I will be forever grateful for our fantastic labels for releasing proper expanded editions of this trilogy of scores. There is some amazing music on there but crikey is there a lot of it! Too much in one go!
In another thread someone posted an excellent 30 minute playlist of highlights from Die Hard. Has anyone put together their perfect playlist of Die Harder and With A Vengeance, maybe 45 to 60 mins?
I will be forever grateful for our fantastic labels for releasing proper expanded editions of this trilogy of scores. There is some amazing music on there but crikey is there a lot of it! Too much in one go!
In another thread someone posted an excellent 30 minute playlist of highlights from Die Hard. Has anyone put together their perfect playlist of Die Harder and With A Vengeance, maybe 45 to 60 mins?
My Die Hard 3 playlist took some editing to make it closer to the film edit.
All three have a different feel. The first, which remains my favorite, has a lot of suspense and a grand sense of humor. Also the holiday vibe is nice.
The second is rougher and colder,. Even the re-orchestrated music from the first is sharper and more brutal.
the third is kind of a mix of the two, but more like the first. I am still sad the music backing John wearing the sandwich board wasn't included.
I am still sad the music backing John wearing the sandwich board wasn't included.
Me too, but that may have to do with Mark Mangini, the composer of that cue, preventing it from being included. When I asked him about it, he said it was not intended to be commercially released
I'm less familiar with DIE HARD 2, because I missed the expanded soundtrack release, but the first DIE HARD is definitely the one most conducive to a symphony-style presentation.
DIE HARD 3 has great musical callbacks to the first movie but suffers from the lack of a central musical showcase and instead has too much low-key underscore for quieter moments of dialogue and suspense as the characters bounce from location to location. It also has the same issue as DIE HARD with a lot of editing (the ending in particular).
That said, DIE HARD 3 can be assembled into a decent 31-minute presentation with some of the shorter cues from the expanded release and one or two from the original. Since it lacks a central build or intro though, I moved up "Bank Invasion" to the beginning to set the stage and shifted the sequence of "Bunny and Fire Drill" to better match the progression of action music:
And as a bonus, the two "optional" placeholders were for two songs I cut for length, but also work decently well (and are presented out of order to better sequence the music closer to their respective sequences instead of following the precise cross-cutting used throughout the movie):
Not really a fan of the Die Hard scores. They're just all over the place musically speaking. Just a mix of score, tracked music, classical and songs. The use of Horner's music always takes me out of what was otherwise a great classic film. What a dump @ss thing to do.
Part One definetly one of the greatest ActionScores there is! And probably the best ActionMovie there is as well.
Agreed, Part 1 is one of the best Action Movies ever and it still holds after more than 30 years!
In the series however the music was not treated well. Only the score to Part Two was used as composed by Kamen. Parts 1 and 3 are a mess of cut and paste. Sometimes it works (the fall of Hans is perfectly tracked and the John Scott theme at the finale worked better than the downbeat original take by Kamen) sometimes not (the terrible Aliens tracking took me out since my first viewing - as at the time I was very familiar with the Aliens LP).
I like Part 3 specially for the Johnny Comes Marching Home quotes, but it recicles too much from the previous two scores. Parts 1 and 2 scores hold better IMO.
Not really a fan of the Die Hard scores. They're just all over the place musically speaking. Just a mix of score, tracked music, classical and songs. The use of Horner's music always takes me out of what was otherwise a great classic film. What a dump @ss thing to do.
They do work really well on album. At least, I think so...
I will be forever grateful for our fantastic labels for releasing proper expanded editions of this trilogy of scores. There is some amazing music on there but crikey is there a lot of it! Too much in one go!
In another thread someone posted an excellent 30 minute playlist of highlights from Die Hard. Has anyone put together their perfect playlist of Die Harder and With A Vengeance, maybe 45 to 60 mins?
Below is the track list for my custom expanded album edit of Die Hard With A Vengeance, which runs about 67 minutes. I aimed to include as much of what was new to this score and not include cues which leaned too heavily on what was heard in the first two movies. For example, I didn't include the cue "Oh, Canada" since it can be heard in its entirety in the DH 2 score and I'm not a fan of too much repetition. Also, surprisingly for me, I kept this custom edit in mostly chronological order. Let me know what you think!
