Movie Scores?

[FLMKR4EB]

I'm sure this has been brought up in the past, but what are some fave movie scores. Nor order, just faves?

Some of mine are

SW-All, but Esspecially AOTC, ANH,ESB
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
E.T. The Extra Terestrial
The Lion in Winter
Excalibur, which is actually Carmina Burana
Indiana Jones movies

[CMJ]

Great topic!

Some of my faves include....(tried not to include any of yours)

The Right Stuff
The Shawshank Redemption
Thin Red Line
Psycho
Gladiator

Man, I could list off a dozen more, no problem.

[JMK]

I don't often pay attention to them. Shame on me for that. But obviously all of the SW movies, especially ESB. FOTR I like alot too. Of course there's the Indy movies, and anything else that John Williams has done; E.T., Superman, Jaws, Saving Private Ryan...
How about songs that bring certain movies to mind?
Like the song from Beverly Hills Cop? Or Ray Parker jr's Ghostbusters, or The Power of Love by Huey Lewis.

[BUFFJEDI]

On no order except #1

1. starwars(all)

titanic superman gladiator lion king top gun (hate tom crude though) halloween's

[Tianje Xhu]

1: all sw, especially esb (imperial march so totally rocks!!)

2: all the indiana movies

3: grease (great soundtrack!)

4: wizard of oz

5: jaws (and just about everything else by john williams. the man is a musical god!!)

[Admiral Lebron]

1. Star Wars
2. Indy
3. Conan, The Barbarian
4. Gladiator

[Marcus Telcontar]

The Muppet Movie.

ESB

FOTR

[CMJ]

Other favorites of mine off the top of my head.....

Empire of the Sun
Lawrence of Arabia
The Natural
The Cider House Rules
Days of Heaven
Jurassic Park
Rudy
Schindler's List

[Quadinaros]

Star Wars
Jaws
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
Psycho
Halloween
Dead Again
The Sixth Sense

I could go on and on, but I won't...

[JonathanLB]

You guys covered my favorites pretty much.

I own A LOT of Williams' scores, though I have to admit the score to Saving Private Ryan is horrible. It is somewhat appropriate for the movie, and it's not Williams' fault, but Spielberg told him to tone it down because he didn't want the score to overshadow the on-screen action, but jesus, it's such a boring, horrid score to listen to alone. Of all the work I've heard by Williams, that has to be my least favorite.

I love the Superman score, the Star Wars ones rock (they are my favorites overall, just no question; SW is as famous for its music as for its mythical story), Indy is fantastic...

I have to admit that in general, my movie score rankings are not far off from my actual film rankings. It just goes hand in hand with excellent films. Most of them have great scores.

For the SW scores, my order is: AOTC, TPM (very close to AOTC in my book), ROTJ, ANH and ESB. I think ESB is very close to ANH, I cannot decide, but because ANH was the first and I love the throne room music at the end, it gets the nod. Then again, the Imperial March is probably my overall 2nd or 3rd favorite piece in the entire saga (behind obviously the MAIN theme, and *maybe* the AOTC love theme because I just love it, but DOTF is close, ahhh so hard). My film rankings differ: AOTC, TPM, ESB, ROTJ, ANH.

I don't think anyone mentioned THE TRUMAN SHOW. I LOVE that score. I think it's incredible. I don't blame you if you didn't really notice it if you only saw the movie once, but I saw it in theaters three times and bought the score after I saw the movie twice. It's really a strong score, very different and captivating.

The only movie in my top ten that would not get a nod for having a great score is The Game. I haven't found anything at all remarkable about that score. It's fine, it serves the movie, but it's nothing special. Now the score for BLADE RUNNER, if nobody mentioned that, SHAME! Vangelis is awesome. Their score to 1492: Conquest of Paradise is also good, even though the movie is not that great (I still enjoyed it; I don't see why it got hammered so hard).

Braveheart has a really strong score. The soundtrack/score to Fight Club is pretty sweet.

Speaking of which, the soundtrack (not score) to Swordfish is sweet too. Donnie Darko has a great soundtrack, but again that's not the score I'm talking about.

