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In what film GENRE is your all-time favorite film score?


WampaRat

Under what genre of film does your favorite score fall under?  

20 members have voted

  1. 1. Under what genre of film does your favorite score fall under?

    • Animation
      0
    • Courtroom Drama
      0
    • Epic
      1
    • Fantasy
      10
    • Gangster
      0
    • Mystery
      1
    • Romantic Comedy
      0
    • Science Fiction
      7
    • Sports
      0
    • Western
      1
    • Horror (NOT on AFIs List)
      0
    • Adventure (NOT on AFIs List)
      0
    • Comedy (NOT on AFIs List)
      0
    • Other
      0


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Under what genre of film does your favorite film score of all time fall under? 

 

example:

Favorite score-Hook

Film Genre- Fantasy

 

Genre can be a really squishy category. Since so many great films have elements from a bunch of different genres (Jaws could be viewed as a horror film, sci-fi film, adventure film,etc depending on your personal definition) For the purposes of the poll, I’m going by The American Film Institutes definitions from their 10 top 10 series. You may disagree with these categories/ definitions. That’s fine. We just have to go by some sort of parameters. I fully realize that even these definitions are pretty broad and there could be some overlap. (“Animation” encompasses Something like “Shrek” & “Grave of the Fireflies” vastly different movies!) But just don’t think too hard about it. Go with your gut reaction. This is just for nerdy fun;)

 

My hypothesis is that most here have their favorite score of all time in either the Fantasy or Science Fiction genres...)

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI's_10_Top_10

 

AFIs Genre definitions

 

Animation: AFI defines "animated" as a genre in which the film's images are primarily created by computer or hand and the characters are voiced by actors.

 

Courtroom Drama: AFI defines "courtroom drama" as a genre of film in which a system of justice plays a critical role in the film's narrative.

 

Epic: AFI defines "epic" as a genre of large-scale films set in a cinematic interpretation of the past.

 

Fantasy: AFI defines "fantasy" as a genre in which live-action characters inhabit imagined settings and/or experience situations that transcend the rules of the natural world.

 

Gangster: AFI defines the "gangster film" as a genre that centers on organized crime or maverick criminals in a modern setting.

 

Mystery: AFI defines "mystery" as a genre that revolves around the solution of a crime.

 

Romantic Comedy: AFI defines "romantic comedy" as a genre in which the development of a romance leads to comic situations.

 

Science Fiction: AFI defines "science fiction" as a genre that marries a scientific or technological premise with imaginative speculation.

 

Sports: AFI defines "sports" as a genre of films with protagonists who play athletics or other games of competition.

 

Western: AFI defines "western" as a genre of films set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier.

 

 

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I totally agree about Animation not being a genre. Like I mentioned earlier,   You have animations that are of the typical Disney brand and then there are things like “Persepolis” or “Anomalisa”. Not exactly kiddie fair. 

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6 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Steiner’s Gone With The Wind

Genre: Epic


Isn’t it romance?

 

“Epic” to me always meant “a subject matter than changes the course of history.”

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4 minutes ago, Chen G. said:


Isn’t it romance?

 

“Epic” to me always meant “a subject matter than changes the course of history.”


i was going by the options presented.

 

 And even without them, I would first and foremost always categorize Gone With The Wind as an epic or drama than a romance. It has a romance in it, but calling the work just a romance undersells it enormously.

 

(Though it might meet the definition of a romance as in a tale, most people consider romance to be a love story which again sells Gone With The Wind short.)

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Given that I always thought of epics as “story that changes the course of history”, I’ve always been reticent to describe these “soap operas writ-large” (Gone With The Wind, Doctor Zhivago, etcetra) as true epics.

 

Lawrence of Arabia is epic because the main character leads a military campaign of strategic importance to World War I. Braveheart is epic because Sir William Wallace leads a rebellion against England which leads to Scottish independence. Kingdom of Heaven ends with the destruction of the first Crusader kingdom, etcetra. Now THATS epic.

