X-Men: DOFP - John Ottman's Evolution

I was highly anticipating this movie.  Ever since the first buzz from the comic movie websites, I felt like DOFP was going to be not only THE X-men movie, but maybe even THE comic book movie.  I truly feel that it deserves this title, though I'm sure many would disagree with all the other superhero flicks coming out that are outstanding; Avengers and The Dark Knight Series to single out a few, and all with pretty damn good music too.

They are almost all good.  But there is a special place for X-Men movies.  Like many, my first acquaintances with said mutants was through comics, cartoons and video games.  The story line was and still is compelling and oddly relevant to modern society.  It had arisen from an era of peoples struggling for basic civil rights and fighting persecution, even in their own government.  Granted, real history hasn't involved disenfranchised people wielding superpowers, but stories like X-Men make learning real concepts and quandaries entertaining, for kids and adults alike.  The comic and cartoon got to me the most when I was young.  I remember real emotion and drama in the old Fox X-Men: The Animated Series and harassing comic book store owners for stuff they didn't have.  People used to complain about the cartoon's animation, but I thought it was perfect and faithful to the narrative and aesthetic style of the comic books that spawned its stories.

I have enjoyed all movies involving characters from the X-Men comics, but it was hard to make a decision on which film had the best score.  Michael Kamen's string themes were so fused to the original X-Men movie that its hard to imagine anything else for that first installment.  John Ottman's scoring of X2, was certainly good, but I still hadn't heard themes and leitmotifs that really summed up the spirit of the genre, story and original medium.  Powell's X-Men 3 score had its moments, no doubt, but the X-Men franchise was sadly another film series without the same composer going throughout.  And if you are one of the negative three people that actually reads my blog, you'd probably know (or not) that said continuity problems are, what I think,the biggest disappointment to all lovers of film score.

Henry Jackman did the best job with First Class.  The movie had distinct, discernible character themes and had the echo of the video game and cartoon music, which was an homage to fans of the other media X-Men were in. Hell, it was an homage to every kid that group in the 90's with a comic collection and Sega Genesis.  Magneto's theme, particularly struck me as almost like a boss battle in some console game, and I found that very cool.  Even the training montages were adorned like that sound that gets you pumped while you wait for the game to load.  I was hoping Jackman would come back to score DOFP, but it wasn't him.

Bryan Singer, the guy who I now fully respect to handle this franchise, decided to go back to John Ottman.  A part of me was upset because I wanted to hear what I heard in First Class again, and on steroids, like the action in the movie itself.  I had remembered that Ottman was also an editor of X2 and that still didn't take away from the nostalgic music Jackman provided.  Well, needless to say,  I am glad now. Ottman provided an amazing score. It fully captures both the musical essence of the comic book reader's world and fuses it with the seriousness and suspense necessary in order to make superheros come to vivid life. To make not only the fantasy realistic, but to make the fantasy real.

I want to tell you about how the tracks from the scenes in the future are apocalyptic, like that of the Terminator series but also have a sense of epic magic that you can't help be in awe of.  I also want to tell you that, as he is my favorite character,  Magneto had a distinctive and powerful theme that ran throughout the film and even had elements of Jackman's themes within.  There's so much I want to tell you about this album and its tracks, but I think I'll let Ottman tell you himself.  Clips like this give people an inkling of the work that goes into the music they take for grant, and that we appreciate so much.

Below this clip are my favorite tracks from X-Men: Days of Future Past. Listen and comment.  And feel the superhuman vibe...





"Time's Up"

"Hat Rescue"

"I Have Faith in You - Goodbyes"
>

Xmen Goes Back in Time: Even Musically

Just saw Days of Future Past. Since Bryan Singer directed it, I'd only assumed that either Michael Kamen or John Ottoman world compose for him. It turned out to be the latter, and I was impressed much more this time around. The score was more dramatic and less all-over-the-place than X2. More to come.

Win a chance to score a movie with Hans Zimmer.

