--Brian
Writer & Film/Video Editor

Other than that, it good. Not great. Not his best. Still, some great moments. Big, epic, tragic, russian.

I've even done my share of it.

Anyway, found a copy at Circuit City for $13.99...sweeeeeet!

I'm on my second listen now...really enjoying it (every recycled minute) There is some great work here...I love the music starting at minute six of track #1. As for the theme from Apollo13/Balto that shows up all over...doesn't bother me--its one of my favorites.

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Originally posted by Laurence Page:
As usual with Horner this score has direct lifts from Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky) and Shostakovich (5th Symphony). He must love those guys and this film must have been a dream come true for him. Looking forward to seeing the film...

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Dan

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Originally posted by Laurence Page:
Well, Wistiti, I'm thinking of a particular string phrase from the slow movement of Shostakovich's Fifth but I'm damned if I can find it! I'm sure I didn't dream it. It's the same bit Horner used in his score to Clear and Present Danger..

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Originally posted by Laurence Page:
To Wistiti:

Sorry - I've got it wrong! It's the string phrase from the First Movement of the 5th Symphony (just found it at last!)not the second.
It's Track 7 (The Tractor Factory) 2:22-2:37 - a small bit admittedly but a definite lift!
Amazed he didn't "borrow" from the "Leningrad" Symphony No.7 too!
All the best..

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Thanks I'll look into it.

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Originally posted by Laurence Page:
As usual with Horner this score has direct lifts from Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky) and Shostakovich (5th Symphony). He must love those guys and this film must have been a dream come true for him.

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Prokofi-what? Shosta-who? Never heard of it. Now piss-off!
- James Horner

Ah well, yet ANOTHER Horner score I won't buy.

I've been reading several reviews both on and off line, from learned (and not so learned) reviewers who have said the music works perfectly and sounds excellent. Obviously they are not saddled with the burden of many folks who have made moviemusic their hobby and hold Horner as a composer of such notoriety. If you can try and listen to the score as an isolated work (which I know is hard to do for many here) you will find it quite an enjoyable listen. I've been listening to it straight for the past three days and have not tired of it...is it completely original--not really.

The *only* weak link in the film (other than the slow middle section with the love triangle) was James Horner's score. It worked very well in the beginning and the fight tense sniper scenes, but all of the quote from other films really brought me out of the movie. The Glory quote at the start, the Schindler's List rip-off (which wasn't so noticable or irratating until the end credits) and the Willow evil them reall make me wonder what horner is thinking!

Good film, so-so score!

Somebody back me up on this, please. As the people who like actual music say constantly, there was no period of time in which Horner wrote consistently original scores. Listen to---first example from the top of my head---Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora! Both scores for films with the same general subject matter (it's war, incidentally) released the same year. What are the similarities? Skip ahead one year: The Last Run, The Mephisto Waltz, Wild Rovers. Do we hear any of the themes/motives from Patton and/or Tora! Tora! Tora! in any of those three scores? Tora and Mephisto share similar instrumentations, but other than that, each score is an original composition.

James Horner scores Enemy At The Gates in 2001. He reuses material from:

1. Glory (1989)/Apollo 13 (1995) (he uses it so much that I can't remember what else it's in, that drumroll)
2. Star Trek II (1982)/Brainstorm (1983)/Willow (1988)/The Mask Of Zorro (1998)/The Perfect Storm (2000)/How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) (and you know the rest that use that damned 4 note motif)
3. The Perfect Storm (2000)/Titanic (1997)
(that totally white-label, black-lettered generic, joe-labbed action music that would make any geriatric scream "Pick up the pace a little, Grandpa!!")
4. Red Heat (1988) (Actually, Prokofiev)

And this is just the first track (well, pretty much)!

At a certain point in his career (the sooner the better), Horner is going to have to experience an intervention. You have to wonder what the people doing his orchestrations are thinking (and saying) about him. On one hand, their job is easier than hell ("Instead of this trumpet figure being on page 27, bar 12 of this score, it's going to be on page 9, bar 5 of THIS one! Ca-ching, ca-ching!"), but on another hand, they have to be more than a little embarrassed at parties when someone asks them "Who do you work for?"

The elder idiot has spoken,
Shaun

NP---At this hour? Why, The Rock, of course! Written by every German in the universe (with the exception of the members of Kraftwerk, who were on holiday the day this score was conceived, written, and performed). God bless instruments that don't work during a power outage!

So many questions!

BobaMike

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Originally posted by Shaun Rutherford:
I understand that you really, really like Horner (and there's nothing wrong with that............that a little lobotomy wouldn't fix),

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I am afraid that not even a lobotomy would fix his problems...

BTW, isn't it amusing to notice that almost all Horner (and Zimmer) fans start to bash Goldsmith whenever someone criticizes their beloved composers' new rip-off??

How cute!!!

They probably don't dare say a word about the other great hach, Mr. Williams. Whom many consider as a god.

Translation: real good composers make us angry!!!

