The Grumpy Oldish Composers Post.

Most film music written today is terrible, with few scores lingering in the memory like the underwater menace of Jaws or the whimsical "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, top composers have told The Times.

Hans Zimmer, who wrote the music for the Hollywood box-office hits Gladiator and The Lion King, dismissed the majority of contemporary screen compositions as unmemorable. “They drift around like cows grazing. So many scores sound like nobody really thought about them.”

Anne Dudley, whose music in The Full Monty won an Oscar, and Christopher Gunning, whose score for La Vie en Rose picked up a Bafta this year, attacked the “blandness” of soundtracks.

The public appear to agree. A recent poll of the nation’s all-time favourite film themes was dominated by scores from decades ago by composers such as John Williams (Jaws) and Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

Gladiator and Pirates of the Caribbean were among five scores in the poll by Zimmer, whose Oscar-winning soundtrack for The Lion King has sold more than 15 million copies.

“Where is the next Jerry Goldsmith?” Zimmer asked yesterday, referring to the late composer of the Stravinsky-inspired score for Planet of the Apes and the jazzy theme of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.

Zimmer praised the craftsmanship of Williams (Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park) and Morricone. “There’s never a lazy note from them,” he said. Gunning said: “I go to movies a lot and I find myself disappointed again and again [by] the blandness of the music. Where has melody gone in film music? What do you remember of Breakfast at Tiffany’s? "Moon River" by Henry Mancini. You can’t get it out of your head.”

He said that these days scores were more likely to be written by keyboard players with computer skills learned at film schools rather than composers trained at music college.

Dudley blamed American studios for choosing music “by committee”.

That was from a couple of weeks ago, and it and responses to it are here. Now I'm not saying they don't have a point... but it's also true to say that you get wheat and chaff in all areas. And really, considering how insidious Zimmer's cloning process is (as opposed to apprenticeship, like with Michael Kamen and Edward Shearmur... and Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer, come to that) he's a fine one to talk. Still, there's stuff to look forward to this year - Michael Giacchino's Speed Racer, John Williams's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - and Barbarella on TV now is on my want-to-buy list, music-wise.

Wait a minute... that was from 1968!

I can only assume that poll was from Classic FM, which ain't the most trustworthy of things...

The Hang On, I'll Think Of A Title Post.

This weekend, I learned...



That the mere thought of P*r*z H*lt*n induces vomiting in my mouth.

That dreaming about one member of Girls Aloud doing another one with an appliance is not helpful.

That the American football cheerleader Megan Fox is foxier than the other Megan Fox.

That my sense of smell isn't developed enough if I can't detect gas leaks at work while others can.

That the Hannah Montana movie is opening in the UK.

That my next diabetes eye screening coincides with a day off work.

That finding lots of secondhand vinyl stuff I'd like to have makes not having the ability to play it even worse.


That Hayden wearing bright-red lipstick is an aphrodisiac.

The TGIF Post.

Problem: In order to tell you my story, I have to tell you theirs...

Hmmm - I haven't shrunk, turned white, lengthened my hair, grown massive breasts and changed sex, and am therefore not Jennifer Love Hewitt. So let's try again.

Problem: In order to remove the implications of working on my Hilary Duff/Lindsay Lohan/Jewel and Cindy Crawford/Hayden Panettiere/Jessica Alba/Hilary Duff (again)/Rihanna/Katharine McPhee/Kellie Pickler stories at work, I decided to just not do them there. But now they've been gestating longer than the film versions of Dick Tracy and The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the implications of that aside I really HAVE to get cracking. Gah. (All right, I'll post them here with NSFW warnings.)

Not that this week's been all that great anyway - wintry bug's affecting a lot of folks including me, and I've been feeling an ache in my right shoulder all week. Endless stress at work ain't helping, but finding out that I'm not the only person who won't be going on the Christmas do next month is (encouragingly, the only other holdout is also the only other person at work who I know for a fact watches this blog's favourite non-animated show still in production, Heroes).

And now that I'm a member of Fanderson at long last, I can... do not much I couldn't do before, really. But at least it ain't bad news.

And finally, for Butch:

"Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the den

Two creatures were stirring - one Kingston, one Gwen..."

