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Just re-watched, for the 9th or 10th time, the original The Big Sleep. If not a great movie, a pretty damn good one. What Steiner's score has to do with a dark detective story, 1940s Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler, or Bogart's driven Philip Marlowe I'll never know.
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Ira Newborn's score for Planes, Trains and Automobiles. What an atrocity.
Curious what's wrong with it. About 80% of it was thrown out, and what replaced it is instrumental versions of pop songs John Hughes tracked in.
All covered in Paul Hirsch's terrific book, A Long Time Ago in a Editing Room Far Far Away...
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Gotta agree, from the moment I heard it, The Princess Bride score pulled me WAY out of the movie. I wonder if it's a major factor in why I never liked the film itself. It could literally be the score that ruined it for me. I like Mark Knopfler just fine, but his score for The Princess Bride is pure amateur hour.
Ladyhawke of course is another. In this case I like the film, however, a recent re-watch in my home theater with guests resulted in howls of laughter at the music from my guests.
You want to listen to a real head-scratcher, try figuring out what the score in the opening 5 minutes of UNCUT GEMS is trying to say.
Sometimes I DREAM of someone reediting Ladyhawke with a more suitable score.
separately taken , I love both film et score but combined : urghhhh! (the market fight scene for example)
(one exception : the dual transformation music works for me in the movie scene)
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2020 - 1:31 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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*sigh*
Just a matter of time, I suppose, before the LADYHAWKE bashing commenced. As one of the score's strongest defenders, I'll just forward you to this piece I did from awhile back and leave it at that:
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=34448&forumID=1&archive=1
You want to listen to a real head-scratcher, try figuring out what the score in the opening 5 minutes of UNCUT GEMS is trying to say.
An amazing score, one of the year's best so far. Lopatin is channeling Vangelis a lot. In fact, the opening track "The Ballad of Howie Bling" is a direct ode to Vangelis "Ballad" from SPIRAL. In this film, the score often goes deliberately counter to the energy of the narrative. As with the 'cosmos' images of the opening, the score is very much mirroring the allure of the jewels rather than the onscreen action (an allure which inevitably becomes a downfall for Howie, so it has a fatalistic element to it).
Damn, threads like this put me in an immediate defense mode. I want to defend every title mentioned so far, LOL!
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2020 - 2:16 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Just re-watched, for the 9th or 10th time, the original The Big Sleep. If not a great movie, a pretty damn good one. What Steiner's score has to do with a dark detective story, 1940s Los Angeles, Raymond Chandler, or Bogart's driven Philip Marlowe I'll never know.
villa - Here in Spain they show THE BIG SLEEP "on normal TV", dubbed into Spanish and with a replacement music score. As was the norm, on dubbing the actors they often removed and replaced the music tracks too, at least partially. THE BIG SLEEP is full of library tracks of what sounds like insipid '60s spy and mystery music, watered down ersatz TV jazz. I'll take the Steiner, thanks.
Hey Thor - Give us an example of something you think is a great movie with an inappropriate score. Maybe Goldsmith's CHINATOWN? It has it's detractors, you know.
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2020 - 2:40 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Hey Thor - Give us an example of something you think is a great movie with an inappropriate score. Maybe Goldsmith's CHINATOWN? It has it's detractors, you know.
I can't really think of any off the top of my head. There are a number of great movies with scores I don't like, of course, but that's not what this topic is about. And therein lies the problem for many of the posts here -- people are conflating their own personal evaluations of a score, with a score's suitability. The former is a legitimate, subjective evaluation, the second is a more objective, analytical evaluation (either based on knowledge about the director's intentions, or a fairminded interpretation of what it is the music is trying to do). A score can fit a movie like a glove even if you dislike it for whatever reason.
For me, it's easier to 'disagree' with film scoring ideologies. For example, I've always had an issue with Barry's approach to action scoring, wherein he slows everything down to a standstill (or at most provides a series of rapid-fire brass outbursts, like in the Bond movies). DANCES WITH WOLVES is full of these. But it's not 'unfitting', necessarily. It fits the movie very well, and may -- in fact -- provide a more poetic approach to action.
Sorry to be all nuanced and shit, but my brain melts without strict parameters to work with. 
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2020 - 7:52 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Cut the crap, Thor. Just name a film you love that has shit music.
Nah, that's a boring topic. We've done it like a zillion times before. It's the 'unfit' part that is interesting here.
But that's just opening the floodgates to accepting as valid absolutely everything which is any way unconventional, or against the grain. We can ONLY use our own perception of what works and what doesn't, be that based on a lifetime's exposure to watching "conventionally scored" films or otherwise.
Another problem is in "knowing too much", or "not enough" about the original intentions. So we're buggered either way. In the case of THE THIRD MAN, which was mentioned a few times before in this thread, what if Carol Reed and Graham Greene had fought against the imposition of the zither score by some studio executive, but lost. Would we be talking about what an abomination it is? The answer is that some would and others wouldn't. THAT'S the boring bit!
So we HAVE to talk about what works for us personally, or in this case what doesn't work. It does all boil down to "good film, shit music" in the end.
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2020 - 9:25 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Well, what about "interesting film, but I found the score inappropriate"? That's the same thing phrased in a different way. Then someone would ask why, and we'd be back to the circular argument.