   Zimmer is pretty active on Facebook and had posted this cool sweepstakes. You have to pay for an entry but it's worth it.    

http://www.omaze.com/experiences/amazingspider-man-2?utm_source=twitter-celeb-hans&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=NotOnOurWatch&utm_content=3

Review: The Hobbit Franchise - Familiar, But Different - Returning to the Shore of Middle-Earth

     http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/smaug1.jpg

I'm not going to lie that I am a big Lord of the Rings fan, especially as far as the films go.  So when I heard that Peter Jackson was taking on the preceding Tolkien classic with many of the same actors and much of the same feel as LOTR, I understandably became excited.  I also assumed that Howard Shore would be coming back to score this new series of movies and, ever loving of continuity, I was likewise anticipating the soundtrack.

Howard Shore did an incredible job with the LOTR series.  I could write endlessly about just how the movies would not be as epic or as emotional without Shore's compositions. I could talk about the film score for classic fantasy epics like the original Conan movies or new ones like the first remake of Clash of the Titans and how the music was as much a character in those flicks as any actor or CGI effect.  I could even equate the LOTR and the Hobbit musical cannon to what Williams did for Star Wars, score that was not only moving but actually a form of mythology itself.  All of those things I could talk about would fall short of what Howard Shore has added to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings franchise.

The music from the original trilogy was at once haunting and confrontational, almost a kind of magic that transports the viewer (and the listener) from the sweet, simple shire to the vile land of Mordor.  With the use of leitmotifs and themes, Shore made us feel through the music Sauruman's connection to Sauron with tones similar, yet distinctively perverted. Nascent versions of these dark anthems are heard in the Hobbit prequel films when foreshadowing the rise of Sauron, or the Necromancer, as he is known at the time. Then there is the theme of the Ring, which is not quite as overtly dark, but rather a mysterious, lingering song that pervades all of Jackson's Middle Earth movies.  The heroic adventure theme of the Fellowship of the Ring is not present in the Hobbit films yet, even though some of those characters are beginning to emerge.  Howard Shore instills hope and awe in us with tracks like Forth Earlingas from The Two Towers and of course the epic and triumphant Lighting of the Beacons.  The musical repertoire runs the spectrum from mystical elf songs, to Hobbit pub music, to the horrific march of Minas Morgul.

Here are some tracks I suggest:

                Lighting of the Beacons - (best music from 0.45-2:40)

                Minas Morgul - scary track with full brass.

So, in reflecting about music from the LOTR, I asked myself, what more could Howard Shore do in this Hobbit series but re-use or re-work old themes.  The success of the franchise to the average moviegoer is special effects and drama, not necessarily film score.  Nevertheless, Howard Shore developed an extremely impressive score for both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug.  The premature themes of RingWraiths and Orcs were there, yes, but they came with Dwarvish songs of old treasure and conquest, and with a considerable amount of new and enhanced material.

I'll highlight the track Underhill from An Unexpected Journey. This track definitely had familiar tones with the orcs, trolls and Balrogs of Moria, but Goblintown got its own harsh theme that to me conveyed that fairytale sense of danger and fear.  It was specific, and that is what I love about leitmotifs and theme laden musical canons like Star Wars, LOTR, Star Trek to some degree. The distinctiveness of the tracks makes for so much diversity in listening that it feels like you are being taken on an adventure just in the listening.  Most people don't realize the effect that film score has on their viewing experience, but I think a part of the success of good multiple film series is having the same composer to give it cohesion, and as I said before, a sense of mythology, and ironically sense of reality because of the richness of the music.

The Desolation of Smaug had a riveting soundtrack and there was a lot of new compositions by Shore.  The first that struck me was Flies and Spiders which creepily haunted us while Bilbo and the Dwarf company get ensnared in the webs of the Mirkwood spiders.  It is a poisonous and unsettling track.  I could only wonder how arachnophobes dealt with very realistic looking giant spiders and this song as they spun their webs and stung dwarves.

