While you are all falling over yourselves for that mp3 version of "Attack of the Clones," I went and bought myself a CD worthy of attention, Williams gets his time when he gets it, so there.

Badelt enters the scoring stage with a bright and brilliant gem. "Time Machine" is a fun and thematic score, and Varese has very much done its job on this one. With the disc clocking in at 57min, the score presents its sweeping themes and ethnic and choral works in brilliant sound.

"The Time Machine" is a great addition to any score collector, a good first Hollywood big film attempt by Badelt.

--Brian

NP: The Time Machine - ****

Will you have a review up at moviemusic.com soon?

--Brian

When I get paid tomorrow, I will go out and get this score. All on your recommendation.

(But I'm playing AOTC as I write this)

Kev! Way to go man! I hope you like it

For you others, my review will be up soon!

--Bri

I must say, you didn't steer me wrong. I picked it up Tuesday after I won my court case.

This is an excellent score (to a really bad movie).

I've played it a few times now, and it's definately going to stay in the player for a while.

Kevin

quote:

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Originally posted by Quill:
As a whole it is far superior.

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- It is not that I have blind devotion to Goldsmith, it is that apparently I have been spoiled by the genuinely amazing music composed by the likes of him, Williams, Herrmann, Waxman, Bernstein, Schifrin, Chris Young, Elliot Goldenthal and other talented, knowledgable individuals. Plus, the fact that years of musical training provided me the ability to discern well-written orchestral music from a cut-and-paste hack job makes it difficult to heap praise on the noisy debacle that is MV scores.

- It is the fact that I find everything written by MV composers to be completely one-dimensional, like music for a car commercial. The composers at MV have no idea about counterpoint, polytonality, harmonic invention, and, what really bothers me, the utter lack of thematic invention and thematic development within their scores. Their music just serves no purpose in the film, it is simply another sound effect. Their music is cold and soulless, much the film themselves.

- When the MV composers use an orchestra, everyone goes bonkers for it. Why? It's just as much of a mess musically as if they had simply used a synth drone. Their scores are plainly tonal. They have no clue of the sound and range of orchestral instruments, only what they can reproduce on their keyboards. The scores for ALIEN and THE MEPHISTO WALTZ could not have been composed on a keyboard. The MV composers have no knowledge of how to manipulate orchestral timbres to achieve something special, something genuinely moving. They have the orchestra members play their instruments in the most conventional manner possible. This is what bores me. They write these scores using left and right hands on their keyboards and when beefed up to orchestral size, it horribly apparent.

Jerry Goldsmith, IMO, is the best living film composer in Hollywood; as a dramatist, he is matched by no one.

However, Quill makes a valid point that more people need to go by. "Simply because it's Goldsmith doesn't means its infallible."

Not all of Goldsmith's work is amazing, and The Edge, IMO, is far from it...

Dan's comment (sorry bud) is pretty disgusting, especially the "taken seriously"; I suppose it's all a matter of taste (I'd probably say the same thing had we been comparing The Time Machine to one of Goldsmith's very best works of the decade -- First Knight perhaps), but it's offensive to anyone who ranks Badelt's score higher than Goldsmith's.

Which, I for one, am. The Edge had a wonderful theme and some wicked action bits, but overall it felt genuinely uninspired to me. The Time Machine -- hey, it doesn't utilize "counterpoint, polytonality, harmonic invention", but it's still an insanely fun listen.

It's unoriginal alright, but however technically inferior it may be to Goldsmith's, what am I going to pull out given the two? The Time Machine.

I think one thing that often gets in the way of obviously hugely knowledgable people like TV Frank is their bias towards composers who aren't classically trained. Zimmer, for example -- because of his technical faults (which apparently there are quite a few), people pass off his music as, well, you've heard it before. Yet, for as little as the man might know musically, he has composed a score as effective as any Goldsmith in the past 5 years -- The Thin Red Line.

I know I'm getting off track, but I think it's important to ask the question "should there be any guidelines for a film composer? One certainly shouldn't be required to be classically trained in order to successfully underscore a motion picture. I tend to notice people like Frank and they usually tend to disagree with that fact.

And re-reading what I just wrote, I realize very little here has any relevence to the topic.

I think I do tend to be a bit biased towards classically trained film composers; it's just part of my background and what I personally find produces more interesting film music. I do have exceptions, namely in Elfman, JN Howard and Thomas Newman, but these guys try to do new things with the orchestral pallete and even when their scores are mainly tonal, it is never just bland tonalities, they tend to produce engaging sonorities with their music.

I will certainly give you Zimmer's RED LINE. It impressed me completely and is my favorite score by him. Zimmer does try to reinvent himself and I don't think he likes being tied down to a repetitive action genre. I often find that those on his MV team, however, are more suited to writing ethnic or pop-based scores as opposed to fully-orchestral works. It's just to my ears that it seems they are out of their element and have to lean heavily on either temp tracks or simple compositional structures.

They score for a breed of movies that require their style and are enhanced by it. You may not care for these movies, but that really is not relevant. They bring something new and needed to the table in any case.

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Originally posted by Hasta:
The Time Machine, IMO, is a fun, fun score.

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But you were just telling me the other day how uninspired and unoriginal, aside from the Eloi chanting, The Time Machine is. And I cleared you all up on the Eloi chanting. That's quite a 180 you're pulling, Jason.

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Originally posted by Jeron:
I've committed The Edge to memory and could sing it if asked (please don't ask, I have a bad singing voice).

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Hahaha - oh, I'll have to hear that sometime.... You could put out a concept album (ala Meco)....

Can't be worse than Rosanne at the Super Bowl.

--Bri

But you were just telling me the other day how uninspired and unoriginal, aside from the Eloi chanting, The Time Machine is. And I cleared you all up on the Eloi chanting. <HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, the Eloi chanting... to me, it sounds VERY like some Adiemus Stuff and therefore allways remainds me on the British Airways Commercials some Years ago... What do you think about those Chants?
(But I the whole score IS fun!)

Me thinks you didn't read my whole original post -- "It's unoriginal alright, but however technically inferior it may be to Goldsmith's, what am I going to pull out given the two? The Time Machine."

Plus, I wrote essentially the same thing in my review (a good week ago); wholly unoriginal -- wicked fun.

My thoughts on the score now are pretty much exactly the same as when I first heard it; you're references to the "Eloi" rips were certainly informative, but it's just another one of the rips in a score which, well, has a handful of other rips.

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Originally posted by Hasta:
Jeron, 180? Hardly.

Me thinks you didn't read my whole original post.

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Jason, I'm referring to OUR personal conversation on AIM... not any post you may have made since then. I'm just trying to regurgitate some of your *original* impressions of the score. Now, you may have re-evaluated it since that time and found more things you like. All I'm saying is that the song you are singing now isn't the same as what you were when you got the disc.

That's all.

Jeron

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Originally posted by Justin:
With samples from him and Jason (Hasta) I grabbed the CD yesterday.

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I guess that 11 minute suite I sent you didn't help at all...