Astrophysicist CARL SAGAN made a major impact on public consciousness with his landmark TV Series COSMOS: A PERSONAL VOYAGE (1980) as well as his vulgarization of the term NUCLEAR WINTER which, in conjunction with NICHOLAS MEYERs breakthrough film THE DAY AFTER (1983), informed about the terrifying ecological outcome of a nuclear war. With the high profile sequel to the classic COSMOS airing this March (A SPACETIME ODYSSEY hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson), many film music observers had hoped that VANGELIS would commit new material for the 2014 iteration (the 1980 series featured a needle drop score made of disparate sources, none original, including a majority of 1970s VANGELIS material). However, this did not come to pass and, because of the new COSMOS being produced by SETH MacFARLANE, another conscious choice would have been to hire RON JONES (composer of MacFARLANEs FAMILY GUY and of some of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATIONs best episodes including THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS) but this did not come to pass either. This week, the man himself -SETH MacFARLANE- announced that industry veteran ALAN SILVESTRI (BACK TO THE FUTURE) had been tapped to score the new 13 episodes series. The connection is actually not that surprising as, SILVESTRI, having scored the 1997 ROBERT ZEMECKIS adaptation of CARL SAGANs best-selling novel CONTACT, already dealt with similar material (ANN DRUYAN, widow of CARL SAGAN and co-writer of the original COSMOS, co-produced CONTACT and is among the production team on the new series). Adding credibility to this 2014 iteration is that, not only is SILVESTRI an A-List composer, he can also sound old fashioned at times (the 1980s synths recently heard in RED2) which, in the case of the new COSMOS, might help it bridge its sensibility with the highly revered classic one. Lets just hope that the artist will not fall back into the sugarcoating of CONTACT whose music score (short of its avant-garde sections) behaved as an aftermath of the prior ZEMECKIS / SILVESTRI collaboration, FORREST GUMP, and sounded over-sentimental for its own good. Proof on March 9th! https://twitter/SethMacFarlane/status/422893692374900737
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:07:24 +0000
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