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Oh, that would be KNIFE IN THE WATER then.
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Top Ten in no order. These are some of the ones that my Dad played all the time when I was younger and I love them still today. I have added a few of my own too.
- STAR WARS - WILLIAMS
- DANCES WITH WOLVES - BARRY
- BEN HUR - ROSZA
- THE MISSION - MORRICONE
- BOYS FROM BRAZIL - GOLDSMITH
- THE PLANET OF THE APES - GOLDSMITH
- CONAN THE BARBARIAN - POLEDOURIS
- THE TEN COMMANDMENTS - BERNSTEIN
- PSYCHO - HERRMANN (I could not pick between this or THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD)
- HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON - POWELL
You should also ask for your Top Ten least favorite.
- THE GODFATHER - ROTA
- MIDNIGHT EXPRESS - MORODER
- THE SOCIAL NETWORK - REZNOR/ROSS
- ROUND MIDNIGHT - HANCOCK
- BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - SANTAOLALLA
- THE DARK KNIGHT X3 - ZIMMER AND HOWARD
- FAME - GORE
- SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - RAHMAN
- BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID - BACHARACH
- THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY - GABRIEL YARED
(YES, most of my least favorite are Oscar winners and that might be why.)
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Re: Top Ten in no order. These are some of the ones that my Dad played all the time when I was younger and I love them still today. I have added a few of my own too.
Kim: Some thoughts on your selections. First, I like many among your favorites, and while I've never heard John Powell's music for HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, I happen to like his music for FACE/OFF, especially the closing music that he calls "Ready For The Big Ride, Bubba," which I love, and I used to keep that final scene where the real John Travolta comes home at the end of the movie on my DVR so I could watch it again and again and sometimes shed a few tears. Check it out. And Morricone's MISSION? That's another I forgot when I made my list.
As for your ten least favorites, I have mixed feelings. First, I've never had a problem with Rota's score for THE GODFATHER. And MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, for the time period, had music that was very effective and I don't recall hearing many complaints at the time. In fact, they were playing it on the radio all the time because it was very popular and high on the charts. It was written for the time and not for now, so many decades later. I remember someone wanting to make me a tape of the BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN music and trying hard to explain to him without hurting his feelings that I had no need for it. BUTCH CASSIDY? I'm still annoyed that it won Best Song. As for FAME, don't forget, that was a song score and I don't feel that it is the kind of soundtrack we're dealing with here, and as someone who was thrilled by that movie when it came out and went back repeatedly with several friends who also loved it, I never had a problem with the music and would later buy the movie on VHS then DVD then Blu-ray, as well as the soundtrack CD and an expanded CD. Despite all that, these days I'm really not a huge fan of it myself. But it was made a long time ago.
Incidentally, when I tried to post the above, it disappeared and was lost and I had to log back on, and I tried to find this discussion and ended up at a very similar one, but it wasn't the same, so I did a search and found the right one, which reminded me how I wish we could keep discussions intact rather than starting new ones that are essentially the same. Luckily I had saved the above and was able to paste it here without having to start it all over again from scratch.
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As for FAME, don't forget, that was a song score and I don't feel that it is the kind of soundtrack we're dealing with here, and as someone who was thrilled by that movie when it came out and went back repeatedly with several friends who also loved it, I never had a problem with the music and would later buy the movie on VHS then DVD then Blu-ray, as well as the soundtrack CD and an expanded CD. Despite all that, these days I'm really not a huge fan of it myself. But it was made a long time ago.
Ron, I know FAME is a song score, but I never like the songs or the movie.
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1. Blade Runner
2. Jurassic Park
3. Batman
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. Starship Troopers
6. Batman Begins
7. Alien
8. A View to a Kill
9. Alien 3
10. Tron: Legacy
And I think John Carpenter seriously needs to get some kind of an honorary mention award.
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Re: "I am preparing an article for my website and would like to hear what readers think are their top film scores for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own.
Kim Tong:
Re your: "Ron, I know FAME is a song score, but I never like the songs or the movie."
I didn't mean to imply that you didn't know that it was a song score, just that I didn't think that that was what they wanted when they asked us for what we considered the 10 best soundtracks. If the movie was full of songs, like "Funny Girl" or "Hello, Dolly!" or "Les Miserables" or "Phantom of the Opera" or "West Side Story" or "Cabaret" or "American Graffiti" or anything else like that, those would of course be "song scores" as opposed to "soundtracks," a completely different genre, which was why I didn't include any of them myself. Okay? Thanks.
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To Arthur Grant, who started this post:
Re: "I am preparing an article for my website and would like to hear what readers think are their top film scores for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own."
