Cool News
Curious About James Horner's Score for AVATAR? Check Out This Brief Article from MovieScore Magazine.
Greetings! ScoreKeeper here revving up the hype machine with a brief article regarding James Horner’s “hugely cinematic” score for James Cameron’s upcoming 3D sci-fi saga, AVATAR (2009).
Not much has been reported about Horner’s score until now. Mikael Carlsson over at MovieScore Magazine has an exclusive article regarding some of the details surrounding the music Horner has been crafting since June of 2008.
…Mike Knobloch, the executive vice president of Fox Music, describes James Horner’s music for the film as epic. “It’s a brilliantly unique blend of traditional and contemporary, electronic elements and spans the entire spectrum of attitude and energy – from bombastic action to the delicate, romantic discovery of a new world.”
There's no doubt this is one of the most anticipated scores of the year. Marking their first science fiction collaboration together since ALIENS (1986), Horner and Cameron aim to up the ante in regards to music. With time running out, the world does not have much longer to wait.
To read the entire article visit MovieScore Magazine.
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Readers Talkback
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God, the more I see that blue face poster the worse it looks.<p> Hopefully the score will be aces though.
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Yes?
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Death by trumpets!
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Yep, that's Aliens.
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In your face fimano!
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Bring it on, Horner and Cameron!
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Revolutionary
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is just about the most retarded and boring thing that is even possible
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Oct. 7, 2009, 12:19 p.m. CST
when you read the menu in a restaurant that wets the appetite
by sherlock_junior
I wouldnt call that boring... Frustrating maybe, cause we have to wait so long for the FOOD
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It still looks like Fern Gully. I thought the trailer was awful. And I'm not a hater. I just don't understand all the hype, even though this is Cameron. I'd like to be wrong, however. Perhaps this will surprise me.
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That film has a fantastic score.
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If it's half as good as Horner's Braveheart score we're in for a treat.
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in the thundercats/smurfs/dances with wolves/delgo type
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With Horner it's always "Hear it again for the first time!"
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...EVERYTIME HORNER WOULD PLAY ME A NEW BIT THAT I DIDN'T LIKE WHEN WE MADE ALIENS."
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THIS I'm keen for. I've been waiting for horner to score a massive Sci-Fi film for over 20 years
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DDDDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
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rubbing the haters faces in it come December.
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Oct. 7, 2009, 2:27 p.m. CST
If they keep the score similar to what was present on "Avatar Da
by VAwitch
then it should be fine. Not anything beyond a scene or two "of note", but also nothing that was detracting, and seemed to complement very well w/ the scenese shown. My 64 y/o dad agreed that the temp score worked.
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And imagine that a bit different.
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Crappy The Abyss chorus with airy riffs off of Titanic then a bit of Aliens for the action scenes. See I can be James Horner too!
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Horner is that rare creature, the self-plagiarist
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last partnership was in the Titanic,not Aliens.
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It was their "last science fiction collaboration" it says.
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Stupid four-note-motif that got so overused in Enemy at the Gates and Troy.
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No, I absolutely love the score to TITANIC. But ALIENS is perhaps the seminal work for both Cameron and Horner. AVATAR is such a highly anticipated film partially because it returns Cameron to science fiction. I was just extending the parallel to Horner as well.
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...should go watch Wolfen, or just watch this-- http://tinyurl.com/ydbkfz2
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We're into DP territory here, folks. <p> And post some samples or STFU with these dumb "updates".
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That was easily my favorite of his scores. Sure it was heavy-handed and could be seen as cheesy by many. But I just love that shit.
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FYI....it's...WHET
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And sure I like his music fine, but "most anticipated score of the year"? Uh, no! I'll be shocked if it doesn't sound like some variation of several of his older scores. Somehow he'll probable work some Celtic into the aliens' theme. Also, I am sorry you guys have nothing more newsworthy to post than this. Did anyone think the music WASN'T going to try and be epic, or that someone would say it was even if it fell short? Music just isn't something I can read a rave about anyway, it has to be heard for itself. This is just aimless hype rather than news. At least give me good hype!
