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What Is The Last Score You Listened To? (older scores)


Ollie

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Sublime is definitely the right word. Wintory, along with Jeremy Soule, gives me hope for good video game music and good video games in general. And Marty O'Donnell of course.

Hope? There's already a shitload of awesome video game music out there!

Yeah I have no idea why I phrased it like that. Maybe just hope that it will continue to be good?

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I had a dream last night that Jerry Goldsmith visited my family's house and I kept thinking to myself "wasn't he dead for 9 years?" after which I decided "Oh never mind, I'll ask him to sign my Star Trek V expanded soundtrack", which I couldn't find and he had to leave very soon.

Pretty similar to when he visited by parent's house (except for the paedophile bit and what follows), only that I didn't remember he was dead, and when I tried to find a CD for him to sign, my whole shelf collapsed and by the time I'd found it among the pile of CDs on the floor, he'd left.

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Well speaking of Goldsmith...

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Though this wasn't scored by Goldsmith, Frizzell did use a piece from Goldsmith's "Alien" , which he calls "Ripley's Theme"

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I know both the score and film is more of a swashbuckling adventure score/movie, but it had it's chilling moments (.i.e."The Crypt" and "Discoveries")

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Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace - Robert Folk

The electronics usage date the score (especially in "Kids in Cyberspace" and "Virtual Reality Battleground"), but it's a refreshingly straightforward action/sci-fi score with a strong theme. He doesn't really put it through numerous iterations, it's usually veers between a triumphant concert arrangement and a more wondrous version.

Sometimes there's too much action, but the quality of the writing is very good and the London Sinfonia ably handles the difficult passages of music easily. A fun action score.

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Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

Certainly one of his loveliest works ever, stylistically somewhere between the blissful Sommersby and Zbigniew Preisner's The Secret Garden. Very different children music to that from Tim Burton films and fairly unique in this regard - still melancholic, but very warm as well. Carefully crafted with great attention to detail. I always wanted to have the original album, but wouldn't pay those ridiculous prices over at Amazon. Thankfully, this new release sounds awesome and looks great too - I'm loving this disc. Of Elfman's repertoire, this one is essential. Highly recommended!

3:10 to Yuma by Marco Beltrami

This one, on the other hand, sounds like Thomas Newman making sweet love to Ennio Morricone. It's composers' high point, as well - intelligent scoring.

Karol

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Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

Certainly one of his loveliest works ever, stylistically somewhere between the blissful Sommersby and Zbigniew Preisner's The Secret Garden. Very different children music to that from Tim Burton films and fairly unique in this regard - still melancholic, but very warm as well. Carefully crafted with great attention to detail. I always wanted to have the original album, but wouldn't pay those ridiculous prices over at Amazon. Thankfully, this new release sounds awesome and looks great too - I'm loving this disc. Of Elfman's repertoire, this one is essential. Highly recommended!

3:10 to Yuma by Marco Beltrami

This one, on the other hand, sounds like Thomas Newman making sweet love to Ennio Morricone. It's composers' high point, as well - intelligent scoring.

Karol

Black Beauty went even higher in my eyes after I heard the La-La-Land Expanded Edition. Additional music brings more variety to the whole and I especially enjoyed the new darker more turbulent tracks and wistful variations on the main themes. There is a wonderful delicate chamber music feel in the music with piano, violin and harp solos and interplay yet it can at times rise to brilliantly operatic proportions. Elfman really loves to write sad music and this score is on the whole tinged in bittersweet mood despite some wonderfully sunny pastoral moments. The recording is beautiful and enhances the soloists in the most flattering way. The two main themes are also some of the finest Elfman has penned in my humble opinion, instantly memorable and affecting. It was a real blessing that the director let the music do part of the storytelling through most of the film and the composer's passion for the project and opporturnity to write expressive music shines through.

I have never heard 3:10 to Yuma but I have heard nothing but good things about it. I need to check it out soon.

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Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

Certainly one of his loveliest works ever, stylistically somewhere between the blissful Sommersby and Zbigniew Preisner's The Secret Garden. Very different children music to that from Tim Burton films and fairly unique in this regard - still melancholic, but very warm as well. Carefully crafted with great attention to detail. I always wanted to have the original album, but wouldn't pay those ridiculous prices over at Amazon. Thankfully, this new release sounds awesome and looks great too - I'm loving this disc. Of Elfman's repertoire, this one is essential. Highly recommended!