[FLMKR4EB]

I loved Saving Private Ryan's Score, and I think TMP is William's worst effort, save Duel of the Fates, which is awsome, other than that I think it falls short of his other stuff. Also Harry Potter was weak to me.

The Natural and Braveheart are great.
Conan is really awsome as well.
The Usual Suspects is a great score
Jurrasic Park was good
THe Abyss was good

[FLMKR4EB]

One more-Heat has a great score. God Moving Over the Face of the Waters is one of the most powerful and beautiful pieces in recent history.

[ReaperFett]

Way of the Gun, Desperado, Army of Darkness, Assault on Precinct 13

[CMJ]

A few others I think highly of....I could list all day :p

A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Crimson Tide
Amistad
Forrest Gump
Hook(a rather lame movie, but awesome music)

[Admiral Lebron]

Cutthroat Island had a good score.
Starship Troopers score was decent.
Jurrasic Park is good.
Unbreakables score was sorta good too.

[Tianje Xhu]

rocky. i forgot rocky. makes me want to run up a long flight of stairs. did you know his brother and father had small parts in it?

[BUFFJEDI]

I forgot Grease jaws and rocky 4 :(

[FLMKR4EB]

GODFATHER(s)

[Jedieb]

ANH
ESB
Jaws
Raiders of the Lost Ark

[flagg]

Star Wars (obviously)
Edward Scissorhands
Batman (heck, pretty much every Tim Burton/Danny Elfman collaboration)
Blade Runner
Fellowship of the Ring
Assault on Precinct 13
Halloween
Jaws
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Jurassic Park

and many more . . .

[Loki Ahmrah]

Star Wars - specifically ESB.
Jurassic Park
Halloween
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone
Fellowship of the Ring
Grease
The Sound of Music
Moulin Rouge
Batman

[Darth23]

[OOPS! somehow I got teleported to the wrong thread. Please ignore this, and the message that used to be here]

:p :p :p :p :p


I blame my Mom's laptop, the annoying glidepad, her 56k internet connection, and my own t=horrible powers of observation.

[queenamadila]

Star Wars, especially the Han and Leia one and The imperial march.
The Godfather
anything John Williams has done.

[darth_mcbain]

There is an interesting article on John Williams and his process for creating his scores.



The interviewer will have no leisurely lunch with John Williams.
John Williams does not do leisurely lunches. He doesn't even do leisurely breakfasts. At 70, the prodigious and prolific film composer is still much too busy for such things and plans to keep it that way.

Therefore, he arranges to answer questions via phone, at 8:45 a.m., before going off to the studio for a day's work.

"It's a very difficult schedule, as you probably know," says Williams, understating the case in impeccable mid- Atlantic tones. He's got two films in theaters now - George Lucas' "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" and Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" - with two more on the way before year's end - the next episode in the "Harry Potter" series and another Spielberg opus, "Catch Me If You Can." No courtroom dramas here, these are action-adventure pictures all, a genre typically painted with a generous musical brush by Hollywood.

"Many of these films I have been doing lately have over two hours of music in them," Williams says. "Which is, if not in quality, quantitatively I guess equal to a lot of operas. And we have to do this in about three months.

"So I find that I have to average about a minute and a half to two minutes of music a day, which is very, very difficult."

That may not sound like much to the uninitiated, Williams says, until one considers how he writes: for full orchestra, in full score.

"If you took an average minute of music for orchestra and reckoned how many notes were there, it would be quite staggering to people."

He doesn't use orchestrators like many Hollywood composers, either, and doesn't hand off themes to a team of arrangers. An industry unto himself, he's responsible for every note, every noise, in his scores.


I find it very interesting that he writes in full score. As someone who dabbles in orchestral composition, I think that is pretty impressive - I usually rough out my stuff on the piano first before trying to orchestrate it. While I have some ideas of the orchestration while I'm composing, I couldn't orchestrate it right there on the spot... It is really impressive also just how much his output is.

Keep at it John - love your stuff, especially the SW soundtracks!