CMS, that uninvited acronym that has seemed to have shoehorned its way into our film music vocabulary, stands for what the theorist calls contemporary music sensibilities. OK.

What struck me more and more as this awful destructionfest progressed is how equally bad the music by... I don't even care to know who, was. In the brief "sensitive" moments there would be this plastic and insincere electric piano going on softly in the background and in the ultra-silly action sequences guitars would wail away. Comtemporary? If you you say so... in a literal sort of way. Good music? Well if you thought the corny pop stylings underneath a chase scene from any bad 70's TV show from Starsky and Hutch to Charlie Angels was happenin then this is your thing.

The interesting thing is that I had seen another comtemporary action flick on the network a couple of nights before... Air Force One. What a difference a GOOD SCORE makes regardless of the CMS argument. I am not sold on this whole CMS thing anyway. Comtemporary stylings are open to interpretion and can be strikingly literal as they were in Con Air and countless other modern movies or they can be subtly integrated into a more traditional music vocabulary. It doesn't matter which if the music is bad.

The CMS theorist correctly says that CMS is the appropriate score for the film. In that respect Con Air got exactly the score it deserved... pure trash.

I think it's frustrating for guys like Mr. HAL and I to observe how recently emerging film composers (and significant others) don't know how to write film scores--even just decent scores, much less great ones, and don't seem to concern themselves with learning how either.

It's just, "whatever."

All of the great strides made in film music as an art form by Franx Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, and (particularly overall, but especially in regards to implementation) Jerry Goldsmith...are all but forgotten by these--I think I like this way of referring to them--young bloods.

All but forgotten because they never learned.

Some might retort in the most of conventional ways, "Well then, Mr. Smarty Pants, why don't YOU give it a try."

And, "Well," I'd say, "first, my name is Bulldog and I like raw meat...and second, I don't have the capability or the opportunity (at least in the moment...but I don't see that changing) to do so. There's no way that I--lacking a musical education from someone else--would ever get hired to write scores. I can't just walk up and go across the country to Hollywood. It's not feasible; I've gotta pay my bills too. Even though I love to write music, and compose every week, I don't have a trained ear for orchestrating or even envisioning how an orchestrator would assemble a score for me if I was so lucky as to have one to do so. I would be a risk as I am, and I don't have the time or the money to seek an education that would let me follow the dream of a lifetime."

Truly, I WOULD love to trade places with Aaron Collins, just for a day, to see life as he sees it. He's living my--and perhaps all of our's--dream.

I often wondered how my life might be different if I'd moved to Los Angeles when I was young and just getting into music and music appreciation.

But that's just daydreaming. I'm content being a film music critic. I'd love to be a composer's "caddy" or something...but other than that, I don't think I'd be able to...or many of the rest of us.

So let's just stop that way/line of debate right here before it has the chance to get started.

We care because we care--because others care and cared enough to devote their lives to making the art (much) better. For Goldsmith, it must be especially difficult in the wake of so much ignorance.

Film music matters to a genius such as he, and to us because we love the great things about it.

Sometimes it just comes down to the fact that some scores do not entertain some people at all. I was not very impressed with the headache-inducing sound of many of the action cues, but the main theme, even with those wailing guitars, does get the adrenaline rushing when it makes appropriate appearances in the film.

I'm not fond of Rabin's music at all, but this one did serve its purpose. I'll take the much more complex and well-written scores from Maestro Goldsmith anyday.

You can take the music seriously, just don't bash it. Instead, celebrate what you DO like. I think that's a lot of the problems that many of us face when we hear something we don't like (won't name names, but I think they know who they are).

I will honestly admit, there's a lot of mainstream music that I have probably bashed enough, yet over the years I have come to realize that with time, everything starts to sound better than they may seem at first. Maybe not. But if not, then don't listen to it. Just go on right back to listening to your favorite music instead.

I think HAL did this, and I commend him for speaking his mind.

But, speaking of music, it can grow on a person...

...grow stale too, that is.

After all, I'm embarrassed to even name some of the scores that used to be my favorites.

What in Pete's name was I thinking?!

Con Air was composed by Trevor Rabin of Deep Blue Sea and Armageddon. He was a former rock guitarist for Yes. He's using the talents he has in a very good field of music, and he obviously has great appreciation for it or else he wouldn't be doing it. Do you think he went out of his way to compose something that you would call "bad?" because you are acting like he is TRYING to make bad music. I loved the fast-paced addrenaline feeling of all his scores. He's only done work for action/suspence films so we can't judge him on just those three scores. (I dunno if he's done anything else, but those are the only films I know of).

