I haven't seen M:I2... but I can see how Cruise would do better. They usually do the second time around! I'll post my thoughts as soon as I go see it (hopefully tonight).

Jeron

But even still it sounded nothing like Drop Zone :-₫

And the opening title sequence was a disappointment. I prefer the first one though.

Anyhow, the music picks up on the second half of the movie, notably when the motorcycle chase begins.

Overall, I was expecting too much from the movie, but I enjoyed it. Definitely will be watching it for the second time.

Well i'm off to prom, cya all later!

--Kyp

Glad to see you are still around posting, man. Good to see ya again. Haven't seen anyone so free-spirited for awhile (the prom has to be exciting). I really miss that....

Woo fans, you too, there's gonna be some bashing!

Those easily brused better start for the hills.

Zimmer thinks he's striking out with new ground on this one. I'm sorry, but I saw his score as one cliche after another.

Spanish guitar music over the love scenes, gee, how original. And even if it's a romantic cliche, when in the hands of a master, like Rozsa's "Viva D'Amour" cue from The Power, it can produce something you'll love the rest of your life. In Zimmer's case, I couldn't remember it as it was playing. It's so generic, I'm sure I'll hear it over the PA at K-Mart someday (and not be able to recognize it).

Now for the female vocalist--yet another cliche. And badly used in the film too: fuel injecting emotion like romantic longing or concern over the images as if we couldn't understand from the images alone and need it pointed out, or during a fight scene even--like, why were we fighting again? Oh yeah, over the girl.

The choir? It's like playing Carmina Burana at a sock hop--it's not a neat juxtaposition, it's totally incongrous.

As for the rest of the drum machine score--I've wanted for a long time to articulate precisely what I disliked about the Zimmer & cronies style and I think I hit on it while watching. There's real energy that comes from eating right or loving something with a passion and then there is a jacked up tension that poses as energy caused by taking stimulants like a whole pot of coffee, uppers of various kinds, etc. I think this is the difference between golden age and recent scores--the recent scores are on steroids, they artificially pump you up but it's a jittery, unhealthy, un-organic, heroin high or caffeine buzz versus an orgasm from love or the feel-good pride from a job well done.

As for the film, Mission: Implausible, it started out fine enough with actual characters and some fun (hiding in the bathtub) and other neat bits like the boy and girl looking longingly at each other as their cars spin out of control only to be followed a moment later by her hanging from her car door over a precipice. But soon all the fun was gone and the film degenerated into a lot of Matrix-style spins and flips.

Sure, Woo created all this before The Maxtrix, but now it looks like a copy of a copy.The same goes for all Woo's usual trademarks--the heroes walking in slo-mo standing apart from time, the Catholic iconography, the white birds--he's just repeating himself.

But it gets worse than that--it becomes preposterous. No matter how far across the room Cruise starts out at, he always kicks the gun out of the villian's hands. Cruise stomps the ground or kicks at a gun and it launches up from the sand, like a bouncing betty, up to his waist or chest completely throwing out the laws of physics at this point. Now that used to be the charm of Woo, going over the top, forcing a stronger suspension of disbelief in the name of fun (think of how delightful and delirious it was to see Chow Yun-Fat bound from his wheelchair in Once A Thief). Call me jaded--but it now seems tired and cheerless. This film was so predictable that I felt like I was watching a process I was very familiar with unfold in the same way it always has. Lots of people like the action-packed last third, but to me it was one climax after another that went on and on and on and would not end. I usually love John Woo, but here he dropped the ball. And Robert Towne should be shot for so shamelessly cribbing nearly everything from North By Northwest or Notorious, although I must admit I liked the bad guy's house here just as much as I did the one in NBNW.

NP: Taxi Driver (non-Zimmer-ish music by Bernard Herrmann)

[This message has been edited by Lou Goldberg (edited 28 May 2000).]

oh My Gosh...That movie kicked and the score...the score well it was Zimmer back in the days of The Rock with MI 2 mixed in IT WAS SSSSOOOOO COOOOOOOL and I can't wait tell June 13 or June 20 what ever date it comes out.

--Kyp

I think the guitar music in MI2 isn't really music at all! It's a "faux" music, a sign that stands in for real music, a symbol meant to represent real music.