3:10 to Yuma by Marco Beltrami

This one, on the other hand, sounds like Thomas Newman making sweet love to Ennio Morricone. It's composers' high point, as well - intelligent scoring.

Karol

Black Beauty went even higher in my eyes after I heard the La-La-Land Expanded Edition. Additional music brings more variety to the whole and I especially enjoyed the new darker more turbulent tracks and wistful variations on the main themes. There is a wonderful delicate chamber music feel in the music with piano, violin and harp solos and interplay yet it can at times rise to brilliantly operatic proportions. Elfman really loves to write sad music and this score is on the whole tinged in bittersweet mood despite some wonderfully sunny pastoral moments. The recording is beautiful and enhances the soloists in the most flattering way. The two main themes are also some of the finest Elfman has penned in my humble opinion, instantly memorable and affecting. It was a real blessing that the director let the music do part of the storytelling through most of the film and the composer's passion for the project and opporturnity to write expressive music shines through.

I have never heard 3:10 to Yuma but I have heard nothing but good things about it. I need to check it out soon.

What is so interesting about Elfman is that he gets a lot of attention when Tim Burton movies come out, but often there are more obscure works in between that probably even exceed those in intelligence/musicianship - this one, Sommersby, The Wofman, Standard Operating Procedure, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Red Dragon, Mission: Impossible or the recent Cirque du Soleil show Iris.

My personal wish is to Elfman to write a period drama score, Jane Eyre or something like that. That could be spectacular. And he seems to be willing to do these types of projects, given his fondness for Sommersby and Black Beauty (from the liner notes).

And one of the best themes he ever wrote would be Sleepy Hollow. Such a strange tune.

Karol

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What is so interesting about Elfman is that he gets a lot of attention when Tim Burton movies come out, but often there are more obscure works in between that probably even exceed those in intelligence/musicianship - this one, Sommersby, The Wofman, Standard Operating Procedure, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Red Dragon, Mission: Impossible or the recent Cirque du Soleil show Iris.

My personal wish is to Elfman to write a period drama score, Jane Eyre or something like that. That could be spectacular. And he seems to be willing to do these types of projects, given his fondness for Sommersby and Black Beauty (from the liner notes).

Karol

I agree. Plus the composers are always on the lookout for different and challenging projects and material that just appeals to them and might give them chances they have not had before. I think any composer would agree that variety is the spice of life and typecasting in their profession is unfortunate. The scores you mention above are all material I like perhaps more than most Burton/darkly quirky scores Elfman has done with a few exceptions. I imagine he would be over the moon if a chance came for him to score a sweeping period drama or anything where music could be expressive and active component in the storytelling.

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You're sharing some interesting stuff, Chaacino. Not exactly your standard film music forum repertoire. Good for soul. :)

Anyway, I've been listening to Terminator Salvation, one of the most underrated works from Danny Elfman (but that has probably mostly to do with the movie). For a modern action score, there is a surprisingly a lot of well thought out and developed thematic material. I'm mostly referring to the three main ideas. Marcus' theme is a main one, being quite literally a heroic variation on Brad Fiedel's tune (heard at 1:08). There's a more desperate and struggling theme for John Connor as well (heard at 0:46 and then 1:42). And it's a pleasure to hear those two interplay throughout most of this score (like at 3:00). A third idea, closing the track below (5:24), which can be called a redemption theme (or death theme) and appears in all three (!) Marcus Wright's death scenes and when he realises what he, in fact, is (a grand crescendo that is buried in the film's mix, sadly). I also like how Elfman uses the lowest registers of the orchestra for machines and some of percussive effects. The electronic stuff is a nice homage to the original Terminator movies and the score as a whole honours those in a much more subtle way that, I think, is more interesting than Marco Beltrami's take. And while there is a ton of unreleased material out there, the 44-minute OST program is perfectly balanced in terms of listening experience. Not as original or striking as, say, Planet of the Apes (which it sometimes resembles), this score remains a surprisingly intelligent and rich work, given its source material.

