The music… Oh god the music…
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anatja — 16 years ago(May 04, 2009 06:38 AM)
I had just finished and there I was, feeling pretty sick with cold excited about seeing a film that I have not watched since childhood, I even have it in my wishlist to show my girl, what did I find? A film with a couple of Brilliant British actors, a decently heroic Dutchman, Pfeiffer looking luminous and the most annoying two things in fantasy film history EVER! Matthew Broderick and the score!
I spent half my time laughing at the screen and the other half getting on with my book.
sneeze
If you love Satan and are 100% proud of it copy this and make your signature! -
Moondrop_C — 16 years ago(May 07, 2009 04:33 PM)
I just caught this movie today on cable, after having not seen it in eons and the music made me feel like Hunter & McCall were going to come running around the nearest corner. Problem with the score in this movie is what was wrong lots of music in the 80s: musicians had discovered the synthesizer and USED IT TO DEATH. Never once did they consider whether it was the right sound for a given situation or piece of music.
At least they didn't go all-out, full-on, gag-me-with-a-spoon 80s and give Michelle Pfeiffer huge hair
My ears! MY EARS! -
jcosyn-1 — 16 years ago(December 02, 2009 01:19 PM)
I'm curious: how many of you people who say you hate the score of this movie have ever had any musical education of any sort whatsoever? How many were born after the movie was made and grew up during the rap-and-earbud era? Also just exactly what kind of musical score would any of
you
compose, with your impeccable personal taste and knowledge of music? Are you thinking that a movie fantasy filmed in the 1980s and set in 13th century France would somehow be better served with a 19th century Romantic orchestral arrangement? Or an Appalachian bluegrass score, or something more along the lines of zydeco, or perhaps reggae, or ska, or swing, or be-bop jazz, or fusion, or a 1990s hip-hop score, or what? It would be wonderfully enlightening if, instead of merely kvetching about the music with complaints as meaningful as "eww!" and "I don't like it!", you would all share your own deep conceptions of what the score to this movie
should
have been. I'm sure many of the rest of us would learn a great deal about music.
(Incidentally, if you're one of those who think the music in this movie is "disco", you don't get to have an opinion, because you obviously don't know anything whatsoever about pop music of the twentieth century. Alan Parsons and Andrew Powell made many albums, but there wasn't anything resembling "disco" on any of them. Failure to recognize this simple fact automatically disqualifies your musical opinions.) -
lunadelrey — 16 years ago(December 28, 2009 04:10 PM)
jcosyn-1 - excellent observations about the people who don't like the score to this wonderful movie. I'm a big fan of the Alan Parsons Project and this movie was made during their peak years in the 1980s. I don't know how or why the producer or director decided to use their music for this movie; however, I never found it out of place or distracting. I think it enhanced the narrative.
And your point about the people mistakenly thinking the music is "disco" is spot on. Alan Parsons never made "disco" music - their music was experimental in electronic and futuristic musical genres. They had quite a number of top-ten hits in the late 80's early 90's ("Games People Play", "Time", "Eye in the Sky", "Damned if I Do", to name a few). They were really big at the time. Too bad the current "music" makers in the 2000's are so trite and boring. There's not anyone doing anything remotely experimental or interesting in this generation. It all sounds the same now, very vanilla and dull. And the sad fact is, the current generation doesn't realize it. -
morpheum — 16 years ago(February 14, 2010 02:48 AM)
I want music that gallops when the horses do.
Excellent choice of words. I have always loved the score, I even wore out the cassette tape I bought in the 80's. I've been a fan of The Alan Parsons Project since long before the movie was released so it was easy for me to like it. This and Tales of Mystery and Imagination are my favorite of their works.
She went to that charity thing for inner-city horses. -
Johnny_Wrong — 13 years ago(May 19, 2012 06:40 PM)
Ha ha ha!
If you think there's nobody making experimental music nowadays, son, then you're living with your head under a rock.
I hate reading the opinions of you old blowhards who can't figure out how to stay abreast of modernity and have just grown into dinosaurs. I bet I'm the same age as you, and yet I think the world of music now is as vibrant now, if not more so, than it ever was.
Sad, man. Real sad. -
lunadelrey — 13 years ago(May 20, 2012 03:58 PM)
Well, genius, by all means. Don't just log on to call people names and make disparaging comments like a fool. Any troll can do that. Tell me who you think are musicians who are currently breaking ground in 2012 with new music that is progressive and interesting. As a real music lover, I'd enjoy checking out new musicians who are not cookie cutter promotions by the music industry.
