Marco Beltrami
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I am currently listening to the reissue of Beltrami’s SCREAM score and that triggered some thoughts about him as a composer. Technically I find he is one of the rare cases where the composer seems very well at home with orchestral and electronic textures. He can create great setpieces in both areas. What he is not, is a great melodist. He doesn’t seem to care much about themes or film music as a medium to stand on its own.
As he has a strong footprint in horror movies it is probably fair to compare him to Christopher Young. When it comes to these typical dissonant horror textures there might even be similarities between the two. But I see Young in opposite as a passionate melody writer.
The most melodic and thematically concise score of Beltrami is for me HELLBOY. And that’s also my favourite score of his.Maybe I should mention, that I am not super familiar with his work. But what I described above is the picture that I have of Beltrami.
Quite disappointed I was with the music for LOGAN. I wished it had been more in the vein of Kamen or Powell for X-MEN. More grand orchestral gesture. He can do that but apparently didn’t want to.I am not really a fan. And I never managed to get into MIMIC which many Fans seem to love. But I love his WORLD WAR Z suite on the Film Fest Gent album.
He is a composer that makes me curious from time to time.What do you others think of him?
Marco Beltrami entered my radar like a whirlwind in the 90s. I was never that much into horror scores, but his approach was something I like to call “delicious darkness”, meaning a more melodic approach to the subject matter (and yes, Christopher Young often does the same, so the comparison you make is fair). So loved SCREAM and especially MIMIC, which remains my favourite to this day. Sorry, Gerate. I followed him with vigilant eyes in the years after, and particularly fell for 3:10 TO YUMA, HELLBOY, I AM DINA, IN THE ELECTRIC MIST, THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS, THE GIVER and THE HOMESMAN. In later years, he’s veered more towards sound design, which isn’t quite my cuppa tea. But now and then, he still churns out a good one.
I was supposed to have met him 2002, when he came to Oslo for the I AM DINA premiere. But he was jetlagged and stayed at the hotel, while I trot around the city with his orchestrator Bill Boston. But then I eventually did meet him (briefly) 10 years later, in LA in 2012. I think we talked about the jetlag episode, but I can’t remember the specifics of the conversation.
He’s the real deal as far as I’m concerned. When he’s working with a director whom he really enjoys, like Tommy Lee Jones or Proyas or Mangold, you can hear the energy he and his team have. Great instrumentation, thoughtful electronic textures, and a real interest in experimenting. If Young errs towards melody in these films then Beltrami definitely prefers electronic experimentation. Three Burials, 3:10 to Yuma, The Homesman, Gods of Egypt etc. all are really well-done and individual. His early ’90s stuff sounded really mature despite being only 30 and he was really flexing his orchestrational muscles there. The Faculty for instance is a good mixture of hip, young guitar synth pulse stuff and very appealing orchestral portions.
But when he’s doing a bad movie, you can just feel him calling a spade a spade and not caring to shake it up at all. E.g, for Angelina Jolie’s movie almost all the music is him or a lackey holding down one note on a synthesizer. For others like the Nicholas Cage Dracula, in interviews he doesn’t beat around the bush and will say things like, “Yeah, I really liked that movie when I first saw it, but then they took all the good scenes away and this is what you’re left with.” I think World War Z in particular broke him because he did a really cool percussion score with animal bones and all this other crazy stuff at Air Studio for the director, and then was told by executives to start again and do something else, and he’s been cruising on autopilot a lot since then. Logan was good and so was Mathilda, the Russian movie. I’m sure he enjoyed Mangold’s racing movie since he’s a car guy, but that type of music wasn’t my cup of tea.
Was his Bach project ever broadcast or sold anywhere? I’m curious how that turned out.
I got to know him with SCREAM I think and I primarily put him in the “Horror genre”. He is a bit of hit and miss. He really knows his craft and could have been a “next Goldsmith”. But it seems he needs to be inspired. Nowdays he seems to have co-composers on more commerical projects and I lost a bit interest with recent projects. OMEN or BEN-HUR were rather dissapointing.
So loved SCREAM and especially MIMIC, which remains my favourite to this day. (…) particularly fell for 3:10 TO YUMA, HELLBOY, I AM DINA, IN THE ELECTRIC MIST, THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS, THE GIVER and THE HOMESMAN.
These I also like. Some other earlier scores I like are TERMINATOR 3, I ROBOT, THE FACULTY or FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX.
