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Hey all,

I've been absent from film music reviewing for a while, and not without a reason. Apart maintitles.net - my favorite place of hanging out with dear friends and a place where I also frequently expressed the concerns I’ll also carry in here in a moment, there has been silence on my behalf when it comes to film music reviewing;

Not that modern film music is not good; rather the contrary I’d say. Yes, not everything is pure gold of course but I couldn’t be located farer than the pessimistic few that view the entire modern film music outcome as soulless recycled junk of no value, I rather view the whole within a more realistic – in my opinion, frame: as the balance of musical quality has been slowly and steadily shifting toward European and non-US territories during the last 6 years or so, it's been something extremely distinctive during the last couple of years where the vast majority of Hollywood - and generally US, based composers (with exceptions) has been coming up with more and more standardized musical scores; scores that are simply there to merely serve the on-going visuals but lack emotion, soul and the power to aesthetically and artistically underline and elevate the emotional background of the movie they accompany, if any.

Yes, If any; 'cause there's a significant drop of quality regarding the latter Hollywood's movie outcome as well, something that might have inevitably influenced in negative ways the work of the relevant composers too. That is subjective though as all and all the causes of the drop in musical quality when it comes to Hollywood scores of the last 5 years are pretty well known; from current trends to the easy, fast-food approach to film music by the studio, producers, some directors and even composers themselves, from heavy temp-track love and stubborn directors who will deprive artistic freedom from their composers in order to get the next, cold - but to their ears, cool sounding Remote Control / Zimmer imitator score and down to the severe lack of talent among a large part of the youngest generation of composers working in those territories today, everything is there and is strongly affecting a large portion of the film music outcome from those areas.

Thankfully, there are exceptions. Both US / HOLLYWOOD - based (See the upcoming review of The Happening for one, a film and score which sparked my interest to resume reviews again, and i'll explain below more about it) but more precisely, Europe. France's Alexandre Desplat, Gabriel Yared and Philippe Rombi with his gorgeous last year score for Angel, Javier Navarrete, Alberto Iglesias and Roque Banos from Spain, Canada's Jeff and Mychael Danna, Italy's Dario Marianelli, England's George Fenton and Israeli Armand Amar with Finland's Tuomas Kantelinen and his gorgeous Kingdom of Heaven-esque ARn but most notably the most amazing Tae Wang Sa Shin Gi/The Story of the Great King and the Four Gods by Joe Hisaishi from Japan are just the leading team of the great non Us-based composer who are currently underlying everything that's passionate, true and honest, beautiful and emotional in today's film music outcome.

A lot of facts and changes when it comes to some traits of film music during the last couple of years have frequently sent me wondering about whether reviewing film music any more actually made any impact or had any value whatsoever.

What facts I am talking about? Well, the vastly rapid spread of fast internet for one (combined with the continuingly illogical and high CD prices of new music along with some other factors) has helped boost piracy and / or easy hand-to-hand distribution of music to extreme levels. Each of us can easily - if he chooses so - have any slice of new film music that's out there, either in the forms of isolated tracks or rather in complete album as well, and instantly preview new material first hand.

Triggering a logical chain of events, most film music-related record labels, partly influenced by the afore mentioned situations and in combination with their own problems and challenges they have to face through the vastly shifting album selling scenery, they have been sending out less and less PROMO CDs, cutting them down to selected and limited-numbered specific channels instead. Now, to forerun specific thoughts you mind have in your minds, no, film music reviewing isn't colligative by the number of promotional CDs being sent to us; it has never been like this nor will ever be, especially now. But nobody can deny that it has a very positive echo on the outcome of a reviewer, as most of us do it as a side-activity out of love for the genre and certainly not as the a money making profession.

Mainly these, in combination with some personal work-related factors have sent me wondering, if it's still worth it, if people are still interested in a reviewer's opinion since they are in a position to actually listen to the score via a couple of easy and quick steps, many times even before the very reviewer does. I asked myself whether there’s any value whatsoever in all this, if people are still going for it.

Somewhere along these lines and through relative discussion and filtering of opinions of both good friends but also stemming from around the wider film music community combined with me taking some time off to relax and think, something very logical came to me; in order for an organism or a phenomenon or one's work to survive in an ever-changing, quickly-evolving surrounding environment - as such are the reviews within the current world of modern film music - one has to co-evolve and change itself along as well; you can’t remain stable and not take into account that people -through the afore-mentioned conditions and newly established data, are naturally tired of the same ol' reviewing routine that mostly described film music on album.

As what our beloved music primarily is, i.e different in comparison to all the other film music genres in respect to its programme nature (music written to underline and accompany a pre-set scene and narrative storyline with on-screen visuals) it has a specific purpose and as such it must be viewed.

As one who has particularly liked reviewers by colleagues and friends who proceeded a step further with their own writings by studying the use of the music within the film it was written for, I found them much more interesting and intriguing than the usual, average dry descriptions of film music on CD. I thought that I’d rather cut down significantly on the quantity of reviews and focus on the quality instead, writing and presenting to you reviews that will be created through and after the movie-going process, after the function and role of the very film music has been viewed and studied within the accompanying visuals as well as on the score CD, combined with interweaved mini-reviews of the film itself where possible.

Starting soon with James Newton Howard brilliant thriller / horror score for M.Night Shyamalan's latest The Happening, I plan to take it from there and see where it’ll lead. I really hope you're still with me; because it DOES worth it in the end; the whole film music genre, its lovers, the followers, the whole alive and breathing organism.

See you soon,
Demetris