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The greatest score ever, transcending previous scores? We'll get to hear a teaser 30 second clip, and then everyone well tell us how they got to hear it with their friend in a limited engagement, it it's so much better in the Surround sound version instead of the limitations of this Stereo version. "You really have to hear it!"<BR><BR>"No, really at first my ears were confused, and then it just felt so amazingly natural, especially the 7 foot tall double Bass and kettle drum. Amazing kettle drum."<BR><BR> Then the TB will be filled with people saying things like "I liked it better when I heard it the FIRST time on AM radio!"<BR><BR>"Apparently Horner has run out of ideas. He's such a hack these days. Go back an compose for and 80's hair band, Jimmy!" <BR><BR> And then some random, "John Williams raped my childhood!" comments, and people asking why we don't see more scene of clarinet players in film.
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WHAT?! He's plagarized from several other film composers and classical pieces in the past.
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...or was it Laurence Rosenthal? <p> Scratch that, I think it was my adulthood and come to think of it, it was more consensual than anything else. Ah yes, I can picture him now, a straping bear of a man. He went by the name Marc Shaiman. Yes. That was absolutl...NOoo! It was Mark Isham! No-no, I'm quite certain now, it was Marco Beltrami. I mean Mark Manicina...Henry Mancini...Angelo Badalemente? Ah of course, it was Tyler Bates. That is to say Brian Tyler... I mean BT...Oh never mind!
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I remember how before TITANIC was released that the buzz from Hollywood was that it was going to tank. They were wrong in a BIG way. They were, however, just one film off of their prediction. AVATAR is going in the toilet as a major, epic fail. I just dont think folks are going to go for blue CGI ThunderSmurfs. Sure, there will be the curiosity factor opening weekend (FROM THE CREATOR OF TITANIC COMES AN EPIC STORY...)but, unless word of mouth is insanely positive, this one is going down in flames big time.
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Only few weeks left.
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Great artists steal. And really great artists write Star Trek II. <BR><BR>Since so many posters seemed to enjoy this last time I posted it, I'll post it again. For the definitive word on James Horner, and his nasty habit of engaging in plagiarism, go listen to the "Opportunity Makes a Thief" podcast dated 10/9/2006 from Film Score Monthly located here: http://fsmpodcast.libsyn.com/rss <BR><BR>This podcast is about 17 minutes long and includes numerous quotations from Horner's work, as well as other film composers, who have borrowed/stolen verbatim from classical composers. Enjoy.
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You'll need to remove the space in "r ss" at the end of that URL. It should be "rss".
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Oct. 8, 2009, 3:29 a.m. CST
IT will be very interesting to see what score James Horner rips
by Rogue_Leader
Seriously that due can't get an original idea out of his ass anymore worth a damn.
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If your expectations are going to be so fucking HIGH, then some of you will be so dissapointed, remember before "The Phantom Menace" was released everyone thought it was going to be a life changing experience...But hey i do have faith in the 2 James, but just don't hype it to fucking much..
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Granted I don't follow the scene that much, but the 90s seemed to have oodles of great scores, and with the unfortunate advent of comic book movies I'd have thought there'd be a shitload of memorable, theme-y scores to track down. I think the last one I was truly interested in was Ocean's 11. Anyone have any recommendations?
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dont you get tired repeating that same horseshit in every avatar talkback? nevermind that it aint true, but this is the place to talk about films, right? there are plenty of other places to talk about tabloid junks. please seek those places, they might give a damn. so you dont have to keep repeating the same thing to get our attention.
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I totally agree with you. I used to rush out and buy movie scores that came out BEFORE some big movies came out, mainly because they were from composers like Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, etc. Unfortunately, we lost Goldsmith, and Williams has been pretty un-inspired with his themes lately. I bought "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" soundtrack and was hugely disappointed. There has not really been any standout scores for many years (not in the 80s John Willaims-heyday way).
