Hans Zimmer is awesome, every score he does is full of life.

I am a fan of Philip Glass. Oddball composer and an odd taste of music.

He did Hamburger Hill (my fav of his), Kundun, The Hours and a lot of other films. I think Southpark even made fun of him at one point. But he is my #1.

This is out of order but as Philip Glass was mentioned...

....and a little bit more Glass

The Lost Boys soundtrack is great

Swordfish soundtrack. Turned me onto electronica....

the lion king. no questions asked. the songs in that are amazing.

harry potter (any of the movies), pirates of the caribean, indiana jones, jurassic park and narnia.

oh yeah... and slum dog milionaire!. love it

The songs in the Lion King are great to be sure but so is the score: Hans Zimmer again. If ever there were films that I want to be great but just aren't it's Pirates of the Caribbean. Luckily the scores are as good as the films should be. The main theme "He's a Pirate" sounds very Zimmer but apparently isn't (although if he didn't actually write it he certainly took it and ran for the sequels). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ends on a bit of a downer and marks the point at which the series gets adult and serious, which is why the credits music is more downbeat than is standard for huge blockbusters.

If A Bug's Life fits into any genre other than the unhelpful "animation", it's surely the Western; it's fitting that Randy Newman's score generally and the main theme in particular noticeably draw on 70-odd year's worth of existing Western soundtracks.

Hans Zimmer again: The Inception soundtrack.

Hans Zimmer has done a lot of great stuff.

anyone know if he's still writing music for soundtracks?

Hans Zimmer is still writing soundtracks. Coming up next he's got How Do You Know (James L Brooks romantic comedy with a great cast), Rango (odd looking CG animation with the voice of Johnny Depp), Kung Fu Panda 2 and the next installments of both the POTC and Batman franchises.

More Zimmer:

and another great submarine song:

thanks for that.

relieved to hear there will be another pirates movie, i love those films.

johny dep is a great actor

:)

The best thing about POTC by a long way is the music. I would watch a fourth one for the music alone.

More Basil Poledouris (1946-2006) now. His best scores are all stirring military-inspired themes big on pomp and brass, but he also did gentler ones for stuff like The Blue Lagoon and Free Willy. I always thought he did The Total Recall score but I just found out it was Jerry Goldsmith so that one will have to wait.

BONUS!

If you're making a big film in which lots of people fight, and there are sad moments, for God's sake get Hans Zimmer to score it. Gladiator has been mentioned lots of times in this thread but nobody's posted it yet. It is the best soundtrack in the world: when the track below gets going it actually pushes everything else out of my head and I literally cannot think of anything at all for a couple of minutes. Most of the rest of these are magnificent too:

Here's a few less obvious and earlier Zimmer themes. Less bombastic than those already posted perhaps, but these are still likely to get into your head and not come out for a while, especially those bloody Panpipes in Rain Man. Meanwhile the wailing guitars from Black Rain, Zimmer's best early score, are back for Days of Thunder and Broken Arrow.

"Bunch a slackjawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a goddamned Sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me."

Predator has a sublime soundtrack, congrats to Adam Silvestri.

Alan Silvestri. You're right it's a good soundtrack, plenty of influence from the Jaws theme.

Well, I saw the Lion King and Little Mermaid, so those are covered. I liked the Little Mermaid so much that I threw a Little Mermaid themed Hallowwen party in college. Imagine a whole bunch of really drunk college folk dressed as their favorite Mermaid character...

Anyhow, no one mentioned the soundtrack from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I still love that disc to this day :)

Some Bernard Herrmann now: he was apparently supposed to be credited for his influence on Richard Band's tongue-poking Re-Animator but due to some mixup was not; either way the homage is clear.

toru takemitsu. his film work is awesome. it's beyond "soundtrack"---use of music and sound design as an integrated whole and without the american preference for pushing you around.

here's my favorite--"black hair" the first sequence from kobayashi's "kwaidan" (1964).




there's other great stuff. if i don't forget, i'll post some.

Roachboy: I'm interested in hearing the Kwaidan music but I want to avoid spoiling the actual film so I'm going to wait and watch it properly. Continuing the Japanese theme, here's some choice cuts from Joe Hisaishi, mostly from Miyazaki/Ghibli films.

This crazy pseudo baroque, sax-powered extravaganza was made for The Draughtsman's Contract and much later used in A Cock and Bull Story, Man on Wire and an episode of Top Gear.




Where's the last place you'd expect to hear the soundtrack of a dour and moody cop thriller? That's right: in an AQUARIUM. But I did hear this music at that place last Sunday; I suppose they had on some chillout compilation CD to make the viewing of big pretty fishes an even better experience. Without this playing it would have been a good day out, with it it was fucking awesome.




Kronos Quartet brings me on to probably their most famous outing: Clint Mansell's Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream. This song has expanded itself so far now into pop culture that it's become a cliche, mostly thanks to an absurd but effective application Sky Sports News.




There's only one place to go now that Clint Mansell's name has been mentioned...

Life is Too Short (Orchestral Version)
Kai Tracid

I love anything from Danny Elfman.. Haha..By the way Thanks for sharing this video..

Still got a few of these left.