Category: LOTR
February 03 2008
Lord of the Wrongs
Yay! Lord of the Rings bloopers! I hope there’s more where these came from.
Posted by Mickey at 04:27 AM in Movies, LOTR | Comments (0) | Email this entry
June 01 2005
40 Top Movie Soundtracks
Another list, this time about movie soundtracks, compiled by the listeners of UK’s Classic FM and revealed during the Monday, May 30 Bank Holiday.
40 633 Squadron - Ron Goodwin
39 Cinema Paradiso - Ennio Morricone
38 Superman - John Williams
37 Once Upon a Time in the West - Ennio Morricone
36 The Merchant of Venice - Jocelyn Pook
35 Somewhere in Time - John Barry
34 The Shawshank Redemption - Thomas Newman/Mozart
33 Indiana Jones - John Williams
32 The Dambusters - Eric Coates
31 Chariots of Fire - Vangelis
30 Pirates of the Caribbean - Klaus Badelt
29 The Lion in Winter - John Barry
28 The Godfather - Nino Rota
27 Braveheart - James Horner
26 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Ennio Morricone
25 Brief Encounter - Rachmaninov
24 The Last of the Mohicans - Trevor Jones
23 The English Patient - Gabriel Yared
22 The Great Escape - Elmer Bernstein
21 The Deer Hunter - Stanley Myers
20 E.T. - John Williams
19 Gone with the Wind - Max Steiner
18 Titanic - James Horner
17 Ladies in Lavender - Nigel Hess
16 Harry Potter - John Williams
15 Dangerous Moonlight - Richard Adinsell
14 The Big Country - Jerome Moross
13 The Piano - Michael Nyman
12 Saving Private Ryan - John Williams
11 The Magnificent Seven - Elmer Bernstein
10 Dr Zhivago - Maurice Jarre
9 Jurassic Park - John Williams
8 Lawrence of Arabia - Maurice Jarre
7 The Mission - Ennio Morricone
6 Dances with Wolves - John Barry
5 Out of Africa - John Barry/Mozart
4 Schindler’s List - John Williams
3 Gladiator - Hans Zimmer
2 Star Wars - John Williams
1 The Lord of the Rings - Howard Shore
Of course I had to take a look, but I can’t say I’m very thrilled with the choices. I have to admit a couple of those titles I don’t know at all, a few others I know but am not familiar enough with the music, and a couple others come almost as a shock. Pirates of the Caribbean and Gladiator? Superman ranked so low? A “score” by Rachmaninoff? Is that fair? If so, I guess that’s why Gladiator showed up so high, since I guess they are including the unsubtle cribbing from Wagner and Holst.
I can’t say I approve of lumping some scores together either. With Lord of the Rings this is understandable, since the intent was to make one large organic piece; but it doesn’t seem fair not to separate Star Wars (or “A New Hope” as you kids call it) and Empire Strikes Back. Or just to concentrate on Raiders at the expense of the other Indiana Jones scores. With that in mind, it would be hard to argue—even for this LOTR fan—that Howard Shore’s work bests Williams groundbreaking and instantly recognizable themes in Star Wars and Empire.
Those aren’t my only quibbles either. I would much rather have Field of Dreams over Titanic; the latter might have sold more albums but the former has better music. E.T. and Superman should swap places. It’s nice they noted of Elmer Bernstein’s two great themes, but what about his Ten Commandments score? And think for a moment of all the composers who are completely left out of that list. No Jerry Goldsmith?! I’m not his biggest fan, but surely they can’t have forgotten all the significant work he has done. Erich von Korngold wrote several classic scores for cinemas Golden Age, none of which is remembered here. Another unbelievable lapse is the absence of Bernard Herrmann, whose Citizen Kane score was voted best in the recent TIME poll—and of course, the great work he did in many Hitchcock films. If they’re going to give a nod to Elmer Bernstein’s two greatest themes, what about the memorable melodies Henry Mancini wrote for the screen? A lot current moviegoes were came of age with the music of Danny Elfman, but he didn’t make a showing here either. Not forgetting Randy Newman, Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard to just name a few. There’s a lot of good stuff in the list, admittedly; but there’s so much lacking.
Posted by Mickey at 04:13 PM in Blogging, Personal, Movies, LOTR, Music | Comments (0) | Email this entry
October 18 2004
Music of Middle-earth
I had the pleasure of seeing The Detroit Symphony Orchestra perform Howard Shore‘s The Lord of the Rings Symphony on Saturday. It was a special one-night-only peformance, conducted by Markus Huber, with the Ford Motor Company Chorus and the Christ Church Grosse Pointe Choir of Boys and Girls. Guest soloist was Susan Egan, handling the elven songs; a young boy sang “In Dreams” but I did not catch his name.
The chorus work was a bit shaky, but that’s forgivable considering the small amount of rehearsal time the full ensemble had (so I’m told). The chorus was also smaller than I would have expected. Curiously, although the songs from The Two Towers and The Return of the King were retained (sung by Susan Egan), the Enya material was absent.
A large video screen showed artwork from the Peter Jackson movie. Sketches and drawings from John Howe and Alan Lee were displayed. I’d heard that film clips would be shown but I thought these sketches worked much better, setting the tone without upstaging the music.