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Oct. 8, 2009, 8:08 a.m. CST
Best composers working today: Desplat and Giacchino
by Nasty In The Pasty
They always have a memorable theme in there somewhere and write actual MUSIC instead of a pair of sticks banging together (accompanied by Moaning Woman) for two hours.
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If you're looking for the big adventure scores like Williams' original Star Wars trilogy, or Horner in his hey-day in the '80s (Star Trek II & III, Krull [all the same score], Aliens, Willow), those days are over. Scores are no longer big and bombastic, they're generally more nuanced material and usually very subtle. See, the people in charge of what happens on the screen don't want the score getting in the way of the visuals. <BR><BR>These days, I seem to be following a select group. Alexandre Desplat (Lust, Caution is an incredible score), James Newton Howard (Defiance, TDK, King Kong, his Shyamalan collaborations even though the movies themselves are junk), David Julyan (Insomnia, The Prestige, and The Descent are great scores), Shigeru Umebayashi (2046, Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers), Howard Shore (LoTR, duh), Brian Tyler (there's a reason Children of Dune has become trailer music, I also really liked his AvP:R score, he did a great job weaving all the previous scores into a single coherent whole), Dario Marianelli (V for Vendetta, Atonement), Philip Glass (Fog of War, Illusionist, Notes on a Scandal, Cassandra's Dream, all the same score; it's funny, I like his film scores more than his concert music), Osvaldo Golijov (I was unimpressed by Youth Without Youth, but I think he's quite possibly the best living classical composer (Ainadamar, Oceana, Ayre), so I'm going to follow his work with Coppola), and finally, the cream of the crop (for me), Bear McCreary. His Battlestar Galactica soundtracks have been some of the most impressive and nuanced film/television music I've ever heard. His television music is more complex than most film scores (even some on this list). <BR><BR>I left the names of some composers off the list who have only written one particular movie whose score I enjoyed, rather than a series of great scores. I'll elaborate, if you wish. <BR><BR>And, in case you're wondering, I primarily listen to classical music (mainly 20th century composers, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Stravinsky, Britten, Bartok, Poulenc, Copland), with a smattering of film scores/composers, so I'm approaching my film score listening from the point of view of a classical aficionado.
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I apologize. I should have broken that up a bit.
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You'll notice Giacchino is missing from my list. That's because he sucks. His early work on Lost was admirable, but has since (third and fourth season, I stopped watching after that) devolved into self-parody. I know people rave about his score for Ratatouille, I haven't listened to it or seen the movie. Star Trek was junk. His Medal of Honor and Call of Duty scores are the most insipidly patriotic bullshit ever written. Honestly, he should have stayed in Video Game music. That's all he's suited for.
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thanks for the info :)
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I'll be very suprised. I have gave up on James Horner since the mid-90s. Since his score for Titanic, to tell you the truth. And since then his scores have only gone worst, with Troy being a particulary low case. Truly, if the score of Avatar is any good, i'll be VERY suprised. And i used to love his movie's scores, i own several CDs of his past glories.
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... traditional and contemporary, electronic elements and spans the entire spectrum of attitude and energy – from bombastic action to the delicate, romantic discovery of a new world.”<br><br>That basically describes EVERY score that James Horner has made in all his career.
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It was Alan Silvestri who composed the score for The Abysss, not James Horner. And the score for The Abyss is brillant.
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Mask of Zorro (the first one) and Deep Impact weren't bad. Of course, they were just retreads of some of his earlier scores (Willow for Zorro, and the Jack Ryan scores for Deep Impact, IIRC). But yeah, most of Horner's "original" work was done in the '80s, and has simply been copy/pasted in various permutations into his scores for the last twenty years.
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That's nothing new. Jerry Goldsmith and Ennio morricone did that constantly. John Williams owns half his career to Aaron Copland, Goldsmith to Debussy and claude Debussy. Prokofiev and Penderecki have had their stuff stolen from every movie score composer from around the world. That's not the issue.<br><br>The issue with James horner is that he's so unelegant and so damn obvious about it. And that he repeats the same thing over and over again. not only he plagiarizes, he repeates the same plagiarism from one work to the next without a break. That's his problem. And now, he's so lazy, he even plagiarizes himself when he plagiarized others. It's insane.
