The title is a gross exaggeration, to be sure. Sometimes, though, that’s just what it feels like.

Right out of the gate, allow me to supply you with the one argument you need to write me off quickly and summarily: I am old. I was a kid in the eighties, brought to film music by Alan Silvestri’s rousing Back To The Future. When I first stepped into it, the film scoring field was pretty much dominated by the three J’s: John (Williams), Jerry (Goldsmith) and, to a lesser degree, James (Horner). Even at the dawn of the nineties, Hans Zimmer had barely left Germany and was working with Stanley Myers on such obscure fare as Castaway.

The eighties were a magical time. It all started with Steven Spielberg, of course, the one filmmaker who can lay claim to having defined the tone of a decade. And naturally, Spielberg stood on the shoulders of Walt Disney, whose House of Mouse in the eighties as much as in any other decade, has told stories dripping with infectious optimism, unabashed sentimentality and plain rollicking fun. Disney has always had an uncanny talent for telling stories with a sort of sweeping imagination aimed primarily at children, but whose unwavering belief in the fundamental goodness that resides in the heart of man also appeals to adults, albeit on a somewhat deeper level, the child in all of us, as the cliché goes.

GREMLINS 2: sure, Jerry largely regurgitated ideas from the original, but the resulting music sounded distinctly Goldsmithian nonetheless.

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER: avowedly, the late Michael Kamen added little to the palette of the one that launched the franchise, but at least the score was Kamen all over.

Mailbag Response to Doug Adams' Hulk CD Review

...Followed By Doug Adams' Reply

NO MORE MELODIES
 
In writing about Danny Elfman's Hulk music, Doug Adams cleared up a mystery for me. As a long time fan of film scores, I've been wondering lately where the distinctive melodies have gone. Now I know the melodies have receded to background because "this lends the writing an air of sophistication and maturity and effe

Windtalkers Analysis

It's the evening of December 21, 1955: Marion Keach has gathered 15 followers on a hill just outside Salt Lake City. They are waiting for a UFO from the planet Sananda to land and whisk them away, thus saving them from the catastrophic flood that is about to engulf the earth. All of this is going to happen according to signals Keach picked up during an Ouija board session. At 4.45 in the morning, the UFO has

Horner, the Mystic?

The film music of James Horner. Agreed, it's a debate that has been going on for a very long time -- one that perhaps you grew tired of and buried a long time ago. Or perhaps the many arguments everyone has ever used in, oh my, the past fifteen years and truckloads of FSM mail bags still haven't silenced that little voice inside you, telling you time and again that none of the arguments conclusively settles the issue for you. The q