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we are still sitting on a stack of Dunston Checks In (even at $5 no one cares)
"Dunston Checks In" is a delightful score! I wish people would give it a chance.
Hope you have better luck with "The Sandlot"!
Never give up. Never surrender!
MV
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Pardon my naivete, but I had no idea LLL released that score! I never came across or saw any news! I think I'll give it a shot! Thanks for the heads up! I'm unfamiliar with Miles Goodman beyond MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, so what the hey. I love me some good ol' wacky comedy music!
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A big thank you to everybody! Will check them all out.
Sorry to hear that they are a tough sell.
And my personal recommendation: DAVE is utterly brilliant, a MUST-HAVE for every soundtrack collector.
Thank you, LLL, for releasing that one!
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Posted: |
Sep 25, 2018 - 6:35 AM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Looking for suggestions (since I stopped listening to comedy scores in the last years and would really like to get your opinion on the current ones)...
Not to be provocative - I'm genuinely interested - but isn't the phrase "comedy scores" an arbitrary one that really exists in one's head rather than on the music paper?
A comedy score could be entirely light and reflective of slapstick (thinking of an extreme here, let's say Laurel & Hardy films or Tom & Jerry), they could be thematic and relatively easy listening (let's say Grand Budapest Hotel) or they could be almost entirely serious (The Death of Stalin). These are utterly different scores, yet they're all enjoyable.
I've seen it written that the best score for a comedy film is one that takes itself seriously. And to use the examples of the Bond films, the little insertions that are meant to be funny (Beach Boys, Lawrence of Arabia, Magnificent Seven, the clown car interlude, the slide whistle in TMWTGG) are often the most reviled parts of the scores. Certainly by me!
So when you say you stopped listening to comedy scores, do you mean the light ones, the serious ones, or the inbetween ones? I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, as far as I recall, there's little or nothing in The Death of Stalin which could indicate that it's from a comedy film, so does knowing that a serious piece of music is from a comedy make it somehow different in your head from, say, an off-kilter piano piece in an otherwise serious western which could have been from Blazing Saddles as well as from Il Grande Silenzio or Once Upon a Time in the West?
Turning it around, the Patton and MacArthur marches wouldn't be out of place in a Goldsmith score for Spielberg's 1941, yet neither is intended to have you rolling in the aisles.
You know, reading this back I can imagine the esteemed Graham Watt posting it, which I choose to take as a compliment to myself. Just interested in the concept, that's all.
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Thats a very good point.
Your boss just called me, he said could you get on with your work, thank you!
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Posted: |
Sep 25, 2018 - 7:43 AM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Looking for suggestions (since I stopped listening to comedy scores in the last years and would really like to get your opinion on the current ones)...
Not to be provocative - I'm genuinely interested - but isn't the phrase "comedy scores" an arbitrary one that really exists in one's head rather than on the music paper?
A comedy score could be entirely light and reflective of slapstick (thinking of an extreme here, let's say Laurel & Hardy films or Tom & Jerry), they could be thematic and relatively easy listening (let's say Grand Budapest Hotel) or they could be almost entirely serious (The Death of Stalin). These are utterly different scores, yet they're all enjoyable.
I've seen it written that the best score for a comedy film is one that takes itself seriously. And to use the examples of the Bond films, the little insertions that are meant to be funny (Beach Boys, Lawrence of Arabia, Magnificent Seven, the clown car interlude, the slide whistle in TMWTGG) are often the most reviled parts of the scores. Certainly by me!
So when you say you stopped listening to comedy scores, do you mean the light ones, the serious ones, or the inbetween ones? I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, as far as I recall, there's little or nothing in The Death of Stalin which could indicate that it's from a comedy film, so does knowing that a serious piece of music is from a comedy make it somehow different in your head from, say, an off-kilter piano piece in an otherwise serious western which could have been from Blazing Saddles as well as from Il Grande Silenzio or Once Upon a Time in the West?
Turning it around, the Patton and MacArthur marches wouldn't be out of place in a Goldsmith score for Spielberg's 1941, yet neither is intended to have you rolling in the aisles.
You know, reading this back I can imagine the esteemed Graham Watt posting it, which I choose to take as a compliment to myself. Just interested in the concept, that's all.
