Great Movie Scores

Peter Collins

My favourite from "The Mission"...used in an Aer Lingus advert too, but I thought I'd go for this footage instead

Hope you like it

The GF was in tears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRb8KKyenSY

MisterAnarchy

Masterpiece.
The Composer Ennio Morricone won an honorary Oscar this year as he had been outrageously and disgracefully snubbed previously.

Running Bing

MisterAnarchy wrote:

Masterpiece.
The Composer Ennio Morricone won an honorary Oscar this year as he had been outrageously and disgracefully snubbed previously.

The Oscars truly is a joke. Who was winning these oscars all those years? The Oscars lose all credibility when you think of the people who have missed out(Kubricks exclusion and Hitchcock's only winning the Irving G thalberg award as well as Scorcesse being overlooked for years and then been given one for the departed is inexcusable).


Anything by Morricone is generally outstanding. The man really is a genius. Sergio Leone's dollars trilogy and the once upon a time trilogy are all great films but they all owe a great depth to Morricone's scores. Pick of the bunch has to be once upon a time in the west.


Another Morricone score I like is for Ripleys Game and his music goes a long way in creating the creepy claustrophobic paranoid atmosphere in John Carpenters The Thing. Movies owe him a lot.

Petey2006

I believe that particular track is called Gabriel's Oboe.

Wacker

I love the Requiem for a Dream score. Anyone know if that is an iriginal piece?

I also love the piece that is in True Romance and Badlands. I think it was done by Hans Zimmer, who does some great work these days, as seen (heard!) in Gladiator, The Thin Red Line, Pirates of the Carribean, Batman Begins, et al. Howard Shore did a great job of the Lord of the Rings trilogy too.

John Williams is also a good contender for the title of best screen composer ever, or at least in my opinion.

MLM

Days of Heaven. Another Morricone score. Not as well known as others. Certainly my favourite, possibly his best.

Sandy22

+1 for Gabriel's Oboe. Also like to put in a vote for "Raising the Barn" from the film Witness.

Running Bing

Dont forget Bernard Herman either. Scored Taxi Driver and did some great work with Hitchcock. Himself and Hitch are easily on a par with the Leone/Morricone partnership.

mike65

Jerry Goldsmith for Star Trek - the Motion Picture. A full blown symphony which stands on its own merits, which is rare enough. Lalo Schifrin for being tense yet funky with movies like Dirty Harry and Bullitt, Vangelis for Blade Runner a masterpiece of atmosphere and quiet lamentation.

Mike.

Peter Collins

Petey2006 wrote:

I believe that particular track is called Gabriel's Oboe.

Ha! It comes up on the clip at 1:06

I always knew people never watched the full clip before replying!

Good one!

shrapnel222

my favorite must be the score of "the last temptation of Christ" by peter gabriel. one of my all time favorite CDs

oh and not forgetting the score of pulp fiction- what a great collection that is

da_deadman

I was delighted that Morricone got that honorary award this year aswell. After so many great movie scores over the years nobody was going to begrudge him that one.

Babybing wrote:

Dont forget Bernard Herman either. Scored Taxi Driver and did some great work with Hitchcock. Himself and Hitch are easily on a par with the Leone/Morricone partnership.

I'm a big fan of Bernard Hermanns work too. The IFI showed a number of Hermann films a few months back and the scores were pretty outstanding in all of his films that I've seen.

monkeyfudge

I loved James Horner's score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn... It was brilliant how the score shifted as the Reliant and the Enterprise kept gaining the upper hand on each other.

Petey2006

Peter Collins wrote:

Ha! It comes up on the clip at 1:06

I always knew people never watched the full clip before replying!

Good one!

I don't have the time to watch entire clips! If it's not edited into an MTV-style super clip, I'm moving on!

Ruu_Old

I liked the main title from The Last Emperor by David Byrne.

TerrorFirmer

Starship Troopers, Robocop, Schlinders List, all excellent. My favourites would definitely be John Williams and Basil Poledouris.

jank

Untouchables and cinema paradisso both by Morricone. Out of this world

Check out some of his other stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4dp8Mao9Gw

Also the kill bill soundtracks were pretty cool. Anything by quentin usually has a great score

edit: how do you post youtube clips?

RuggieBear

jank wrote:

Untouchables and cinema paradisso both by Morricone. Out of this world

Check out some of his other stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4dp8Mao9Gw

Also the kill bill soundtracks were pretty cool. Anything by quentin usually has a great score

edit: how do you post youtube clips?

[Youtube.]p4dp8Mao9Gw[./Youtube]
but take out the "."s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4dp8Mao9Gw

jank

cheers ruggie

fillefatale

I'm quite partial to Bernard Herrman's opening to North by Northwest

Sandwich

Gladiator
Glory
The Last of the Mohicans
Joe Versus the Volcano (a great movie that never was btw)
Blade Runner
Original Star Wars trilogy

(Also agree with Morricone for almost everything he did)

Sad Professor

Morricone was a master, I especially love his score for Once Upon a Time in the West.