Did anyone see the version of 2001, found just last weekend, of Kubrick's very first print of the film? I'm surprised it hasn't received more press coverage, but with this Corona thing.... We know that Kubrick and Orson Welles both loved pulling our legs by generating controversy, and in this case Alex North was the unfortunate victim. But, according to the new files, his original intention was no North, no Ligeti, no Strauss - just the same two Bob Dylan songs on a loop. A print of the movie was actually found last week, and according to friends of mine who have seen it, it's mind-blowing. Gives the film an even deeper level of significance.
I haven't seen it, but I don't like the idea. Call me square.
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2020 - 9:55 AM
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By: |
Hurdy Gurdy
(Member)
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I actually saw that cut of 2001, Graham, just the other week, in our garage.
Hysterically, he'd also tweaked the two Dylan songs, so they came out as 'Like A Rolling Bone', primarily for the apeman sequences and 'Going, Going, Gone Dave' for the HAL shutdown sequences.
I thought it was brilliant and worked like ghostbusters in the film, but I also thought it was a bit shit and prefered the Alan Parsons music that was in the original version that came after this original version.
I'd deffo buy it on video or DVD from the shop though.
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I, for one, am just fine with "The Princess Bride" score.
I do wish some of the cues had been done with real players, but I get over it because of how fantastic the film is.
I can't imagine not hearing familiar cues at certain points of the film, such as the race to the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, the love theme here and there, Inigo Montoya in the woods wishing for his father to guide his sword, others.
Anybody want a peanut?
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*sigh*
Just a matter of time, I suppose, before the LADYHAWKE bashing commenced. As one of the score's strongest defenders, I'll just forward you to this piece I did from awhile back and leave it at that:
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=34448&forumID=1&archive=1
You want to listen to a real head-scratcher, try figuring out what the score in the opening 5 minutes of UNCUT GEMS is trying to say.
An amazing score, one of the year's best so far. Lopatin is channeling Vangelis a lot. In fact, the opening track "The Ballad of Howie Bling" is a direct ode to Vangelis "Ballad" from SPIRAL. In this film, the score often goes deliberately counter to the energy of the narrative. As with the 'cosmos' images of the opening, the score is very much mirroring the allure of the jewels rather than the onscreen action (an allure which inevitably becomes a downfall for Howie, so it has a fatalistic element to it).
Damn, threads like this put me in an immediate defense mode. I want to defend every title mentioned so far, LOL!
"*sigh*"
Geez, Thor, talk down to people much? So sorry our *on topic* discussion here personally offends you. 
Lopatin can channel Vangelis all he wants, that says nothing about whether it's appropriate or not. Williams could channel Mozart for a scene in a film and the fact that it's Mozart doesn't make it fit the onscreen action.
Regarding UNCUT GEMS as a whole, at first I was totally distracted by the self-conscious directing "style" with all the overlapping voices and bizarre sound design. Eventually I got over that but even then, the disconnected music score still drove me to distraction. 70s era Moog? Why??? Other than a few effective suspense cues, the score seemed mixed in from another movie and entirely unrelated to what was happening on screen. It was also mixed so loud that after the opening few minutes I just wanted to score to shut the f**k up.
Again, you could argue (and I've seen the filmmakers argue) that the score is deliberately (and intentionally) working against the film. And I would agree - the SCORE ENDS UP WORKING AGAINST THE FILM, lol. Great job!
(All this would be fine if it was serving to make some kind of sub-textual or emotional point, but if all you are wondering is WTF, I say "mission not accomplished." One should not have to seek out interviews with the composer or filmmaker to find out the answer to my WTF question.)
I get the "cosmos" inspired opening bits with the opal, and can even kind of get what it's doing with the colonoscopy (!). But then it goes on and on and on past all that, and just serves as a distraction.
RE: the overlapping voices at the beginning seemed like a self conscious attempt to create aural chaos, rather than one that seemed to organically come out of the situation. It just seemed overdone and so deliberate that I was aware of being manipulated, which is what turned me off. Once the movie settled in and we had just a normal dialogue scene I was able to get into it. It also really bothered me that no matter if someone was talking at a normal level or shouting, all the voices were mixed at the same level. In other words, someone shouting was at the same volume level as someone talking normally. This really surprised me since it was an Atmos mix, and rather than envelope me it constantly distracted me with its artificiality - as did the score.
RE: Ladyhawke. I enjoy the film. But it's also true that in several showings audiences literally have laughed out loud at the score. Doesn't that kind of define inappropriate? As one of my guests said the other night, "one minute I was lost in a fantasy medieval world, the next minute I found myself plopped right into the mid-1980s." All well and good if Donner was going for irony, but from all indications Donner was just so enamored with the Alan Parsons Project that he ignored the advice of almost everyone else who worked on the film, who almost-to-a one begged him to go in a different direction with the music.
Of course, one could effectively argue that a "traditional" 19th century score is just as much of an anachronism. At the same time, there are very few people outside of the rather insulated film music community who would realize this, as audiences have come to associate that Korngoldian 19th century sound with a sense of timelessness.
In other words, maybe there's a *reason* why Ladyhawke keeps coming up in this context.
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