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I used to think highly of Giachino because of his excelent work for The Incredibles and because of of his cool riff off Jerry Goldsmith's planet Of The apes score for the end credits of Lost. But his horrible souless shit score for Jar Jar Abrams' Skank Trek lost my faith on the dude. And his end scroe for Cloverfield is hardly the great stuff people were claiming it to be, more a case of hype over reality.
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I'll give you on Mask Of Zorro, it was good stuff, yes. But frankly, i abhoor the fucking score for the fucking movie Deep Impact. Really, that movie's score is very alike the movie, melodramatic dumb bullshit pretending to be a serious intelligent SF movie.
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Hahaha. Yeah, Deep Impact is a bit of a guilty pleasure. It's still a better movie than that Michael Bay abomination though.
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"And his end scroe for Cloverfield is hardly the great stuff people were claiming it to be, more a case of hype over reality." Yeah, just like the movie. I really like how he uses the chorus from Rosenman's Robocop.
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Jar Jar Abrams, mind if I borrow that? I love it.
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I said.
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"Jar Jar Abrams, mind if I borrow that? I love it."<br><br>By all means, please do.<br><br>"Deep Impact is a bit of a guilty pleasure. It's still a better movie than that Michael Bay abomination though."<br><br>It's pretty easy to be a better movie to the worst movie ever made in the whole history of cinema, isn't it? Every movie stands to win compared to that horrible piece of shit. Still, as the say goes, two wrongs do not make a right. Deep impact is still a bad movie, no matter what. It's like a bloated TV movie made with more money and better special effect,s but with all the wrongs that can be found on a bad TV movie, specially the fucking melodrama. And teen marriage, man, teen marriage! Fuck's sake! And the science of Deep Impact is not much better then Armageddon. Well, a little bit better, but really, not by that much!<br><br>But if you want to get some good news stuff about Deep Impact , learn that in 1998, at the box offic,e it made more money then Armageddon. No, it didn't had bigger numbers, but the production of Deep Impact was much cheaper, half the budget of Armageddon, therefore by the end, and all counted in, it proved to be a bigger sucess for Dreamworks and Paramount then Armageddon was for Disney. How about that?
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"John Williams owns half his career to Aaron Copland, Goldsmith to Debussy and claude Debussy. Prokofiev and Penderecki have had their stuff stolen from every movie score composer from around the world." Don't mischaracterize these guys as ripping off these late 19th/early 20th century composers. The reason everyone sounds like them is because they defined the modern orchestration and texture we hear today. Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, etc. They were the 'colorists'...everything we hear today (orchestrally speaking) flows from their contributions. <p> And in no way shape or form does any of our great film composers even hold a candle to those giants. John Williams can write a hell of a melody but he had greats like Herb Spenser orchestrating for him.
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Oct. 9, 2009, 6:12 a.m. CST
Horner seems like a nice chap, but his music is fucking boring
by quantize
fact
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of Horner's scores. Obviously Aliens, but his star trek work is awsome imho, and Braveheart is pretty damn good too. I agree that he has been quite uninspired for quite some time now (but then which major film composer the 70/80s is nt these days?), so Im really hoping he finds some inspiration and pulls off at least a good score for Avataar...
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yeah, its just getting boring now hearing the same dead horse flogging from the Avatar haters. I dont know why they insist on just repeating the same crap over and over. Yeesh, we get it, they hate Avatar, cool beans, nothing for you to see here then. Move along....
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Thanks for the tips. And please, if you've come across great one-offs recently, shout them to the world. A shame you have to look so much harder for heart-quickening scores these days, but I'll give those recommendation a whirl. If they aren't to my taste, I guess there's still a lot to catch up on.
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I had a question, particularly to The Mothman - did you find there were certain - thematic similarities between Bear Mc Creary's work and that of Osvaldo Golijov, specifically in regard to the song "Bloodshed" vs. "Muerte a Caballo". There seemed to be some thematic commonality and I wanted to see if you felt similarly.
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