"... but what the hack."
Exactly my point. Thank you, language barrier.
Exactly my point. Thank you, language barrier.
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@mathis said:
So, how to miss as many possibilities as possible with 200 million dollars. This Troy legend is such a great subject, with this budget he should have been able to make a great film.
Good night,
- Mathis
Unfortunately with this size budget one gets approval committees, focus groups and test audiences, so anything original is likely to get filtered or removed completely. That is why I'm always so surprised when a big budget Hollywood movie is actually any good.
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@mathis said:
Man, writing in a foreign language is a weird thing.. I´m often curious what you guys actually read as opposed to what I meant....
Quite so Mathis. It never ceases to astound me that so many people on this excellent forum, from non-native-speaking English countries, speak fantastic English. No only speak, but write it too! People from England assume that the rest of the world should all speak English, which means that the truth is, we're too lazy or too dumb or too arrogant to learn another language properly. I include myself. Indeed, a lot of people from England are unable to read, write and speak English as eloquently as our European neighbours. Incredible, to me, the level of quality English language you and all the other Europeans speak and understand. Fantastic!
200 million dollars aye? Could have built a hospital for that! The point about films like Troy and actors such as Peter O' Toole and Julie Christie, for example, is an old trick. Derek Jacobi in Gladiator, and so on. Familiar cinema stalwarts that appeal to the older audiences. Hollywood usually uses British actors as character references or the obligatory 'badie'. British actors don't mind, of course. It runs a parallel with what Fred Story mentioned about familiarity in music. It's safe. I wonder if Gabriel Yared's score would have 'lifted' the film in anyway. What do you think? I bet it would have, although, not saved it, from the sound of your description.
DG makes a very good point about test audiences, committees etc. I've watched committees in action from close up, over time. I wonder if Pressburger & Powell did that when they were about to release a film, or Ealing? Originality is not part of their collective consciousness. Hehe! Just a wild guess, but it's not Daniel, is it?
All the best(s)
PR
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@PaulR said:
Quite so Mathis. It never ceases to astound me that so many people on this excellent forum, from non-native-speaking English countries, speak fantastic English. No only speak, but write it too!
Thanks for the flowers, as we germans say... [[;)]]
Actually I feel I can better read/write english than I speak. That comes from, well, guess what, reading and writing ( [8-)] ). I learn a lot of my english actually on this kind of forums. There´s always my great dictionary running in the background and I use it a lot. I learn a lot of casual english in these chats.
But when I have to speak I´m not fast enough with looking up... most horrible for me is a phone call. there I don´t even have my hands for sign language.
I don´t think, Yared´s score would have made a great difference to the film I have to say. In some cues (the romantic ones) I would say it even was a better choice to not use his music. The film would have appeared like a melodrama from the fifties. But especially the song stuff and also the action stuff I think would have been much better.
But this is a kind of film one really can´t *save* with music. That would be a great miracle. Maybe that would mean one could change the world with music. What a dream!
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@mathis said:
But this is a kind of film one really can´t *save* with music.
Unfortunately I don't think that one can ever save a film with music. If the music is of a much better standard than the film all that happens is that the focus is pulled away from the pictures; this never works. Of course if one is asked to score a bad film, then the music still has to be as good as possible in order to maintain one's reputation [[;)]]
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The example I remember that is closest to music saving a bad film is "Obsession" - a piece of clap-trap from the pretentious writer Paul Schrader (criminally responsible for the god-awful remake of "Cat People") and Brian de Palma who can do some good things but screwed up a bad idea here - Hey! Let's do "Vertigo" with father and daughter!
Huh?
But anyway Bernard Herrmann's music is so great that it almost makes the film watchable. Almost. But fortunately you can listen to it alone on the soundtrack album.
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I saw this the other day - strictly in the interests of research of course. Lots to say about it...much of it mitigated by the fact that I learn from the preceeding posts that it was written in two weeks - no wonder he had Vaughn Williams posthumously write the last cue! (Tallis Fantasia? Good choice IMHO).
Gladiator Too - check. But it makes Ridley look pretty good doesn't it?
Pity about the Yared score. Cold mountain was fairly impressive no? A powerfully intense piece of work. Amazing horn section as I recall - fully exploited too!
Anyone seen the new Almodovar? A wonderful score - mixed very loud - a la Hermann by Iglesias. Really fantastic in every respect. Great playing by Gavin Wright's lot etc...Worth a look definitely.
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I don't think it was credited ... more in the way of "un hommage" ... basically it was identical music, except that the orchestration was expanded to include the full (and i do mean FULL) band.
tallis fantasia or greensleeves fantasia is the source - can't remember which one just now, but it is the second subject in the piece im thinking of...
best from sunny scotland!
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Yes indeed he does, BUT I think I may have the answer to this particular one...
Its the curse of the temp.
Saw Master and Commander the other day and Hey Presto the same Vaughn Williams cue is all over it like a strange pastoral miasma transported into the ocean from some English sheep meadow. The effect is quite peculiar really. Or is it just me?
So probably it was just a temp that stuck. As they do.
That particular score is quite unusual in that it uses mainly 18th C existing music (complete with sterling efforts by Russel Crowe to mime playing the fiddle).
All the best from (really) sunny Scotland. About 15 degrees here today. Phew! Too hot for us Northern types...
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actually, I had something against the music in the lord of the rings trilogy.
the score for the first movie was nothing short of brilliant. But in the 2nd and 3rd movie they kind of tried to form a theme that was always played when an action event took place. that kind of made it feel 3rd rate to my ears, instead of making a breathtaking new themes for every movie.
probably not the composers faultthough. he got his orders from someone else. There was a trailer with the orcs marching through middle earth and the chorus was nothing short of spinechilling. that trailer music (originally composed for LotR) never made it into the movies. so sad.
I believed these movies were epic enough to escape from the annoying thememusic effect. maybe i'm picky because i'm a muscision [[;)]] but isn't it a bit cheesy at times?
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I agree, and you're touching on something that was discussed elsewhere, about leitmotif scoring which LOTR is a major example of. Though that score is an effective one, I dislike the leitmotif use in general because it is arbitrary - a film score can be done without it perfectly, so why use it at all? But in the case of LOTR it is justifiable because it is a simple way of organizing the score which was so huge. For epic films, it becomes similarly useful to Wagner's original purpose of thematically organizing his gigantic operas.
BTW I remember that old trailer and if it's the same one you're talking about it was actually a temp track by someone else! Sounded a bit like the Polovtsian Dances, with a marcato chorus part?