The Composers, Scores, and the Chewers Who Love Them Thread - Page 2

I do like the Titanic score but Celine Dion is just a dealbreaker for me.

I don't know if i'm alone in this, but the score of Passion of the Christ made me think way too much to Peter Gabriel's Passion: The Last Temptaton of Christ score. It's the one to beat.

So don't watch the end credits ... there are plenty of movies that tack on a vocal track over the end credits just to give one of the studio's recording artists something to do.

I just realized I forgot to mention my all time favorite: the score to Ravenous by Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman. LOVE those insane strings.

Bernard Herrmann's Cape Fear is brilliant, so is the rest of his work. Angelo Badalamenti is also brilliant (He scored almost all of David Lynch's movies).

I'm also big fans of Jon Brion, Michael Giacchino (his work on The Incredibles and LOST is fantastic) and enoy me some Ennio Morricone

I love that Cutthroat Island score. Debney's work on the Sin City score is fantastic, probably the best music from that whole movie.

I won't pretend to be an expert on a lot of these guys but I almost always enjoy Zimmer's work. He has a ton of beats in BROKEN ARROW that were just perfect, especially that bit when Travolta emerges from the canyon.

For what it's worth, I like Graeme Revell.

I'll have to check this out.

As I stated earlier, Zimmer's done a great job so far. Black Hawk Down is wickedly fun to play, as it's dark and brooding, and won't stop to lighten up.

One composer that I find interesting, if uneven, is Graeme Revell. He can put some fantastic work ( The Crow, Pitch Black, The Insider - with Lisa Gerrard) and some bland stuff ( Dune miniserie, Tomb Raider, The Chronicle of Riddick).

One soundtrack to look for by Revell is the rejected soundtrack for The 13th Warrior, recorded with Lisa Gerrard. Less bombastic than Goldsmith hurried score, it's a whole different take on this tale, going for a more earthy and organic tone.

People may think this is an odd view, but I still think that The Lion King might be Hans Zimmer's best work. Word is that he also worked on instrumentation on the musical numbers. To Die For, in particular, is an awesome track (and I mean "awesome" in its non-surfer usage).

I've enjoyed Graeme Revell's work, but the unfortunate thing about his scores is that they have a tendency to be buried in films that promote big soundtrack albums. His cues have been drowned by pop music so many times, it's depressing. I'd love to get a score album for Titan A.E, but I don't see that happening.

If as a director I was given Graeme Revell or Marco Beltrami for a composer when there are so many other talented-but-cheap composers available, I would be so fucking pissed. With the exception of The Crow, these two bring nothing but blandness to any film they score.

I enjoyed parts of Beltrami's score to the Faculty, and his theme for T3 isn't half bad. I've heard a few scores by Revell, but nothing particularly memorable comes to mind.

Aside from THE CROW, I love what Revell did with HARD TARGET. That whole final half hour is a great loud bombastic score and fits the events on screen just right. I liked his SIN CITY stuff as well.

I'm a bit surprised that Alan Silvestri hasn't been mentioned yet. He composed some fantastic scores in the eighties, especially for "Back To The Future" and "Predator". His "Predator" score was one of the first movie themes that I remember humming.

I liked his score for "Forrest Gump", but apart from that he kind of fell off the map in the 90's for me.

A look at IMDB shows that he's been scoring a steady stream of crap for some time now. I wonder what happened. Did being removed from Mission: Impossible hurt him that bad?

Just have to throw in some love for Barry's "Out of Africa" score. Lovely and soaring, "Flying Over Africa" still gives me shivers and always makes me flash to the scene with the plane swooping over the lake of flamingos.

I like Clint Mansell's work. Elements from Requiem for a Dream have been used over and over for other films' trailers. I'm really looking forward to his work on The Fountain. The couple songs he did for Pi were really cool, but you have to like electronic music.

His music for The Mummy Returns is a fun bit of scoring too.

Not to mention ENTER THE DRAGON.

I've always loved Lalo Schifrin's work in the late sixties, early seventies, he scored 'Bullitt', 'Dirty Harry' and he created the theme for 'Mission Impossible', I know he doesn't really do movie scores anymore but he was pretty damn good back then.

Although I really don't think the movie has held up that well, the score still sounds really vibrant.

ETD?

Yeah, I should've mentioned the name.

I actually think Mansell's work in the last third of Requiem for a Dream is his best stuff. The entire winter section has a score that can only be described as being taken to hell and back, just how it builds and builds with the images, the Kronos String Quartet's arrangements slowly overshadowed by industrial metallic thumping always makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

I'd also like to say I love David Holmes work primarily with Soderbergh in his lighter films like 'Out of Sight' and the Oceans Eleven films, just really good punchy scores that fit the films like a glove.