Karol

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I listened to this tonight, and did a read-along with the score. Been a while since I've heard anything besides the climactic cues, but wow, this is still one of my all time favorites. The last time Shyamalan was great, I think. The more emotional/delicate moments during Throwing A Stone, Boarding Up The House, Into the Basement, Asthma Attack, and The Hand of Fate II are really gorgeous.

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You're sharing some interesting stuff, Chaacino. Not exactly your standard film music forum repertoire. Good for soul. :)

I've been thinking on starting a thread about old and folkloric music from around the world. It's become a surprisingly large part of what I listen to.

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Black Dahlia by Mark Isham: One of Isham's very best scores this piece evokes the film noirs of the yesteryear in its jazzy moody atmosphere and themes, paying homage to Jerry Goldsmith among others. An intelligently crafted and highly thematic work where DePalma allowed Isham to be bold and dramatic and the composer distills his score into a perfect length album presentation where romantic 1940's and 1950's styled jazzy noir love themes alternate between tough as nails action (obvious Goldsmith nods in the ferocious rhythms) and suspenseful dramatic scoring. It has to be said that the score follows the old noir formulas quite closely (DePalma does so with his film too) but in this case the re-vivification of the genre tropes is done with spirit and class and part of the fun here is the sense of familiarity, a loving nod to the genre. Highly recommended.

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I've just received Patriot Games expanded album. It's a very good score actually. Khatchaturian's adagio serves as a main theme (as it did in Aliens title sequence), but here Horner really develops it more and that constitutes, quite surprisingly, one of the highlights (especially the unexpected action version in climactic Boat Chase). The score is very gloomy and synth-heavy, even though it uses a 130-piece orchestra. A nice contrast with Horner's melodrama scores and, as such, quite an interesting listen. I can't imagine a lot of people actually getting into it and that's probably it got so many lukewarm reviews back in the day. The Celtic are used with much more skill and subtlety than, say, Titanic. And the whole thing I would describe as restrained, anxious and subtle - not exactly your typical Horner. A very interesting album - I have this feeling it will be revisited frequently. Impressed.

Karol

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The Perfect Storm by James Horner

It's ridiculously melodramatic and grand. In fact you can skip the film altogether, because the score does everything anyway. You will feel every turn, wave hit, turbulence, what have you.. And the album is, of course, 80 minutes long, so by the time you reach 40-minute mark you might want to kill someone as soon as main theme appears for the millionth time. And while not exactly original as a whole (bah!), it is so entertaining anyway that that you can't deny how much fun the whole thing is. And it doesn't cease to amaze me how he writes those 10-minute long coherent pieces. Hollywood schmaltz at its best.

Karol

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Horner excels in Hollywood schmaltz (in a good way, at least when listening experiences are concerned)!

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John Williams - Sabrina (1995)

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An absolute lovely score. I am so happy I found it in a used CDs store a few years ago. The main theme is one of those brilliant JW inventions that really captures a whole range of emotions. :)

Dinosaur - The Complete Score (James Newton Howard)

It's easy to forget scores like this. It's not the kind that is mentioned a lot when people talk about Howard's music. And when people mention it, most of the time they mainly refer to The Egg Travels. The Egg Travels this, The Egg Travels that... Blahblah... But the heart of the score, to me, really is the Herd's theme. Aladar Meets The Herd truly is the highlight of this score. Across The Desert also features some really nice variations on that theme. The delicate opening of Inner Sanctum, the main theme's statement at the beginning of Finding Water, the more exotic music in The Courtship are other highlights of this score. And yes, The Egg Travels as well.

God, how I miss this Howard!

Yes sadly JNH hasn't done something akin to his Disney scores (Treasure Planet, Atlantis and The Dinosaur) in quite a while. Wonderfully colorful, thematic and exciting work. Now it is percussive action that or synth drone bore this with a lonely little melodic theme thrown into a blender of blandness. :crymore:

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The Perfect Storm by James Horner

It's ridiculously melodramatic and grand. In fact you can skip the film altogether, because the score does everything anyway. You will feel every turn, wave hit, turbulence, what have you.. And the album is, of course, 80 minutes long, so by the time you reach 40-minute mark you might want to kill someone as soon as main theme appears for the millionth time. And while not exactly original as a whole (bah!), it is so entertaining anyway that that you can't deny how much fun the whole thing is. And it doesn't cease to amaze me how he writes those 10-minute long coherent pieces. Hollywood schmaltz at its best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC3tMN-ofqM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9LBhvRecvQ

Karol

Totally agree. Despite its flaws, it's immensely enjoyable score with killer tracks like Coast Guard Rescue (if I ever make my 10 Best Action Tracks list, it will most likely be in it). Actually I prefer The Perfect Storm to Horner's more acclaimed Titanic.

