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Not sure why he's quite so unpopular on here. I found his score to be a little unmemorable and not exactly groundbreaking but perfectly good nonetheless.
Especially with Skyfall breaking all records.
Now with this being 24 & 25 they can make this the greatest one eva'!
A story line that may even take Bond a complete 180, or even 360 from Skyfall.. or will we revisit the past now that we have a male M one again and Moneypenny back ..the mouth waters with what they could do now ..Bring it on......
In Barbara, Michael, Sam and Daniel ... we trust. ^:)^
Personal choice I really wish that they could do Fleming's YOLT with this group.Mendes, Craig, etc...
The timing could not be better and the subject matter, dark as it is ..could be acceptable as long as they stay with this format.
I think we are going to get another classic Bond movie. I'm hoping they're going to work out a convincing way to bring a 'world domination' plot back to the franchise!
I may be on my own here, but I do think that the rest of Craig's movies will feature Quantum. Skyfall will be his Goldfinger.
They'd be silly not to, methinks!
Quite. Newman's score was not up to Barry standards, but it was a solid cut above Arnold's best. But opinions on this site are a bit eccentric. The disdain for Naomie Harris' performance--and I had serious reservations about her when she was cast, BTW--is another oddity. I can only chalk it up to the youthfulness of the posters.
Which is doubtless why it received an Oscar nom.
Anyway, so according to you, "the young ones" dislike Newman, while "the old ones" consider Oscar noms very relevant to judge something ? Hm, really, for me it's very much the opposite : Newman's score is tailored for the new generation, that looks on the Internet all the stats about box office and Oscar noms, that's very much a generic Hollywood score IMO, the Academy would never give an Oscar nom to a Bond score or Bond song by Barry btw. Not a very good factor to look at then, IMO. American composers like Hamlisch, Conti, or Newman were nominated for their one time work on Bond. Hard to say that being American did not play a role :)
(And I write this from a country which stole the 2012 Oscars, but we're lucid it's thanks to Weinstein lobbying).
Took the words right out of my pocket. (To quote Licence To Kill)
I agree 110%
So did something happen with him that we're not aware of? Did the producers not like him?
I hope you're right. I'd like Arnold back, I wouldn't mind a new composer, but I really hope we've seen the back of Newman.
Actually, older folk who have enough taste not to be suckered by Arnold's clunky techno-trash understand that Newman's score was a clear cut above Arnold's. And while Oscar noms are not the be all and end all, they do at least suggest quality and are regarded worldwide as a reputable standard for cinematic merit. At any rate, they certainly cut more ice than the cyber-scribblings of juvenile BBS posters.
Politics, Khan, are why Newman's SF score received a nomination. The Newman family has been Hollywood royalty for many decades now. This is why all other prior Bond composers, Barry included, got snubbed annually while Newman's efforts (some of which were nothing special) got nominated. The Academy is a "good ole boys" club in the finest tradition.
I'm not a fan of Arnold using techno either and don't think it fits a Bond film, but I'd like to know how you figure Newman's use of it was that much better? Or why a soundtrack that barely nodded towards the title theme, was nearly devoid as well of the Bond theme, and loaded with techno sounds and motifs surpassed Arnold, who to his credit usually got the first two elements right and gave us more than several Barry-worthy pieces along the way?
Some of my earliest childhood memories are hearing my father's playing of both the GF and TB soundtracks, and later the YOLT soundtrack upon it's release in 1967. I'm a musician, I know music in both technical and creative senses, and my opinion is far from eccentric considering my age and knowledge. You don't like Arnold's Bond work, fine, but let's not pass it off as a folly of youth as there are quite a few people here my age and older that feel Newman's SF soundtrack doesn't surpass several of Arnold's entries. Newman will return, but not out of merit for this work being so superior, he'll return because as others have correctly stated, he's Mendes' buddy and Mendes will get what he wants for the moment because EON doesn't want to mess with a formula that worked at the box office. Plus I don't really think they care that much about who is composing as long as it isn't as aurally offensive and way out in left field like the GE soundtrack is.
All other prior Bond composers? Marvin Hamlisch got a nomination back in 1978!
You have no proof whatsoever Newman's nom was politically motivated. The reason you and others dismiss it as such is because the nomination does tremendous violence to your notion that his SF score was poor, let alone worse than Arnold's dreck. And incidentally, I don't despise Arnold to the extent that almost all of MI6 Classic's posters used to (I'm shocked at the reversal that has occurred on this site in that regard). I actually think his CR and QOS scores were competent, unlike his earlier Bond work. Still, on the whole, his scores are ham-fisted and generic and are not a patch on Newman's SF score. Arnold simply has no light touch.
@Panchito- forgot about that one, but then Hamlisch was also an Academy darling which at least partially explains the nom in this case. Unlike Newman's SF soundtrack, Hamlisch wrote a fantastic title theme which gave the nom some understandable credibility for it's inclusion and used it in Barry-like fashion as well as showing some originality in using a different approach while keeping some semblance of what came before. I just didn't like the disco but it was still better than the Serra and Conti efforts.
