batmanand

They are awesome. I particularly like the choirless Double Trouble. You really get a feel for how rich the orchestrations are in a typical JW piece (listen to what the strings are doing FFS!)

The Hours is excellent.

The Hours; it is arguable whether the repeated phrases are "themes" within any reasonable definition of the word.

On that basis, the best score = the best score release (almost). This thread was explicitly not about the quality of the music itself.

Lots of good stuff (especially AI and HP:PS/POA) has been mentioned so far, but I thought I would expand on Star Wars - all of them. Just one random example from each score: TPM: that noble horn fanfare when the submarine thing they are in surfaces in Theed. AOTC: Yoda and the Younglings. Just beautiful. ROTS: Scenes and Dreams. I love ATS, the foreboding in the music (particularly when she says "Ani, I'm pregnant), and then the Grievous stuff. I am not sure why people do not like "Grievous speaks to Lord Sidious"; I find it to be a wonderfully rhythmic, harmonic and dramatic cue ANH: Tales of a Jedi Knight is pretty awesome ESB: The whole of the Cloud City sequence is scored to absolute perfection ROTJ: Alliance Assembly. A jaunty little cue, with some nice theme action near the end

It comes from working 40+ hours, 5 days a week. Wow. How do you find 40+ hours in a day? (Sorry I am being facetious)

189GB?! Jeez... Do you keep it in .wav format? Cos if not that is a LOT of music.

I have about 5GB of Williams.

In the BBC interview, he was in his office, which was in Universal (I think).

The "Nimbus 2000" theme is much less clear-cut as a theme than the Stone theme. It features in all sorts of weird places, such as the scene with the snake at the beginning of HP:PS, that have nothing to do with the broomstick or flying. Hence, it is probably more of an all-purpose magical wonderment theme. The Stone theme certainly IS misquoted in COS. There is just no doubt about it. Arguably, it has evolved between HP:PS and COS into another Voldemort theme, but a number of things count against this interpetation. First, Voldemort has at two distinct themes in PS; why does he need a third? Secondly, the theme is so heavily and obviously associated with the Stone in PS, why would it be transferred to Voldemort? Thirdly, there is a Chamber of Secrets theme which is not played at key moments (such as the opening of the chamber) when the Stone theme is instead played. This suggests either tracking or "lazy" scoring - ie in both cases a non-deliberate attempt to change the meaning of the theme. See http://www.jwfan.com/modules.php?op=modloa...article&sid=369 for a full (and excellent) analysis.

Isn't that going to be needed to pay your taxes?

What about the Palpatine-Windu fight and the "POWER! ABSOLUTE POOOWWWWWEEEEEERRRRR!" bit?

See, when I hear things are "soothing" it usaully means ambient noise, which Stepmom is.

Pick up Schindler's List, put down Stepmom. That score has basically no redeeming features.

Not that it is terribly relevant to a thread about Zimmer, but with regards to the Troy saga, I have enormous respect for Horner. He has two weeks to write the music for that film - and so it is inevitable he included his favourite four notes. Not even the Maestro is above a little self-plagiarism - look at COS, with Lucius Malfoy/The AOTC Conspiracy theme and the Quiddich Match/Chase through Coruscant. Yared's Troy was obviously a masterpiece, but Horner's is at least passable. And in two weeks I think that is an outstanding achievement. Indeed, there are bits of Horner's score (the Achilles-Hector fight, Achilles' theme, the final 15 mins of music) that are actually rather good IMO.

Consistency, elegance, orchestras, quality (most of the time).

No, WotW is PotC with music.

The following are good Zimmer scores: The Lion King The Thin Red Line Gladiator (yes, I know, but it is very listenable and some parts are melodic and all is very appropriate for the film) Hannibal (shame it is mixed so low in the film) That is all.

Yes Sirius Black Escapes is AWESOME. At the moment, I have it only with SFX and a tiny bit of dialogue (it is a DVD rip). To hear it in its full glory would be immense. Could it be - maybe after the Prologue from Hook - the best 1m10s of isolated music in JW's career?

Do any exist at the moment?

Some PS cues that come to mind: *A lot of the early Hedwig stuff *The whole "windswept island" cue, with the first amazing Family theme and then the Hagrid sequence *Diagon Alley (the one in the film) *OLLIVANDERS *The Boy who Lived - awesome transition to the flashback and then some cool "Voldemort" themage *Entrance to the Great Hall *Proper Mirror of Erised *Halloween - all *The full Chess Game, with the family theme at the end *The "Dumbledore's post-encounter explanation" stuff, and the nice little themage when Harry sees Ron and Hermione again *The proper "House Cup" music, including the dreamy, beautiful stuff when Dumbledore is awarding extra points *Some of the cooler Stone theme stuff, eg when Hermione finds Flamel in the library *The encounter with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest (amazing brass in that cue) There are more but I can't thnk of them now

Whilst I would move a number of scores into different categories, I would say that broadly, you are correct.

I'm not sure if it counts as "scored", but in CoS, when the Chamber opens, and instead of the chamber theme playing, the Stone theme plays. Come to think of it, pretty much every playing of the Stone theme is out of place and hence badly scored.

Stargate when they first see the pyramid when they land on Abydos.

The last 30 minutes? What about the rest of the score?! It sounds nothing like the HP sound that Williams established; and whilst I admire Doyle's courage, his execution is bland, unimaginative (the orchestrations are mostly appalling) and, simply put, worse even that Williams' no-time-to-write-it COS.