It wasn't until I read the above (and I put emphasis on "film scores") that I realized that I hadn't taken the time to follow your precise instructions "for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own." Goodness. I was just looking for favorite soundtracks that I love to listen to and giving no thought to how that music may have been integrated into the film, and looking at many of the postings here, I don't think that I was the only one thinking more about how the music worked for us as a listening experience apart from the film rather than how it worked for the images it accompanied on the screen. You posed a thoughtful and intriguing and even sophisticated question that is completely different from how many of us music and soundtrack lovers think of soundtracks. Once we're away from the film, it comes down to "How much pleasure does this music give me?" rather than the very specific "How did it contribute to the film it was composed for?" Very sorry about that. Hope others will review your original posting and think in those terms. (And I don't think it helped that several people indicated that they were posting their favorite soundtracks, which had to have influenced us.)
Here is what I just added to to my original lists a couple of pages back:
9-29-13: A postscript to the above. A couple of pages forward, I was reviewing what Arthur Grant asked when he first started this thread, which includes the following:
Re: "I am preparing an article for my website and would like to hear what readers think are their top film scores for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own."
And I realized that I hadn't given that any concern when I made up the above lists, nor do I believe that many others here gave it much thought either. I looked at my 2 lists of 10, and, going through them one by one, decided that most of them, besides being gorgeous music, worked quite nicely with their films, which I had seen repeatedly. For example, Carter Burwell's score for "In Bruges" has some lyrical, piano-led cues that are perfect for the beautiful images of Bruges in Belgium. But he also fashioned some explosive cues that are almost symphonic in their accompaniment to the gun fights between Ralph Fiennes and Colin Farrell, and, indeed, one of the things that drew me to both "In Bruges," the movie and the soundtrack, was a cue called "Shootout Part 2" that just exploded out of my speakers, both shaking and exciting me. Plus the wistful and sometimes sad moments, such as "Walking Bruges," that remind me a little of Chopin. I could easily examine the cues from the rest of the movies and probably find similar ways in which the music was such an integral part of the images and action on screen.
And I follow this with a very astute posting by ToneRow, who got it!
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From ToneRow:
...for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own.
Here's some of my favorite films (most of them without corresponding soundtrack albums) whose music contributes so much atmosphere during the viewing experience that I'm unable to imagine these films having any different music.
1. ONIBABA; music by Hikaru Hayashi. Thunderous percussion, yelps from the brass, vocalizations from the musicians, and magnetic tape recordings of pigeons cooing altered & edited during playback. There's no other score quite like this one & ONIBABA wouldn't be the same without it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMIeGZIdpR0&feature=player_detailpage
2. WOMAN IN THE DUNES; music by Toru Takemitsu. The most iconic film collaboration of Hiroshi Teshigahara & Takemitsu is also a very unique & outstanding score (featuring microtonal shifts in the strings and a variety of musical/natural sounds altered by tape editing and electronics).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceienj-4QfQ&feature=player_detailpage
3. LES BICHES; music by Pierre Jansen. Mesmerizing themes rendered via chamber-music-type variations. Can serve as a great introduction into the cinema of Claude Chabrol.
For more than 40 years, the rare Cinevox LP was the only soundtrack until 2012 when Saimel released the entire score on CD.
4. TAM LIN; music by Stanley Myers. Lyrical music for a film set in Scotland.
This would likely be my favorite Stanley Myers soundtrack - that is if TAM LIN's music will ever surface onto an album. (sample Myers' work at 4 min 27 seconds into the YouTube clip below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bc_9BJHH0E&feature=player_detailpage
5. PRESSURE POINT; music by Ernest Gold. Sounds initially like it could come from one of Van Cleave's TWILIGHT ZONE scores - but Gold's PRESSURE POINT has so much more!
Contains 1920s speakeasy jazz, Nazi marches, & queasy cello/double-bass for a slab of raw liver!
6. THE FOX; music by Lalo Schifrin. Another late-'60s Lesbian film (not unlike Les Biches from above). My favorite Schifrin film music. Viewing the film is the only way to hear how seductive it is - both the 1967 LP and the 1999 Aleph CD are re-recordings which don't quite capture the effect of the actual film tracks.
7. KNIFE IN THE WATER; music by Krzysztof Komeda. Roman Polanski's first feature film; it's not the first time Polanski & Komeda worked together, though, but it's my favorite of their collaborations.
8. POCIAG aka NIGHT TRAIN; music by Andrzej Trzaskowski. A mono-thematic jazz score, but what a score!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAIvoHMeF4&feature=player_detailpage
9. THE HAUNTING; music by Humphrey Searle.
10. THE MEPHISTO WALTZ; by Jerry Goldsmith.
From Ron: I wish that I had carefully read the above, because ToneRow obviously got what I missed and what I think some others here missed, and he even quoted the salient passage from the man who started this thread. So it's certainly worth quoting it all again just to remind us why this discussion was started in the first place.
