Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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I can say Rózsa, North, Herrmann, Goldsmith and Morricone would be “fixed” as my top five favorite film composers, but I like a lot of other composers as well, so the other five slots may be “rotating”.
I just name these off the top of my head (in chronological order of birthyear)
Miklós Rózsa (1907–1995)
Alex North (1910–1991)
Bernard Herrmann (1911–1975)
Ennio Morricone (1928–2020)
Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004)
John Williams (1932–)
Howard Shore (1946-)
Elliot Goldenthal (1954–)
James Horner (1953-)
Thomas Newman (1955-)I’m flipping around a few names… I mean, there are so many more that are favorites… There’s John Barry, Leonard Rosenman… Don Davis (because I LOVE his Matrix scores), James Newton Howard (really cools stuff)…, Bruce Broughton… Vangelis (I like his film scores, but don’t consider him primarily a film composer, Hans Zimmer, Maurice Jarre, Danny Elfman… and more… cannot decide really, so I could flip a few names now and then, and probably will. 🙂 Wojciech Kilar is a favorite too…
Not to mention composers such as Shostakovich, Copland, Glass, Nyman, Vangelis… I like them all, but I don’t consider than primarily film composers, even though they obviously were film composers… Ah, well, I did my “off the top of my head top ten” list. 🙂I like quite a bit of Danny Elfman’s music; I first took notice of him in the 1980s. He had done the theme for the funny TV series SLEDGEHAMMER, and then of course came the two punch when he scored Tim Burton’s huge hit BATMAN and the theme for the still running THE SIMPSONS.
My favorite Danny Elfman scores? Hmmm… off the top of my head:EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)
Just a beautiful score… love it from start to finish.ALICE IN WONDERLAND & ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (2010/2016)
Danny Elfman meets Philip Glass with chorus.PLANET OF THE APES (2001)
I didn’t care for the movie, but wow, what a score. At the time I said it sounded like the Vienna Philharmonic took acid and started banging and clanging on anything that made noise. Forget “heavy metal”, this is much more in your stomach.FIFTY SHADES OF GREY/DARKER/FREED (2015-2018)
These scores for the silly “pseudo-BDSM” love story show a different side of Elfman. While the movies are of course high-concept fan-fiction nonsense, the music is elegant and has class, and goes well around the selection of classical pieces and pop songs also used in the movie.DOLORES CLAIBORNE (1995)
Elfman provides a restrained and brooding score for one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever.Bonus mention:
THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993)
Of course, it’s a film score, but basically it’s a musical, so I mention it apart from this others. But yes, I love it. Great, fun songs, lots of good music. And the album with Patrick Stewart’s narration is just perfect.I mentioned only film scores, I put his concert works aside for now and did not include them in consideration.
I have seen John Williams give concerts twice live, both times with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, but that was 30 years or so ago. Certainly both great concerts.
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
But is it more expensive with the new tarrifs, or have they been like that for a couple of years?
It’s been like that as far as I can tell. US releases are more expensive at Music Box Record, European ones are cheaper. But shipping is much cheaper for me from Music Box Record… in fact, it’s even gone down a bit.
I very much enjoy DUNE, both part 1 and part 2, and the DUNE Sketchbook too. Wonderful sonorities and engrossing soundscapes, very melodic actually. I think it’s one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores.
Not sure why, but the forum seems to — quite often — put posts of mine into “Spam”, even though I do not actually intend to spam.
Last post that happened to was my reply in the “10 favorite soundtracks” forum. Not sure what could have triggered the filter.Ah, oh, wow, lots of good stuff I see. I just thought at first it was film music related, and I don’t recall any film music on Harmonia Mundi ever.
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.I don’t know the exact reasons, so I’m just guessing, but if 50%(!) of the sellers do not do it, there are obviously very good reasons for not doing it. I mean, 50% is a lot. That is really a lot. So there are obviously hurdles. I mean, if you are a small scale seller who sells his inventory anyway, and the UK or any other country is more bureaucratic or has problems, you might just cross this off your list. I’m sure it is not because sellers specifically want to annoy UK citizens.
This may be, but the question is why they refuse to ship to the UK. I know at least from one seller (but not CDs, clothes) who stopped selling to the UK completely. Why? Because she didn’t feel like it? No, but because the hassle wasn’t worth it. Apart from the considerable additional paperwork that was allegedly necessary (I didn’t dig into that, so I don’t know), what happened a lot with UK shipments was this: Items shipped, entered UK, stuck in customs. Customer did not pick up package to pay additional fees. Customer demanded refund because he never received the item. (Easy to do with Paypal.) Seller maybe (or even maybe not sometimes) received back the package. Stuck with a lot of hassle, a lot of expenses, and maybe even with lost merchandise. Once that happens to a seller a couple of times, he is likely cross the UK from the list of countries he’s selling to. Stuff like that seems to have happened a lot after Brexit.
