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Top 10 Amazing Film Scores
Because of this movie’s critical reception—“Sweet Jesus, Jethro! Them’s two boys fornicatin’ right thar.”—not as many people saw this movie, as they would prefer a God-approved movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The instrumentation focuses around a guitar and is very thinly scored. Santaolalla only needed his guitar to get him the Academy Award for best score.
Gustavo Santaolalla – 1
John Williams – 0
I could go for a music major approach to tell you why this is an impeccable piece, but that would just bore you. It would be nearly as boring as the movie King Kong itself. The music was the only saving grace for this movie, in my opinion. James Newton Howard has an inexplicable way of building the intensity of a certain piece like no one else can. His entire score is based off a piano, and builds the instrumentation up right from the start. The King Kong soundtrack is on my “sleep” playlist on iTunes, because it is probably the most calming music I have ever heard.
This… is a good piece. I think. To be quite honest I’m listening to Wicked right now, and I don’t want to switch over. Clint Mansell wrote this piece after his failures with his British pop band, “Pop will eat itself,” and his previous score to π. Though, according to Wikipedia, this score became a cult hit.
Maybe you shouldn’t listen to it. Cults are bad.
The Spanish composer, Alberto Iglesias, wrote the score to this movie. This movie is set in Afghanistan, and has a seemingly authentic Middle Eastern sound to it. Of all the pieces in this film, the title theme was the one that really stood out to me. It’s a very unique piece, and definitely worth giving a listen to.
First, let me point out that I hate Johnny Depp. This really has nothing to do with the review at all, but I just can’t stand the guy. Anyway, on to the music: I could have really substituted any of Danny Elfman’s works in here (The Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and so on..) because they have the same great sound. Using flutes and upper strings to play a constantly repeated section (ostinato) over rich melodies in the middle voices, Elfman creates this incredible fantasy sound that encompasses the feel needed in every movie he’s asked to write for.
The strange thing about this is, my 5 year old nephew could play this on piano. (That is, if I had a nephew, if he happened to be 5, and if he had taken piano lessons.) A simple melody is played over ambient sounds, and is repeated about 20 times before going into the next section. However, it’s still a strong and emotional piece. I don’t quite understand how this is possible. Listen to it and maybe you can tell me.
Trevor Rabin did a stellar job with this entire score, but this one piece sticks out to me. It seems that in this genre, these pieces will always have the exact same layout: a peaceful string introduction, horn counter melody/harmony, then an abrupt segue into a fast and dramatic phrase, back into the peaceful strings. Rabin follows this perfectly, but somehow stands out above all of the others who have done this before. Definitely worth listening to.
Okay. Fine, it won an Oscar in ’94. I still think it was underrated. Hans Zimmer wrote the score to this movie, as Elton John did whatever the hell he wanted to with the soundtrack. This is the only Disney movie where the film score and the soundtrack were written separately. To create consistency, Zimmer used leitmotifs—repeated melodies representing a character or feeling. The reason you could probably listen to this piece of music and instinctively know that it came from The Lion King is proof that Zimmer’s plan worked. Go on, youtube it.
I could go on for days about this film score, but I’m fairly hungry, and I may starve if I write too much on this. This piece is really basic. Sequencing is used (a pattern modulating every time it is repeated) to build the intensity. The way that he was able to build the aforementioned intensity is what made it the #2 spot on this list.
This piece is played in the final scene of the movie. Listening to the composition on youtube or iTunes is great, but is nothing compared to watching the last scene of the movie. Please, rent the movie just to see this.
But read the book first. The movie blows otherwise.
Yeah, I don’t quite understand this either. I used to listen to Yahoo! Radio’s film scores station all the time before I started buying these on iTunes, and I was doing homework when the most beautiful piece I have ever heard starts playing. After listening for a bit, I decided I absolutely had to know which movie this came from. I read the title about four times before exclaiming, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I have held Team America up as my least favorite movie of all time since it first came out, and now my favorite film piece comes from it. Anyway, if you have a dollar, download it on iTunes right now. It is worth it. While you’re at it, you might as well get “America, fuck yeah!” just to piss me off.
1 comments:
January 15, 2009 8:38 PM
"Lux Aeterna" haha never really took the time to look up the name of the song but loved it. Great post now I can download the song... By paying for it of course... ^_~