The part about scores is what really baffles me. They all seem to be just filler these days; none of the movie soundtracks of today are something you would listen to on their own, they just come across as generic and bland. The only exception I can think of is that Icelandic composer who composed the score to the Chernobyl miniseries, except I wouldn't listen to that either but that's mostly due to it just being such a downer.

And you can't tell me it's because all the great movie composers are dead/dying because I refuse to believe that's all there is to it.

I've actually spent the last couple days doing some routine cleaning, etc on my machines. Trying to decide on what to watch this afternoon but I think I'm going to start with The Postman with Kevin Costner. I haven't watched it in years. I'll be using my DVL-700.

The reason for this is that modern directors want to make modern movies this way.

A) Ego: they don’t want to be the Leone to anyone’s Morricone. This isn’t my theory, it’s Morricone’s, and I believe him.

B) If you make an actual music piece you can only edit it, or edit around it, so much. These days people want to be able to edit a thing right up the day before it gets pushed to theaters. As a hack director, to get the reaction you want from inserting Smash Mouth’s All Star or, even worse, Sympathy For The Devil you only need to use the part the audience knows. Sometimes movies will use litterally two seconds from a popular song. This is very flexible. Similarly fluid are meaningless sample based orchestra smears and what sound like LFE test signals or someone accidentally leaning on a keyboard. That stuff can go anywhere.

Finished the novel "SHOGUN", a reread after tackling the others in that series of James Clavell books.
Highly reccomend all his books as historical fiction monuments of our last few centuries.

So feeling a bit forlorn leaving that epic behind (again!) popped in "The Last Samurai".
Will not go critique this film, however it was a nice revisit. Made it two thirds through and then played xbox for a tad.
Satisfied my wanderlust of all things Japan.
I joked with my wife about going there someday, however a bit too soon after our return from Ireland. I got the look !
On the bucket list to be certain, would love a jaunt around the Holy Isles to the obscure and popular Shinto Shrines.

Best wishes to the membership.
Cheers peepz.

Not all post 2000 films are rubbish, of course.

Last night one of my absolute favourites was shown on TV here in German, Changeling with Angelina Jolie. It's without any doubt one of the most heart wrenching films I have ever seen in my entire life. It's a flawless film. Perfect score, costume design, acting, story, it's unbelievable. It's one of those films where one films feels infinitely sad at the end of it, one that has a lasting impact on its viewer, one that keeps you thinking. Angelina Jolie was so absolutely perfect in it!

I love most of the films Clint Eastwood has put out these last twenty years - Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino. J Edgar is also one of those films I have come to cherish over the years.

So there are some excellent films that have been released over the past two decades or so. More recent films that I also believe are excellent are The Irishman (fantastic), Shutter Island, 21 Grams, etc.

I think my most favourite film of the 21st century so far is Mulholland Drive. It's an unbelieavable masterpiece.

But there has been too much disappointing rubbish over the last 20+ years. I am a huge fan of the first two Mad Max films (the 3rd one is OK at the beginning but goes downhill as soon as those annoying kids with their gibberish show up and the last part is just plain stupid). But the Mad Max films that were released this century were a huge letdown! I hated every minute of it and I cannot understand how it can have such a high rating on imdb.com. I didn't like Blade Runner 2049, either, even though I am a huge Blade Runner fan. It's way too long and I can't stand Ryan Gosling.

All of the films that got oscar nominations this years were rubbish, too, in my humble opinion. But I would like to mention two Polish films (by the same director) that got some oscar nominations in the last years: Ida and Cold War. These are beautiful films!!! The cinematography is amazing. Katyn released in 2007 is a very interesting Polish film, too.

I have also watched a couple of Japanese drama series on Netflix in the last 12 months. One that I would like to highlight is "Nankyoku Tairiku: Antarctica" shown on the TBS channel in 2011. It's fantastic and I even bought the soundtrack on CD and had it sent to me via cdjapan. I think it's still on Netflix. There's also been some very good Japanese Netflix series such as The Naked Director or Asura.

Hans Zimmer is one example of a film score composer that's become one of those typical present-day Hollywood Blockbuster Superman vs. Batman composers. He did a lot of excellent stuff in the 80s and 90s (Driving Miss Daisy, The Thin Red Line (best score ever!!!), etc.) but I can't listen to anything he has put out in the last years. Blade Runner 2049 is one example. Damn , I hated that film now that I think of it. But I know that many people disagree with me. I had the exact same feelings when watching Interstellar or The Martian. But Children of Men and Gravity are great films. I saw Gravity in a 3D IMAX cinema in London. Best cinema experience of my entire life! You felt like you were literally in space. Wow.

That's pretty ironic, considering how completely interchangeable a lot of the big blockbuster directors these days are.

Actors, too. Just take Jeremy Renner. Any actor could have been played the role he played in Arrival.

Just watched Appleseed (1988) [BELL-640] again.

Classic OVA, I love this one. Was talking to forper and he said the manga has a better storyline but hey its a one shot OVA so you can only
get so much out of it.

Great music and love the extra at the end with the live action demo, wonder what could have been!!!

Yeah. It was great to have that OVA but it’s nothing compared to the manga. Like Outlanders or Choujin R…a tiny amount of animation is better than zero animation but it’s more of a collectible. The manga is the thing.

I didn't mean in just a figurative sense either - how many times have these big blockbusters had their directors fired and replaced halfway into the production in the past decade?

When you are directing movies that are largely animation where all the actual work is done with software or by technicians the style of the director is hard to spot. When you do all your blocking with tape marks on green floors, the actor’s entire body is replaced by CG…your endless expository two-shot dialogue scenes are going to look like everyone else’s. Especially since they’re talking about Wolverine or some crap. When you have a huge checklist of all the crap you’re supposed to shove into this genre thing. It’s very hard to stand out.

Directors like that are chosen for the same reason Jay Leno had a career. Because they are the best? Absolutely not. Because they are bosses. Because they know how to play the game, how to keep the machine going.

A lot of people wouldn’t take a Marvel job under any circumstances. You spend two or three years doing nothing but making a movie that enriches your bosses, takes time off your clock, and produces crap that pisses of its fans. An artist needs to eat…but he also only has so many years to work before he croaks. These movies pay well but they are also a trap that robs your creative opportunities. It takes a couple thousand people to make a mediocre Star Wars movie and the majority of those people are capable of much better things.