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47 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Given that I always thought of epics as “story that changes the course of history”, I’ve always been reticent to describe these “soap operas writ-large” (Gone With The Wind, Doctor Zhivago, etcetra) as true epics.

 

Lawrence of Arabia is epic because the main character leads a military campaign of strategic importance to World War I. Braveheart is epic because Sir William Wallace leads a rebellion against England which leads to Scottish independence. Kingdom of Heaven ends with the destruction of the first Crusader kingdom, etcetra. Now THATS epic.

 

If you were to use that definition, you would limit epics to movies that have actual historical characters or invented characters creating actual historical events. So Saving Private Ryan would not qualify, Gladiator would not qualify but something like 300 would. Even Ben Hur wouldn't qualify because Ben Hur is an invented person and did not actually cause anything major to happen historically. 

 

I think in general colloquial film-making terms epic typically represents a story of characters caught amid sweeping historical events presented on a grand scale with typically scenes of multitudes or great changes taking place. With that definition, both Gone with the Wind and Zhivago would qualify though admittedly both of them do have their soap-y aspects (though in their Hollywood film versions though and less so in the books.)

 

You can see the films that the film industries voted for the AFI's top 10 epic lists - 

 

1 Lawrence of Arabia 1962
2 Ben-Hur 1959
3 Schindler's List 1993
4 Gone with the Wind 1939
5 Spartacus 1960
6 Titanic 1997
7 All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
8 Saving Private Ryan 1998
9 Reds 1981
10 The Ten Commandments 1956

 

So I think they were going with the general colloquial definition too.

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5 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

If you were to use that definition, you would limit epics to movies that have actual historical characters or invented characters creating actual historical events. So Saving Private Ryan would not qualify, Gladiator would not qualify but something like 300 would. Even Ben Hur wouldn't qualify because Ben Hur is an invented person and did not actually cause anything major to happen historically. 

 

I don't care if the history in question is fictitious or not. Gladiator most certainy qualifies: it sees Rome's full conquest of Germania, the death of not one but two Roman emperors, resucing the city from famine, and the restoration of the Roman republic.

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I am always a little bit jealous when I recognize people who are actually able to name their favourite movie of all time. I am not able to make that choice. 

Favourite movie. Favourite song. Impossible.

 

I might have from time to time a favourite director. But even then I might prefer the one or the other movie from another director. And all of that can change over time.

 

But at least I can state, that John Williams is my favourite film composer. 

 

By the way. I am missing action and horror in the genre list.

and why is romantic comedy the only kind of comedy listed?

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Well, I guess I envy you, in a way -- because that means you're probably also not prone to be a completist of an artist's work. That can be quite expensive and time-consuming.

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STAR WARS and E.T.. Hmm. Space fantasy and... family drama/spacey fantasy? Yeah, fantasy'll be the common link, I'll vote for that.

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As I suspected, most of our favorite scores reside in the fantasy and science fiction genres. Why do you think that is? Do those genres just allow for more terrific scores? Our favorite movies are in those genres and hence our favorite scores?

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1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

 

I don't care if the history in question is fictitious or not. Gladiator most certainy qualifies: it sees Rome's full conquest of Germania, the death of not one but two Roman emperors, resucing the city from famine, and the restoration of the Roman republic.

 

Much of what gladiator shows is entirely fictitious. But anyways, Gone With The Wind also qualifies then as it shows the fall of Atlanta and the Reconstruction in progress. 

 

I think such a specific definition will cause confusion regarding a rather amorphous term.

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7 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

Gone With The Wind also qualifies then as it shows the fall of Atlanta and the Reconstruction in progress. 

 

The difference is that in a film like Gladiator the characters are instrumental in changing history, themselves; so you feel the characters achieved something truly momentous. In films like Gone With The Wind, the characters' stories just coincide with historical events.

 

The epic always was among the most amorphous genres to begin with.

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It is too a genre; just not in the Homeric sense of it.

 

"Epic" in cinema simply means "big". That's why its so amorphous: "big" how? Big as a production (sets, extras, outdoor photography)? big as a story (lots of incident, lots of characters, long passage of time within the story, long running time)? to my mind, a true epic is big primarily in the context of the story: its a story that changes the course of history, whether said history is real or fictitious. It has to feel like the characters facilitated something truly momentous.

