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Now on the CBn main page...

David Arnold: A New Approach For 'Bond 22'

'I'm going to be on Bond for quite a while this time...'; Part three of an audio interview now online

Interesting, I hope him being on the job for quite a while (Working closesly with Forster at that) will churn out one of his better scores.

The talk sounds exciting...it sounds as if this will be the score that may truly be Arnold's litmus test. He's apparently being given the most time he's had yet to come up with a score. I've enjoyed him quite a bit, and I think that CR, for the most part, may have even surpassed his TND score. Given much more time, and a director who plans to be involved closely in the composing process, Arnold may be able to come up with a score that really follows the arc of the story and fits very closely with the tone, and not reverting to rousing arrangements of the Bond theme over and over (i.e., his pre-CR Bond films). There can definitely be too much Bond theme, IMO.

Time to walk the walk, Dave.

Sounds like they are willing to put a bit more work into it this time... perhaps he won't need to borrow the score from TWINE again this time.

Since his music for CR was "entirely different", I cant wait to hear this "new approach"-music for Bond 22

That's what I fear. I loved what he did with the YKMN theme (in fact I like what he did with it more than I liked the song in the first place). But he tends to use these heavy, melodramatic, melancholic themes to underscore every romantic scene / scene involving a female or whatever. And it all sounds like something out of TWINE.

Hopefully having more time will help - and hopefully Forster will keep Arnold on a leash. A tight one. With a whip.

to expect a composer to do a complete 180 and change his style and direction is a bit silly, as most creative people have a kind of niche or style that they work through. Arnold does, and there were changes from DAD but it was still fundamentally Arnold. You can't expect anything else.

I'm REALLY looking forward to this one now that I hear he's going to be spending much more time on it. Hopefully marvelous things will be done with that extra time...

Can't wait to hear this score. I've loved Arnold's previous 4 and i'm hoping that with a close collaboration with Marc Forster (who apparantly likes to do alot of work with each department so that it all gels together) we're going to get a score that perfectly suits the film.

I am quite a fan of Arnolds Bond work, lets hope Bond 22 will be his best. You all gotta admit that Arnolds work on Die Another Day was one of the few highlights of the movie.

heheh... you won't get many to admit that, my friend...

I'm not concerned with Arnold's romantic scenes. I think that is his strongest aspect of his composing. I'm hoping he can improve on his generic, long-winded action themes that for the most part bring nothing to the table, "African Rundown" being the one exception. In AR, he did show some flashes of brilliance on how an action cue should sound (heavy use of the film's theme). However, AR was not perfect, and still consisted of some stretches of just "noise" and too many crescendos. It doesn't need to be that way, and hopefully Forster will work with him on that.

This doesn't really excite me - this quote could easily have been lifted from his comment about CR back in early 2006. And, for that matter, DAD in 2002. Arnold's "new approaches" don't seem particularly dramatic...

That said, however, I did really enjoy most of his score for CR, especially Vesper's theme, and the use of YKMN. Hopefully the same quality will continue, and grow.

Largely agreed.

I find it fascinating that Forster seems to be working very closely with Arnold. I wonder how much that will influence the direction of the score... Forster might have a very specific angle in mind.

I totally agree with this assessment, Arnold sort of hinted at the source of this problem in the interiew quotes, that they recorded too soon after filming and so a lot of the action music for Casino Royale sounds like a temp track they never went back and finished.