians, especially if they are Germanic. I will go see this when it opens and judge then whether the score works with the picture for me.

However, I hope I can help clarify what I think Mr. InSanDiego might mean by BLACK RAIN being the more "innovative" score -- we are so used to the Media Ventures sound now, that we forget that when Zimmer hit the big time with RAIN MAN, DRIVING MISS DAISY and BLACK RAIN, he'd been an obscure composer whose own particular sound was rarely known by anybody. The first picture he did to get wide notice, although not huge boxoffice, was A WORLD APART, the very score that referred him to director Barry Levinson.

No one had ever heard a score like RAIN MAN for a drama, nor BLACK RAIN for an action film; that in itself makes it innovative. Zimmer's subsequent DROP ZONE, for instance, however much fun it is, was already just "more of the same" by then; never mind the Mancina/Rabin/etc. knockoffs.

For good or for ill, the BLACK RAIN score was the first step towards changing the SOUND of Hollywood action movies. The Goldsmith/Williams style had predominated until then (and indeed, you see Williams scoring fewer action movies these days). The whole spectrum of younger composers, Silvestri, Howard, Horner, Young etc. looked to the Goldsmith/Williams example. Zimmer came in and redefined that. I remember writing a review of BLACK RAIN and observing "This may well be typical of what we can expect from film scores in the 90s." One record producer told me I was probably right, but I had no IDEA I would be THAT right. Media Ventures wasn't yet a gleam in anyone's eye.

Zimmer appears to be trying to "develop" with scores like THE THIN RED LINE, which wasn't entirely successful I thought, but then we didn't hear all the music he wrote and recorded (I understand there was at least three hours of it, and who knows what the best stuff was.)

By the way, I should also apologize to otten, for upon looking back at my post, I can see where it could be misunderstood to mean something else...sorry about that.

Mr. InSanDiego, I thought THE THIN RED LINE was a decent enough score, and I LOVED the movie, and probably shouldn't comment too much about it because I don't have the album, and don't really REMEMBER most of the music -- hence my use of the phrase "not entirely successful."

Oh yes, SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW -- actually, I REALLY liked that one! I know it's kind of slow, but I liked the texture. I kind of thought that most of it was really Harry Gregson-Williams' work (he DOES share credit), and I tend to think that HGW and John Powell are by far the most talented and original of the Ventures grads. I thought it a more dense and interesting score than, for instance, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS -- THAT'S the one that *I* found horribly dull. Oh well.

otten: BLACK RAIN's a keeper.

[This message has been edited by H Rocco (edited 27 April 2000).]