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Genres are dumb. That's what synopses are for, or at least keywords. Remember last.fm where you used to type any word that comes to mind and it would bring up a song, or type a combination of more general words. If you want to relate movies to one another, see if they have some keywords in common.

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20 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

It is too a genre; just not in the Homeric sense of it.

 

"Epic" in cinema simply means "big". That's why its so amorphous: "big" how? Big as a production (sets, extras, outdoor photography)? big as a story (lots of incident, lots of characters, long passage of time within the story, long running time)? to my mind, a true epic is big primarily in the context of the story: its a story that changes the course of history, whether said history is real or fictitious. It has to feel like the characters facilitated something truly momentous.

 

Sounds like a mood, scope, scale of a story.  A Western that is epic (Once Upon A Time In The West) is still first and foremost a Western. A Science Fiction movie that is epic (2001: A Space Odyssey) still belongs in the genre Science Fiction. 

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Scholars have been debating genres for centuries, both in literature and film. They're always fluid entities. ALIEN, for example, is both a horror and a science fiction. Very few films are just one genre. But there are better sources for genre theory, and delineation, than the AFI system above. Not only because it includes categories that are not genres, but rather styles or modes, but also because they are not on the same level. Some are oddly specific, like sub genres, while others are broad. Makes no sense.

 

So ultimately, I guess anyone is free to define them the way they want - or which of the genre markers one want to put as the most important ones.

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3 minutes ago, Thor said:

Scholars have been debating genres for centuries, both in literature and film. They're always fluid entities. ALIEN, for example, is both a horror and a science fiction. Very few films are just one genre, period. But there are better sources for genre theory, and delineation, than the AFI system above. Not only because it includes categories that are not genres, but rather styles or modes, but also because they are not on the same level. Some are oddly specific, like sub genres, while others are broad. Makes no sense.

 

So ultimately, I guess anyone is free to define them the way they want.

 

Yes, that's why IMDb uses several genre names to categorise a movie. But what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think Spartacus? I think most people would put it in the Historical Drama genre. Let me put it this way, while Blade Runner is in almost every Science Fiction Top list, I dare you to find it in a Top 10 Crime movie list.

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1 hour ago, Thor said:

Well, I guess I envy you, in a way -- because that means you're probably also not prone to be a completist of an artist's work. That can be quite expensive and time-consuming.

That's right. I am not jumping for every bone.

Even when it comes to Williams' scores I make exceptions. 

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2 hours ago, Chen G. said:

 

The difference is that in a film like Gladiator the characters are instrumental in changing history, themselves; so you feel the characters achieved something truly momentous. In films like Gone With The Wind, the characters' stories just coincide with historical events.

 

The epic always was among the most amorphous genres to begin with.

 

It has also been cheapened with its ubiquity. Now a trash RC power anthem cue with added drums is marked as "Epic Song" on Youtube and racks up millions of views.

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40 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Hey, speak for yourself. I only like one film.

 

Reminds me of that one awful neighbour I once had, that only played one song on repeat for weeks on end -- and loudly. Namely this one. Drove me nuts!

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Favorite score is The Outsiders by Carmine Coppola. None of the genres listed really cover that one.
 

Honestly, the list of options is way too short. At the very least I’d recommend adding non-specific drama, comedy, horror, and romance to the options. 
 

Also, animation is a technique, not a genre. 

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I agree there is a shocking lack of straight “Horror” “Adventure” or  “Comedy” genres. 
 

But I decided to stick to AFIs genres here just to have some parameters. I don't necessarily agree with their categories and definitions. But I thought it would be fun to see what the results were. Just cool to see  a discussion going on :)

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On 11/25/2020 at 9:48 PM, WampaRat said:

But I decided to stick to AFIs genres here just to have some parameters.

Sticking to parameters doesn't make a lot of sense, when they're stupid parameters. Add the missing categories, so I can vote!:)

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