Tom_Servo
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My gf and I saw the 1977 thriller SORCERER on Friday, at the Academy Museum here in Los Angeles. I mainly wanted to hear the Tangerine Dream score but also know of this film’s cult status. I was surprised at how little score there is for the first hour, with only the briefest of stings. But there is a montage sequence halfway through that was finally scored with a full piece of music and it was great. The movie itself takes a long time to get going and contains characters that are difficult to know, but the second half is riveting.
As a Gen X film score fan who grew up loving the usual cadre of composers we all loved unequivocally – Williams, Goldsmith, Elfman, Horner, Silvestri, Barry – Zimmer was always an interesting yet complicated composer to approach. During the 90’s, in FSM and online, the overall consensus seemed to be that we weren’t supposed to like his music, as if it was akin to liking junk food. Of course I had my favorites (BLACK RAIN, THE PEACEMAKER, BACKDRAFT), as everyone does, but over the last 10 years or so I found myself in new mindset I like to call “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hans Zimmer”! Part of this was helped by when I focused an episode of my podcast on his career, his approach to scoring (a band-like philosophy) and his music.
The expanded editions of older scores of his helped, but I also kept buying his new scores and really loving many of them. WONDER WOMAN 1984, THE CREATOR, DUNE and NO TIME TO DIE are all recent Zimmer scores that are so memorable in my book. I then discovered mid-career scores of his I missed and now love, such as the two SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE LONE RANGER. INTERSTELLAR and INCEPTION are awesome, as are all his PIRATES and BATMAN scores. I feel like the only album of his that I bought in the last 10 years and hated was WIDOWS.
I made a 5 volume set of highlights spanning his career up until now, with some custom suites I made from scores like WHITE FANG and THE ROCK, and it’s my favorite way to interact with his music.
I appreciate all the Ifukube info in this thread! Admittedly, I’ve only been aware of his work in the GODZILLA & kaiju movies but I know that he had a varied musical career. On my podcast, “A Score To Settle”, I recently began a mini-series to explore the music of the GODZILLA series and thus spent time researching the series and everyone connected to it. I just released the 2nd episode this week, wrapping up the Showa era and the non-Ifukube scores during that time, if anyone is interested in listening!
Below is the Podbean link but you can find the show also on Apple and Spotify!
Hi everyone, it’s Tom Servo, migrating over from the FSM board (which is honestly a shell of its former self ever since the update). Thanks to Thor for reaching out and asking if I’d like to join – so I did! I’ll try to contribute here as often as I can.
And for anyone here who listens to podcasts, check out my movie music podcast, “A Score to Settle” – now in its 9th year! I’m currently in the midst of exploring music for the Godzilla series.
