Joe

Anyway, as Joe said, I have been really busy lately. I went on a business trip that was scheduled to last a week that stretched out to three weeks. I am back now and have recently had a very fast cable modem installed so my E-mail has changed. I will be emailing everyone in the next few days with my new address. Pietari my E-mail address at work is still good, I haven't forgot about you buddy I will be sending your CDs soon.

Take care guys and farewell to everyone else at moviemusic,
Audacity

"...the same reason a lot of the original people have left..."

A lot of the original people have left?

Was this because of a problem that I overlooked and never addressed? Or is it something I couldn't have helped and the original people have just decided to not like?

If this is something I overlooked, I apologize and will be back on track in a moment's notice. If everyone left for another reason, I feel very insulted, as I've spent a whole year trying to make this place an awesome site for YOU GUYS, the original people. Not a good feeling! I don't get it, because a lot of you have been in close communication with me throughout the year and I never noticed anything other than the complaint that there are too many people in the community (which shouldn't be a complaint - you can never get enough people to truly appreciate real movie music!).

Please, explain, if any original folks are still out there. I think I deserve a little be of an explanation, especially if I can help.

Sir, it is NOTHING related to the work and effort you have put into the website, in fact I think Aaron makes the comment only in reference to the forum and it is something that just can not be helped.

You can expect e-mail from a few of us I have no doubt, but I can asure you my personal commitment to the site in general will never die.

Dan (UK)

Don't worry about the ol' folks. Most still lurk around...but like Dan indicated, perhaps the biggest reason for most old members leaving is the messageboard/forum, which is something you can't possibly control without bordering on censorship. It's really up to members to handle the circumstance on their own. Aaron's taking the whole situation into his own hands, and I applaud him for speaking his mind but I also regret that another member won't be visiting here.

Why?

This forum is what you make of it. Sure, I will be around here and there to censor/move/edit certain posts or remove members if the forum isn't moving along the general path I'd like it to go (open, fun, thoughtful, meaningful discussion without a bunch of snide attitude and spiteful flame wars). So far, it seems like I've been hit with complaints myself for having even that much censorship, which is next to none.

But back to the point. This forum is what you make of it. This forum is not going to fulfill any wishes if people who want it a certain way don't contribute towards reaching the goal.

My own ideas for the forum have always been the same. Make this place one of the friendliest forums around with great discussions. This doesn't mean everyone agrees with everyone about everything. This doesn't mean this place is a happy love-fest year 'round. It means this place is full of bright, talented, passionate people who like to actively and purposefully interact with one another to further enhance their own personal experiences within this hobby of listening to movie music. If anyone doesn't want to participate here along those lines, they are free to come and go.

When I hear some say people are leaving because of the forum, it makes NO SENSE to me, because this place is very close to what I've always envisioned it. There's no other place out there like it! Where are people going to go when they leave here?

Those are some of my thoughts. No offense to anyone at all! For those who've left, come on back!

PeterK

I'm not sure what makes a person one of the "originals", but I do know that each one of you have an original personality. I do miss many of the people who went on to other things years ago 'til recently, and their presence is still missed. But with all of you here, you are contributing greatly to this board- not because you are filling in old spots, but because you are making brand new ones.

PeterK

this really has nothing to do with you and you shouldn't feel insulted at all.
It's just that the place has changed a bit since last year. I understand what some of our (for lack of a better term) older buddies are saying.

I continue to visit this place because I will not be bullied out by some mindless, always wanna fight imature babies. I just don't read their posts.

The vast majority of people on this site are great guys. They have a lot of knowledge and I learn from them all the time. It's just the one or two who can really get to you, but as I said, I just tune them out they are really not worth my time or effort. Perhaps they were abused as children or something. Anyway, since this is about music, let me see...most of us are like a great action score with lots of quirky and funny side notes. Just sometimes, there is this dark, lurking theme that never really makes sense and always shows up in times of great listening. Just skip those ones. They belong in the horror scores.
I will miss Audacity very much as I miss the other people who have unfortunately left. I am saddened by this to no end... but what can you do...
Scott

NP: Mozart

Just as on April 12, 1999, there still exists lively interaction and discussion of movie music. That hasn't changed!

If someone might suggest that because there are more people now there is more chance for bullyish behavior, that's silly, because even on the old MovieTunes message board I created, there were a few people I can remember being very pesky, and that crowd was pretty small.

Just some more thoughts. Maybe people are leaving simply because it's time for them to move on. That time always comes for everyone, and it's the only reason.

PeterK

(What is going on with this 'smilie' thing anyway... This is the third time this has happened. I select the 'wink' and I get the 'thumb's down').

O.K. that one worked....

PeterK,

I don't quite understand your moving on bid. Heck, we don't work or live together. We just visit and talk.

