Something to drink?

Clay G.

I "bag" on him for a couple reasons:

1. He's no Danny Elfman (insert predictable Andre Lux insult here...)

2. This electronic/ guitar trend is beginning to get cliched, hackneyed, and worn out. It ALL frickin' sounds the same, no matter who's writing.

at least with the orchestral composers, you can tell differences between the Horners, Goldsmith, Williams, Barry, Burwell, Elfman etc.

** popular culture isn't always right as to what is good.
I walked out of Armageddon slightly deaf.
Don't take it personally that I dislike Trevor Rabin's music okay?

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Originally posted by scoreguy15:
Armageddon (w/ HGW)-19th Highest $ grossing film of all time. Guess that one sucked.
Enemy Of The State (w/ HGW again)-Around the 21st I think. Guess that one sucked too. My point is that these films don't suck. If they did, why did they make so much money at the theatre???
Clay G.
NP CON AIR (Mark Mancina/TREVOR RABIN)

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Because people have lousy taste. Why do you think there are so few score fans?
But, truly, I've seen both films, and they do suck. Big time.
I don't care how much money a movie makes. Quality doesn't come from BO success, only bad sequels do.

quote:

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Originally posted by Al:
Yes. And imagine Armageddon's score without all the help Rabin received. It could have been so much worse as well.

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Frankly... how in this world "Armageddon" could get worse than it already is???? With Jim Carrey in the role played by Bruce Willis perhaps??

The movie is what it is - that outrageous nuclear bomb on celuloid - thanks, inclusive, to the "help" of Rabin's noise and Aerosmith's unberable "shopping-center" song, played every 10 minutes.

But I understand that there are some people who think it's great - both movie and noise... I mean, score.
Well, if it serve as consolation for you, I saw Arnold Schwarza's "Commando" 6 times in theaters when I was 16... And thought it was extremely cool!!!

There's nothing to do with it.

I like some pure synthetic scores, like Capenter's "Escape from New York" (which still sounds much more fresh and inventive than anything these drones are doing today) or Serra's "The Big Blue" - just to name a few.
And Jerry Goldsmith uses electronics togheter with the orchestra (sometimes more than it need) but it's always something distinctive and complex.
Danny Elfman was a lame guitarist on a lame rock band and have composed some very decent orchestral/non-orchestral scores ("Instinct", "Midnight Run").

What I found nasty on these Zimmer/Clones scores is the simple fact they just don't know how to do it.
When they come with a pure "pluged" score it sounds like someone smashing the keyboard, with noise blasts of guitar and other cringe sounds ("M:I2", "Enemy of the Estate").

And when they use orchestra, it's even worst. They just put everything togheter, at the same time, wall to wall. Then you have the chords, the brasses, the percussion, the chorus performing the same notes at the same time - everything incresead by synthesizers in the same note, of course ("Peacemaker", "The Rock", etc).

Of course, there are people who love it as there's people who think Enya and Prince are great. Nothing wrong with it.

But again, it's a mistake to think people dislike MV poor scores just because they use electronics or come from rock'n roll...

Armageddon is one of my guilty pleasures as well ("Launch" is the only cue I genuinely like, but I think that HGW's stuff is better, even though it sounds right out of The Rock).

And although I don't particularly agree with everything Andre has to say (I like Elfman, particularly the "boring" scores he's been doing recently), he's pretty much nailed why MV is disliked.

Another great all synth score is John Harrison's CREEPSHOW, which I thank Mark Hatfield for on a daily basis. Like he says, "This is synth music that's actually WRITTEN!"

quote:

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Originally posted by Justin:
No one is forcing your ears to hear their music

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Untrue. When I want to watch a decent movie like Gladiator I am actually FORCED to listen to the score. It's not like we are talking about normal music groups here, which can easily be ignored. We are talking about film music which can ruin an otherwise great movie for us.

And BTW, I couldn't have said it better André. You are perfectly right.

Clay G.

"First Knight" - It sucked, didn't it...?
"Congo" - Couldn't capture the audience of Jurassic Park.
"Star Trek V" - Another sucker.
"Deep Rising", "U.S. Marshalls", "The Shadow"--all chart-toppers, right?

IN FACT....if you look at the TOP 50 highest grossing movies of all time, Jerry Goldsmith finally edges in at #48.

After all...that's how we should approach art, right? By its' financial sucess.

eh, it stunk anyway...

oops, can I say that ?