The Elf themes in this movie were not very different from the prior films, not that this was a bad thing. There was one new emergent theme that struck me though and it seemed to play every time Tauriel saved the day, very prevalent in the track Beyond the Forest.  Tauriel, a character added in just for the movies, had an epic and graceful string theme that seemed to follow her throughout the movie and at times was slowed down to a comforting pace (1:02), almost mirroring the she-elfs ability to both kill and heal.

Next was a theme that came about when the Dwarf and Hobbit company first set sight upon the floating Laketown.  In the track Thrice Welcome, you hear strings that seem almost like they are the musical equivalent of weaving latticework.  The track slows down to include some faint tones of a harpsichord and then picks up again seemingly to convey the pride of the established, albeit destitute town.


Tracks like Inside Information, Smaug and My Armour Is Iron were the most impacting in the whole of this movie.  Perhaps it was because the movie built to the climax of Bilbo's confrontation with the dragon. This was different than the prior Hobbit and LOTR because the reveal was slow and the dialogue driven scene between the Hobbit and Smaug is really tense and builds in a way that scenes in the other films don't.  Smaug's theme is ancient and primal sounding, but at the same time conveyed a level of sophistication, just like the dragon who displays some of the most modern speech and dialogue of any character in Tolkien's universe.  As a composer looking at the screen and trying to develop a score, it must have been really difficult to see such an impressive dragon sequence and create a score that doesn't detract from the tension or visual magnificence of Smaug.  Howard Shore crafted this score perfectly, however.  Every track involving the dragon, be it him simply searching or violently attacking the Dwarvish company seriously accentuated what you as a viewer saw on screen.  Haunting and at times horrifying.


People are always comparing books to the movies made that are based on them.  I did this with the Hobbit as I actually read the entire book years before the first movie came out. It is hard to compare these two, at times very different forms of media and I usually yell at people for saying "it wasn't as good as the book" because there will never be a movie that can match one's literary expectations perfectly.  However, film score is one thing that people do not or cannot necessarily imagine when reading.  And it is the medium of movies where we get to hear something that can enhance our appreciation for a narrative story.  Say what you will about Tolkien's wonderful writing and imagination or your own (and it is amazing in its own right), but to hear the themes of the entire Lord of the Rings saga gives me chills or gets me pumped in a way that reading can't.  I'm not advocating abandoning reading of course, just trying to push back against people that are always pro-book and anti-film.  The culture of Middle Earth almost seems real because of what artisans like Howard Shore, Peter Jackson and Tolkien have given us.

A great article on the composing process

http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/hans-zimmer-film-composer-inside-his-studio?s=mobile

Oblivion OST - Original Music by M83 Score Composed by Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapenese

Oblivion - An Odd Blend

Found that this score helped make the film both surreal and grounded.  What are your thoughts?

Take a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRywL8RKIQE


Original Music by M83
Score Composed by Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapenese

Hopeful Resurrection

I recently came upon an expanded version soundtrack for a movie that came out in 1994 that wasn't that popular to begin with; The Shadow. Seeing this makes me hopeful that other albums will come out with expanded film score so you can hear those tracks that aren't usually put on commercially available albums.  I often find that there is music in movies that is not included on something you can purchase whether it be CDs or mp3 downloads. Jerry Goldsmith's work on this album is a welcome edition and mayhap a sign of things to come.

To Boldly Go

Been watching a lot of the old Star Trek movies and enjoyed Into Darkness so I had to reflect on the music.  Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner were major players in the film franchises' score.  This article explains it well.  Not bad for an encyclopedia. Check it out!

List of Star Trek composers - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_composers_and_music#The_Original_Series

Review: Game of Thrones Soundtracks

Preview and purchase the Game of Thrones soundtracks and episodes at Itunes

Photo credit: Entertainment Weekly

Source ew.com

The first time I remember hearing Ramin Djawadi's score was on a film I very much looked forward to and thoroughly enjoyed: Iron Man.  The music didn't much impress me, most of it sounding like the contrived music preceding a professional wrestler's entrance into the arena.  Despite this, a few songs appealed to us Marvel reading, Nintendo playing fans, sounding like something out of a Capcom arcade game.

