Backdraft - Heroic scenes were loud and perfectly played! The action scenes, I could BARELY here... This really hurt me.

Plunkett and Macleane - Such a great score... After seeing the film, though, you wouldn't be able to see that.

Gladiator - Mainly the Barbarian Horde track, I found myself trying to hear the music, but not being able to. The sound effects were a little too loud, and they got in the way of the score a little too much (The Battle track was played perfectly though!)

Man in the Iron Mask - Not bad, but pretty mediocre considering the score was so good... They could have edited it a little better.

NP: Bernard Herrmann Taxi Driver (OST/Arista release)

The score, inexplicably, plays a jingoistic, celebratory victory march -- in the heat of an undecided battle.

ZapBrannigan, that could have been my second example (I left it out earlier 'cause there's only so much time for posting). I remember that scene from The Black Hole and to play Barry's Overture theme at that time was ridiculous and counter-dramatic. The movie itself is bad, but I think it is so darn bad that it is fun again. It sure is good for a few hearty laughs.

Though slightly overblown (and what Barry score isn't?--in a good way, at least), it is both ominous and heroic, and rather appropriately so. The movie itself may be a little underdeveloped for the science of the time, but look at the talent attached: Maximillian Schell, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forester (All with noteable Academy accolades), also Anthony Perkins, Roddy McDowell as the voice of "V.I.N.cent" and Andy Devine as the voice of "Old B.O.B." (Both of which were acronyms for something or another....)

You accept that "Star Wars" was the film's reason for being (just like Galactica and Buck Rogers), but the Vincent droid looked and acted like a character on "Theodore Tugboat" (a boat-puppet show for toddlers).

The biggest problem was the dialogue. It was all clumsy, artless exposition. The actors were visibly embarrassed. It needed a re-write, plain and simple.

John Barry's main title was pretty cool, though.

quote:

---

Originally posted by ZapBrannigan:
NP: Alexander Nevsky

---

Wow, you already have it? Considering the shipping to Austria, I'll have to wait one or two more weeks, I fear.

Katz and Harris, when preparing the DTS version of the Vertigo soundtrack for the 70 millimeter restoration, had to caution the sound mixers to remember that this was a film from 1959, and that the score should remain a more essential element in the score than the effects.

A film I can think of that had a good sound mix that showcased the score effectively was Mission: Impossible (the Brian De Palma one). I remember seeing the film in the theater and thinking about how amazing it is to actually be able to hear all the little Lalo Schifrin references during the action.

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Black Hole was an interesting concept mangled into mediocrity by forces beyond human understanding.

Let's face it, a collapsar is a fascinating object, it's a terrible destructive force that comes about from an interesting process.

The depersonalization depicted in the film (the "humanoid" robots that Maximillian Schell's character created out of the Cygnus crew) is a highly frightening thing.

The visual design, effects and modelwork in the film were stunning. Even today, the effects work has to be admired. The Palamino crew's first entry into the flight deck of the Cygnus and when that same ship first starts heading towards the collapsar itself are fantastic special effects sequences.

The problem with the film is the absolutely abhorrent script that turns the black hole itself into a curiosity, has no interesting characters to care about whether their brains are turned into guacamole, and wastes the awesome images Harrison Ellenshaw and all the effects wizards created on a dull, uninvolving plot.

The score is excellent, careful, restrained and dark except for the overture and the "Laser" cue, which stick out from the rest of the score like a sore thumb.

The original LP, while containing the main points of the score, was missing quite a lot of great music. Maybe someday we'll hear more of it (the Mask CD that's floating around features a better sound mix than the LP had).

But I don't think I'll need this. I doubt it's more complete than my selfmade (from the DVD) 1:30 hour-long 2 CD set. Unless they did some great remastering work. Then it should be worth it.

Oh, my name is Marian (no problem!)

SFT

NP: Pelléas et Mélisande, Claude Debussy *****/*****

Anyway, If there is ONE thing I like about The Black Hole is the ominous tone that the picture sets up. Even though it never really "delivers" the feel of the pic is fantastic to me. Yes there's lame acting or at least screwy dialogue but somehow I get past it.

I love the score too.

The worst mis-use of music was indeed "California Girls" in A View To A Kill. It squashed flat any notion of danger or suspense in the teaser scene, and put a pre-emptive stink on the whole film.

This applies in some way to composers. Sometimes composers are pushed to score things in ways that run counter to their own instincts. And sometimes composers' own instincts are so skewed that nothing that they do could be right for the movie in question.

Maurice Jarre is a composer I think is only right for a select number of movies -- he's written some GREAT stuff, but also, so MUCH stuff that seems completely at cross-purposes with the story he's working on, that you wonder what the hell he's thinking. Morricone has the same problem sometimes. Early Williams, and even some of his later, more overblown stuff, can be like that too. Very few composers manage to be genuine chameleons. Those that do tend to slide under the general radar, be it fans' or critics'. I've wondered if I personally underrate, for example, James Newton Howard, who almost never interests me, much less impresses me, but never repels me either. Isn't the function of film music really just to support THE FILM? If we get a great album out of it, that's gravy. (Recently I saw the main title sequence of SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, with a theme by Howard, and was mightily impressed. I'd hire him before I'd hire some of these other characters, but still he'd be pretty far down on my own personal list.)

So: there ARE a few composers who can do no wrong in my eye. (roll out the usual litany) BUT: Here's one who never could do right, and I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, because I'd use the same words if he were still among us:

Miles Goodman. I don't know a single score he wrote (there were about fifty of them, weren't there? mostly comedies, I think) that didn't grate on my ear. The scores for HOUSESITTER and WHAT ABOUT BOB (a pair of horror films directed by Frank Oz, who ill-disguised them as comedies) were so grating, I really wanted to leave the theater at times. "What IS this noise?"