Movie themes and Scores

[Little Oshawott]

This is where you discuss about your fav pieces of Music from Movies. Like which ones you love and which ones you think are timeless and magical. For me it has to be the theme from E.T. As well as the long score at the end with the chase and the goodbye. Even just listening to the music gets me teary. So how about you?

[TRIFORCE89]

*looks at iPod*

I've got a whole lot of John Williams on here. But, I agree with you on E.T.. It is just an absolutely beautiful and magical score.

I also listen to Danny Elfman, David Arnold, Hanz Zimmer, Alan Menken, and Michael Giacchino.

Some stuff works on its own. Others make me think of the movie. Some is catchy, some is epic, some is sad. But it all works well even without the movie or accompanying artifacts.

Like, I have Aladdin and Lion King scores without the singing songs. The scores are just as good (if not better, in the case of Lion King).

[Lt. Col. Fantastic]

Vertigo...stuff like that. Creepy and kind of beautiful at the same time.

[Mr Cat Dog]

I love Bernard Herrmann so much. As cliché as it is to say, his score to Psycho is my favourite movie score of all time. It adds so much that fillm; not only in the famous shower scene, but all the way through, being a constant source of dread and tension and suspense. I could listen to that score completely independently of the film and still really enjoy it. On top of that Herrmann's scores for Vertigo - as mentioned above - and Taxi Driver are really like what Lt. Col. Fantastic says: creepy and kind of beautiful at the same time. That trifecta of scores is probably the greatest in cinema history, if I'm not being too hyperbolic! :P

With regard to more modern film composers, I really like the works of Jon Brion (I <3 Huckabees), Cliff Martinez (Contagion) and Carter Burwell (nearly everything by the Coen brothers, but especially Fargo and Burn After Reading). Burwell is more traditional, despite making some very eccentric and eclectic scores, whereas Brion and Martinez use a lot of electronic software in their scores which have a surprisingly potent effect. The Huckabees score, for example, is ridiculously distinctive one, but it contains instruments that I'd never even heard of until a Wikipedia search informed me of their existence. All this new technology isn't all bad if it's being used for such beautiful music such as this.

[Toshiro.]

Anything by Hanz Zimmer. The mans a musical god. His work is fantastic, especially in the Batman movies and Inception. This guy never disappoints.

[Scarf]

I can't say I know too many composers beyond the really famous ones like Zimmer and Williams, but I've got the soundtrack to The Fountain which is done by Clint Mansell and it's really great. Sad and a little heart-wrenching, but still great. All those strings. You can really get the whole story of the movie from the music, which is good because it's not the kind of thing I can watch too often even though I like it.

And since I'm such an aficionado of Japan things I of course have some favorite composers from there. Yoko Kanno, of course, is amazing, though she doesn't often do the orchestrated film score types of music (though she can, and it's good). Hajime Mizoguchi did the soundtrack to Jin-Roh and it's also really nice. It's got the same kind of feel as The Fountain in that you can sort of feel the movie from the music.

[Lt. Col. Fantastic]

Originally Posted by Toshiro.

Anything by Hanz Zimmer. The mans a musical god. His work is fantastic, especially in the Batman movies and Inception. This guy never disappoints.

This guy said it all. Zimmer is pretty epic.