Contemplating The Shining, Clockwork Orange, 2001, Eyes Wide Shut, one laments the absence of superb musical discernment and range which current directors/producers totally and utterly lack (save for a couple of exceptions).

@Errikos said:

P.S.: Goran's post is an example of the sad case of musical affairs. There are so many composers that have written really good music which we'll never hear - I could mention so many myself that would seem obscure to most here, while there are so many extolments and careful multiple listening sessions for so much that is really trite, it breaks my heart for I know how hard it is to be a proper composer for so many reasons, and all these people just disappear, practically unsung, while Fockers like the ones we see on those movie-DVD documentaries get to immortalize their great insights for all the Hobbits to pilgrimize....

Agree. The world is not a just place in this regard (well, neither is it in any other, for that matter...)

@weslldeckers said:

 Wendy Carlos wrote the score which was ultimately little used by director Kubrick. He used pieces from Ligeti, Bartok etc.

cheers!

Carlos wrote something that was probably mostly replaced in true Kubrick fashion. The point is - Bartok etc did not write music for The Shining. They just wrote music for themselves that was picked up for that film because Kubrick was an asshole when it came to music writing for his films.

Imagine how much better, just as an example, a Bernard Herrmann score would have worked in that film - specifically written and cut to scenes rather than just fitting in classical music segments, as with Bartok.

 If that had been done, a new work of art would have been created beyond Kubrick's The Shining (as opposed to Steven King's which as everyone who watched the TV movie he directly supervised knows is a pathetically feeble joke).  It would not necessarily have been more "effective" in film music terms (as the temp track pieces Kubrick went with were effectively used) but it would have risen to a higher artistic level such as  a Hitchcock film scored by Herrmann, or a Harryhausen film he did, or a very few others by other great composers.   In other words, creating the hybrid art form of cinema with original through-composed music scoring is OPTIONAL just like Shakespeare or Sophocles doing what they did was OPTIONAL.  It's called art.   And today, almost all producers OPT OUT. 

The problem with film goers and perhaps, more importantly today, film makers - is the bottom line is fast cash and to get that you need to appeal to the lowest common denominators in society today. That is to say, trailer trash. Or perhaps more explicitly, the most dangerous type of human on the planet - namely, persons with very low self esteem. The type of imbecile who thinks all women should quack like a fucking duck when talking on screen. The type of person who then goes out and  commits violence against real ducks - as we learn today on our local news. These people are a very easy sell and always have been. So you get more and more quite cynical film makers that have no trouble exploiting that while at the same time almost validating their inability to make a film through box office take. Film score writers also suffer from this same type of validation by thinking they can just either copy or simply have their cat walk up and down a keyboard using patch 42,  pressing record during any given scene.

Sadly, good television is better than films, and that is a poor state to be in.

There are many examples of different types of film and film music. There are films like The Shining and so on that ultimately fail under microscopic examination (even though it's a great film in that genre) because the director has a bug up his ass about film scores. Or you get say, a film like The Quick and the Dead, which is a very well done, technically good fun film, with music from Alan Silvestri's  favourite composers; including repeats of himself from his other films. It's great to look at, has good actors, is totally meaningless and is a great way to waste a couple of hours if you have nothing better to do. Nothing wrong with that film. 

But now you get films made by morons, made for morons - generally rom coms or what is supposed to be comedy genre. It's a cash in baby on a very low level and make no mistake about it. The number of trash films that have characters from comics or Viking throwbacks or Greek gods with a s h i t load of CGI seemingly grows exponentially and these film makers know the morons will eat it it up.

The education departments of schools around the world have done these film makers a huge service, along with facebook and twitter. They have developed an audience for their films. Not the other way round unfortunately.

Yes, quite, old boy.  It was Tarkovsky who stated that the audience can actually be TRAINED by filmmakers to be stupid.  Today's audiences have been trained to eat up cinematic pablum like overfeeding infants, and actually believe they are experts on film because they have eaten a lot of the pablum that was spoon fed to them by cine-nannies with MBAs.  When they are inadvertently exposed to a high-fiber black and white silent, or a vitamin-rich Bergman, or an Antonioni loaded with potassium and magnesium,  they instantly spit it out and begin bawling, red-faced and enraged, demanding more of the smooth starchy pablum their digestive systems are used to.

(To belabor a metaphor.)

Quite so. When I say television is better than films, this of course is a sweeping generalization. Why, here in the UK we have just witnessed the birth of a televisual feast called Camelot.

DON'T UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WATCH THIS!!!!

I saw just a few moments and immediately volunteered for a Bubonic plague trial being advertised in the local newspaper.

@PaulR said:

DON'T UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WATCH THIS!!!!

Thanks for the warning...

Another one to avoid musically:

X-Men the Prequel. More, and still more of the mind-numbing s/lame. As the soundtrack of a movie belongs to the studio, I don't understand why they still pay composters. Just pick one from an action/epic from 10 years ago and keep using it. 

T-H-E-R-E  A-R-E  N-O  D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-C-E-S

Note: If that wasn't enough, 4(!!!) people share credit for it; one on the opening cards, and 3 for "additional music" in the end credits.