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This is simply wonderful! And, for me, a nice bonus was, heard near the beginning, the very different performance of "Exsultate Justi" from the Spielberg/Williams album on Sony Classical with the Boston Pops and the American Boys Choir (Amazon has a used copy of that CD for just 1 cent plus $3.99 shipping). I won't say that it's BETTER than the version we're used to on the soundtrack, just different, slightly more masculine, and I immediately bought it as soon as I finished listening to the program. As someone who has bought more than 10 different recordings of Mahler's gorgeous 4th symphony, I get enormous pleasure out of different interpretations of favorite pieces, so it's not unusual for me to buy some of the same compositions again and again. But I'm straying from this excellent interview with Mike Matessino about the L-L-Land release of "Empire of the Sun," and I hope others here will take the time to listen to it!
Incidentally, I didn't realize that the film lost money until I heard this interview, and IMDb tells us this:
"Empire of the Sun" Box Office:
Budget: $38,000,000 (estimated)
Gross: $22,238,696 (USA)
When you have to gross at least twice, sometimes 3 times, your budget just to break even, this movie clearly lost a lot of money, although this doesn't include foreign box office or any money it may still be making in home video and TV broadcasts. But it's not encouraging.
https://soundcloud.com/timburden/remembering-empire-of-the-sun
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townerbarry: And yet it's one of Spielberg's few "bombs," losing money at the box office. Ridiculous.
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I remember Rolling Stone said that John Williams should win an Oscar for Witches of Eastwick and have it taken away for Empire of the Sun. Some critics said the music ruined the film!!???
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Rozsaphile: Re: They seem to feel that imagery and montage and even dialogue are legitimate "cinematic" means to this end but music is not.
Both the director and the composer walk a narrow and precarious line, and more times than I'd like to admit, I've seen (and heard) composers use more when less would have been more effective. Plus there are a lot of filmgoers who don't care to hear ANY music. Most of us here at FSM pay fairly close attention to the music when we watch a movie, and we love it when it works and sometimes groan when it doesn't. John Williams' score for "Empire of the Sun" was the sort that was guaranteed to polarize, and we've seen quite a disparity of opinion on it in the main "Empire" threads. It's been so long since I saw the movie that I honestly can't remember whether or not the music seemed too heavy-handed -- maybe I'll pull out my DVD of it later in the week (and I came across it while channel surfing HD cable less than an hour ago, but chose not to start watching in the middle of it). The fact that La-La-Land has been selling the 2-CD set, which isn't cheap, is testament to the enduring popularity of the score, and I've written elsewhere that it sounds wonderful and I don't resent a penny that I spent on it.
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Top interview by our Tim.
If you browse Tim's own site, many interviews are available.
The film will stand out as one of Spielberg's greats, and from somewhere outside his usual American subject matter, as Schindler's List, shows him cosmopolitan. It's great that the score is available in its fullness.
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Confession: I've never seen this movie or heard this score. I was a little weary of the Spielberg/Williams collaberation by '89, and could tell that this movie would not play well at the available selection of desultory crackerbox theaters.
Also, by this time, the critics had become hysterical about Spielberg's "over-reliance" on John Williams, and were promulgating the notion (sometimes justified) that Williams scores were being bought by studios to caulk over the faults in lesser movies. 1941 and JAWS 2, both excellent scores for such movies, come to mind.
These critics didn't realize that John Williams had become essentially an operatic, Golden Age-style composer and, true enough, some of the movies that got that treatment didn't merit or need it.
I suspect EMPIRE OF THE SUN merits it in spades. I look forward to my initial evaluations on La-La Land Records and eventually Warner Home Video Blu-Ray.
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Also, by this time, the critics had become hysterical about Spielberg's "over-reliance" on John Williams, and were promulgating the notion (sometimes justified) that Williams scores were being bought by studios to caulk over the faults in lesser movies. 1941 and JAWS 2, both excellent scores for such movies, come to mind.
Although, of course, JAWS 2 is not a Steven Spielberg movie.
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