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Topic: James Horner feared dead in light aircraft accident
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
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Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-22-2015 10:45 PM
quote: LA Times A single-engine plane owned by Academy Award-winning composer James Horner crashed Monday in Ventura County, killing the sole occupant, whose name has not been released.
The crash was reported shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Quatal Canyon Road, a remote stretch in Los Padres National Forest, said Ventura County sheriff's Capt. John Reilly.
The crash of the single-engine S312 Tucano sparked a small brush fire that grew to about 2 acres, Reilly said. County fire crews doused the flames.
The county coroner's office has not released the name of the pilot.
Jay Cooper, the longtime attorney for Horner, confirmed that the plane involved in the crash was one of five aircraft owned by the composer. No one has heard from Horner, Cooper said.
Horner's manager did not respond to a request for comment. A person answering the phone at the Calabasas home owned by Horner and his wife requested privacy.
Horner, 61, is widely considered one of the most successful film composers of all time. He won two Academy Awards for composing the music in "Titanic," whose soundtrack includes the mega-hit "My Heart Will Go On."
Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Horner garnered several Academy Award nominations for his work on such critically acclaimed films as "Braveheart," "A Beautiful Mind," "Avatar," "Aliens" and "Apollo 13."
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.
I'm guessing some sort of catastrophic mechanical problem with the plane, though I'm wondering if the very hot weather we've been having recently might have been a relevant factor. Very sad.
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Justin Hamaker
Film God
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Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 06-22-2015 11:59 PM
Variety is now saying it's confirmed. Rest in Peace.
James Horner Dead, ‘Titanic’ Composer, Dies in Plane Crash
quote: Composer James Horner, who won two Oscars for the music of “Titanic” and scored such other blockbusters as “Avatar,” “Braveheart,” “Apollo 13″ and “A Beautiful Mind,” has died, Variety has confirmed. He was 61.
Horner was one of the most popular film composers of the last 30 years, and his “Titanic” soundtrack – with its hit Celine Dion song, “My Heart Will Go On,” written with Will Jennings – became the biggest-selling movie-score album of all time, selling an estimated 30 million units worldwide.
He scored more than 100 films in all and was often in demand for big popcorn movies. Most recent were “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Karate Kid” remake, but he also scored “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “The Perfect Storm,” “Clear and Present Danger,” “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and “Aliens.”
He was born Aug. 14, 1953 in Los Angeles, the son of production designer Harry Horner. He spent his formative years in London, attending the Royal College of Music, but he returned to L.A. and earned his bachelor’s degree in music at the USC and did post-graduate work at UCLA.
Horner began his career with AFI shorts and low-budget Roger Corman films including “The Lady in Red” and “Battle Beyond the Stars,” quickly graduating to major studio films including “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” His 1980s output demonstrated his versatility, including scores for “48 Hrs.,” “Cocoon,” “Willow” and “Field of Dreams.”
In the 1990s he added “The Rocketeer,” “Sneakers,” “Patriot Games,” “Legends of the Fall” and “Ransom” to his resume before hitting the jackpot, both financially and awards-wise, with “Titanic.” In addition to his two Oscars, he won song and score Golden Globes for the James Cameron film.
He received eight other Oscar nominations, including seven for the scores of “Aliens,” “Field of Dreams,” “Apollo 13,” “Braveheart,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “House of Sand and Fog” and “Avatar.”
As a songwriter, he earned an Oscar nomination and two 1987 Grammys including Song of the Year for “Somewhere Out There,” written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for the animated film “An American Tail.” He did the “American Tail” sequel “Fievel Goes West” and musically launched another popular animated-film franchise with “The Land Before Time.”
He earned four more Grammys including one for instrumental composition for 1989’s “Glory” and three for “Titanic” including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
He also scored Michael Jackson’s “Captain EO” theme-park attraction at Disneyland in 1986 and composed music for a handful of TV movies including “A Piano for Mrs. Cimino,” “Extreme Close-Up” and “Freedom Song.”
Horner dabbled in other realms of music-making, including composing new music for Katie Couric’s stint at the “CBS Evening News” in 2006 and, in recent years, classical commissions. In November 2014 he premiered a double concerto for violin and cello in Liverpool, England, and March 2015 saw the premiere of his concerto for four horns in London.
