Intrada Soundtrack Forum

Steiner's score's a classic, even Oscar Levant thought it was great music. Makes me wonder, if Steiner wrote "Gone with the Wind' in 3 weeks time for similar release reasons, and Goldsmith pulled it off with his replacemant score for "Chinatown" in 11 days, why this new score (which I've yet to hear yet) seems to fall flat from what I've heard?

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Different movies, different scoring needs, different approaches-- and above all, the difference between genius and excellency (or "just" good).

I like what Howard does a lot, and liked what I heard. I won't compare this assignment with what Goldsmith might have been able to do with as little time; it would be unfair to Howard, who is a fine composer. Everybody just can't be a Goldsmith.

Jackson did seem to have some specific ideas in mind, anyway-- like the boy singing at the end, which is lifted from TLOTR (and I have yet to hear in a Howard score).

As for the movie, I enjoyed it a lot, but I won't jump on the "Jackson = Spielberg = Hitchcock = ..." bandwagon. He is talented, but some scenes were definitely overkill-- the unnecessary and really badly done slow motion (the "Skull Island" one was particularly painful because totally unnatural / artificial), the stampede (not a bad idea, but a wasted opportunity), the drawn-out Rex fight that went on in the vines, ...

As I pointed out on JWFan.Net, one my favorite moments is actually a very simple, original scene: Kong wandering in a dark street, totally lost and confused.

A good movie, but not the masterwork of a genius director. And a good score, which I should receive from Intrada very soon.

Hi, Olivier- nice to see you are posting over here as well as "Jerry Goldsmith On line"- I'm going to see this on Christmas Day, so I'll be able to give my opinion on the score then. Gotta feeling it's a cd I'll see in my stocking this year. Now, when they re-make my all time favorite sci fi classic "Day the Earth Stood Still" as I hear may be in the works (shudder), I'm sure I'll be quite concerned over every aspect of how they do it.... (Why can't they leave some things ALONE?)

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Chinatown was a much shorter score though...I wonder what would have happened if he had to write over 3 hours of music for CHINATOWN![/quote]

True, it's a much more character driven story with such strong dialogue that he was in a more enviable position to accent atmosphere in certain stretches that had no dialogue at all, and quite a few such stretches with no music at all! Still, I marvel that he pulled it off with such a memorable contribution. One of my favorite movies of all time.

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Any one notice that Howard Shore was conducting the orchestra in Theatre ???

[quote="SchiffyM"]My favorite "Kong" score is John Scott's "King Kong Lives." Does that count?[/quote]

Yeah - of course, KING KONG LIVES counts. I definitly think it's better, astetically at least, than Howard's score. It only suffers a little from the era in which it was written.

Most Popular KONG scores.

1). KING KONG (1933) - Max Steiner
2). KING KONG LIVES (1986) - John Scott
3). KING KONG (1978) - John Barry
4). KING KONG (2005) - James Newton Howard

I'm leaving out the ones where he fights Godzillia, but am eagerly tempted to include Chance Thomas' score to the video game version, which isn't half bad.

SON OF KONG - Does anyone know if Max Steiner wrote an original score for this sequel?

Just for fun - check out Max Steiner's credits on IMDB.com - he had a very prolithic year in 1933. Of the 36 films he had that year, most were stock music, but 11 or 12 of them were apparently original scores. Max Steiner - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000070/

Even given the three weeks to compose a score for a three hour film, not even Howard has had that kind of output as Steiner at his peak.

~ Oz

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