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Posted: |
Feb 15, 2006 - 1:25 AM
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By: |
Timmer
(Member)
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It's been discussed many times before Alex but better late than never. It is indeed one of the all time great scores. I've always felt that there was something particularly special in Barry's choral scoring that besides Morricone you don't hear anywhere else. Williams, Goldsmith, Horner etc I can always trace to great classical influences such as Debussy, Ravel, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Prokofiev etc etc, done fantastically, without a doubt, but just not as original as the above two mentioned.
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I just heard this score for the first time and was completely speechless. What a great musical experience!!! IT definitely is one of my favorite musical works of all time. I now feel sorry for those who don't have it. Alex Lion in Winter is one of my all-time favorite scores. Glad to see people are rediscovering it anew! I reccomend you see the film as well, which is completely up to par with the score it was given. Great writing, passionate, intense performances from a cast including Peter O'Toole, Kate Hepburn and Anthony Hopkins. Its also quite remarkable that Barry was able to fashion such a broad, expansive score for such a dialog-heavy film. Paul
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One of my favorite scores as well. Great, bleak stuff! Good for the winter months too. Ryan
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I like to put this ir rotation for the holiday season. The opening might be bit dark for it, but the rest is brilliant. The choral writing is so lovely. After several years of helping create the sound of the 'swinging sixties' and single-handedly making it impossible for anyone else to ever score another spy movie, this is an absolute revelation of dramatic tone and orchestral color.
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It's ironic, because this has been such a favorite movie and soundtrack of mine ever since I saw the movie at the Four Star Theatre on Wilshire in Los Angeles the week it was released and would go back several times, and then bought the soundtrack LP, bought an augmented soundtrack LP, bought a soundtrack CD, bought a CD (or possibly SACD) with the choral music from the soundtrack, bought the movie on low fi mono, bought it on hi fi stereo, and bought it on DVD. But little over a week ago I watched it again on DVD and found myself not feeling quite the love for the soundtrack that I've had for it for the past 46 years. Maybe at this point I've kinda ODd on it! Heresy indeed!
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Here's some gasoline for the fire: If the Academy was so "perceptive" in their choice back in 1968, where does THE LION IN WINTER place on the AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores top 25, balloted in 2005? It doesn't. Jerry Goldsmith's score to PLANET OF THE APES is #18. Is the Academy more valid than AFI, or vice versa? Or do we make the argument that neither of them really judges reliably... Maybe George C. Scott had a point! Quite the conundrum.
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What matters is that we can play this music to our heart's content, no matter how well it did or didn't do in some, ahem, popularity contest. We know that Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto was pretty much hated when it premiered, and I don't think that Puccini's "Butterfly" did so well either. What matters is how we who listen to it feel about it, and to hell with the popularity contests!
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To answer the earlier question, THE LION IN WINTER was released on Sony-Legacy last. Intrada never released it. On whether THE LION IN WINTER or PLANET OF THE APES should have won the Oscar, gee haven't we done that loads of times already? Please, just for once, can we talk about one of the greatest scores of the 60s (THE LION IN WINTER) without it becoming about Jerry Goldsmith and his lack of Oscars? Cheers
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Eleanor's Arrival might well be one of the loveliest film cues ever written. In other news, I think it's common knowledge now that Goldsmith was robbed of the Oscar EVERYTIME he was nominated but hey, life goes on
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