1.Goodbye Bonwits 2.John And Zeus 3.Taxi 4.Papaya King 5.The Subway (Part 1) 6.The Subway (Part 2) 7.Feds 8.Infiltration 9.Bank Invasion 10.Panic 11.Santa Claus 12.Surfing in the Aqueduct 13.Ticking Refrigerator 14.Mercedes Chase / School Assembly 15.Hooking the Boat 16.Escape 17.Running in the Halls 18.Holly / Celebration 19.Ode to Johnny 20.Johnny Comes Marching Home
I will be forever grateful for our fantastic labels for releasing proper expanded editions of this trilogy of scores. There is some amazing music on there but crikey is there a lot of it! Too much in one go!
In another thread someone posted an excellent 30 minute playlist of highlights from Die Hard. Has anyone put together their perfect playlist of Die Harder and With A Vengeance, maybe 45 to 60 mins?
Below is the track list for my custom expanded album edit of Die Hard With A Vengeance, which runs about 67 minutes. I aimed to include as much of what was new to this score and not include cues which leaned too heavily on what was heard in the first two movies. For example, I didn't include the cue "Oh, Canada" since it can be heard in its entirety in the DH 2 score and I'm not a fan of too much repetition. Also, surprisingly for me, I kept this custom edit in mostly chronological order. Let me know what you think!
1.Goodbye Bonwits 2.John And Zeus 3.Taxi 4.Papaya King 5.The Subway (Part 1) 6.The Subway (Part 2) 7.Feds 8.Infiltration 9.Bank Invasion 10.Panic 11.Santa Claus 12.Surfing in the Aqueduct 13.Ticking Refrigerator 14.Mercedes Chase / School Assembly 15.Hooking the Boat 16.Escape 17.Running in the Halls 18.Holly / Celebration 19.Ode to Johnny 20.Johnny Comes Marching Home
That’s great thanks Tom. I will sort this out and give it a listen this week.
Fair point! I think when I put together this custom album I felt that, for my tastes, the Taxi Chase cue went on for too long, but I wasn't sure if I could myself could edit it down, so I elected to not include it.
Fair point! I think when I put together this custom album I felt that, for my tastes, the Taxi Chase cue went on for too long, but I wasn't sure if I could myself could edit it down, so I elected to not include it.
Same issues here when I put my list together. "Taxi Chase" is very unique and I wanted to include it as a nice musical break, but it's 5 minutes long and doesn't develop in any way. It's a really good example of why this score works better in the movie because it supports the main showcase which is the on-screen action and that scene had so much noise in the SOUND track.
Same problem with all the "Subway Chase" music too where the cues were good in parts but just went on too long. Which I also ran into with the "Boat" music and why I put those as optional.
I also felt like the score, sans "Summer In The City", doesn't announce itself in any compelling way which is why I opened with "Bank Invasion".
This is definitely one of the toughest of the 3 movies to create a playlist for and we both ran into the same challenges where really you could very easily make a broad decision to cut most of the cues in half to create a good album presentation.
Fair point! I think when I put together this custom album I felt that, for my tastes, the Taxi Chase cue went on for too long, but I wasn't sure if I could myself could edit it down, so I elected to not include it.
Same issues here when I put my list together. "Taxi Chase" is very unique and I wanted to include it as a nice musical break, but it's 5 minutes long and doesn't develop in any way. It's a really good example of why this score works better in the movie because it supports the main showcase which is the on-screen action and that scene had so much noise in the SOUND track.
Same problem with all the "Subway Chase" music too where the cues were good in parts but just went on too long. Which I also ran into with the "Boat" music and why I put those as optional.
I also felt like the score, sans "Summer In The City", doesn't announce itself in any compelling way which is why I opened with "Bank Invasion".
This is definitely one of the toughest of the 3 movies to create a playlist for and we both ran into the same challenges where really you could very easily make a broad decision to cut most of the cues in half to create a good album presentation.
Yep, good observation that this score doesn't announce itself in any compelling way, it does make an "custom album edit" difficult and the choice to start with "Bank Invasion" is excellent.