Which means don't give me the usual heavily promoted, overly exposed and trite acts like Rihanna, Adele, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Flo Rida, Train, Maroon 5, Usher, Justin Timberlake, etc. Boring, boring and more boring. I want to hear completely new, inventive, and interesting acts. So, what do you recommend? Share your genius with us all. -
GuanoLad — 16 years ago(February 19, 2010 07:18 PM)
I love the melodies; they're upbeat and bouncy. When they segue into strings and orchestra, they sound great. It's the synth instrumentation that bothers me. The synthesiser was a poor choice for a fantasy film set in a relatively believable mediaeval setting.
Compare the two different scores available for Ridley Scott's "Legend". I choose Jerry Goldsmith over Tangerine Dream.
Of course, this film needs a full treatment Criterion Collection-type clean up, and a new score would be an interesting optional extra. -
MrAleisterCrowley — 11 years ago(April 19, 2014 07:06 PM)
Answers to your questions jcosyn-1: I was born in 1972. I am a huge fan of early 1980s new wave, a professor of medieval literature (Chaucer specifically), and for THOSE REASONS I detest the soundtrack for this film. It is characterized by an ugly, brash tone; it is nothing like the shimmering beauty of (for example) Chariots of Fire. Alan Parsons, producer of Dark Side of the Moon, was/is a prog-rock genius. That does not mean that he or his band-mates should have been anywhere near a fantasy-film soundtrack in the mid-1980s. I studied music theory at university and my wife and I both have classical voice training (she wanted to be an opera singer). In grad school I studied filmic representations of the Middle Ages, and obviously most filmic representations of the Middle Ages have a significant fantasy element. When scoring film, the most crucial issue is the relationship between image and sound (music). I am a fan of silent film, and I know how crucial music is to the successful progression of a narrative on the screen. The music does not need to be period-appropriate in the sense of using only music that fits specific time-bound content, such as medieval polyphony in fantasy films, but it MUST BE consistent on an emotional level.
The issue that I have with Ladyhawke is that there are radical shifts in tone in the script, which are then aggravated greatly by the poor scoring. This results in the fact that nearly every scene that uses the harsh, up tempo synth sounds garish and borderline absurd, Monty Python in its effect on what is happening on screen. Re-score in your mind Star Wars or 2001 with disco (real 1970s disco) or bad 1960s euro pop in the latter case. How well would those films have worked then or work now despite other aspects that actually do date the films? Yeah, exactly.
"I love those redheads!" (Wooderson, Dazed and Confused, 1993) -
Fitvideo — 16 years ago(January 02, 2010 06:12 AM)
I completely agree with the OP, it was dated when it was written ( I saw it living in Japan in 1985, when it came out )I thought so then and still do now it was not an eighties sound, it was sort of late 70's funky upbeat whatever. the synths sounds were not current for 85, the digital era had arrived mixing synths and orchestras is always problematic, and never a good idea unless you really know what you are doingsadly in this case it really does take a good film down.
Ohh, , and yes, I have a musical education , and am quite capable of composing and scoring music. I do so on a daily basis.
regards
Fitvideo -
revengine — 15 years ago(February 25, 2011 02:13 AM)
I just finished watching it again (on VHS no less, hows that for nostalgia?) and I have to agree that the music really does date this movie. And to be quite honest, it really doesnt fit well with it. Not to say that a synth score couldnt fit, I would imagine if Vangelis (the guy who did Blade Runner) scored this movie, it probably would have worked a lot better. As it is, I think this movie would have (and could still) really benefitted from a traditional orchestral score.
"If you're waiting for a woman to make up her mind, you may have a long wait." Preacher -
gducroquet — 15 years ago(February 26, 2011 01:56 AM)
From Wikipedia :
"The film's score was composed by Andrew Powell and produced by Alan Parsons. Richard Donner stated that he was listening to The Alan Parsons Project (on which Powell collaborated) while scouting for locations, and became unable to separate his visual ideas from the music. Powell combined traditional orchestral music and Gregorian chants with contemporary progressive rock-infused material, to controversial effect. It has been cited as the most memorable example of the growing trend among 1980s fantasy films of abandoning the lush orchestral scores of composers such as John Williams and James Horner in favour of a modern pop/rock sound.[1] The soundtrack album was released in 1985 and re-released with additional tracks in 1995."
Well yes, it really sounds like Alan Parson's Project !