I almost started this yesterday, and Charlie read my mind, so here it is. The place to discuss film scores new and old, composers, just about anything. We’ve had some nice discussions spread over several threads and forums, but with all due respect to Moltisanti and Desslar, if a thread about Van Damme and Lundgren can go 13 pages, I think we deserve a one stop place to discuss the great music of the movies.
If you’re willing, and I now know there are a ton of film score fanatics around here, post it all here.
I’m probably going to get my arse kicked for stating this but I really love some of the contemporary asian scores which have come out recently.
Kenji Kawai’s work on Ghost in the Shell and Seven Swords is pretty incredible, and the electronica/orchestrated score for Oldboy, and Baroque OST for Lady Vengenace are wonderfully well done.
I’m certainly not going to kick your ass, “Oldboy” was a really nice score, thanks for it btw. I’m still catching some of those others, but I think the music in a lot of foreign films period has gotten pretty great. I’m bad on names, but loved “Tae Guk Gi”, and of course Tan Dun did masterful work on “Crouching Toger, Hidden Dragon”.
I’m obsessed with Elliot Goldenthal… I just love his over the top, industrial-esque scores.
I just started getting into Jerry Goldsmith. I’ve always loved his music, but never seperated him from the movies he scored until now. The best film composer in history IMO.
John Williams has kind of dropped down the list for me. Star Wars will forever freeze him in fanboy carbonite, but other than that (and the Jaws and Indy scores) he’s been pretty generic to me. He’s talented for sure, but he’s like the Pepsi of film composers. Safe syrup.
Let’s see… Jon Brion is very cool. But I wish he’d do more standard orchestral scores like Magnolia. Brilliant work.
Asia has some great music coming out of it. Joe Hisiashi is an incredible composer. His work on Kitano movies is amazing. OLDBOY always deserves a mention, as does INFERNAL AFFAIRS, which has a very good score.
I’ve already done a thread about it, but I really digged Kitano’s stop gap solution for Zatoichi. That he hired Keiichi Suzuki because he couldn’t afford Hisiashi and still managed to get a score that works so well with the film is quite impressive. That Suzuki’s score probably elevates the movie is downright astounding.
I’m probably the biggest Williams defender when it comes to this board, but I don’t agree he’s generic at all. If he sounds generic, it’s because of what he created in the first place and the people who have followed him, and sure he hasn’t deviated much, but he has done some pretty different scores (A.I. for one).
Goldsmith is awesome, although I think it’s hard to say who the best composer is. Goldsmith has an amazing catalogue, Williams is the king of themes, but you have people like Steiner, Korngold, Waxman, those guys who were kicking ass when those guys were in diapers. Not to mention people like Elmer Bernstein.
Charlie, my problem with Williams isn’t that he’s generic. It’s that he’s bombastic. And while I don’t hate the guy, I think there are far more versatile and interesting composers working today.
He’s certainly bombastic with some of his scores, but for me, he’s just as able to take on a small and intimate score as opposed to a huge orchestra piece and do it well. He’s definitely got very good competition nowadays, and the days are long gone when it was just him and Goldsmith at the top, but I still think he kind of gets a bum rap from people.
As other guys go, Mark Isham is a big favourite of mine, who seems to never get any kind of limelight whatsoever.
Yoko Kanno is a musical goddess. This is indisputable fact. I’ve never heard a composer, from any hemisphere, play around with so many styles, and be great at them all. Nowhere was that more prevalent than Cowboy Bebop, where the skizophrenic musical influences gave her room to go completely nuts with whatever genre she felt like from straightforward rock, to the Morricone-tribute in the episode with the Space Cowboy/Samurai. The show fits her like a glove (to the point that they even modeled a main character around her.), and even the shittiest of anime benefits from her presence.
Originally Posted by Charlie Brigden I’m probably the biggest Williams defender when it comes to this board, but I don’t agree he’s generic at all. If he sounds generic, it’s because of what he created in the first place and the people who have followed him, and sure he hasn’t deviated much, but he has done some pretty different scores (A.I. for one).
Yeah, I think Williams gets quite unfairly pigeonholed as “generic”. I hear the “Well, he writes a good brassy theme but” and sort of talk down his ability to write a memorable theme.
But “Catch Me If You Can”, “Presumed Innocent”, “A.I”, hell, “Minority Report” is not his usual fare, “Sleepers”, and especially some of his older stuff like “Missouri Breaks”, the man has done it all. He’s had different sounds and scored virtually every genre. To do all that and still be able to crank out such diverse scores as “Memoirs As a Geisha”, “Munich”, and “Revenge of the Sith” in the same year? That’s the master as far as I’m concerned.
Originally Posted by Crow Yoko Kanno is a musical goddess. This is indisputable fact. I’ve never heard a composer, from any hemisphere, play around with so many styles, and be great at them all. Nowhere was that more prevalent than Cowboy Bebop, where the skizophrenic musical influences gave her room to go completely nuts with whatever genre she felt like from straightforward rock, to the Morricone-tribute in the episode with the Space Cowboy/Samurai. The show fits her like a glove (to the point that they even modeled a main character around her.), and even the shittiest of anime benefits from her presence.
Yeah, she is one talented person. I just found that she let herself be limited at times too. Kawai tends to cut loose no matter what, where at times you can really sense that Kanno doesn’t give a shit. Her reworking of Madame Butterfly for Memories was brilliant though and her GITS: Stand Alone Complex score was pretty nifty. She seems happier when she can get away with using western music in her scores.
The people who think Williams only writes big brassy themes remind me of the people who think his Jaws score is nothing but the “da-dum” over and over again. For every Superman March or Imperial March, there’s a Love Theme or Yoda’s Theme.
And maybe there’s a preponderance of loud action cues in his repertoire because he’s scored some of the most famous action-adventure films of all time?
The music. The official CD has lots of music missing, different orchestrations of cues, and movie dialogue, which I can’t stand on albums unless it’s on individual tracks.
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall Are they the electronica band who did the Master of the Flying Guillotine score?
They were responsible for soundtracks for Legend, Fright Night, Vision Quest, Near Dark, Firestarter, etc. Really trippy stuff. Not great. Just trippy.
Originally Posted by Charlie Brigden The music. The official CD has lots of music missing, different orchestrations of cues, and movie dialogue, which I can’t stand on albums unless it’s on individual tracks.
Yeah the monolouge on the first track is a complete pain in the arse. I remember doing a presentation on Blade Runner and having to edit the soundtrack just to use it as backing music.