The next time was the remake of Clash of the Titans and I remembering being altogether more satisfied with this album.  The leitmotifs were rather simple, but catchy and did the film more justice than its visual direction did.  I don't know if I just liked Ralph Feinnes in the role or if it was Djawadi that made me love  Hades, god of the underworld, and I'm inclined to think the latter.  Tracks built up with a melodic intensity in ways reminiscent of the late, ever great Jerry Goldsmith. This work was better, some tracks more than others, than Iron Man was, but as an album, nothing to blow the hair back.

It was only when heard his compositions for HBO's Game of Thrones series did my appreciation for Djawadi skyrocket.  It's hard not to talk about how good I feel the series is. It's even harder to separate my appreciation of other facets of the show, it's dramatic narrative and acting to start, from my appreciation of what Djawadi set the GoT world to.

The theme song is catchy like some of his prior works, but also reflects the complexity that is the show's, and the novel series', intricate plot.  To me it almost sounds like someone is composing a medieval tapestry with violins and cellos and that people are at work conspiring.  And many tracks on both the first and second season albums have a stringed eloquence to them that adds feature film depth to television, something, in my opinion, that is very hard to achieve.

When watching a scene displaying the Red Priestess presiding over a seemingly dark ritual, I heard an extremely eerie and haunting melody almost chanted in the night air with her disciples.  The track is called "Warrior of Light" and its leitmotif seems to be the theme for Stannis Baratheon and the Lord of Light he and Melissandre stock their faith in.

"Warrior of Light" - starts off incredibly haunting and then turns heavier toward the end of the track.

  In tracks like "Don't Die With a Clean Sword" this eerie melody is made louder and thrust into battle, much the way Stannis' troops are to the Lannisters. The notes seem to powerfully invert things.

Speaking of Lannisters, I haven't been able to get "The Rains of Castamere" out of my head for weeks now.  It is called the Lannister Song and tells a somewhat sad story from what I can gather.  We can thank George R.R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, for the lyrics to the song and only wonder if he collaborated with Djawadi for the musical part of it.  Even if not, it is the theme for members of House Lannister and when the soldiers or "smallfolk" sing it, it makes me feel like I'm somewhere between high fantasy and historical reality.  It sounds like a royal anthem or drunken sea shanty, depending upon how you look at it and definitely takes you somewhere else.

And the score on the East side of the Narrow Sea is no less interesting.  It reflects the often quite different environments and cultures that are present in Essos with the Targarian side of the story.  When in D'othraki lands and with the horde there is a very tribal sound, but an eclectic one.  Again, I'm no musician, but at times it sounded like a fusion of African drumming, Peruvian flutes and with a Arabian tones all at the time time.  A melange of different cultural sounds, different from a more European Westeros, but no less regal.

Then you have tracks like "King in the North" that sort of convey a certain royal dignity and hope that only gets you further immersed in the events of the series.  Djawadi does a great job with it all, whether it be playful score behind "The Sword Dance" or the ominous and dreadful drumming and string-work in "Three Blasts". It's amazing how so much disparity, of character and setting, is so artfully mirrored in the series' score, and yet still retains a cohesion. Despite the diversity, all the tracks sound ancient and mystical.  Djawadi has made me a believer in dragons, white walkers and the Red God.  The show would simply not be as epic without his haunting and mystical contributions.

Did you like the Game of Thrones soundtrack or what music you hear in the series?  What are your thoughts on this or other Djawadi works?

Update 6/13/13

Djawadi did it again for the Season 3 soundtrack, now available for purchase.  Imagine the Unsullied marching and dragons flying to silence or the Red Wedding with the Rains of Castamere and you'll realize just how important orchestral score is to even a TV show.  Tracks to check out for sure "Dracarys", "White Walkers" and of course "Mhysa", a tribal reworking of Daenerys' leitmotif.