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That again!

:rimshot:

Eiger Sanction by John Williams

Earthquake by John Williams

War Horse by John Williams

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by John Williams

Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

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Actually I prefer The Perfect Storm to Horner's more acclaimed Titanic.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is better than TITANIC, the STORM by a land mile.

RUSH - by JWfan's dearest whipping boy

Groovy rock score with a solemn cello motif on top (ranging between vanilla Dire Straits, AC/DC and such). It's breezy and entertaining as a pop album and has none of the grand pretensions of misbegotten scores like MOS. So it's basically Zimmer back in DAYS OF THUNDER territory - aka, stuff he's best at.

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Actually I prefer The Perfect Storm to Horner's more acclaimed Titanic.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is better than TITANIC, the STORM by a land mile.

Mighty Joe Young is something I own but can't stomach. My blood sugar levels go off the charts when the Wind Song melody kicks in. Eeeewwww.

:music:Too Much Sugar from Gods and Generals.

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It's f...ing Di$ney, it's perfect for that (and i like the cute flute melody, the whole score is Horner at his most Goldsmith-y, taking cues from BABY and even shyly featuring POTA's slide whistle). I miss these kind of scores... :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_d5gYQM90

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You both are fools! The Lion King trumps them both!

Jusr kidding. I prefer The Ghost and the Darkness over those scores.

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Actually I prefer The Perfect Storm to Horner's more acclaimed Titanic.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is better than TITANIC, the STORM by a land mile.

RUSH - by JWfan's dearest whipping boy

Groovy rock score with a solemn cello motif on top (ranging between vanilla Dire Straits, AC/DC and such). It's breezy and entertaining as a pop album and has none of the grand pretensions of misbegotten scores like MOS. So it's basically Zimmer back in DAYS OF THUNDER territory - aka, stuff he's best at.

Didn't he release this score on 2000...and call it "Mission: Impossible - II"?

I have been catching-up on my David Holmes, by listening to "Ocean's Eleven", "Ocean's Twelve", and...ooh, can you guess?

Not so much fully-formed scores, more of a series of musical vingnettes, which are not displeasing to the ear. Add-in some killer songs by other artists (especially Faust 72's "Dynastie Crisis") and you have a collection of killer tunes that, like the films (yes, even "Ocean's Twelve"!) ooze style, and class.

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Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

I actually don't think I've ever listened to that one... but I do remember watching the film every time I visited my grandma as a kid. I'll definitely be checking out the score :)

Oh you must Alice! It is a "name is an omen" kind of thing as the score is a beauty indeed. One of Elfman's most charming and loveliest creations.

Checkmate by John Williams: A great crime-jazz album with great groovy tracks and sultry romance and shows off Johnny Williams' skills with a smaller (jazz) ensemble. Highly entertaining.

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Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

I actually don't think I've ever listened to that one... but I do remember watching the film every time I visited my grandma as a kid. I'll definitely be checking out the score :)

It's one of those you've got to check out. Elfman doesn't get much better than this (in fact I'm not sure if he ever did). Absolutely compulsory!

Michael Collins and Cobb

Angela's Ashes - it sure looks like this film outside

Hey, I just got an e-mail that I won last years' Krakow festival CD compilation with autographs of Goldenthal, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek and Tom Tykwer. Neat!

Karol

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Black Beauty by Danny Elfman

I actually don't think I've ever listened to that one... but I do remember watching the film every time I visited my grandma as a kid. I'll definitely be checking out the score :)

It's one of those you've got to check out. Elfman doesn't get much better than this (in fact I'm not sure if he ever did). Absolutely compulsory!

Michael Collins and Cobb

Angela's Ashes - it sure looks like this film outside

Hey, I just got an e-mail that I won last years' Krakow festival CD compilation with autographs of Goldenthal, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek and Tom Tykwer. Neat!

Karol

You are one lucky man Karol!

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