It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I agree; I admire some of Conti's other works but his score for FYEO makes an otherwise superior film almost unwatchable at times. While not perfect, I don't find Hamlish's score as distracting. Barry could have placed the icing on the cake for these two strong entrees in the series.
Conti's cowbell-laden score gives that film such pep. Yeah, it "dates" the film but Bond films are time capsules anyway. Even John Barry entered the world of the drum machine to great effect late in the game, or even the synthesizers in OHMSS (which anchor the film in its time, along with Hunt's visual approach).
I'll repeat it again here too! FYEO is a vastly superior soundtrack to anything from Arnold.
Yes the disco sound is dated - just like the clothes, hairstyles and Janet Brown also date the film - but it doesn't diminish the melody.
To my ears Arnold never gave us any action theme as strong as the chases in FYEO. It's mostly tuneless tinny drum machines.
Pep indeed right from the opening gun barrel, my favourite since DAF.
You said it imho. Perfectly. This is my view as well.
The score in Spectre wasn't something that attracted my attention. I really couldn't recall anything except maybe in the PTS. That may be a good thing or not. I guess the score in SP is also just there.
Maybe that's Newman Bond thing.
Knowing Newman by heart, his Bond scores clearly belong to his weakest work, which really puzzles me.
Anyway, I saw a little bit of SF on tv yesterday (I'll watch it again this week before seeing SP) and it was the Silva intro and the interrogation scene. I noticed the score this time distinctly (I was listening for it because of all the discussion here). It sounded modern and fresh, without being overbearing, and fit the scene absolutely perfectly..... I watched from his intro on the Island up to when he escapes captivity.
So I think he did a good job on SF, if you leave your Barry expectations at home. Having said that, I felt the same way about Serra as well, and all the other one-offs (yes, all of them).
I think I'm going to enjoy the SP score, with the film, because Newman seems to make that part work for me.
Serra is notable because it stands out though. Newman's score, even you said, you have to listen for. Serra, for better or worse (in my eyes, for better) moved on from Barry while still making a score that stood out in the film. With Newman you don't get Barry, and you don't get anything memorable - beyond perhaps the Macao intro score in Skyfall.
Maybe I'm just getting older, but I quite like it, after years of Arnold's over productions (imho) which @MakeshiftPython alluded to above.
In a way, Newman is the antithesis of Arnold but is too much on the other side of the spectrum perhaps.
Now we need to move forward in B25 onwards with someone who gets back to the right balance.
The only track that i have really picked up on, and liked from his 2 Bond films, was the score in SF, where Bond jumps up onto the bottom of the lift in that building in Shanghai.
No it for the most is not particularly memorable but it does it's job. I find Arnold in the Brosnan era to be quite serviceable I just don't like that era so I'm probably biased. Though CR he seemed at times to be getting somewhere and I maintain him and Cornell produced the best theme since TLD possibly even AVTAK.
Though some loud pounding percussion and that Sky plane sequence is simply pastiche. The vesper theme and his arrangements of the theme are great but he seemed to be hitting on something with QOS.
It was like he was getting his own sound without having to use the safety net of the JB theme, Time To Get Out, Inside Man & Night At The Opera are for me probably the best cues of the Craig era.
That being said we were spoiled with Barry, he not only could could soundtrack every mood but he could do it with memorable music with bags of melody. It doesn't seem that allot of modern films have this kind of thing plus JB is a one off and expecting another like him is futile.
A new composer needs to vastly reinvent the Bond score but unfortunately no one has so far even rose to that challenge without descending into tribute or wall paper like soundscapes.
Very nice post and well put. Newman and Arnold do have greatly different approaches they put into their film scores that exemplify the extremes of what made Barry's sound synonymous with Bond. The brilliance of Barry was the melding of memorable cues with a delicacy that would fit the mood. Newman is a terrific mood setter, but larger remains just that. There are very few moments that jump out and invite us in. Conversely, Arnold invited us in more than we needed and aside from his most recent work, did not provide additional context to the pictures associated with each track.
However, I do feel that his work in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace provide mood that is expressed between the lines of dialogue and works to enhance the scenes. Death of a Vesper is a good example of this in my opinion. The music tells me so many things in the looks they exchange from the lost possibility of love and retreat, betrayal, anguish, revenge. It takes me through an abbreviated version of the stages of grief pertaining to the situation.