Update: 1/19/2016

Season 3 - Suggested Tracks:

         Dracarys

        Mhysa

Season 4 - Suggested Tracks

Let's Kill Some Crows

Thenns

The Real North

Season 5 - Suggested Tracks: 

A Dance With Dragons

                                   

The Dark Knights: Zimmer & Howard

 

To preview or purchase The Dark Knight trilogy movies or mp3s, got to Amazon

Photo Credit: http://eyemdope.com/?tag=the-dark-knight-trilogy

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy has definitely earned a place in the canon of modern superhero movies.  Nolan's attention to complex narrative detail lends a realistic gravity to all his films, even ones involving the masked and caped.  His dark, yet direct visual style is greatly supported by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard through this intense series.

I remember watching Batman Begins and wondering if I was watching a superhero flick or a military/espionage thriller.  However minimalist at times, there was always a sense of a something being imminently revealed.  In the same way the viewer could feel like every frame of the film was somehow crucial, Zimmer and Howard audibly elicit a sense of awe and hope that comes as a result of the Caped Crusader's ethical austerity.  At once the score dances between a mission driven momentum and some dark primal honor.  

The hype of theatrical performances aside (even though to an extent they are warranted), The Dark Knight's score added another element to this consistently dark and driven soundtrack in much the same way the Joker character introduced anarchy to Gotham City, and to Batman's soul.  The opening shot of the movie provides the clearest example of what the composers imposed, the gradual sound of what to me sounded like a violin plugged into an amplifier with reverb on it.  Now, like I've stated in previous posts, I have no musical training beyond middle school general music, so I may be totally wrong on what this effect is, but nevertheless, it's eerie in the same way Ledger's portrayal is.  In fact, there was a sort of grunge/punk feel to much of the crazy clown's image and some of the music building dead-ended in electric guitar riffs.  I found this to be crude at first, but once I embraced the film's psychological texture, I began to appreciate it.  

 The Dark Knight Rises is definitely the biggest and boldest of the three soundtracks and in my opinion the best of them.  Zimmer and Howard continue their tradition of keeping a string driven, serious sounding score, lacking the big brass that we heard in Silvestri's work for The Avengers, which still impressive in its own right. But, at times, they got quite creative with the strings.  In tracks like "The Fire Rises" we hear something new and even more chaotic than oddly timed guitar riffs.  We hear the alternating strings unleash havoc like that of Bane; a sense that time is ticking out for us helplessly.  With "Gotham's Reckoning" and its recurring chanting and bells throughout other tracks, I detect a possible theme for the villain, which makes me very happy.  I really love different themes for different characters in movies, because they lend a sense of depth and culture. Still with tracks like "Why Do We Fall?" and "Rise" we're grounded in the emotion that is at the heart of any good heroic tale.

Zimmer has never disappointed me and neither has Howard.  From what I know of Howard's work, primarily album's like the OST for Falling Down, he was likely a big influence on the crime thriller sounding realism behind The Dark Knight Trilogy. Not that Hans Zimmer is any stranger to this, but I do feel that he's more diverse of composer, addressing a wide array of genres.  The fusion of these two provides this series with an musical ambiance that's just realistic enough to be believable, but epic enough to be the stuff of comic books.  

Continuity Problems

Imagine now, if you will, it’s 1980.  Three years ago you were blown away by a science fiction movie so epic and revolutionary that you could barely believe your eyes and ears.  The movie was Star Wars: A New Hope and you’re now sitting in a theater, eagerly awaiting the anticipated sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.  But as the gold opening credits fly into outer space you hear something different from the recognizable fanfare of the Star Wars theme.  What if John Williams only composed ANH, but not the other two films?  Would the experience be the same?  What if the ever classic themes of the Imperial March and Han and Leia never existed, but something else was heard in its place?  Would there be any musical connection to the film that started it all?  What I am trying to elicit is the culture that movie music provides and how it supports any film series by providing cohesion between sequels and depth in story.