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While I didn't go into detail with my list, those are the scores that to me work exceptionally well within their films, contributing powerfully to their films' overall tone or atmosphere and in some cases even elevating their film to another level of quality entirely. I can't imagine Jurassic Park without the beauty and grandeur of Williams' score. Nor would I want to see an Alien 3 without the haunting melancholy, gothic horror and dissonant terror of Goldenthal's work. And where would Starship Troopers be without Poledouris' inspiring marches and powerhouse action cues that perfectly capture both the dire, fighting reality of the film's fictional soldiers and the film's tongue-in-cheek, satirical message? A View to a Kill as a film (for all it's admittedly debatable merits) virtually stands upon the haunting beauty of Barry's music alone. The one substitution in my list I might make would be trading Carpenter's The Fog or Assault on Precinct 13 for Tron: Legacy, but otherwise these choices, which happen to mirror my top choices for stand-alone listening as well (Independence Day aside), stand as they are. I don't think it's much of a coincidence, however, that my favorite scores for everyday listening are those I also find contribute the most to their films.
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Tango Urilla:
Bravo! I'm sure that that is precisely what Arthur Grant wanted when he posted this!!!!! And he'll probably be back to thank you!
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Re: "I am preparing an article for my website and would like to hear what readers think are their top film scores for what they contributed to the films they were composed for rather than for the more subjective listening experience on their own.
Kim Tong:
Re your: "Ron, I know FAME is a song score, but I never like the songs or the movie."
I didn't mean to imply that you didn't know that it was a song score, just that I didn't think that that was what they wanted when they asked us for what we considered the 10 best soundtracks. If the movie was full of songs, like "Funny Girl" or "Hello, Dolly!" or "Les Miserables" or "Phantom of the Opera" or "West Side Story" or "Cabaret" or "American Graffiti" or anything else like that, those would of course be "song scores" as opposed to "soundtracks," a completely different genre, which was why I didn't include any of them myself. Okay? Thanks.
Does AMERICAN GRAFFITI have a score? Isn't it just a series of records playing in the background, via car radios? That's not the same as HELLO, DOLLY! or WEST SIDE STORY or other musicals, where songs are sung as part of the plot; but also have orchestral scoring, accompanying scenes. In fact, many musicals are even more impressive than non-musicals for their scoring, because the arranger must often only use the original composer's music, to create a dramatic score. THE SOUND OF MUSIC is an excellent example of this. It has really great scoring accompanying the scenes. It's "scored" by Irwin Kostel, utilizing only Richard Rodgers' music.
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PhiladelphiaSon:
But he didn't write a kind of symphony of music to accompany the action, and I'm not referring to the standard sonata form in classical music but how the totality of the music of a Franz Waxman, say, or a Max Steiner creates a sweeping panorama of sound to add its own special counterpoint to the action on the screen. I'm not trying to shortchange the contributions of someone like Irwin Kostel but to point out that what he and others did was quite different from what most film composers must do. As for "American Graffiti," I only cited it as an example of the kind of movie that may have a "soundtrack" but is unlike the sort that we are dealing with in this discussion.
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I'm still reading and appreciating everyone's contribution to this thread.
In my original preface I did want to direct peoples' thoughts to what the music scores contribute to the films they were composed for since that is the composer's job at hand, not composing music to enhance our soundtrack collections. Now having said that when I listen to the music by itself that's almost always what I want to listen to...just the music please: especially those big juicy themes or pulsating action riffs!
While the condition in my preface may produce LESS subjective lists, there's certainly plenty of subjectivity left over especially when asking for a measly 10 films. So if some contributors sneak in their stand-alone listening favourites or ignore my conditions all together that's fine with me...again my admittedly selfish reason for starting this is to get ideas, some new scores for films to consider, many more to re-consider and I couldn't be happier with all of the responses.
Thanks to one and all.
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I like your list. Just kidding - I LOVE your list.
Thanks Fun Guy. I like all the scores on your list too, with the exception of Children of Dune, which I have never heard before. Is that the Brian Tyler score to the TV movie?
It was actually hard to narrow my list down to 10 - Coming up with a top 30 or 40 would be easy I think, but for the ultimate top 10 I just closed my eyes and pictured the scores I can listen to endlessly without getting sick of, and are good all the way through.
I promise Children of Dune will be right up your alley. I happen to have an extra copy that I'll send to you. If you want, shoot me a mailing address at thatguyjedi at hotmail.com and I'll send it to you ASAP.
-Paul
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