Greetings! ScoreKeeper here with a bit of news which broke last week but was only recently made official. Stalwart 007 composer David Arnold will be tied up as musical director for the 2012 London Olympics so SKYFALL (2012) director Sam Mendes is turning to a trusted collaborator to compose the music. For the first time since 1997 somebody other than David Arnold (five films) will be composing a score for a James Bond film.

Thomas Newman was assigned the mission!

I'm a tremendous fan of Thomas Newman and am super-intrigued by this appointment. When I interviewed him a couple of years ago I asked him why he hadn't yet tackled any big-budget action flicks. He had an interesting response....

"The thing about action movies is unless you have a real visionary director, the music for action movies is very… there’s a real requirement. It’s really required to do things and in that requirement often times I think you run out of room for personality. You are really making things exciting. Often though, not always, you have to resort to devices to do that.

Action movies are just not something that I longed to do. I guess if something came along like THE MATRIX (1999) or something that was so stylized…that would be a real fun kind of movie to score."

I think his requirement of needing a "real visionary director" is being fulfilled with Mendes at the helm. I've always felt that Newman is one of the more cinematically diverse composers working today and this new appointment will give him a chance to flex his muscles and show a side of himself he may not yet have had the opportunity to reveal. I was already interested in seeing Sam Mendes' SKYFALL. I'm even more enthusiastic to see a Sam Mendes SKYFALL scored by Thomas Nemwan. Bravo!

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