The More More MORE Post.

Feltz: Writers Joy Blake & Melissa Blake and director Lesli Glatter, for an unforgivable error (apart from all the scenes with Niki/Jessica, that is) in the otherwise quite good chapter five of volume two of Heroes, "Fight or Flight." I'll just copypaste my comments at the relevant post on Tonight We Make Soap: (Slight spoilers for anyone watching on BBC2 pace)

Dana Davis is fiiiine.

Kristen Bell is wonderful.

But neither of them can make up for the fundamental flaw of Monday night's new episode - good though it was, it was also the first ever episode of Heroes with NO HAYDEN! And damn, I missed her (even if she would also bring along more of West) - Heroes without Hayden Panettiere is like The Simpsons without the Simpsons. It's like Dark Angel without Jessica Alba. It's like Hawaii Five-O without Jack Lord. It's like Angel with David Boreanaz. And so on. (Coincidentally, this episode was written AND directed by women. Hmmm.)


Cindy: Cindy.
This must be that fabulous-looking one Cindy shot earlier this year in Malibu (where thankfully her home reportedly didn't go the way of Sean Penn's trailer - let's hope Butch's friends in the area share her luck). And no, I don't speak Russian, but who needs to?

The Space-Filling Because I Woke Up Late By My Standards And I Hate To Rush These Things So I Can't Think Of ANYTHING To Put In Post.

The full title is The Space-Filling Because I Woke Up Late By My Standards And I Hate To Rush These Things So I Can't Think Of ANYTHING To Put In But I Swore I'd Have Something Here Every Day In September So I'm Doing This And Please Let Me Not Wake Up At 9:20PM And Thus Disrupt My Sleep Patterns So Instead Of Waking Up At 1:30 I Wake Up At 3AM Thanks A Whole Lot Although I Consider It Payback For Not Helping Sharon Clean Up More Yesterday So It Kind Of All Balances Out Karma And All When You Think About It So That's Okay Post, but I couldn't fit it all in.

I hate stress.

Flooding delayed my new debit card. Postal strikes delayed it as well. And I have to wait until after work to get paid tomorrow because they didn't get to do the direct payments into our accounts again. This is not good. Things have to swing upwards soon.

Random irritation time.

The next issue of Playboy (after the one Booch raced down to Borders to get what with Amanda Beard being in it) features a birthday-suit-clad Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon (NYPD Blue, Lindsay Lohan's forthcoming I Know Who Killed Me and a lot of TV shows that weren't shown in the UK like The Jamie Foxx Show, were shortlived like Eyes, or were both like The Opposite Sex and Models, Inc.). It's not her nudity that inspired this post, as I'm not interested in her really - it's that a post on BlackSista.com railed about her doing it, about how this almost never really boosts careers (which is true, and to their credit the blog pointed out it applies to white women as much as blacks - for every Pamela Anderson, Marilyn Monroe or Kim Basinger whose career was definitely given a major legup, there's a lot more than one Mercedes McNab or Gena Lee Nolin), how they make black women look bad (citing Robin Givens and Stacey Dash) and... er, I mean how they make Black women look bad, which is the term they used and bringing me to what really inspired this post.

The damn capitals.

Calling someone Black instead of black was a pin in my side years ago with Ebony and Jet, and times haven't changed. Okay, so the terminology is supposed to be signifying strength and meaning, but isn't that being divisive? Whites calling themselves Whites is fucking annoying, and so is this; it's not like there's a country called Black somewhere. That's one reason I stopped checking out black-obsessed papers, media, or whatever... it ain't helping, people.

Of course, there's another problem with this - it's that it isn't Gabrielle Union stripping off. Then I'd be a lot more interested, and this post would be a lot happier.

Winter sucks.

Especially when it rains and blows instead of snows. And you're trying to get rid of a cold that won't go away (damn sore throat). And the fridge won't keep stuff cold, just adding to Sharon's woes. And you've ripped one of your gloves.

And when you're watching a YouTube Glamourcon behind the scenes video with Erica Campbell, Jelena Jensen and Maggie Green as you've never seen them before (i.e. dressed) and the IM screen gets in the way... I joke, Mike.