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Does his [Horner's] agent ever say anything to Horner about his reuse problem? (probably not, since Horner is worth a lot of money). Do orchestra players vie to get on a Horner score, knowing that his latest score will be a snap to play since they'e already played it? Do other composers ever say anything?

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I doubt his agent would say anything unless directors suddenly develop something called taste and quit hiring him.
I doubt orchestra players are chomping at the bit to play a Horner score. They just do it to make a living. I would imagine there's more anticipation for a new John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, David Newman, or Alan Silvestri score where there is an actual challenge to playing the music.

Having been a trumpet player, challenging new music is more fulfilling.

Do other composers say anything?
Yes they do, and they know Horner's full of it. Ask anyone that teaches composition at any major university music school.

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Originally posted by JJH:
Do other composers say anything?
Yes they do, and they know Horner's full of it. Ask anyone that teaches composition at any major university music school.

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Well, I think that most university composition professors are ignorant of film music in general and look down at all of the major composers. It took me a good year or two but I finally turned my undergrad composition prof into an Elfman fan! (a Goldenthal fan too) I'm interested as to what other film composers have to say about Horner. I wonder if they make jokes about him and such at ASCAP/BMI functions? I wonder if they do imitations of his pseudo-British accent...

Tim

Did anything I say suggest "bashing"? I said it was disconcerting, troubling. Why? Cause it sounded like something he'd used in the past. Sounded LIKE something...

Did I now--or ever--say "Goldsmith is a hack"? "Goldsmith needs a lobotomy"? "Directors should stop hiring Goldsmith because he's running out of ideas"? "Directors who hire Goldsmith have no taste"?

I have never said anything to suggest that, and I've never even THOUGHT that. BASHING Goldsmith? You're claming that my one remark has some *equality* to what you've been saying?

You guys are starting to sound like Horner, because you've said the same thing over and over again, re-using old arguements from the past, and barely coming up with anything original to say....

I come here, and I listen to all of you Goldsmith afficinados tout your man, and decry all others--but it's not just *that*. The lengths that you go to be insulting is disheartening--and then I wonder why film music is one of the least appreciated musical genres, commerically or otherwise.

I'm not saying "boo-hoo, play nice." I'm just observing the situation, here. Yes, it seems we're not all "gonna get along", here, but you spend an awful lot of time in an effort to be as insulting as possible to the composer, to the followers--so might I suggest that your enthusiasm and exuberance might be spent better elsewhere?

This was a bit less true when he started out: scores such as WOLFEN, KRULL, THE NAME OF THE ROSE and 48 HRS. are substantially different from each other, and by the end of the eighties he was still pulling slight surprises out of his hat (the choral main and end credits to RED HEAT), but by now he's become the most homogenous and predictable composer this side of John Barry. And I'll give more props to Barry, whose music is at least always recognizably HIS, and he can still write often thrilliing variations on it (e.g. THE SPECIALIST).

James Horner works with the same people over and over again -- Ron Howard, Lawrence Gordon, Phil Alden Robinson, Ed Zwick etc. -- none of them terribly original or groundbreaking filmmakers themselves, by the way -- because they know they'll get exactly what they're looking for. Ron Howard dumped Howard Shore's music to RANSOM in favor of more Horner connect-the-dots glop -- I haven't heard it, but would confidently lay odds that Shore's version of the RANSOM score was just too dark and edgy for Howard's taste. The producers of JACK THE BEAR actually DELAYED release of the film in order to accomodate Horner's schedule, and the resulting score is still more connect-the-dots glop, one of the worst he's written, but precisely what the filmmakers wanted: predictable, unobtrusive, superficially pretty little noises.

Horner is the choice of producers and directors who want to know exactly what to expect, and that's certainly their right -- although it is also a signal of their own dearth of imagination -- but it also seems to me that his very success has hamstrung whatever development he might have achieved. You don't ask for much from a vending machine. Horner hasn't been asked to stretch in a very long time, and now I think he never will be. Look at the best of his contemporaries (that is, roughly in the same age group), e.g. Carter Burwell, Elliot Goldenthal, Christopher Young -- these guys are experimenters, real originals. (Could today's Horner have attempted anything as daring as TITUS?) Even Hans Zimmer has attempted more variation in his approach -- THE POWER OF ONE, BACKDRAFT, RADIO FLYER, I'LL DO ANYTHING, several others come to mind. Horner is a conservative, repetitive noodler, and a kleptomaniac as well. Worse yet, he's a reasonably talented one -- having watched his career since the very beginning, for years I thought he showed incredible promise. Now? I don't know what would have to happen now. He's found his niche, and is fat and happy within it.

JJH is right, session musicians do prefer a challenge, as a couple of professional film composers have told me directly. Goldsmith is indeed one of the Los Angeles session players' favorites, because his music IS a challenge. I'd imagine the same of the other composers JJH mentioned, and the ones I did above. As for Horner, you have to wonder every time he conducts the London Symphony what those august musicians are thinking. Probably something like "We played this LAST month!" Whether in the guise of another Horner score, or Prokofiev, or Tchaikovsky, or whoever ...