Pride and Prejudice

Dear reader,

I was able to see for myself how our presuppositions affect our way of thinking, if not to say forms our prejudices. Two evenings ago the movie "Blood Diamond" was on tv. I knew it already, but wanted to watch it again and really see some of the actors this time. I didn't know them before or wasn't aware of them as who they were the first time around.

I didn't remember who composed the music for the film, but "suspected" Hans Zimmer. I don't like him. His music often is big, which is fine in and for blockbusters, but the music without the film is often quite exhausting for me to listen to. I don't listen to the few soundtracks of him that I have anymore. Sometimes I listen to a remix version of the title song "Now We Are Free" from the movie "Gladiator". It's the "Now We Are Free (Juba's Mix" from "Gladiator - More Music From the Motion Picture", one of the two cd's out there. I liked to listen to that one earlier. I liked it better than the other one. On it are pieces which Hans Zimmer composed, but never "made it" into to movie. It also has a couple of parts of dialogue from the movie. Even listening to the "better" one of the two cd's, I don't get passed the first 3 tracks. I then skip all of them except the last 2 tracks. And that it's it.

It took me a long time before I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie from 2009 and Inecption, because Hans Zimmer die the score for it. I know, I'm stupid. (The score for the first Sherlock Holmes movie, by the way, is exactly what I expected of Hans Zimmer: much of other movies and much repetition. To be exact "The Third Man" and this is repeated so much that I was bored, if not to say annoyed by it, even watching the movie. A couple of times I still listened to the soundtrack alone and thought it was okay.) The second Sherlock Holmes movie from 2011, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, I didn't watch, because the story didn't interest me much. Maybe I'll watch it some time. Inception and the first Sherlock Holmes movie I really didn't watch out of protest. I had no interest at all in Hans Zimmer.

Back to Blood Diamond. So I had Hans Zimmer in my head and a couple of times when I was aware of the music, I only liked it partly. Sometimes it was pretty good, I had to admit. Overall of course, I could not possibly like it, although some was pretty good. Then the movie was over. And? "Music: James Newton Howard. Ouch. He worked with Hans Zimmer on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. James Newton Howard gave both movies the emotion of the music, which Hans Zimmer cannot, because he can only do "massive blockbuster and action". James Newton Howard's wonderfully minimalistic soundtrack to "The Village" is my favourite. So he had done the score for Blood Diamond? I'll soon listen to it without the movie.

On saturday I told my mom about the quasi confusion and how I came to like the score just now because of that. She grinned and said, "See. See how our prejudices influence us." All I could do was grin back at her and nod.

The "pride"-part of this blog entry is this: James Newton Howard composed the music for the first two Batman movies together with Hans Zimmer, like I wrote before. He didn't work on the third and last one though and Hans Zimmer did it alone. Why? The other day I accidentally came across a page on the internet which stated that James Newton Howard seemed to have expected to work on Inception with Hans Zimmer, like they did work together on the two Batman movies. Nolan however didn't ask him. I don't know if it was defiance or pride or whatever, but Howard didn't want to work on the last Batman movie then. What an ego. Sad.

Until next blog,

sarah