One of my biggest pet peeves involving film score is when movie directors and producers decide to not keep the original composer on for a film sequel.  I feel this happens way too frequently these days and it is exceptionally disappointing when the first film in a series has a really impressive score attached to it.  I do understand that not everyone appreciates film score as much as we do, listening to it on our mp3 players and embracing it beyond the movie, and I’m also aware that budgetary and logistical concerns do play into the choosing of a composer for a movie. But to me it is just as important as having an actor reprise their role.  What is film score if not another actor in the movie, one that has a remarkable impact on the tone of the entire work.

One movie’s whose score I did not initially appreciate was the remake of Clash of the Titans (2010), but over time I grew to enjoy it.  It definitely had thematic elements in it that greatly added to the tone of the film.  Tracks like “You Can’t Hide From Hades” build from soft to loud in such a way you’d think the god of the underworld was really conjuring his presence among you.  Another thing that struck me was how the main theme of the movie was altered based on what was going on in the film, deepened and made harsh when enemies were faced, and made triumphant upon heroic actions; hardly a new notion, but very well done for this movie.   Though I’m still a great fan of the original Clash of the Titans, the film score definitely supplemented the visuals in the experience. 

The sequel, Wrath of the Titans (2012), was visually enjoyable with a plot that was fairly interesting, but one thing it was lacking was musical continuity.  The same way it was good for us to see Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Sam Worthington reprise their roles, I watched it hoping for musical themes to be reprised as part of the saga.  To my utter disappointment, it was not Ramin Djawadi who composed the score, as in the first film.  That’s not to say Javier Navarrete didn’t do a good job on Wrath, but it was simply lacking something that may have helped make it epic beyond the plot and numerous special effects.

Unlike Star Wars, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was planned to be released as a trilogy and was not simply banking on the success of one film, before filming the others.  In this vein, Jackson signed on Howard Shore to score the films.  As a result, the trilogy was jam packed with recurring themes and a musical continuity that made the films a sort of mythology, even apart from Tolkien’s canonical novels.  It simply would be a different experience if there were different composers for each film.

Some of my favorite movies are ones that stem from other media such as comic books and one franchise I came to love is X-Men.  Of all the X-men and X-men related movies, not one of them had shared a composer, even the first two films which were both directed by Bryan Singer. As much as I did enjoy the films, I can’t help but wonder why Singer did not have the same composer attached to both films.  After all, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin and Patrick Stewart (among others) came back to portray their characters.  So why not make the movie comprehensively continuous?  The same is true for both Iron Man movies, and because of this, I found the movies lacking something that could’ve made them greater and ultimately more entertaining.

So what are your thoughts? Does the lack of composer continuity annoy you as well? Or do you like the musical variety?  

Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes OST - Patrick Doyle

A well-versed, extremely nuanced composer indeed, Patrick Doyle has lent his talents to numerous orchestral works, both inside and out of the movie industry.  My first experience with him was listening to the haunting and at times terrifying score of the film Needful Things (1993), which was a movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel.  The movie itself was only decent in my opinion, but it was, however, greatly surpassed by Doyle's score.  It was through the disparity of the tracks of this album that I was to appreciate the scope of score beyond just epic fanfare.  If John Williams initiated me into this genre of music, Patrick Doyle made me fall in love with it. A combination of epic, choir rich selections reminiscent of Daemon Irrepit Callidus and sweet, fanciful tracks that highlight the ambiance of the film, Doyle made a serious impression on me.

                                            The Arrival - Chaotic and Haunting

                                          Amazing End Credits Music
                                             
But since then [1993], I haven't heard too much from him that caught my attention.  Mind you, I didn't go far out of my way to check up on what he'd been composing. I'd notice a movie or two that he'd work on, but nothing that really impressed me like Needful Things.  That is, until recently.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a exciting and interesting film for many reasons, its score among them.  Though it did not incorporate the vast array of instruments that Needful Things utilized, RPTA did captivate me with its balance of fast paced, epic sound and deeply emotional, even sentimental ambiance.  The film loosely dealt with the concept of adaptation and evolution and the music actually reflected this.  This score was especially significant to me as one of my all time favorite composers, the late, great Jerry Goldsmith, composed for the original Planet of the Apes (1968).