All I have to say to all you "serious" film composer fans is...stop acting like such a F*cking snob. If you want to bash something, go talk into a mirror.

There, I said it.

Hal, I'm not knocking you down for stating your opinion. I'm just responding to it. Plus, why would you force yourself to watch a movie you clearly weren't going to like anyways? And what kind of music did you expect? It IS a Bruckheimer production.

I'm going to find my "mirror."
Mirror Mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest composer of them all?

(Don't answer that or else!)

When a cardboard-character action picture DOES manage to make us worry about its characters -- DANTE'S PEAK comes to mind -- it's a miracle and a half. Jackie Chan's pictures have no weight to them at all, but we like Jackie; on the other hand, we know nothing really awful is going to happen to him (except whatever head-breaking stunt that occurs over the end credit outtakes). And Jackie impresses the hell out of us. But do his pictures have any depth to them? Ixnay.

I thought that, as those Bruckheimer pictures go, CON AIR was relatively smart and interesting -- DIE HARD with extra freaks, on an airplane, yes, but I thought it was smart and fun -- even my MOTHER liked it, for God's sake. None too ambitious, but who wanted it to be? It was more than I expected! And you couldn't DRAG me to see some of the other Bruckheimer "masterpieces," like BAD BOYS or ENEMY OF THE STATE. I know before I walk in what those are going to be like. (Perversely, it was my mother's idea to see CON AIR in the first place.)

As for the Mancina/Rabin score, that's the only one by either composer that I've cared to own so far (except for the various bits either of them have contributed to the various LION KINGS or other MV scores -- and yes, I know that Mancina isn't an MV guy anymore). It had a beat and a personality to it -- and no more depth than the picture did, but THE PICTURE DIDN'T NEED OR WANT ANYTHING ELSE. They fed off each other quite well, I thought. Take ARMAGEDDON, a movie I've repeatedly said I hate: the score by the three or four guys (or eight or nine, who will ever know for sure) was such a pastiche of Zimmer cliches and even Horner's TITANIC that I was even more irritated with the picture than I might have been already. CON AIR, on the other hand, felt relatively honest. And I like the album, though it's not one of my favorites. It would have taken a real genius, a Goldsmith or Williams or Christopher Young, to pull any kind of emotion or subtext out of that picture.

As for those "beautiful-enriching themes and awe-inspiring tunes", if these do begin to fade away from modern film-scoring, I am afraid that my interest may fade away from modern film-scoring, because those "awe-inspiring tunes" are the reason I fell in love with the art in the first place.

I understand your points. I still hate the way the music cheesed up things. I'm not even saying that I would have preferred an all orchestral score. I just contest that the music was BAD, pure and simple. That has been the center of my argument regarding this whole CMS business. Bad music is bad music whether uttered by a full orchestra or a rock ensemble. The question for me is not so much what style as it is what quality.

Heck, we will have Patrick Doyle and George Fenton, who always bring a touch of class to the proceedings.
One of these days, John Debney will get really good. He's pretty good now, as Cutthroat Island and White Fang 2 can attest, but IKWYDLS is argument against. I'm still undecided on End of Days.

Carter Burwell, definitely has a unique sound, and hopefully will be around for a long time coming.

and Elliot Goldenthal. wow. he can be such a huge musical force.
I'm REALLY starting to like Mychael Danna'as music. Of the 3 scores I have, I like all of them: 8mm, Girl Interrupted (with the glass orchestra), and Ride With the Devil.

Mark Olivarez said it all...

Indeed there's no difference between all this Zimmer-Mancina-Rabin-Gregson-Williamson-Gleeny-Smight-etc people. Sometimes I wonder if they aren't all the same person, using different pseudonymes just to make fun upon those who take their pre-fabricated music seriously...

These guys must think to themselves: "Geez! And people pay money for us to write all this crap!! Hehehehehe...."

quote:

---

Originally posted by JJH:
Elliot Goldenthal. wow. he can be such a huge musical force.

---

Modern does not necessarily mean good. It only might.
Change does not necessarily mean better. It only might.
They say "if it ain't broke, why fix it?"
I say only a fool tampers with success.

Forget the "Then why leave?" question, think of the bottom-line: Did it make the film better? Then say why. Or why not.
Either way, just say it.