Khan, it's no secret to anyone what I've said about the Newman family. I have a few friends in Hollywood who know how the Academy works and are able to vote. Now whether or not you believe what I've said is your call, but it is a club and one that is more politically than artistically driven. And a lot more people here who know this themselves would agree with me and have done so. You can also tell by those who continually get noms for average soundtracks while others that were better were dismissed. I don't have the time to name examples as I must leave here shortly, but it has nothing to do with your notion of why I don't see it as positively as you do. I gave my honest and valid reasons which you've dismissed somehow here as disingenuous and self serving. I think his SF soundtrack also rode into the nom on a lot of goodwill from a title song which he didn't write. Please, again, explain how Newman's over reliance on techno makes this soundtrack demonstrably different, let alone better, than the likes of CR and QOS which you acknowledge as competent? I feel both of those soundtracks are indeed better than SF and then some. But Newman did some things that I liked and I'm not one of those who wants Arnold back based on this initial effort, I'm fine with seeing if Newman can improve on it, but I am saying that his return has more to do with Mendes than it being an improvement on Arnold.
Sadly, that's very true.
Gunbarrel at start of the movie.
Newman
No techno terrorism
At the end of the movie Bond gets the girl....
Fair enough. You truly believe Newman's nomination was politically driven, and I shouldn't have impugned your motives. Personally, I disagree. Not that Newman's score was brilliant, but IMO, the quality of music, virtually all music, has deteriorated dramatically since roughly 1993, and the competition, therefore, is not particularly stiff. Upper middling scores can therefore get nominations nowadays.
Regarding the use of techno, I think Arnold toned this down in CR and QOS, and that largely accounts for his improvement. But I heard nothing in SF's soundtrack that remotely approached Arnold's worst excesses in, let's say, TND. Newman's techno was tasteful and understated by comparison.
Agreed with quality of music, although I feel it deteriorated in specifically rock around 1991-1992 when many untalented grunge acts were signed en masse while established acts with a proven track record of sales were dismissed overnight. Not there weren't a few talents such as Chris Cornell and Dave Grohl in the bunch, but most of them never amounted to the same hill of beans as acts from the 80's and before had, hence why the mass industry firings of 1997 occurred. Like punk, there was a pronounced lack of musicianship and all the singers sounded way too similar. But that's my opinion as a musician. I do think the rock scene has improved since the 1990's, but that's based on my tastes.
I agree that Arnold did tone techno down following DAD, but I did understand why he used it excessively in the TND Germany scenes as techno is a German passion for some strange reason that even I, as a man mostly of German descent who was raised in a European German manner with lots of old country traditions, can't understand. Techno replaces real musicianship and that is something I'll never accept. However I though the overall work of Arnold in TND was superior to TWINE (which in my mind is far more techno in focus) and DAD as he produced some music such as "Surrender" and the Paris themes that stand out as worthy of the homage he paid to Barry here before moving on to more of his own ideas. It gives your thoughts as to his improvements by losing a lot of the techno some validity, as then a composer has to rely more on himself rather than a machine.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Newman's use in SF, which I found to be prevalent in more tracks than I would have liked and thus not exactly understated. But he did use it better in a memorable sense, whereas most of Arnold's techno pieces are fairly forgettable compared to "Shanghai Drive" as an example.
And I really don't see the relation between being "old and wise", and trusting the Academy as a sign of good taste, frankly. It's rather some young ones (not all) that I see counting the Academy noms and awards and box office receipts to seemingly decide what to think about movies (I'm not talking about this forum only)
Really ? It seems it's rather the Hans Zimmer crowd that despises Arnold, and to me that's rather the young ones. What you call "reversal" is rather "arrival of young fans", IMO. I may be wrong though, I did not do any stats, and I'm not sure we know all the ages of people here. Also, here we're many to say that Newman's score is a weak point of SF (I consider for instance that the tone of the music looks sometimes almost random compared to what is seen on screen, the exotic sounds in particular), we do not claim that Arnold's Bond scores are work of genius. Even on movie score reviews sites, his best rated scores are not the Bond ones - for these ones he clearly is pleasing the producers first, IMO. And yet he could not convince them to use Surrender !
But well, we somehow know the producers would not talk to Newman, and they even had to license some Arnold music, and that they really like Arnold a lot, so let's see if Newman will really come back...
SirHenry, another blatant example of a movie score composer who got nominated a lot, is another member of Newman's family, Randy. He won two for songs though.
I already explained in the past that when you run a fan club or edit a fan magazine, you simply can't speak your mind as freely as when you're an anonymous fan, it's not worth the risk, so don't expect long answers IMO.
But, well, try to find a quote from Broccoli & Wilson during or after the release of SF talking about him or the score :)
Compare with for instance :
Also, the Electronic Press Kit about the score of Skyfall, is a lot about the Bond theme :) You'd believe the score was an Arnold's one (who, don't forget, used a lot the Bond theme on request of the producers...).
What a load of arrogant, patronising BS. Go to Film Score Monthly and you'll find plenty of fans of Newman's score (along with a healthy number of haters) and there's no clear correlation with age - plenty of older posters who reionise the score's artistic and dramatic merits. The idea that those like Newman's SKYFALL score are the great unwashed who only know RC-type scores is something you've dreamt up to make yourself feel superior.
With "general movie score reviews", if you're talking about filmtracks.com - that is just the product of one man (Christian Clemmensen), who's utterly ignorant and close-minded about film scores in general.
For the rest, I stand by that I write. And as far as you're concerned, I don't need to dream to feel superior :)
We'll see if Newman comes back...