I thought I had a great seat, in the third row, but in fact I was much too close. All I could see and hear were strings. The horns were quite often just a rumor. This is less a problem with our orchestra than with the Fox Theater’s acoustics. It might be a great gem of a movie palace but every concert I’ve seen there has sounded terrible. Still, when the music was louder, everything got clearer and it was great pleasure to hear the orchestra surging across the Pelennor.
By the way, if you’d like to recreate the Symphony in the comfort of your home, put the following tracks in your playlist. (It would only be a rough approximation however since you would be missing some bridging material.) And if you’d like to recreate my concert-going experience, sit right next to the left speaker.
Posted by Mickey at 03:55 AM in Movies, LOTR, Music | Comments (0) | Email this entry
September 28 2004
There and Back Again
My wallet is destined to be empty. Last weekend, New Line announced the specs on this December’s release of the four-disc The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition. The official movie site has the details, and DVD Answer has screen grabs from the movie and the DVD menus. The Extended Edition contains fifty minutes of added scenes, plus two discs of supplemental material on the making of the film. It will be available on December 14, and can be pre-ordered starting October 1.
Insuring that my bank account must remain flatlined every December, Topps is releasing another Lord of the Rings collector card series. Once again the series will feature autograph and memorabilia cards, this time covering the entire trilogy.
Note to all family members who may read this: sadly, yes, I will be handing out IOUs again this Christmas.
Posted by Mickey at 08:38 PM in Movies, LOTR | Comments (0) | Email this entry
September 06 2004
The Shaping of Middle-earth
I finally got a chance to see my brother Rick’s handiwork. In decorating his son Jake’s room he had downloaded a PDF of JRR Tolkien’s map of Middle-earth, converted it to transparency, projected it onto Jake’s wall and painted it. Here is the impressive result. (Click on the image to see a large-scale photo.)
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“This is the fashion of the lands…in the ancient days…” |
Posted by Mickey at 01:41 AM in Movies, LOTR, Photos | Comments (2) | Email this entry
July 26 2004
“This is My Hour”
So much news came out of last week’s ComicCon you’d think it was a vast right-wing conspiracy to overshadow this week’s Democratic Convention. (Much like I’m the victim of a right-wing conspiracy at work, which is making me stay till 10:00 PM tonight and tomorrow. How much you want to bet there are no late hours in September!) Sideshow Toys unveiled much of their long-awaited Return of the King line, LucasFilm revealed the name of the remaining Star Wars movie, and New Line announced details of this Winter’s Return of the King: Extended Edition.
Todd and Bill from The Digital Bits discuss the LOTR news:
| [...] New Line finally revealed more details about the forthcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - Special Extended DVD Edition (currently set to street in December - date TBA). The set will feature more than 50 additional minutes of footage, including some 300 additional effect shots. Among the new scenes we were able to preview this weekend were: the final confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman at Isengard; the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate; Aragorn revealing the sword Anduril to Sauron’s eye in the Seeing-stone; the confrontation between the Witch King and Gandalf at Minas Tirith; more battle footage on the Pelennor Fields; Frodo and Sam marching with Sauron’s forces disguised as Orcs; Faramir telling Denethor that he would never use the power of the Ring; Aragorn looking down upon a fleet of Corsair ships from a ridgetop; Faramir and Éowyn at the House of Healing; Merry pledging allegiance to King Théoden at Gondor; Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli narrowly escaping an avalanche of skulls deep inside the Dwimorberg, and MUCH more. From what we’ve seen, this final extended cut promises to be every bit as good as the previous two. We also learned that the set will feature more than 20 hours of supplemental content. That’s not all. In addition to the 4 disc set, there will also be another special collector’s gift set, that will include the 4-disc Extended Edition along with a bonus DVD - Howard Shore: Creating the Lord of the Rings Symphony - A Composer’s Journey Through Middle-earth - and a miniature Sideshow/Weta statue of Minas Tirith, which doubles as a trinket box. |
Furthermore, The One Ring.net provides links (including one to ElfLady.com, the only mirrored link that currently works) to a bootleg of the trailer New Line showed to advertise the Extended Edition. The video is crude, the audience is a bit too vociferous (stupid girls), but the film clips are still effective!
Posted by Mickey at 08:56 PM in Movies, LOTR | Comments (0) | Email this entry
June 09 2004
Idledown
Evidently a “MySQL misconfiguration with the server” eviscerated my blog for a few hours today. Obviously the problem has been fixed, since you’re reading this. My apologies to everyone visiting the page today, which means I’m apologizing to myself. And, for the record, I am accepting my apology. The down-time is another reminder I had better backup my databases. It also allowed me some time to find this site, World Wide Words, a handy reference explaining the derivations of many words and expressions. Hey kids, look up your favorite work or phrase! It’s got dirty words too!
P.S.: The Digital Bits (by way of Video Business) says The Return of the King Extended Edition will be released in December.
Posted by Mickey at 09:55 PM in Blogging, Movies, LOTR | Comments (1) | Email this entry
May 03 2004
A Horn in the Hills Ringing
IMDb links to an Empire Online exclusive story about the CD release of Howard Shore’s full Lord of the Rings score. Apparently, the set will be 9 CDs long, including a bonus CD of unused music. This is big news, but unfortunately Empire got my hopes up for nothing. They report the CDs will be released “next year”, perhaps so as not to steal focus from the movie DVDs out this year. Be prepared therefore for another long wait; but, as with the movies themselves, it should of course be worth it.
Posted by Mickey at 08:29 PM in Movies, LOTR, Music | Comments (0) | Email this entry
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