I was actually lucky myself. As a diehard STAR WARS fan, I got to geek out another way as well -- Williams was the comencement speaker at my college graduation.

I posted this in a talkback last week. It was targeted at plant reviews for movies, but let’s see if we can apply the same principles to this review:

http://www.geocities.com/sa mtaholo/plant.htm

1. ‘I've never written to Aintitcool before’. Check.

2. Overly elaborate explanation of how he got his hands on it. Check.

3. ‘I’m a big fan of John Williams’ score’ (just like the rest of you, presumably). Check.

4. ‘I was never really a big fan of Ken Thorne’s score…’ Check.

5. But… ‘This changed yesterday.’ Check.

6. Turn negatives into positives. ‘I now think Thorne did an excellent job given the fact that he had an extremely downsized orchestra in comparison to what Williams had in Superman I, and I feel he does the best with what he was given to work with.’ Check.

7. Try not to criticise the material directly. Criticise other things instead. ‘I can't say the score was as fun to listen to as Superman II, but that's only because Superman III, as a film, is a pretty big disaster.’ Check.

8. Compare the material to other popular material. ‘But the score is very reminiscent of Henry Mancini, and maybe that's intentional. Either way, it was still a fun listen.’ Check.

9. ‘If you use this, please call me ________.’ Big old check. And how dare you sully Al’s good name!

What I don’t get is why ScoreKeeper felt the need to include this planty review to supplement his own opinion, the press release material and the upcoming Matessino/Kendall interview, which sounds like it actually *will* be fascinating. It feels like FSM is trying to make a big deal of the Ken Thorne material, to pique the interest of fans who might otherwise shrug and say, “well, I’ve already got the Williams score for the first movie, so why do I need all this other crap?”

Of course, that just begs the question of why AICN’s staff aren’t more discerning about what they do and don’t publish. But that’s a whole other can of worms, I’m sure.