Yet, the admosphere of the message board has changed, whether you have noticed it or not, some of us have.

Lou,

you are the prime example of what I was trying to say. Instead of just trying to understand you make it worse. I hope you are not a shrink, because most of your patience would jump.

I mean really, do you really think you helped the situation any? Over-sensitive whimps. Buddy, none of us who have seen the changes are whimps and getting down and dirty with you or anyone else is not my style (anyway, due to the fact that I practice martial arts I would be on the shorter end of the stick for kicking you around a bit).

You see PeterK? This is just stupid. I am going home to my nephs and nieces, they seem to have more sense than some people here. Goshwhere do these people come from.

Oh and Lou, it seems to me you have more growing up to do than Audacity.
Scott

I will try to be reasonable and fair. First off, I have formed countless relationships on this board. I changed my political party because of a GREAT MAN's words' on this board. I have no "beef" with any new folks, because half of them are my friends also.

Here is an observation. Someone makes a very, very odd and off the wall, post. Usually, you will get that same crowd from FSM(I didn't want to say that), and you will have conversations that half of us other people have no idea what it is about.

Also, we have a few people on this board, that are, very opinionated! They will continuosly shoot down a composer or an idea if they don't like or agree with it.

They can however, not like it and post the negatives of the score, but that's not what is happening.

Aaron(Audacity), is a good friend, and has a very good ear(I mean if JNH is your fav. composer, you have to!). He also is very intelligent about music. If you didn't know, he is a very mean tenor sax player.

This is just my opinion, and I hope I shed a little more light on the subject.

Thanks,
Aaron Collins

This goes back to my previous point. This message board is what people make of it.

I asked a question as to why people were leaving. I really never got a clear answer (to me, "the atmosphere has changed" really doesn't say anything to me, because the primary atmosphere of movie music discussion still dominates this forum, unlike most other forums) as to why people are leaving, until Lou decided to call it what he thinks it is. What he had to say was an observation that helped me understand why folks would leave a place that had healthy discussion about what we like. Lou could have used other words to descibe people, but anyway around it, it seems that the name would be considered negative and, no matter how nice it was said, someone wouldn't like it.

Scott, I have to be honest here, but don't you think saying something like "it seems to me you have a lot of growing up to do" really doesn't help the atmosphere you are trying to advocate? I leave it for you to decide, I am just asking.

Now, if people leave this message board because of this topic, it will be pretty clear to me now why people leave: They don't like to be called names. This is the only conclusion I've made so far.

Ok, so name-calling happens. It's not the dominant trait in the MovieMusic.com forum, I am happy to say. It comes up every once in a while, which is admirable, considering the flame wars that erupt every single day on nearly all the other message boards regarding movie music.

I hate to let everyone know this, but once, the web site nears completion of the soundtrack store and imminent audio show, I have a HUGE database of names I will be emailing to announce this site. This means more people will becoming this way. Many of them will be nice and happy to find the place, others may just be name-callers.

As long as movie music discussion marches on, and continues to be the first order of the message boards, I can hardly be displeased!

Please, those who've left, or those who are thinking of leaving, now's the best time to come back and keep this place great!

Sincerely,

PeterK

Really, I don't understand what the all fuss is about! So, OK, maybe every once awhile the repartee turns acrimonious but, compared to what can be read on other boards, it pales in comparison. I can only conclude that some individuals are simply unaccustomed to having their opinions put into question. Blame youthful exuberance. The growing pangs of individuality and personal taste are not necessarily pretty. Don't forget, I was your age once too:

I can recall a particularly uncomfortable scene from a day long past when I encountered an unforgiving fellow who, in the midst of our discussion on the comparative merits of Mahler and Ives (a discussion, I might point out, was way out of my league but, blinded both by over-confidence and the fear of appearing ignorant, persisted), he summarily repudiated my judgement based on a simple grammatical error: I used the word 'especially'. Well, it took some time to get over the humiliation of it all, particularly since he was right...the word 'especially' does not exist in the English language except as a colloquialism. So, what did I learn from the experience: that even disagreable souls like that fellow long ago can teach me something. I haven't uttered the word once since then...

As for the 'name-calling...for the most part, it's intended as playful and really shouldn't be taken to heart. By my quoting Dr. Lizardo's famous line: "Laugh while you can Monkey Boy", do you really think I mean ill intent. Seriously, who's making fun of whom here? You, the unfortunate recipient of my ribbing, or myself, who would willingly have himself incarnated as Dr. Lizardo!?!

Context folks, it's all about context.

And, to conclude, I'll quote an old saying that's very apropo: "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me"...

NP: Mario Nascimbene Anthology

[This message has been edited by SPOR2 (edited 09 June 2000).]

guilty as charged.

