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GREAT to hear!
good job on the edit :)
but as i said in my video - Zimmer just doesn't do it for me, i actually prefer the Newman track over that Zimmer one...
if you want an example of how that scene should be scored (IMO) - try putting Arnold's "Target Terminated" or "Time To Get Out" from QOS over that same car chase scene, and see the results ;) ..
i know people bash Arnold because of his over-reliance on the Bond theme in his scores - but dammit, it at least felt like a B-O-N-D score.. the lack of it since CR is annoying to me.. it's like using it has suddenly become taboo, its only ever good enough to be played over the closing credits, or whenever the Aston shows up >:P
Brilliant! Looks like a completely different car chase now.
"... at the producer's insistence Newman added an interpolation of "Skyfall" in the track "Komodo Dragon", used in a scene where Bond enters a casino in Macau."
Okay. Splitting hairs a little here.
Anyway, the tradition in the great Bond scores is that the theme from the title song recurs during the film. Newman is not an idiot so he obviously knew this. And yet it was the producers who insisted he include it.
A less precious composer than Newman would have wanted to work more closely with Adele and her composer to achieve a collaborative effort. That's what Barry did even when he hated the collaborators, such as A-ha.
The SF score would have been elevated if Newman had done this.
Ditto, the one brief reference to TWOTW in SP really pops out. Newman should have used it more.
You’re kind of inventing a narrative in your head here.
I find it so odd that folks construct these personality profiles based on so little. Cary is a really good guy and is lovely to everyone, Newman is ‘precious’ etc.
such a beautiful melody in that song - shame it was only used in 1 scene....
thats exactly what grinds my gears about the more recent scores - i feel like when the title theme and score are married together, it helps in giving that particular Bond film it's own unique identity.
Shame it was barely used in the song! :)
Such statements are considered "baffling" around here, be careful. ;)
What you insist is a tradition is no longer the case. It hasn't been for a very long time now, long before Newman got the gig.
Funny that you bring up A-ha, as that was the last time we had a title song weaved through the score before the streak broke with Michael Kamen's score for LTK not including the Gladys Knight song. Eric Serra not integrating the Tina Turner song. David Arnold almost had it with "Surrender" before EON ultimately relegated it to the end credits, leaving the official title song by Crow not included in the score. TWINE would mark the first time that the main title song was integrated with the score in 12 years. Followed by DAD having Madonna do the song with her own producers, and David Arnold didn't bother attempting to integrate it with his score. Then we get "You Know My Name", the first Bond title song weaved through the score after seven years. Then Jack White does his own thing, with the song not really appearing (aside from bits only fans have argued was Arnold attempting, but they're so blink and you miss it that they might as well not count). Thus we have Thomas Newman, who expressed a lot of enthusiasm and interest in working on the score to his buddy Sam Mendes. As pointed out earlier, the Adele song was produced very late in the process, so it wasn't possible to actually integrate it beyond the one appearance that EON requested. And there's nothing to support your made up narrative of Mendes trying to "resist" including the song, and I suspect you made that up in order to further find fuel for your dislike for his score because if there's one thing I've noticed about you @Getafix it's that you like to make a negative narrative over people you're not fans of in this series, like how you find any opportunity to dismiss Pierce Brosnan.
Then there's SPECTRE. Supposedly the song was already in the can by January 2015, so if Newman wanted to weave the score beyond one scene he probably could have but for whatever reason that didn't play out. However, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that he didn't out of laziness, a dislike for the franchise, or just some weird ego thing of not wanting to include tunes made by others into his work. Instead, I'm pointing the finger at EON. As everything I laid out in this post strongly shows they don't put a lot of stock into weaving the songs into the scores, at least until it's way too late to in the case of SF and SP, or not even bothering to at all like with LTK, GE, TND, DAD, and QOS. So it's certainly not something unique to Newman.
In one of the James Bond & Friends podcast episodes Bill Koenig brought up an excellent point of how EON's approach to title song and score had changed by 1997. Originally they approached John Barry to score, however one of the big issues that resulted in him not wanting to return was that they didn't guarantee him producing the title song like he did in the past. And as we saw, they ultimately rejected the k.d. Lang song that David Arnold actually produced. That's what John Barry didn't want to deal with, and why he never came back. After the issues that came about with A-Ha, EON seems to have become content to allow the artists the option of total creative control over the song as a way of enticing them for the gig. This would shut out composers from the process, with the three notable exceptions being "Surrender", TWINE, and YKMN.