I started this thread as humorous little jibe at all the fans of this trite electronic music that seems to the trend.

that's all. nothing more, nothing less.

yes, this thread is sick.

While people are getting sick here, there is a good discussion waiting to happen in this thread. This disparity is at the very essence of why and how these message boards continue to thrive! Imagine if everyone "liked" everything because it was wrong to tell people what you thought. There would be 500 zombies in here with nothing to say, staring blankly at the screen!

Just because YOU like something, or just because YOU dislike something, YOU HAVE to click "POST NEW MESSAGE" on the MovieMusic.com Message Boards and type out your thoughts. YOU HAVE TO.

Or else, once again, where would we be?

PeterK

If the quality of a film is judged by it's box-office takings, then you're saying that something like The Lost World is way better than Shawshank Redemption.

Mind you, I thoroughly enjoyed The Lost World, but what I'm saying is that the quality of a film is not reflected by it's box-office takings.

That would place Phantom Menace above Empire Strikes Back :-)

I firmly believe that Rabin's score helped Armageddon immensely. And given the type of film, a loud guitar-ripping score was just what was needed to make it the action-packed-not-to-be-taken-seriously romp that it was. And people like that (heck, I enjoyed watching it, despite admitting it's many flaws)

And if people like that, the box-office takings increase.

If John Williams had had a collaboration with someone else except Spielberg, I'm sure he would still have churned out great scores, but he wouldn't feature so much in the Box-office charts.

At the end of the day, Titanic is not the best score ever released, so there goes the box-office argument.

Thanks if you got to the end of my longest thread to date, and if you DO think Titanic is the best score ever -
a) Sorry, that's my opinion up there
b) Pick up ET, Star Wars, The Mission, Spartacus, Star Trek, Willow etc.,etc.

NP - Iron Giant - Kamen (is Brazil any good?)

I believe that if a person shells out 15+ dollars for a score that ends up being a load of crap, they bought their right to complain. Then again... it's Trevor Rabin. They probably should've known better.

NP: Morricone's "City of Joy"

You didn't like The Hollow Man score, right? But you paid quite a bit of your own cash for it. Well, wouldn't you agree that you pretty much bought your right to complain about it?

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Originally posted by Al:

I believe that if a person shells out 15+ dollars for a score that ends up being a load of crap, they bought their right to complain.

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You buy the right to complain, but complaining means saying that YOU don't like it, or that it's not up your alley. Nobody has the right to say that music, or any art for that matter, sucks, becuase someone else might, and definetely does, like it.

This is like why my mum used to tell me to distinguish between 'this food is bad' and 'I don't like this food'. What to me tastes like mongolian goat droppings may be somebody's Sunday treat.

Clay G.

PS- Buying a score and not liking it is ok. Just don't say "the score is the worst one ever" because IT ISN'T NO MATTER WHAT CD YOU BUY. Once you get all 6 billion people to say it is the worst (which would be impossible) it would still be just an opinion.

Camillu, I'm not that keen on most of Kamen's output but BRAZIL is a great score AND film!

quote:

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Originally posted by Al:
TimT,

You didn't like The Hollow Man score, right? But you paid quite a bit of your own cash for it. Well, wouldn't you agree that you pretty much bought your right to complain about it?

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Well yes I complain about scores I don't like. But Only if you ask me what I think about it. And I never try to disrepect the composer, make rude comments, or start childish topics on message boards about why a composers sucks and how he/she's ruining the film music industry. And the lamest one of all; going into a topic called something like.... "ATTN ALL Zimmer Fans!", and post some stupid hate-letter.
Becuase all that is not needed.

does it really say that Rabin sucks? No, it does not.

lighten up, people. That's what's wrong with society today. No one can take a joke and laugh at themselves. No, we must pontificate on the proper etiquette of how to say a score sucks.

If I believe a score sucks, a score sucks, IN MY OPINION. You do not have to take that as gospel truth.

Part of education is discerning the difference between fact and opinion. And this board is full of OPINIONs, not necessarily facts. Of course, it is a FACT that I dislike several of Rabin's scores. But it is my OPINION also.

Of course, I could go into a long string of phrases and musical jargon explaining exactly why I think Rabin, for example, can't in my opinion compose, or why I disagree with his choice of instrumentation and style, but that would likely be over many people's head, and likely make me very tired.

I usually always try to back up my opinions.

you people who have been around long enough know my VERY quirky sense of humor. Quit taking people's opinons so personally dammit.