Lou,

I apologize.

Everyone,

if I have offended you:Sorry.

PeterK,

you are right. I hope you can forgive me for letting you down.

I am sitting in the corner as we speak,please let me know when I can come back.

Scott

So, get outta the corner and vote in the newest MovieMusic.com Poll!

PeterK

To begin with, I've done very little name calling here. Only recently on the MI2 post did I decide to inject some of my iracible personality into things, never before that.
I'd just had enough of the Horner and Zimmer worship and snapped. I listen to all kinds of music and a great number of composers and just think there are better altar and shrines. OK, that's my opinion. When I attacked not just the composer but the followers here on the board I got slammed. I didn't want to hurt anybody, just shake them up. I got replies that made me feel that people's toes are too easily bruised, that they've been brought up spoiled, that nobody has ever been unpolite to them or told them they were full of it. When I learned from this topic that there were "deserters" as well, I thought, well people are free to come and go, do as they please. I also thought that people were leaving because they found the atmosphere charged with people who might disagree with them or be stupid or whatever and to leave just for these reasons sounded absurd, even cowardly.

I understand it though. If I walked into a party and everyone there started being a jerk and called me names and told me I was an idiot, I'd probably walk. I wouldn't even fight. Why bother. They're jerks. Best to leave. On the other hand, if the food was good and no one was going to physically harm me and I wanted to be there to hang out with one or two people I like, then damn it if I'm going to let these other guys bully me out.

I'm a human being, cinema has humanized me even moreso, I'm sensitive and I've been hurt and rejected. But to prevail, I believe you've got to try to get over it.

Three things happen on this board. People offer up information to each other---such and such is on this label, is out of print, was never issued or bootlegged, etc. People help other people acquire music they're looking for. And, lastly, people give their opinions about music, composers, films, etc.

When it comes to the last, the opinions, you must understand that these are opinions about art and that art is the barometer of culture and culture has a profound effect on how people think, believe, behave, and live with one another. Culture takes on political overtones.

When Bunuel and Dali made their first films, people actually rioted in the theaters! They busted up chairs, tore the screen and decor. Why? Because they saw this art as a threat to their way of life, their self-concepts, their hopes and ideas about what human society is. When George Antheil first performed his modern music, he carried a gun in his jacket on stage to the piano in case he needed to protect himself. People rioted at his concerts. Art is serious business. People fight over it. The Nazis had their own vision of culture, the way things were supposed to be, who man was supposed to be and they had ideas about what kinds of art represented their cultural views. So, they attacked everything they thought went against the world they were trying to create--they burned books, banned paintings, controlled the cinema, subdued peoples. We in turn had our own opposing vision and culture and we went to war--bombs, tanks, men, mucho violence--to stop the dominance of the Nazi cultural ideals. And that's no small theater riot--12 million dead! Billions in manhours and materials thrown away.

Art is philosophy in stone, it is a collective dream of people, their wishes, their aspirations and views of themselves and it is not to be taken lightly. And unfortunately, it sometimes takes more than just opposing ideas to come to terms with opposing cultural aims. I'm not against the racist, I'm against what he thinks, the idea is the disease not the man, the racist is still a person of humanity who might be turned another way. But when the racist goes to lynch me--I've got to wipe out the person carrying the disease. At that point it's him or me.

Now to map all this onto some poor guy who likes Hans Zimmer when I don't may seem absurd, but the principle is the same in miniature. I've attacked the music, the composer, never the followers until most recently. But this is art and Zimmer is watering it down for me, just one element in an overall trend of dumbing and numbing the whole culture and I don't like it.

Of course the best way is to argue it. In logic, name calling is called an ad hominim arguement--attacking the man instead of the idea--and it's considered faulty logic. I realize I've been overheating lately. But art is something people are going to overheat about, it's important enough that they should overheat about it. The deserters can't expect everyone to be civil and polite about it at all times. It gets personal, political, it touches one's deepest intuitive source of what's right, correct, just.
So, Audacity, where's your audacity? Scott and Lancelot and Otten got on my case, they didn't shirk, they even threatened to kick my ass with kung fu! These pacifists are willing to fight for their cultural belief in PC (ironic, huh?). Get convictions, build callouses, be scrappy. Maybe it's good you deserters left. If you can't stand the heat, leave the kitchen.

And Scott--no need to apologize to either me or PeterK. Please don't do it again. After all, you could be right, maybe I am a 13 year old jerk who needs to grow up, who needs to be told this, and if you don't say so, who else around here has the guts to.

how should I respond? If you are a 13 year old kid, I shouldn't be talking to you. If you are an adult, I shouldn't threaten or make the statement that I could kick your behind. After all, you could be Jackie Chan (then where would I be?).