A trained pilot, Horner also scored music for an airshow by the Horsemen in 2010.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
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Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-23-2015 11:51 AM
Pretty tragic news. At least he died doing something he loved. It makes me think of the rash of motorcycle accident deaths we've had here in Oklahoma the past few days. Light planes are different from motorcycles, but accidents in both are often serious or fatal. Bob Barry Jr., a popular sportscaster at KFOR in Oklahoma City was killed this past Saturday when some idiot pulled an illegal U-turn in front of his motorcycle. I can't guess what might have gone wrong in James Horner's plane to bring it down.
James Horner has been one of the most popular movie score composers of the last 30 years. He has the scoring credits on the current #1 and #2 box office champs, Avatar and Titanic. His music has been used and re-used in all kinds of advertisments, not just movie trailers either. John Williams is the most well known movie score composer of the last 40 years, but his movie themes have been more identifiable and thus less friendly for audio clip art use in some featurette, sports piece or news story.
Horner created the music in the re-mixed version of the THX Cimarron snipe (the version with music instead of the original pow-whooosh thingie).
Glory is one my favorite scores from Horner. It features the Boys Choir of Harlem. The score wasn't nominated for an Oscar (but it did win a Grammy award and get a Golden Globe nomination). Nevertheless the score had a powerful effect on the movie. Incidentally Glory did win the Best Sound Oscar for 1989 and I think the music score had at least some influence on that. I watched the movie in 70mm Dolby mag at the UA Gemini Twin in New York when it was first released. I bought a CD of the music score a few days later. I've heard a few different tracks from the Glory score re-used on movie trailers, such as the thrilling Charging Fort Wagner theme. The boys choir vocal for An Epitaph to War made my hair stand on end when I first heard it. Very beautiful and haunting music. For reference, it's used in the scene where the soldiers' bodies, black and white, are rolling into a mass grave.
I haven't heard music from Apollo 13 or Titanic used quite so often as audio clip art, but then those have themes that caught on with popular culture better.
Horner's music really seemed to take advantage of the dynamic range of the then-new 5.1 digital sound formats in the 1990s. I remember the moody opening theme of Braveheart pushing things dynamically.
If there is one criticism about Horner's music, it gets a bit repetitive at times. You'll hear things in one score you swear you heard in a previous score of his or even music by someone else.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
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Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-23-2015 08:52 PM
I guess an important thing to remember is movie score music is not really meant to stand on its own for listening, like Beethoven's 9th Symphony or Heretic Hate Anthem by Slipknot.
The music score is really there to punctuate the emotion on a particular scene or be absent, like no music score at all during the scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex goes medieval on the asses of those Ford Explorer vehicles, and an attorney.
From that perspective I can forgive James Horner for using and re-using some of his own themes from one film to another, like Legends of the Fall to Braveheart. Or raspy flute themes from a Jack Ryan action pic? I remember re-watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and Aliens within a short time of each other. Frank Poole is jogging along in the Discovery, mime boxing. Then I watch Aliens and I'm hearing pretty much the same theme. WTF? Did anyone get sued?
This sort of thing still goes on. Some people were going, "how the hell did the guy from Nine Inch Nails nail down a Best Score Oscar for The Social Network?" A better question might be how Trent Reznor did it considering a couple of the movie's most memorable themes came from his previously released Ghosts I-IV album? The pieces were re-mixed, like A Familiar Taste, previously known as Ghosts 35, or Ghosts 14 which became Magnetic on The Social Network movie score. Nevertheless Trent Reznor's electronic score fit the mood and personality of the movie perfectly. It underlined the dramatic notes of the movie without calling too much attention to itself the way any proper movie score should do.
BTW, I recommend the Ghosts I-IV set to any NIN fan. It's all instrumental music. Not traditional rock or pop. I actually like playing it in my headphones while working. It tunes out a lot of other distractions and keeps me a little more focused on tasks I need to get completed.
With John Williams getting up there in age, James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith passed on, movie music fans might ask who is going to pick up the mantle? Williams is doing the new Star Wars movie score, BTW.
Alan Silvestri is still around for one thing. Loved his scores on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Abyss and Back to The Future. But out of the slightly younger set, Michael Giacchino is a stand out. I have to throw out his name since he is a fellow alum of School of Visual Arts. He has racked up a pretty serious credits list over the past decade and has produced the scores of FOUR movies so far this year (Jupiter Ascending, Tomorrowland, Jurassic World and Inside Out).
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