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Vangelis' Blade Runner album. Not only was it twelve years late, it mislabeled the titles, omitted the best music, included music not even heard in the film and sprinkled dialogue clips all over it. There are some things impossible to forgive and Vangelis' disdain for his best score and his fans ranks high on my shitlist.
I very much enjoy that album for what it is on its own, though I agree it's not the best representation of the music. Probably my favorite cue by Vangelis is the Main Title for BLADE RUNNER, and it's not even on the realeae. (The BSX recording by Edgar Rothermich is an excellent presentation of the film score.)
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Spammers reported!
Dear me. In this thread, spam is like fine chocolate.
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... I think the nomination was largely due to Hamlisch being current flavour of the month after "The Way We Were"
Yes, I think it hits three of the big unrelated-to-the-score Oscar nomination bonuses:
1. Hamlisch being current flavour of the month
2. A popular opening song
3. A well known, and great, set of themes for the series
Any one of those can push a single score into the memorable lane, which can be all that's needed for a nomination, let alone a win.
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Lethal Weapon 2.
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My entries for this valid, and in no way essentially 'bitchy', topic would have been the one-two punch of '83 & '84.
In '83 I was aware that something about the single album Return of the Jedi was more frustrating than it should have been. Yes, a single album was already a bad move (regardless of whose decision it was - sorry record producers, but composers aren't holy, and prerogatives don't make them right on every question, certainly not this one. That's not how the universe works). But for some reason, the album itself didn't even register as being as good as any of the four individual LPs from the previous two pictures' double LP sets. I haven't listened to the album since that wonderful 1993 box set replaced it, so this is from memory, but I recall calculating that about half of the available music was source (two songs) and concert pieces (Luke and Leia, Parade of the Ewoks, the Jabba's theme part of Solo's rescue, most of Finale, and the opening and closing Star Wars themes we already had twice, by then). That left about 25 minutes of original film music, stuff that played when things were happening on screen, underscore. That's what the was; not that it felt like half a release, but it didn't really feel like a soundtrack release at all.
Then a year later, we got the much maligned, and appropriately so, Gremlins mini-LP.
16 minutes of film music. 16. Mind you, it's 16 nice minutes, it sounded great, and for what it had to be, they were even decent cue-combos, to play like a Twilight Zone: The Movie suite, but Gremlins wasn't a 25 minute segment of that film. It was such an inexcusable decision.
We've been in such a great space for so long, now.
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Then a year later, we got the much maligned, and appropriately so, Gremlins mini-LP.
16 minutes of film music. 16. Mind you, it's 16 nice minutes, it sounded great, and for what it had to be, they were even decent cue-combos, to play like a Twilight Zone: The Movie suite, but Gremlins wasn't a 25 minute segment of that film. It was such an inexcusable decision.
Agreed, and this one probably sticks out more because the film was so beloved... but that same year another Goldsmith score (The Lonely Guy) was also afforded a "mini-LP" with even less score!
Both of those though were kinda hybrid soundtrack albums, with non-Goldsmith songs mixed in. There are a lot of releases out there like that of course, like the first two Free Willy scores by Basil Poledouris. If those count, I'm gonna nominate Free Willy 2. Because that score is actually a huge improvement over its (already good) predecessor, but you wouldn't know it from the soundtrack album, which only included three cues totaling 10.5 minutes! At least the original score got almost half an hour of score on a release with a bunch of songs, and it covered literally all the highlights of the score. Free Willy 2 has over an hour of great orchestral score in the movie, with wonderful new themes, great development of the original film's thematic material, and a more acoustic sound, with real orchestral sweep to the themes... and nobody has a clue how good this score is because only 10.5 minutes was released. Not on a "mini LP" even. On a full size album that decided to include just three score cues from one of Poledouris's best scores. And the worst part is I fear an expansion may never even happen.
For a Goldsmith pure score album I'll echo the earlier suggestion of Ransom. Terrible sound in general. Half the LP accidentally in mono. Tons of score missing. And to add insult to injury, three cues repeated for no reason! So frustrating.
Yavar
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... but that same year another Goldsmith score (The Lonely Guy) was also afforded a "mini-LP" with even less score! Both of those though were kinda hybrid soundtrack albums, with non-Goldsmith songs mixed in. There are a lot of releases out there like that of course...
Yes, the hybrid thing also happened with Explorers and Innerspace, but those at least weren't also mini-LPs. I'd forgotten Lonely Guy, which I found on LP in the mid-'00s, was also a mini! What a dumb trend attempt. But how else are you going to catch all the Goldsmith/Quarterflash fans?
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Then a year later, we got the much maligned, and appropriately so, Gremlins mini-LP.
16 minutes of film music. 16. Mind you, it's 16 nice minutes, it sounded great, and for what it had to be, they were even decent cue-combos, to play like a Twilight Zone: The Movie suite, but Gremlins wasn't a 25 minute segment of that film. It was such an inexcusable decision.
I agree the album was a disappointment, but at least these 16 minutes of film music, as you said, sounded great and played well as a "suite".
But indeed, it was a disappointing release. I so loved the movie and music back then, I was especially fond of the mysterious Chinatown music from the beginning and the threatening fountain music from the end, both of which was sadly absent.
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Two Bernstein scores.True Grit and Baby,the Rain Must Fall!
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Haven’t seen the film and don’t know how much score he wrote total, but the soundtrack album for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge has less than 7 minutes of Elmer Bernstein score on it (split among 4 cues).
Yavar
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I think Quest for Camelot’s OST should be included here. While I understand that the songs are what people usually go for on animation soundtrack albums, it only included a paltry six minutes of Patrick Doyle’s score when there was quite a bit of room for more (the album was only 45 minutes). Of course, this was partially compensated for by way of the isolated score on the DVD (I really hope Warner Archive retains this if they release the film on Blu-ray since I don’t see an expanded edition happening any time soon), though it’s still a disappointing presentation.
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