I have to beg everybody’s indulgence: we need to ship the Kickstarter donor rewards in mid-January. This is because we finally have the Best of Film Score Monthly book at the printers, but they can’t turn it around faster than that. The other perks are done and ready to ship, but I have to ship everything all at once, otherwise it’s not fair to the people also expecting the book. And if I double-ship (send items in more than one shipment), it’ll be several thousand more doll

Very sorry to hear of the passing of jazz artist Gordon Goodwin . He suffered a stroke while fighting pancreatic cancer. I emailed with him briefly when we were working on the Deluxe Edition of Star Trek: Nemesis ; he did the arrangement of “Blue Skies” for Brent Spiner at the Troi-Riker wedding. Super talented and super nice.

Was Tron ever cool? I remember in the ’80s it was this kind of also-ran sci-fi movie that had a unique look and cool concept—but dramatically, was pretty inert. It was this sort of intriguing flop that we’d revisit once in a while. I never would have pegged it as a franchise, but Disney has tried anyway, and, well, zzzzzzz . The original Wendy Carlos score is super cool and here’s a video on it which I enjoyed: It comes from a unique point in time when mixing synthesizers wi

I see that Paramount is now trying a hostile takeover of Warner Bros., to beat Netflix’s offer . I’m sure there are lots of corporate-merger subtleties to it that I don’t understand, but that’s the gist of it. This whole thing is depressing as all of these mergers will result in more consumer costs and less choice. That’s why we have monopoly rules. Or used to, anyway. The 1996 Telecommunications Act did a ton of damage. The concept is simple: when you allow vertical integra

Let’s hear it for the “white slavers,” as George jokingly called Disney after selling them Lucasfilm (and had to walk it back afterwards, so much fun): they have restored the original Star Wars Trilogy, without all the dumb changes, for theatrical re-release in 2027. And I’m sure for Disney+ afterwards. Clips have been leaking online: And here: Looks great! So strange—I feel like it was just yesterday that we were going to see the Special Editions. The new VFX were amazing,

As a lifelong Trekkie I’ve always been fascinated by the “show that wasn’t,” Star Trek Phase II —which became Star Trek: The Motion Picture circa 1977–78 when Paramount decided to abandon plans for a fourth TV network and instead make a Star Trek film. Scripts were written and sets built, as chronicled in various books, magazine articles and websites. The TrekWorld YouTube channel has done an incredible job unearthing images from the aborted production, and debuted a new s

It’s crazy that Netflix is acquiring Warner Bros. So now there’s just, what? Disney/Fox/ABV, Paramount/CBS, Amazon/MGM, Netflix/WB, Universal/NBC. And Apple, where making movies is a hobby. And Sony, who will probably be gobbled up next. Years ago somebody explained to me why TV movies are never any good: because they don’t have to be . They make some sensational piece of crap, people tune in, and by the time they realize it’s junk, they’ve gotten the ratings. (This is circa

Today’s project on our end is getting the FSMOnline subscription/payment service to work right. There are a lot of moving parts on the “backend” as we say about websites: caching, e-commerce, “webhooks,” and a lot of other stuff I never thought I would learn about. It’s frustrating not to have a better grasp on this, personally, because I can’t get in there and help the way I could if it was, for example, editing a magazine article. But we’re confident in our tech folks to so

Thanks for all your orders from yesterday’s CD sale! We’re shipping them today. And there’s still a ton of great stuff in inventory! Check out the spreadsheet here (sorted with all the high-end goodies up top today) and go to FSMCDs.com to order. Proceeds are going to continued FSM website improvements—more fixes to the message board coming soon. Thank you!

We have added 115 listings to FSMCDs.com , including a lot of sealed box sets, like the La-La Land Lethal Weapon collection (above). Here is a spreadsheet of the available inventory , over 5,000 listings in all. Two special items today: an Elmer Bernstein concert program and a John Williams print . Here are photos of these items . Hope you find some goodies—thank you!

Our next CD sale will go live tomorrow, Tuesday, December 2, at 10AM Pacific / 1PM Eastern. Not a large number of titles, but some premiums collector editions and box sets. And a reminder that cool stuff, like La-La Land’s Die Hard With a Vengeance , is in stock now. There’s typically one copy of each, at way less than eBay prices. Thank you for supporting www.fsmcds.com !