At times the album produces a vocal chant that can bring goosebumps to your skin and haunts you into a sense of wonder, but this is tempered with quick, but intense bouts of loud string and brass sequences that give you the sense that something is being hunted, a definite theme in the Planet of the Apes series.  Other tracks, such as "Lofty Swing", have a bouncy, playful tone to them, so much so that you don't even think you're necessarily listening to the same album (or watching the same film).  As the plot progresses and the plight of the main characters become more serious, so does the score and its darkness is apparent in the tracks "The Primate Facility" and "Ceasing The Knife".

Scenes of conflict or alliance between different apes had tracks of a very organic, tribal nature such as heard in "Rocket Attacks Caesar" and "Buck Is Released", and one can certainly identify with why this style was used for such a movie.  But more than just relying on drums and "primitive" sounding percussion, Doyle creates tension and build up that so closely mirrors the narrative that it is extraordinary.  In the track entitled "Cookies", he fuses prior tribal elements with a heavier string and brass  that gives the impression that these apes are gaining something.  As they get smarter and cognitively more aware, it is represented in the music by the tempo of the tracks increasing and becoming ever more complex.

"Caesar's Stand" is a track that represents a pivotal moment in the film, but still manages to support this moving scene without overwhelming it.  It takes on a more rebellious sound than the previous tracks which were either enhancing moods of sorrow, excitement or fear.  The track conveys a feeling of revolt and sounds like a rallying call in its cadence and tenor.  It definitely sets the tone for the remainder of the film.

One of my favorite songs from the album is "Zoo Breakout", which is a fast, riveting piece that produces the musical sounds of a action and sci-fi movies alike.  The entire track sounds so dire in its severity and speed, that the listener keeps expecting it to tire out, but yet it doesn't.  It continually builds upon itself forming a song that, as fast as it is, keeps increasing in complexity and intensity to the point where you wonder how much further Doyle can take it. Another phenomenal composition is "The Apes Attack".  It is amazing how Doyle can have so many things go on in one single track without having it sound like some sort of random cacophony or at the very least like a superfluous over-extension.  This reminds me of David Arnold's masterpiece of Casino Royale and tracks like "Miami International" that have such a degree of momentum that they get you  caught up in them to the point you feel like you're part of the chase.

The album terminates with the track "Caesar's Home" which brings full circle the emotion that is at the heart of this film.  It starts off slow and quiet with strings calmly and sweetly easing in.    It then progresses into a hopeful and triumphant tone that boldly impacts the listener to the last note, leaving a sense of awe and anticipation of what is to come for the future.  It is the perfect culmination of both the soundtrack itself and what Patrick Doyle does best.  It is clear that he is a versatile and articulate composer by the dynamism between instrument sections and his ability to evoke such powerful and disparate emotions across the human spectrum, no matter what genre his movies are a part of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wjw94XUf94

Have you heard this album? What are your thoughts, feelings, criticisms?  Please post!

Shorter Tracks, But More Freedom

One thing that I am noticing about albums is that tracks that used to be diverse in tempo or style and longer in duration are getting much shorter and more distinct.   As a result, movie soundtracks are generally having quite a few more tracks that run less time individually.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  On one hand, it allows for more freedom, especially with the Mp3 generation, where we can select tracks more specifically based on our moods and get instant gratification from hearing what we want right away. The IPod world we live in has changed much of our music listening experience, even outside the realm of film score, where we now can listen to mixes or shuffle tons of Mp3s instead of feeling inclined to listen to an entire album from one artist. I'm not saying everyone does this, but with massive amounts of music available in a compact, organized format, people are as likely as ever to hit shuffle or have more control over what they listen to.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for the old school tracks that have a longer duration and the deeper experience you get from losing yourself in the process of listening.  The longer listening experience can make a person feel very cinematic in their appreciation, from the potential variance in the track's pacing to building suspense or even teasing the listener.  Longer tracks provide more of a listening journey and if you have the time to listen to a longer track in its entirety, it can move you in the same way a powerful scene in a film does.  It allows for a greater level of complexity, simply because more can be included on the track and the orchestra's endurance or variance alone can be impressive elements.  