I also love John Barry's score for Dances with Wolves

eddyc

The score to 'The road to perdition' was quite good , lots of haunting piano stuff there.

Someone mentioned the 'requiem for a dream' score yeah it is original, it was done by Clint Mansell of 'pop will eat itself' and the chronos quartet, its really good, one of the songs on it has been used for a few other movie trailors 'The two towers' was one and also the ad for the ryder cup last year.
Mansell did the 'π' soundtrack aswell which is good too.

David Holmes did good work also on the 'Oceans 11' soundtrack, some really nice jazzy stuff there.

Sandwich

Sad Professor wrote:

I also love John Barry's score for Dances with Wolves

I liked the main theme very well, but thought the score was very limited and repititive of that same (although good) theme.

ballroom blitz

The Drop kick murphys tracks on the departed soundtrack are great!!

gucci

some cool music on easy rider too. steppanwolf, the byrds, jimi hendrix ,to name a few, i think the who are even on there, cruising around and showing the scenery helps the music sound better though!!

kraggy

Wacker wrote:

I love the Requiem for a Dream score. Anyone know if that is an iriginal piece?

Yes. it's called lux aeterna

Play it here, By this guy: http://www.myspace.com/mansellclint

Sandwich

Cheating a bit (but worth it) as it was TV, not a movie, but one of the finest fits of a score to a screen drama - Brideshead Revisited : Geoffrey Burgon.

nacho libre

The Fountain
The Last of the Mohicans
Once Upon a Time in the west

Declan A Walsh

What about the rock musical Tommy, written by The Who's Pete Townsend? That's one great soundtrack.

Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads is great too.

Moving away from music-based films....
How about the soundtrack to Jackie Brown - some really great soul tracks, including that one by the Delfonics that Jackie Brown likes!

While on Quentin Tarantino films, how about some of the songs on Reservoir Dogs, especially "Stuck in The Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel - any one who has seen that "ear" scene will always associate the song with it!

I think the score to American Beauty is lovely - somehow very moving(probably the context of the story).

The theme tune to "The Man With The Golden Gun" (James Bond film) is particularly good when played in orchestration mode.

I'm sure I could think of loads more if I put my mind to it.

DublinWriter

Peter Collins wrote:

My favourite from "The Mission"...used in an Aer Lingus advert too, but I thought I'd go for this footage instead

That would be my personal #1.

Coming a close second would be Mychael Danna's soundtrack for what I consider to be one of the most criminally overlooked pieces of cinema in the last 10 years - Regeneration.

It basically was a Ch4 cinema production based on the Booker-prize winning Pat Barker Triology. It's available on DVD, pricey, but well worth it.

DublinWriter

Declan A Walsh wrote:

What about the rock musical Tommy, written by The Who's Pete Townsend? That's one great soundtrack.

Tommy was more of a "Rock Opera" than a soundtrack.

The original concept for Tommy was an LP which was later developed into a film by Ken Stamp and had the music totally reworked. I really wouldn't class it as a soundtrack as such.

Deliverance

Heard this ten years ago on tape, saw it on 'Hamburger Hill' combined with napalm explosions.

Can't find a link to the video though, the music is 'Samuel Osborne Barber - Adagio for strings', ten minutes of amazing music.

When combined with the scenes of war it really says something. If anyone finds the combination of video and music please post it, it is incredible. Like I said I heard it ten years ago and when I heard it again recently It brought back the scenes, powerfull stuff.

Ps Ennio Morricone, on a different note so to speak, what an artist, well under-rated.

Sad Professor

Adagio for Strings was used in Platoon not Hamburger Hill. Great music though.

Deliverance

Nice one, Platoon it is.

Declan A Walsh

DublinWriter wrote:

Tommy was more of a "Rock Opera" than a soundtrack.

The original concept for Tommy was an LP which was later developed into a film by Ken Stamp and had the music totally reworked. I really wouldn't class it as a soundtrack as such.

A matter of semantics really - when is a soundtrack not a soundtrack. By the way, it was Ken Russell who directed Tommy, if memory serves me right.

Ok - here's another one. What about the William Tell Overture performed on "A Clockwork Orange" : it was quite appropriate to what Malcolm McDowell's character was doing at the time it was played ... the "in out"!

sioda

Loved Elliot Goldenthal's final fantasy the spirits within sound track and Zimmers black hawk down soundtrack the minstrel boy as the last track is just fantastic

Hypnotoad

Jurassic Park,a clockwork orange and Donnie Darko have my favourite movie scores.

The moog used in a clockwork orange was just perfect.

Sandwich

Sad Professor wrote:

Adagio for Strings was used in Platoon not Hamburger Hill. Great music though.

Correct on both points. But wasnt written for the film. Is an orchestrated version Barber made of a movement of his string quartet in the 1930s.

Zapp Brannigan

Conan anyone?
Dunno who it's composed by, but I've always loved the movie for its music alone.