Let me explain. Real music is a sign with a message to communicate, but the subtle difference between "faux" music and real music is this: If a composer of real music wanted to write a piece that communicated qualities of warmth and beauty, he/she would pen a series of notes, that when you listened to them, would produce a feeling and emotion in you when you heard it. If you linked this music to a film image, of say a couple, you could associate the emotions in the music with the image.

With faux music, the music itself doesn't have to produce emotions in you at all. Consider the MI2 guitar music. A spanish guitar plays a few notes in a bland, generic, slightly pretty way and that in itself signals to the audience that this is "romantic" based on what they know and remember of other music that does create romantic emotions (a friend of mine said it reminded him of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire", so not only is it bad, it's cribbed as well).

This faux music isn't real romantic music. It doesn't need to stir your emotions. It just needs to be enough like real romantic music for you to make an intellectual connection.

Real music communicates emotion. Faux music is emotionless sound that points to real music. It's a neon sign flashing "romantic" "romantic". It's a thumbnail sketch meant to represent a whole painting. It's a cigar store indian instead of a real Indian. And that's what the MI2 guitar music is--sounds which symbolize romance rather than music which communicates real romantic emotions.

Hans Zimmer is a talentless bum, a sign painter, a non-composer of non-music (Bam! Biff! Pow!). He and the committee he farms the work out to are de-evolving film music into a 10th generation dub of real music (Wham! Zowie!). I haven't seen Gladiator or heard its score, but I can just imagine that it points at the epic and dramatic without being capable of actually producing epic and dramatic feeling (Klang! Crash! Zonk!). If I could, I'd get a rail and run Zimmer & Co. out of town.

All you kids that think MI2 is special or that Zimmer has talent instead of being the broken down copying machine he really is---I don't know what to tell you. Maybe it's better to be ignorant and happy.

It IS tired and jaded. Is there such a thing as an ORIGINAL action movie anymore? This was disappointing coming from Woo. "Face/Off" was miles better.

Writing/Dialog - Bad
Acting - Bad
Music - Bad
Use of slow-mo - Really Bad

The list goes on. And is it just me, or do you REALLY buy Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt? To me, his portrayal in this film just further cements him as one of the most OVERRATED actors of our time. He brings no credibility to the role. He looks like a scrawny, pip-squeak type of guy. Nobody you'd take seriously. The may as well have cast Leo DiCaprio in the role.

And what was that horrid attempt at a love story? Gag! Was that ever bad.

The ONLY saving grace in this movie was...well, I'll have to think about that some more.

NP: David Newman: "Heathers"

He said--Lou, you don't get it--those cribs from Hitchcock and James Bond, the guitar music, the female vocalist in the score--these are ironic and self-conscious re-workings of old tropes to point out their tiredness used in conjunction with an anti-capitalist take on business greed and the evils of bioengineering and the new surveillance technology. The film isn't meant to be taken seriously on the level of drama--it's post-modernism!

I said--I'm sorry--You can't have it both ways. The audience wants a hero, romance, a meaningful conflict and that's why they go. You say the film pretends to give it to them to get them in the theater so it can lecture them on how old hat that all is or how meaningless it is in the face of modern politics. I don't even believe that's true, but if it is-- you may call it post-modernism. I call it a cowpie.

Perhaps they'd rather rant and rave about how no one makes movies like Kubrick anymore, or how no one composes film scores like Max Steiner anymore. At least as long as Hollywood keeps up the fine work, they'll have something to bitch about until they're 95, if they make it that long. Who knows, with all the bile they're storing up.

It wasn't an answer to world peace, or a contender for best picture--it was just a fun story. Am I pleading evasion? Perhaps. Honestly, I don't care. Films like this aren't made for those who'd rather nitpick over the degradation of entertainment these days. I personally think they'd be better off picking up a set of Dickens, or maybe re-perusing an edition of Tolstoy, rather than wasting their precious breathing hours in the theater watching the "mindless efforts" of John Woo and Tom Cruise, whilst their delicate and discerning ear drums are pummeled with the "repetitive attrocities" of Hans Zimmer....Can't they find anything to be positive about--and if not, can't they just keep it down?

@robin:

Why did I include them...because both offer nothing but visual thrills. They're hollow, mechanical showpieces built upon on shallow templates one could readily equate to those sort of children's drawing books which offer little excercise of creativity or imagination apart from colouring inside the lines...