I am especially fond of the textures of IN THE ELECTIC MIST and HOMESMAN and would somehow group them with THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA.I’ve enjoyed a fair amount of his scores and tend to like his orchestral works best, such as KNOWING, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD and GODS OF EGYPT. SEVENTH SON and UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION were also really nice surprises. His orchestral action material is kinetic and muscular, with some excellent ostinatos and repeated riffs, which I really love. But I don’t think I warmed to his horror scores as much, which I know is how he gained the most attention.
I think World War Z in particular broke him because he did a really cool percussion score with animal bones and all this other crazy stuff at Air Studio for the director, and then was told by executives to start again and do something else, and he’s been cruising on autopilot a lot since then.
I wasn’t aware of those circumstances. I’m kinda obsessed with WORLD WAR Z. Seen it maybe 10 times. I have a soft spot for films that contain many “mini films”, which this does (due to its travelogue nature). But at no point during those ten times have I taken notice of the score. So that’s certainly not the main draw.
I’m kinda obsessed with WORLD WAR Z. Seen it maybe 10 times. I have a soft spot for films that contain many “mini films”, which this does (due to its travelogue nature). But at no point during those ten times have I taken notice of the score. So that’s certainly not the main draw.
As I wrote. I also didn’t pay much attention during the movie. But the two part suite is my favourite part of the Brossé album.
Not sure if people here saw that during Covid Beltrami went into his old files and found some of his earliest work. I think this was his first score, a short film called “The Bicyclist” from 1993. Really fun, and you can hear the energy of a rookie beaming through every note.
I’m a fan, of sorts, thanks to an FSM member alas no longer an active poster.
The story is that I bought Beltrami’s The Watcher and really didn’t enjoy it. I said so in a related thread on FSM, and had a bit of to and fro with a particular poster, who happened to be a Lancastrian and a big big fan. He didn’t have The Watcher, and I ended up sending the CD to him (“if you like him so much, you can have it!”), and in return he sent me a taster CDR with a few themes on it… which I really liked. I went on to enjoy a few other CDs and am perfectly happy listening to Beltrami without ever becoming obsessive.
That would be about twenty years ago. We met up in Manchester a couple of times (recorded in FSM thread “Hands across the Pennines”) and although he emigrated to the colonies shortly after that we kept in touch. He usually visits the UK once a year, and I herd together a few northern FSMers and spend a very pleasant few hours with him over pizza and beer. Always a treat.
Of course, you had me scrambling to FSM now, to see who you were talking about. Oblicno! I had completely forgotten about him.
In a funny bit of coincidence, I scrolled down the thread, and see I mentioned my stroll around Oslo with Marco Beltrami’s orchestrator Bill Boston as one of my few FSM encounters at that point (2006), the very story I told earlier in this thread.
I have a smattering of Marco Beltrami score CDs and enjoy them, to varying degrees.
But I can never recall a theme he wrote and find the scores never stay with me much thereafter.
I think he’s a very accomplished orchestral composer and quite decent at mixing electronic elements too, but he’s probably one of the weakest melodist/theme writers in my collection.
There’s a score CD I have (1864), wherein I absolutely love the Main Theme, when it’s playing, but can I remember it later that day!? Can I sh!te.
He’s the equivalent of a Chinese meal in that respect, I guess. Quite enjoyable in the moment, but long forgotten pretty soon after.
Other scores I have and enjoy by him (but can never remember much after) are T3, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, 3 BURIALS, DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, SOUL SURFER, TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, WARM BODIES, THE HOMESMAN, THE GIVER, SEVENTH SON, LOVE & MONSTERS.
I’ve just learned he wrote the theme to the video game FORTNITE. I don’t play video games (never have) but our boys (and every other kid I know) are pretty much obsessed by that game.Beltrami’s one of the few film composers who seems to know the glass harmonica exists (Logan, Minus Man). Jack Nitzsche and Elliot Goldenthal are others. Are there any other film scores which use glass harmonica?
Other than Saint-Saëns’ «Aquarium», which of course has been used in several films, I don’t know a lot.
I think he’s a very accomplished orchestral composer and quite decent at mixing electronic elements too, but he’s probably one of the weakest melodist/theme writers in my collection.
I agree. But as I said before. HELLBOY main theme is relatively catchy.
I don’t have too many of his scores, but of the ones I do have 3:10 TO YUMA is my favorite. But I also have a soft spot for western scores for some reason, even though I never really have or ever do now watch Westerns.
But I also have a soft spot for western scores for some reason, even though I never really have or ever do now watch Westerns.
We need a threat about Western scores. Or do we already have one?
I will certainly contribute, as I absolutely adore western scores, especially Americana styled ones.
For a long time they were my favourite genre of film music, possibly still are.
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