Topic: Movie soundtracks & scores

What's your favourite (and least favourite) movie scores?

Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Favourites (off the top of my head): Alexander Nevsky by Prokofiev, Star Trek: the Motion Picture by Goldsmith, Airplane! by Elmer Bernstein.

Don't really have a least favourite, but if I have to pick one, I throw out Avatar by Horner, mainly for its flagrant lack of originality, even by Horner's low, low standards.

Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

I just got Lifeforce 2-disc CD that has 46 tracks on it. Henry Mancini's score is fantastic. What in the world were Cannon Films thinking when they replaced it with a lackluster "Alien"-like synth score by Michael Kamen...

Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

I recently wrote a top twenty favourite 80s movie score in my blog (link in my sig). Outside of the 80s, I love the scores to- Face/Off, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands, Superman, Mission Impossible 3 (Giacchino rules, his score to the show Lost is amazing), Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Iron Man, Captain America and tons more. I can't remember them all.

Jerry Goldsmith was one of my favourite composersbut I hate his score to Runaway. Also not a fan of the scores to Goldeneye, The Terminator (though T2 is awesome), Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Thor, Green Lantern among others.

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Props on the Alexander Nevsky shoutout, it is indeed a wonderful score (I had the pleasure of seeing the movie with a live orchestra playing with it once, was awesome).

I'm a big James Horner fan myself, so Wrath of Khan and Aliens are personal favorites. Independence Day/Stargate are great. Hanz Zimmer's Broken Arrow and Crimson Tide. Obviously pretty much anything John Williams has ever done. EDIT: Also John Powell's Face/Off and more recently How to Train your Dragon are amazing.

As for least favorite/most disappointing, I have to say I continue to be utterly amazed that people love and recommend Michael Giachinno's work. That man can't write a good memorable theme to save his life, and every time I give him a shot again I'm profoundly disappointed. He did a great job on the Incredibles and the Medal of Honor games, but that's about it as far as I'm concerned. His Star Trek score is one of the biggest wasted opportunities I've heard. Edit: That comes off a bit harsh. He's not a bad composer by any stretch, but I think he shouldn't be scoring "epic" movies, his strength seems to be in mid-level thriller territory

Last edited by bullet3 (2012-03-20 23:26:01)

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

bullet3 wrote:

As for least favorite/most disappointing, I have to say I continue to be utterly amazed that people love and recommend Michael Giachinno's work. That man can't write a good memorable theme to save his life, and every time I give him a shot again I'm profoundly disappointed. He did a great job on the Incredibles and the Medal of Honor games, but that's about it as far as I'm concerned. His Star Trek score is one of the biggest wasted opportunities I've heard. Edit: That comes off a bit harsh. He's not a bad composer by any stretch, but I think he shouldn't be scoring "epic" movies, his strength seems to be in mid-level thriller territory


Oh....It's ON!

Not really. I love his work on Lost and his Life and Death theme is very memorable.

I agree with you on his Star Trek score, though, it was very disappointing. As was his work on Mission Impossible 4

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Tron: Legacy Soundtrack (Daft Punk) is awesome. I also greatly enjoy the score for LOTR  (Howard Shore) and a great assortment of John Williams' film scores (love the main theme for Catch Me If You Can.)

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

I like angelo badalamenti's scores for Lost Highway and other david lynch movies. His music is amazing, ranging from moody soft strings to oldschool blues/jazz influenced stuff. He mostly scores foreign films and B-movies now.

Anything Clint Mansel does I generally check out. Love the score for The Fountain.

Also, Tron Legacy.

As for soundtracks that I didn't like... I wasn't all that impressed with the Inception soundtrack, to be honest. It has it's moments, but overall it's not something I'd listen to. Works in the movie, but not on it's own aside from a few tracks that are amazingly listenable. To be honest, if the music is bad it's usually cause it's one of those 'various artists' soundtracks. Most of the time you end up with generic crap instead of real music. I will say, tho, that the idea behind the soundtrack for The Crow: City Of Angels was brilliant, and the execution was pretty damned great.

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Howard Shore's 11 hour LOTR scores (sustained high quality)
John Williams' Star Wars scores (among the best ever)
Most of Clint Mansell's scores, especially The Fountain and Moon
Heat
Also Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans is epic (also love The Insider)
Gladiator - Lisa Gerrard's contributions are evocative during the end death scene
Ridley Scott movies generally have atmospheric scores: Blade Runner is a classic, as is 1492 & Kingdom of Heaven and Hannibal
Most of Angelo Badalamenti's scores for Lynch e.g. Mulholland Drive
A Single Man (similar to The Fountain), as is The Road's score
Kubrick: Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut scores
Alien3 - the best of the Alien series's scores imho
Master & Commander
Ennio Morricone's collaborations with Sergio Leone
The Mission - better than the movie
Witness - Maurice Jarre
Dune by Toto
Others with selected great tracks: True Grit, Meet Joe Black, Gattaca, Rocky, Pan's Labyrinth, King Kong, Up

not long to go now...

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

For recent techno-driven scores, people should really watch/listen to Hanna by the Chemical Brothers, that was my personal favorite soundtrack last year:

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Epic.

Last edited by Xtroid (2012-05-22 17:35:01)

Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

John Williams' process, enjoy:

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Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Re: Movie soundtracks & scores

Howard Shore's work for The Lord of the Rings is obviously one of my favorites. If you want your mind blown by the attention to detail in that score, I recommend checking out A Magpie's Nest; a regular at TheOneRing.Net forums maintains this website, and it's ridiculously in-depth. Every piece of chorus used in the score has been translated into one of Tolkien's languages, and she's got the lyrics.

I've been getting to know John Williams' stuff recently, and I did not realize that his Superman theme was already firmly embedded in my bones via pop cultural osmosis. That's impactful, man.

I'll offer up most everything by Michael Kamen, the gentleman who scored Brazil. I know him from adoring the soundtrack to Disney's 1993 version of The Three Musketeers as a little kid and, obviously, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. (I have a thing for cheesy mid-nineties period action films. It is very specific.) I've only got the soundtracks to those, but in both I'm fascinated by how he can involve the Award Bait song into the score, make it feel organic and natural, and make that song feel ultimately earned.

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