Good post. Comedy scores aren't really a genre stylistically speaking.
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Posted: |
Sep 25, 2018 - 8:46 AM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Looking for suggestions (since I stopped listening to comedy scores in the last years and would really like to get your opinion on the current ones)...
Not to be provocative - I'm genuinely interested - but isn't the phrase "comedy scores" an arbitrary one that really exists in one's head rather than on the music paper?
A comedy score could be entirely light and reflective of slapstick (thinking of an extreme here, let's say Laurel & Hardy films or Tom & Jerry), they could be thematic and relatively easy listening (let's say Grand Budapest Hotel) or they could be almost entirely serious (The Death of Stalin). These are utterly different scores, yet they're all enjoyable.
I've seen it written that the best score for a comedy film is one that takes itself seriously. And to use the examples of the Bond films, the little insertions that are meant to be funny (Beach Boys, Lawrence of Arabia, Magnificent Seven, the clown car interlude, the slide whistle in TMWTGG) are often the most reviled parts of the scores. Certainly by me!
So when you say you stopped listening to comedy scores, do you mean the light ones, the serious ones, or the inbetween ones? I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, as far as I recall, there's little or nothing in The Death of Stalin which could indicate that it's from a comedy film, so does knowing that a serious piece of music is from a comedy make it somehow different in your head from, say, an off-kilter piano piece in an otherwise serious western which could have been from Blazing Saddles as well as from Il Grande Silenzio or Once Upon a Time in the West?
Turning it around, the Patton and MacArthur marches wouldn't be out of place in a Goldsmith score for Spielberg's 1941, yet neither is intended to have you rolling in the aisles.
You know, reading this back I can imagine the esteemed Graham Watt posting it, which I choose to take as a compliment to myself. Just interested in the concept, that's all.
Good post. Comedy scores aren't really a genre stylistically speaking.
If I’d just said that, it would have made my point AND avoided getting a bollocking after Bill dobbed me in...
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Posted: |
Sep 25, 2018 - 9:07 AM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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Not to be provocative - I'm genuinely interested - but isn't the phrase "comedy scores" an arbitrary one that really exists in one's head rather than on the music paper?
It's a reasonable question, but my answer would be that yes, we can define a comedy score in general.
Look, life is dramatic and life is comedic. There's the famous Walpole quote: “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” Most dramatic movies have elements of comedy, and vice versa. Some would say that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a comedy, though it is commonly defined as an action movie. (It's certainly funnier than "1941"!)
There is no one way to score a comedy – some believe the best approach is always "straight," but I don't believe that's true. We can debate this, and it would be interesting, but I don't have time now.
Regardless, I think we can generally agree that some movies are comedies, and the music composed for those films are comedy scores.
Turning it around, the Patton and MacArthur marches wouldn't be out of place in a Goldsmith score for Spielberg's 1941, yet neither is intended to have you rolling in the aisles.
Maybe not out of place, but those scores wouldn't serve the comedy. What makes "1941" one of my favorite comedy scores (for one of my least-favorite comedies) is that it plays with the conventions of a war movie score. Those martial rhythms are always so tight, the melodies so precise, and Williams' score for "1941" goes maybe 15° off, starting with the precision but continually veering just out of control, and overplaying the pompousness (but only a little). That is the difference between "Patton" and "1941," musically speaking, and while they're of course have similar musical touchstones, neither would be at home in the other.
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I agree, of course, in as far as comedies can be scored in many ways.
I should have been more precise: scores written for comedies in the last decade.
And I have listened to them, of course, while watching some of these movies - but I stopped buying them and really familiarizing myself with them.
Maybe this was due to my impression that movie comedies in the last decade (or should I even say since 2000) rarely had the same effect on me as comedies from previous eras.
In other words: most of them I found unfunny, crude or both.
An example for a wonderful movie comedy which got a perfect score: Ivan Reitman´s DAVE. But that was from the early 90´s.
I did discover that in the last ten years I liked Jeremy Sams´ "The Week-End" - but that is more of a drama, really. Mark Orton´s "Nebraska" falls in the same category, even Rolfe Kent´s "Bad Words".
A more typical comedy from the last decade is "The Intern" with Theodore Shapiro´s score. But that one is almost a bit too sugary for me, too much of what Zimmer did for "It´s complicated" and the other Nancy Myers´ films.