Given all this, I know better now to not set any expectations for a score weaving the title song throughout the whole work. That's now a thing of the past from 1962-1987. Anything after that was just an exception. Maybe when Gregg Wilson gets promoted to producing with his aunt he'll be insisting that the artists collaborate with the composers to get the classic scores we used to get in the first half of the franchise's lifespan. Or maybe not. At this point, it's all on EON.
thats EON "Chasing the Dragon" as it were - they now seem to consistently want that chart topping song as well... it seemed like after they struck gold with Sheena Easton with "For Your Eyes Only" and Duran Duran with "A View To A Kill" they now view that as a priority..
It’s pretty fantastic, it’s true.
I think as a publicity tool it’s undeniably a great asset. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that: it’s not as if the songs haven’t been put into the charts right from Barry’s version of the James Bond Theme.
Yup. That's what really changed the game. Before AVTAK, the artists that John Barry typically worked with were strictly vocalists that served as song birds for his music. Then comes Duran Duran, who were actually artists and contributed to the creative process, which I don't think Barry ever had to deal with. However, since they trusted in Barry they were very open to his suggestions/arrangements which is why the collaboration turned out pretty well. Contrast that with A-Ha, who clashed creatively with Barry that there are now two different versions of the song, Barry's mix in the TLD soundtrack and A-Ha's preferred mix in their album. Also, none of the the composers that came after Barry had nearly the same clout he did.
That's a good point, yes. Does anyone know what the highest charting song was before AVTAK?
Yeah I don't know; it is interesting that although Barry was great his songs didn't quite hit the pop success that other ones did- those two are still amongst the top most popular Bond songs when you hear folks talk about them, and he even followed their leads slightly with his songs to slightly less success. AVTAK obviously was his biggest hit, but as you say that was a combined effort.
Well, until 1994 when All The Time In The World got a re-release thanks to the Guinness ad! :)
We would’ve got No Good about goodbye as the title track and it would’ve been extremely well received over Another Way to Die.
One is actually about the state of mind Bond is in after losing Vesper. (Regardless what anyone says including Arnold the song he and Bassey made is about Bond post Casino Royale). The other is a mess of music/lyrics that have no baring in the film. It could literally be used as a place holder on any Bond/action/spy film.
Hell Celine Dion made a better “Bond song” for Deadpool 2!
oh i personally dont really care one way or the other lol - i'm just calling it what it is..
if they want to chase the top spot on the Billboard 100, hey go for it... i would just like to hear the song worked into the score more than it has been in recent films, thats all i am saying.
As I mentioned in the title song speculation thread, if the current speculation that Beyonce got it is correct, it may actually help with that very thing as her and Hans Zimmer have worked together just recently on The Lion King. Could bring back a level of composer involvement with the title song not seen since the Barry days.
Sounds good to me!
He does actually do the occasional bit of song writing too of course; which not all movie composers seem to do.
@Shardlake It was amazing seeing him live! He may receive the main credit on the poster, but after just about each song he brought a band member forward and spoke about their working relationship and creating the piece about to be played. He had a real passion and enthusiasm for his profession, and it very much felt like he and his band were a family.
I would highly recommend seeing him live if he's ever in your neck of the woods.
Not super keen on Beyonce. And is it really wise after she did an Austin Powers movie?
It seems incredible now that A-ha were so resistant to collaborating with John Barry. It suggests incredible ignorance and immaturity on their part (although I love their song - both versions actually).
So many artists would have jumped at the chance to work with Barry. And I think these days A-ha are a bit more respectful of the Barry version.
I can see that EON probably value a hit song over weaving it into the score. The success of Adele's SF undoubtedly contributed significantly to the success of that film.
But it's obviously not totally unimportant to them as they did still ask Newman to include it in his score.
So there's a slight contradiction there to the notion that EON simply don't care.
As someone pointed out above as well, Arnold did it twice - on TWINE and CR - in recent times. And almost managed to do it on TND. So the idea
of combining song and score is clearly not dead.
The difference is that Arnold is a known collaborator with a respected track record of working with other artists and performers on their songs. And Newman isn't.
And EON had sat on the Sam Smith song for a good nine months before actually putting it out there, so if they wanted the song more woven in SP than Adele’s was they could have requested that... and yet they didn’t.