Jayaram,
My comments are inserted below-
________________________________
From: jayaram81 <jayara...@yahoo.com>
To: arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:51:51 PM
Subject: Re: [arr] Oscar Watch: Composer
By the way you are looking for the most idealistic score. Of course
my friend, the best is yet to be and scores of that nature are indeed
rare in a lifetime.
Are you saying that it's very rare (in a lifetime) that one comes across scores
of the kind that I was looking for? I already listed a bunch of such scores
(from this year) earlier. Other examples? Almost anything written by John
Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, Georges Delerue... the
list is endless.
Thematic Development & Cohesiveness - This has less to do with the
composer and more to do with the screenplay. In my opinion, SdM did
not offer much for a Thematic Development as you had mentioned.
Toying around with ideas - Seriously, of the last 8 Oscars, probably
Atonement's score had it. Catch me if you can was there, but it
didn't make it to the top. On a different note, if you are saying
that Rahman doesn't do that I have to say you are kidding and dude,
you need to start watching some of his movies
I'll agree with the time constraint but I'm not sure about the screenplay not
giving the freedom to think about such things.
I should have been more clear about what I meant with 'toying with ideas'. I
meant development of theme structure changes (not just tempo and
instrumentation). I don't know why you think that only Atonement and 'Catch Me
If You Can' satisfy that? Pretty much all the recent Oscar nominations satisfy
that with some exceptions like Michael Clayton, Babel & Brokeback Mountain.
And I don't recall seeing those kinds of things often in ARR scores (Bose was
an exception).
Other great works this year - I did listen to them as you said, and I
agree that some of them are good, but that doesn't necessarily mean
that SdM's soundtrack is inferior to it
I neither said nor implied that the SdM soundtrack is inferior to anything this
year. I mentioned my method of evaluation of scores (not songs, not
soundtracks) and said why I didn't think that SdM demonstrated those qualities
enough. I hope that when you're judging the SdM score, you are not adding the
influence of the songs (there's a separate award for that). From what I
remember there wasn't much score in the movie outside of what has already been
released on Itunes. So when I'm talking of the score I think of it as comprised
by Riots, Mausam and Escape, Liquid Dance, Latika's theme and Millionaire.
Judging a song's
greatness also lies with the beholder (a twist there) and
unfortunately, how it makes the Oscar cut is definitely going to be
dependent upon the other major critic picks.
Exactly! Everyone has their own measure of merit.
Unfortunately for you
SdM has had its fair share of successes among the critics' circle. So
if SdM makes it to the nomination list, I would love to see you eat
your own words.
'Unfortunately' for me? You are missing the point.
I'm delighted at SdM's success and popularity. I'm ecstatic at the praise and
recognition that ARR has got for his work in the film. As an ARR fan, I'm
always happy to see him win these awards and hope he gets many more.
I have a criterion by which I judge scores. I would be a hypocrite if I relaxed
that criterion when evaluating the SdM score just because I'm an ARR fan. It's
as simple as that. Not letting ones bias get in the way of judgment. Whether he
goes on to win or not does nothing to my judgment of the score.
As an aside... a lot of people have criticized Morricone's score to Mission to
Mars. It doesn't have any awards. I don't care. In my book, it's a fantastic
score.
SdM offers its own complexity. The movie screams "Indian", which
obviously calls for score which does the same. The very nature of the
movie which traverses back and forth, that too between unrelated
scenes, does very little in helping the composer maintain the
cohesiveness that you are looking for. If you had read the main
article on which this thread was started, you would get where I am
going with this.
... 3 Weeks is not a lot of time, given the fact that
Rahman is not known to work like that. I would say "Give the credit
where it is due".
I've addressed some of these points earlier. I'll only respond to your
statement of evaluating SdM based on all the constraints and "giving credit
where it's due". In an awards event, you're not really going to look at all the
circumstances and constraints and judge relative to that, are you? Say, a film
couldn't afford to record the music with an orchestra and so they used cheap
synths. Now are you still going to say 'hey, they did a great job in spite of
using synths so they deserve an Oscar'. They're judging the end result. If they
really wanted to judge based on circumstances and constraints then nearly every
score deserves to be nominated and to win. Horror movie scores seldom get
nominated. Same with action films. Scores from comedies seldom get a cd release
(ask poor Teddy Castellucci or Theodore Shapiro), forget even getting
nominated. Let's face it. A lot of these awards go to the the movies that are
dramas.
It lacks the
grandeur that a full fledged orchestral arrangement would bring in -
the one that you might define as Oscar worthy. But as much as you
would like to keep your eyes closed on other genres of film
composition that do exist and might be "Oscar worthy", there are many
a critic that would be interested in these soundtracks - the ones
that are not stereo-types with horns blowing and cymbals crashing.
While I do have a preference for orchestral scores I have never said that
that's what makes them Oscar-worthy. You're either misinterpreting what I said,
or laying out a lot of straw-man arguments.
My only peeve is with the non-thematic approach to scoring (a la Babel and
Michael Clayton). I'm happy with themes (SdM has them). I'm thrilled with
thematic development. I'm ecstatic with intelligence in scoring.
BTW I do like the small scores. Some of Christopher Young's early works
(Flowers in the Attic, Invaders from Mars, Haunted Summer) are all
synth/electronic based simply because the budget couldn't afford an orchestra,
and I love all of them.
I do not like the ones that are over-scored, overblown or bombastic and perhaps
that's what you are thinking of with "horns blowing and cymbals crashing".
RR