I recently also discovered Alexandre Desplat´s "Tamara Drewe" - a movie I also have seen only recently and enjoyed a lot.
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Posted: |
Sep 25, 2018 - 2:51 PM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Not to be provocative - I'm genuinely interested - but isn't the phrase "comedy scores" an arbitrary one that really exists in one's head rather than on the music paper?
It's a reasonable question, but my answer would be that yes, we can define a comedy score in general.
Look, life is dramatic and life is comedic. There's the famous Walpole quote: “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” Most dramatic movies have elements of comedy, and vice versa. Some would say that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a comedy, though it is commonly defined as an action movie. (It's certainly funnier than "1941"!)
There is no one way to score a comedy – some believe the best approach is always "straight," but I don't believe that's true. We can debate this, and it would be interesting, but I don't have time now.
Regardless, I think we can generally agree that some movies are comedies, and the music composed for those films are comedy scores.
Turning it around, the Patton and MacArthur marches wouldn't be out of place in a Goldsmith score for Spielberg's 1941, yet neither is intended to have you rolling in the aisles.
Maybe not out of place, but those scores wouldn't serve the comedy. What makes "1941" one of my favorite comedy scores (for one of my least-favorite comedies) is that it plays with the conventions of a war movie score. Those martial rhythms are always so tight, the melodies so precise, and Williams' score for "1941" goes maybe 15° off, starting with the precision but continually veering just out of control, and overplaying the pompousness (but only a little). That is the difference between "Patton" and "1941," musically speaking, and while they're of course have similar musical touchstones, neither would be at home in the other.
We live in a world where the brilliant 1941 Williams score exists and it’s hard to imagine that disappointing film (Patton actually was funnier) without it. But if it had been scored with either of the Goldsmith marches from the outset I don’t think anyone would be saying “this march doesn’t fit”. Indeed there’d probably be a podcast dedicated to it. But we’ll never know.
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Looking for suggestions (since I stopped listening to comedy scores in the last years and would really like to get your opinion on the current ones)...
How To Murder Your Wife by Neal Hefti
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Posted: |
Sep 27, 2018 - 1:07 PM
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By: |
DS
(Member)
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Ironically, the best, most adventurous, most risk-taking American comedy score I've heard in years is from a movie that may never see a proper release, last year's "I Love You, Daddy," with a score by Zachary Seman and Robert Miller that was recorded with an 80 piece orchestra in London. Almost everybody who has seen/reviewed the film has singled out this score as being excellent, and it is. It's basically a lush 1940s comedy score that just happens to be in a movie set in the present. I was thinking that it might be a good candidate for MovieScore Media, but given the amount of controversy tied to this project I'm guessing this score will likely slip into total obscurity for the foreseeable future. Maybe a promo will emerge at some point - these composers definitely deserve to have their work heard.
I typically don't like contemporary Hollywood/American Indie comedy scoring and regard it as some of the "safest" and least imaginative scoring being done today. I am, however, a big fan of contemporary French/Italian comedy scores, such as "La buca" (Pino Donaggio), "La rançon de la gloire" (Michel Legrand) and "Potiche" (Philippe Rombi).
I'm unfamiliar with modern British/Spanish comedy scores, but I'd love some recommendations if anybody has any.
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Posted: |
Sep 27, 2018 - 1:46 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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Ironically, the best, most adventurous, most risk-taking American comedy score I've heard in years is from a movie that may never see a proper release, last year's "I Love You, Daddy," with a score by Zachary Seman and Robert Miller that was recorded with an 80 piece orchestra in London. Almost everybody who has seen/reviewed the film has singled out this score as being excellent, and it is. It's basically a lush 1940s comedy score that just happens to be in a movie set in the present.
Boy oh boy, not me. I found the scoring of this excruciating film (excruciating on its own, even apart from the controversy) to be completely perplexing and heavy-handed. Like so much of the film (the black and white, the old-style title cards), the music just seemed to be a distancing choice, a way for Louis C.K. to say "I mean this but I don't really mean this" all at once.
Adventurous? I suppose. But to me, pretty grim.
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Thanks for indirectly drawing my attention to Dunston Checks In, thread! Listening to it as we speak! Diggin' that funky percussion.
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