Scott

NP-13th Warrior complete*****/*****

OK, then.

Scott--What's wrong with talking to a 13 year old kid? Where's your open mind? I'm offended.

Spor--Yadda, Yadda, Yadda. Sorry you find all this boring, but atleast you're funny about it.

Pietari--I'm not attacking Hans Zimmer the person who I wish well, but the point of attacking Hans Zimmer the composer personally or directly rather than just his music is that it's difficult to seperate the art from the source. Earlier I discussed Nazism but didn't mention Hitler, but I easily could have. I could talk about Microsoft without mentioning Bill Gates but to many people the man and the mega-corp are the same.

I have heard THE THIN RED LINE, not HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS. I have posted elsewhere how much I like BEYOND RANGOON and SMILA'S SENSE OF SNOW. Nonetheless, these are exceptions to the rule. And Hans Zimmer isn't just a lone figure in my mind. He and the Media Ventures clones have created a style, a movement, an approach to the design of film scoring that I find IMHO to be totally wrong for movies. I'm obviously not above name-calling and I like to put credit where it's due.

Oddly, if you were to call Jarre names, I might put in my 2 cents worth, maybe call you immature for doing so as well--so I understand where you're coming from. Nonetheless, you're free to do so.

Off topic---Anyone made curious about my earlier statements about Nazism as an artistic movement should endevor to see one of the finest documentary films I've ever seen, Peter Cohen's THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM, which describes in astonishing detail what happens when Romantic views of Man become twisted and politically enforced.

JCWand I once exchanged emails about keeping up the fight to get the younger people to consider Golden age scores. So here's the plan, the challenge if you prefer, to anyone. You make a tape or burn a CDR of your most convincing musical arguments and I'll trade you for a mixed tape of some of Golden age scores greatest moments made by me. You listen and I listen and we'll see if our tunes on all this change.

Pietari--I'm sorry I disappointed you over the MI2 post. I've tried to explain, but truly I'm a bad man and a poor leader.

NP: Horn Concerto #2 (Richard Strauss)--I don't own it, it just happens to be on the radio right now.

Hitler enjoyed Wagner. So little else was performed and composed. He hated swing, considering it degenerate, so it gets surpressed. His preferences were allowed free reign because he controlled the government, business, the press and everything else that could have opposed him.

I am not sure which 12 million dead you are refering to.

These are some of the figures I have seen

Russians 26 Million Dead
Germans 20 Million
British 1/2 Million
Americans 1/2 Million

The Japanese did not even adhere to the Geneva Convention, not least because it was part and parcel of their attitude towards POWs in general: if you're dumb enough to get caught and don't even have the nerve to commit suicide beforehand, then you deserved whatever happened to you. (I refer you to Gavan Daws' recent horrifying "Prisoners of the Japanese," if you have the stomach for it, that is.) Foreign soldiers of any type who fell into their hands got infinitely awful treatment, while Americans and Englishmen who fell into the Nazis' paws were, more or less, granted benefits of the Geneva Convention (Red Cross packages, etc.)

It's interesting, on reflection, that the last century's most infinitely awful period of butchery is so insistently romanticized by so very many. I, who did not live through that period, am probably as guilty as anyone else of that glorifying of "the Greatest Generation" -- in so many ways, they were no more than the "Unluckiest."

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:

Scott--What's wrong with talking to a 13 year old kid? Where's your open mind? I'm offended.

---

Lou,

there is absolutely nothing wrong with talking with a 13 year old. I just don't think it is advisable for a 35 year old to converse too much with a 13 year old. Defenetly there should be no friendships formed whatsoever. But this is only how I conduct myself in life.

I believe minors have as much intelligence and foresight as adults, if not even more so. So I do have an open mind, I just like to keep it save in this day and age.

So, please, do not be offended. I respect your opinion and think you are an incredible human being, whether you are 13 or not. What matters is your knowledge (and you have a lot) and how you conduct yourself (well, that is on my side anyway).

Scott

There were about 4 million Gypsies, Gays, Communists, and assorted “travelers” that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know the interesting thing is that if you read Mein Kampf, you know that he planned to kill almost all the Russians as well as the rest of the Poles.

Speaking to the German meticulous of record keeping, did you know that this one of the evidences that people who deny the Holocaust point to? They say that they are false because no one would keep such records. Simply Amazing.

Yes, the Japanese were fairly vicious with prisoners. Understandable when you consider the cultural bias that existed against surrender. When you think of an enemy soldier is not really human because he didn't do the honorable thing and commit seppuku it really doesn't bother you to use them for biological warfare experimentation.

A terrible period in history and I hope we never forget it. If we do, then it really will have been for nothing. That would be the worst tragedy of the war.