What are your top 10 favourite soundtracks?
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Innlegg
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An old-school topic that’s been done many times on many different boards, but I’d like to create some life here again — if possible.
So, what are your top 10 favourite soundtracks of all time?
I already did mine in the very first episode of Celluloid Tunes in 2013, and it hasn’t changed much since, but I’m curious to hear yours.
Graeme Revell – The Siege
Jerry Goldsmith – Congo
Paul Haslinger – Sleeper Cell season 1
Daniel Licht – Bad Moon
Vangelis – Blade Runner
Gary Chang – Storm of the Century
Tangerine Dream – Firestarter
Elliot Goldenthal – Alien 3
Graeme Revell – Strange Days
James Newton Howard – SignsGreat list, and almost all of them from before you were born. Impressive! We have a mutual interest in synth scores, both old and new.
Of course these lists are quite fluid. But currently I would go with this list.
The Empire Strikes Back- John Williams
E.T. – John Williams
Raiders of the Lost Ark – John Williams
The Force Awakens – John Williams
Unbreakable – James Newton Howard
Hana-Bi – Joe Hisaishi
The Magnificient Seven – Elmer Bernstein
Quo Vadis – Miklós Rózsa
El Cid – Miklós Rózsa
Tess – Philippe SardeHana-Bi was my first Hisaishi score. Mononoke was second. I love both, but Hana-Bi is somehow more special to me.
Top Ten Film scores:
Of course, this is an “old favorite topic”. And that question gets often asked like it’s a clean question. But there are many ways to answer it. What am I going to list? I can love the way the music sits in the movie, how it underscores scenes. Or I can love it on its own, stripped of image, just as music, without much concern about the movie. Or both.
So I try to “go with the flow” and lists scores that are… well… simply favorites. Maybe it’s one of the scores that pulled me into the world of film music. Maybe it’s the one that lit the match for your favorite composer. Or maybe it’s the one that really kept lingering and spoke to me and I wondered: “What is this? And why does it feel like it knows me?”Okay, so here is mine, my personal “top ten” list. Not etched in stone, it’s a “new” list every time I’m asked, though perennial favorites keep shaking hands on this list. So it’s not about rankings. It’s chronological in the way the music came out (not in the way I encountered it… would be a different chronology). It’s about those scores that, for one reason or another, are “essential” for me.
Miklós Rózsa: EL CID (1955)
Ah, wonderful music. The first time I saw this on TV I did not have a lot of Róza music, maybe just one CD or so. This movie changed that.Jerome Moross: THE BIG COUNTRY (1958)
The perfect, quintessential Western score. And sheesh, I’m not really a genre guy, but I think I always liked Westerns a bit more than the other genres. This one I first saw as a kid, and it stuck.Bernard Herrmann: NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
It’s nervous, sleek, always on the move… just one of Herrmann’s coolest scores. And the music is thrilling, often nervous; it is the anxiety Herrmann scores, civilization is a chase scene, and the music knows it.Alex North: THE MISFITS (1961)
I have always loved Alex North’s film music. When I first noticed his music, it was when I caught a movie called BITE THE BULLET channel zapping as a teenager… at first, I thought the music must have been composed by Jerry Goldsmith, but it turned out to by by Alex North, a composer I had never heard of. And there are many favorites I could list, including of course his big epic scores for SPARTACUS and CLEOPATRA. But there is something about his music for THE MISFITS which makes it an album I just love. The music is dry and haunted, a mix of American West, but mixed with a bit of (then) contemporary jazz/rock/pop sounds. Very eloquent at times.Leonard Rosenman: THE CAR (1977)
Dissonant, aggressive, and that great “Dies Irae” tune… from the “Main Title” forward the music announces: “Here comes Evil”. Of course, it’s ludicrously silly, because “Evil” in this movie comes in form of a murder-shark… I mean murder-car, but it’s a lot of fun. Indeed, JAWS in the desert with a car instead of a shark. Yes, it sounds as bonkers as it is, the car doesn’t just kill people, it kills sound reason. But who cares when you get such a terrific piece of horror scoring that is composed through by Hollywood’s most forward looking composer? Rosenman has written more famous works, but this is one of his best.Ennio Morricone: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
This music doesn’t accompany myth, it is myth. Every theme is a psychological symbol, the feminine, the outlaw, the man with the harmonica, Morton, Cheyenne. I guess so much has been said about this score, I don’t have to add anything.John Williams: STAR WARS (1977–2019)
Same with STAR WARS… it’s the biggest longest opera of pop culture… I can take or leave STAR WARS (except for the first two movies, which are really great), but the music in all movies has been fantastic.Jerry Goldsmith: STAR TREK – THE MOTION PICTURE (1979)
Adventure and awe. That’s what this is. This is, perhaps along with STAR WARS, the one film score that single handedly made me a film score afficionado… and a Goldsmith fan.Philip Glass: KOYAANISQATSI (1982)
I came across this when I had a summer job at a film distributor. I had never heard anything like it, it was like a new type of music…. Music as a mosaic. Mesmerizing.Howard Shore: THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001–2003)
Wow, Shore… now this is another big, long piece of wonder. Ancient modes, prophetic themes, leitmotifs that grow like characters. Shore’s music doesn’t just support the story, it is part of the story, Shore’s music completes it. This is the sound of Tolkien’s myth remembering itself. I always loved it, but I love it now even more than when I first heard it.Of course, this is an “old favorite topic”. And that question gets often asked like it’s a clean question.
True, but since this is a ‘fresh’ board, I think some of the classic evergreen topics are worthwhile to re-explore.
Interesting list, btw. THE CAR was an unusual choice, but I know you dig Rosenman. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.
THE CAR is an interesting movie… it took the setting from DUEL and the plot from JAWS… It sounds like a cheap exploitation rip-off, but the production values are quite high actually. Great team behind the camera and a solid cast. (So maybe it was a mid-price exploitation rip-off. 😉 )
I saw this as a kid and it stuck… It was probably among the first Rosenmann scores I noticed, and it’s quite a dark score. I mean, the music sells this…
It’s one of the scores I never thought would see the light of day and was elated when it did.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVlUDaI-HwITHE CAR – Opening Scene
Reminds me somehow of that weird horror movie De Lift from the Netherlands. In the late 70s and early 80s the, made horror movies about everything. Cars, animals, any household appliance.
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