I like Debney well enough but to me his music just doesn't have much of a personality. I do like CUTTHROAT ISLAND, but my favorites of his are older action scores like SUDDEN DEATH and END OF DAYS, before he began taking on cute little comedies and treacly drama. He's also another guy, like Brian Tyler or William Ross now and David Newman a few years back, who falls victim to temp track-itis on occasion, and I'd include PASSION there, which sounds more like THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST or RABBIT PROOF FENCE. If it works well in the movie that's one thing, but it's just not terribly original or interesting music. Just my $.02.

That said, I think Debney is a solid craftsman who has the potential to be a big gun, and I really hope he does so because I like his big, broad style. I'm worried he'll become this generation's Bruce Broughton.


About Revell, I'm not a huge fan either but let's not forget his score to THE SAINT.

I have absolute hatred for Beltrami. He sucks.

The Sahara score seemed very Bond-ish to me.

I remember reading an interview with Guillermo Del Toro (it might have been here) where he said he always had to push Beltrami to go big in the big moments, like he was always wanting to shy away from the big emotional stuff and be more restrained. It struck me so odd because I always figured that's the moment you live for as a composer, getting to provide the huge emotional wallop.

You could essentially apply this same argument to THE OMEN, which is ironic considering who wrote the original. I haven't heard the new score yet myself, but I have it on good authority that it's suspiciously light on choir. How the fuck can you score the Antichrist without some chanting?

The irony about Horner, for all that's said about him repeating himself, is that his best stuff (WOLFEN, STAR TREK, ALIENS) was done when he was constantly repeating himself.

There’s only one composer I can’t stand and its Michael Nyman. The guy could suck the life out of Tony Little. I have to watch Gattaca with subtitles.

I agree nearly 100%, except for last year's CHUMSCRUBBER, which I think was Horner's best, most inspired score in years.

I like Burwell but I don't love him. I think he's done a few standouts (the brilliant AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, ROB ROY, the MILLER'S CROSSING and FARGO themes), but his music just rarely engages me. I can see why people might like him because's not overly mawkish, but I find his scores often lack some real meat I can sink my teeth into.

She also did the music for Avalon.
Unfortunately i´m not really into asian cinema so i haven´t heard any of her other works.

Hey man, a score is a score.

Sure, DiCola's work for those films is a little dated now, but I love 'em both. Same with all those old Harold Faltermeyer scores.

Great idea for a thread. My love for film music and filmmaking go hand-in-hand. A truly amazing score can turn a solid film into a memorable one for me.

James Horner's WILLOW is probably in my top 5. I think I found a used one on Amazon or something, but a remastered version of the CD needs to be released ASAP. Lush, with just the right touch of melodrama and expansiveness...it has a timelessness and comforting tone that I'll always cherish.

I'm something of a neophyte regarding contemporary Japanese film composing, but I get the sense that there are some really interesting things going on in that world. The opening theme for Elfenlied, for example, is a pastiche of plainchant and late-Romantic schmaltz...and it's gorgeous. The composers, Kayo Konishi and Yukio Kondou, are a complete mystery to me.

Also, I love John Williams' Bombasticity, but even if you don't, there is much more to the man's music than brassy fanfares and flute arpeggios. Check out his scores for Jane Eyre, Schindler's List, Memoirs of a Geisha, AI, Angela's Ashes. Heck, even his Prisoner of Azkaban score is a model of restraint, although it admittedly features some (wonderful, charming) flute noodling.

John Williams' MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA could be his best score in years, and that's saying a lot with heavyweights like MUNICH, REVENGE OF THE SITH, WAR OF THE WORLDS, and PRISONER OF AZKABAN all worth owning.

On the subject of Vince DiCola's Transformers score, have any of you heard the complete album? It's called "When All Are One", and it was sold as a special item at a convention, I think. I managed to download the whole thing piecemeal on Limewire, back when I still did that sort of thing. The weird thing is that, while it contains a hell of a lot more music than the three cues that were on the official soundtrack album, it doesn't contain those three tracks (rights issues, I'm guessing). So you have to try to combine them, and place those tracks in the proper chronological order.

As dated as the score sounds now, I really enjoy it, probably because there's nothing else out there quite like it.

Check out the Rocky IV soundtrack for more from DiCola. I bet there are a few mid-80s soundtracks with a similar synthesizer-heavy sound if you look around.

I always saw Harry Gregson-William as a pseudo-clone of Hans Zimmer since I heard of him.

I've been listening to the Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack since the last 2 weeks.
Well, this album proved me dead wrong. He really managed to blend Middle-eastern, medieval and classical influences into a really great piece of work for one of the most butchered movie ever. Amen to the director's cut.