Have to relisten many more times, but here folows initial thoughts:
Apart from a few inspired moments (dia de los muertos, backfire, dona lucia,..) it seems very repetitive and unoriginal.
Also, in the action scenes, there's just to much drummings and noise and very little melody.
Also, it really disapoints me that Thomas Newman has reused so many "moments" (not new approaches or variations, but the exact tunes) from Skyfall. Was he unispired or just lazy?
Also, you can clearly see that he feels much more confortable with the more romantic scenes then with the action scenes.
Anyway, despite an slightly overall negative opinion, i do feel that the music will match perfectly the movie.
It has a great sense of rythim and pace and it is very atmospheric.
I will post a final review after seeing the movie and listening to it more times. cheers
Glad to hear that and to have been of some service. Not me. The others. But still.
;)
In fact, I believe this began on A View To A Kill, where Barry had problems with Duran Duran, who wanted more creative control on their track. Barry was upset that Cubby caved in. Then things really came to a head with AHA for The Living Daylights. Similar problems......but interestingly AHA now talk very highly of Barry and say that he really made a massive contribution to improving the track (duh.....).
So unfortunately, the commercial impact of a young popular singer/successful song (for marketing purposes) seems to take precedence these days over an integrated score. It appears (not sure) that most acts are Diva-like and don't want to work with the composer, or it could be that the composer doesn't like to work with some flavour of the month pop act, or finally it could be due to licensing/record studio/label issues.
Bottom line - the seamless collaborations which we had in the past and which led to such masterful classic scores are almost certainly long gone.
To Newman's credit, he's the only composer that tried working in the song into the score in some capacity, despite having never worked with the two singers on the song. If Newman is to be offered another gig and returns, I hope he gets his chance to collaborate with the singer. He's certainly capable of it, as he has worked on songs in the past such as the Oscar nominated song "Down to Earth" by Peter Gabriel for the film WALL-E.
I had forgotten how badly that film suffered because of the action music. Shame, because some of the sequences are superb.
Yeah, too bad, the biggest issue I have with this movie, is Billö Conti's score. Compared to taht, I prefer Marvin Hamlish TSWLM sacore, although the Bond 77 is a little too funky for a Bond movie. But that's just my opinion.
I agree. I prefer Hamlisch's score as well. His Bond 77 at least is suitably Bondian (with the Bond theme infused and nicely tweaked) while Conti's disco action score is just that.....pure disco. It is distinctive though and memorable, I'll give him that much. All the other elements of his score (including cowbells for the gunbarrel) are first class though.
Are we even sure Newman did this? In both SF and SP the title song is used in one scene and one scene only and it seems pretty clear that this was at the instigation of EON saying they want it integrated in some way and it was just shoved in at the last minute.
There are definite shades of the tank chase track where Serra's original track was replaced by someone at EON against the composer's wishes.
I dont know about SF but I watched an interview with Sam Smith the other day and he say he recorded the song in January - plenty of time for Newman to properly integrate it throughout the score if he so desired rather than one token scene
You would have thought he would have been thankful to have Smith's quite Bondian melodies to use given how bereft of inspiration he was on the rest of the score.
Perhaps theres a rights issue/credit thing going on where if he uses the song more than once Adele and Sam would get a shared credit for the score?
The music for the monastery climb at the film's climax is superb.
The Monastery Climb score is very good indeed. There are good parts in Conti's music, e.g. "Gunbarrel/Sinking of the St. George's", the first 30 seconds of "Melina's Revenge", "St. Cyril's Monastery", and "Cortina", "Run Them down/The Climb". "Runaway", "Gonzalez takes a drive" (funny, the typo remained on the CD-2000-release - was also on the LP-sleeve) and "A Drive in the Country", and the rest is mediocre at best. But, yet again, this is my personal taste.
Maybe it was Sam Mendes, who only wanted the the title song only in one particular scene, and thus, only featured in one track of the score? Then, of course, it could be a question of money for Adele and Sam, who knows? And Serra was quite angry on Campbell and EON about the way they used his score in the finished movie. Maybe because of the tank chase track, which was done by John Altman, the orchestrator. So it's quite likely, that EON and Campbell were not happy with this track. He also complained, that the music's volume was not loud enough throughout the movie. But then the audience should be able to understand what the actor's are saying?
You should come out of a bondmovie humming some of the music, needless to say that wasn't the case here.
It does work better within the film but the action sequences were crying out for somthing more memorable.