Despite the shorter playing times of individual tracks in general, many composers still have songs bleed into each other in a seamless fashion and thus maintain the best of both worlds.  It's great to be able to isolate a particular piece of music within a track, without having to fast forward to specific part or rewind to repeat it.  At the same time, with the overlapping of shorter tracks, one could feasibly listen to larger pieces of score without interruptions or abrupt switching between songs.  

I do wonder, though, if the current trend of shorter tracks is just a means of letting listeners have greater control of what they want to listen to when, or if it reflects the style of composition that composers/movie directors are preferring.  Especially with fast paced films such as action/adventure flicks, there may be a need for quick bursts of music, rather than long selections.  The music is always at least a partial slave to celluloid and the director's agenda and this too may account for the trend.  

How do you feel about this?  Do you prefer longer tracks and the procession of the musical/cinematic experience or do you like shorter tracks that get right to the mood/pace you enjoy or that suits you? Do you prefer a balance between the two styles  provided by short distinct tracks that overlap or blend into one another sequentially?  What are your thoughts? 

Overture

People sometimes look at me like I've lost my mind.  I don't blame them. If most people saw a guy in a station wagon blasting film score from the speakers with a big dumb grin on his face, they'd probably change lanes or at least roll up the windows.

It's like that with the genre.  Unlike more popular, "radio worthy" music, film score is not something you generally hear people bonding over at a party or even played in symphony halls, at least not on a regular basis.  But every once and a while, you make contact with someone who gets the same chills from it that you do.  Someone who appreciates it in the same way. Someone who is able to notice the distinguished nuances of the under-appreciated tapestry which enhances and validates our cinematic experience.

Appreciating orchestral movie soundtracks was not something I inherited from my folks or from a friend.  I grew up liking lots of music ranging from blues and classic rock to heavy metal and pop.  The film score genre grabbed me and pulled me to it in a unique way.  Like other people, I embraced my love by way of Star Wars.  After all, if there is one piece of film score that people know, it's probably that theme that blew people out of the back of their chairs in '77.  But I began to listen to tracks in other scenes and felt like continuing the experience even when I wasn't actively watching the movie.  I brought my CD player everywhere and always had headphones on, narrating my everyday life with tracks composed by John Williams.  It was certainly an obsession and one that provided  part of the diverse soundtrack of my teenage years.  And Williams only piqued my interest.  I had no idea what I was in store for.

I remember watching the movie Needful Things on a fall evening at age fourteen and being haunted by what I heard accompanying the images on the screen. It prompted me to take a more active role in listening and I'd go to the now archaic institutions of Tower Records or Virgin Megastore and search out the music to my favorite movies, most of them epic in nature.  And though many people may not regard it with the cultural value of opera, symphony or even the score of musicals, an emphasized appreciation is nevertheless a good thing.

Much of the background music of my life has been orchestrated by such greats as the legendary Jerry Goldsmith, David Arnold, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Howard Shore.  It got to a point where before even seeing the name of the composer in the credits or looking at the album, a few friends and I could discern composers simply by listening.  And the few people in my life that have had such an ear for score have turned me on to things I never would've thought of listening to. Many times I'd enjoy the score to a film, better than the movie itself, and I know I'm not the only one that has happened to.

So why start a blog?  Because I know there are more people out there with minds that are cinematic and imaginative.  People whose Ipods are dominated by 15 to 28 minute songs, ones that evoke every possible emotion from despair to excitement and make the listener feel like they are living through the rich and deep experiences they were meant to accompany.

Here on SCORE Bored, I'll post about recent albums/soundtracks, trends in the film score industry and any other information pertaining to the genre for lovers and up-and-coming appreciators alike.  It is my sincere hope that people will comment and contribute to discourse and debate regarding what new material is being released, even if it is something as simple as pointing out that you always liked the music that has gone along with a certain movie.  Through the course of discussion, we'll learn from each other and expose the community to just what we love so much about movie score.