Soundtracks of Movies
 

When the TFP was down, I posted Soundtracks of Movies on the blog. Since I'm still moving and grooving with this, I thought to move it to a more fitting location for discussions.

As far as movie soundtracks go, I've rediscovered the 50's-esque La Bamba and Grease.

I just started on the London Symphony Star Wars Scores I-VI. I had forgotten just how moved I am by them. Each one has emotion oozing out of it and because of the visuals of the movie, I can see the scenes in my head as the music unfolds.

I was never into soundtracks for films other than musicals until the Burton movies. Now I love anything from Danny Elfman.

I'm a bit of a soundtrack fiend.
- Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica)
- Brian Tyler (Childen of Dune)
- David Arnold (Stargate)
- Dennis McCarthy (Star Trek: TNG, Generations, Enterprise)
- Hans Zimmer (Thin Red Line, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Last Samurai, Tears of the Sun, Batman Begins, and DaVinci Code)
- Harry Gregson-Williams (Kingdom of Heaven)
- Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings)
- Jerry Goldsmith (Star Trek: Final Frontier, First Contact)
- John Williams (Every good movie you've ever seen)
- Kyle Eastwood (Letters from Iwo Jima)
- Tan Dun (Hero)
- Tyler Bates (300)

That should be enough to get you started.

Elfman in "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a must-buy soundtrack.

I don't know if either of you have ever heard the soundtrack of but it is one of Danny Elfman's first soundtracks.

His version of is very interesting as is the rest of the eclectic sounds. He did it before Quentin.

When I first heard the Oogie Boogie song, it instantly reminded me of the Zone.

I'll check into it. :)

Gabriel Yared's soundtrack to "Message In A Bottle" is what made the film tolerable for me.

Johnny Greenwoods score for There Will Be Blood is remarkable.

I'll have to check it out. When I went to sample it at Amazon, I checked out his So Lo album. Very interesting as well.

I love the So Lo album, it is one of the best IMO where he reaches his stride from punk/new wave sound to bridging him to his soundtrack sound. The first track Gratitude is on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. I watched that movie so many times trying to find out exactly where it appears in the movie and have never ever figured it out.

He also has which was performed in Carnegie Hall. It's very interesting to listen to the samples, I have yet to actually get it, but it's on my list.

I love soundtracks. John Williams has to be my favorite, but honorable mentions are:
- John Barry ("Somewhere in Time", "Out of Africa", etc)
- Hans Zimmer ("Last Samurai", "Gladiator")
- Mark Isham ("Life as a House", "A River Runs Through It")
- Clint Eastwood ("Unforgiven", "Bridges of Madison County", "Absolute Power", etc)

There's many more that I can't think of right now, but when I hear them I'm like "oh yeah, I love that composer's work". I have an XM radio subscription, so I listen to their Cinemagic channel all day while I'm at work.

agreed, i listened to it even before i watched the filmand still loved it haha.
my all time fav would probably have to be vanilla sky though

I forgot to mention James Horner ("Braveheart", "Titanic", "Willow", etc)

I love movie soundtracks and own or have owned quite a few in the past...but typically not ones that are just "scores". Some of my favorites are:
Forrest Gump
Grosse Pointe Blank
La Bamba
The Big Chill
Trainspotting
Titanic (minus the Celine Dion song)
The Full Monty

I think I like soundtracks because they usually offer songs by different artists, and that very much appeals to me. I rarely find an artist/band that I like enough to consistently buy their albums.

And yet they usually have a cohesive vein running through them which caused them to be selected in the first place.

I like Danny Elfman I have his greatest hits on CD.

As far as soundtracks go?

Grease
Twister - Bad Movie, Great Soundtrack

DB

How could I have forgotten about these? Thanks for sparking the old gal's memory, DonnieBoy:

The Big Chill
American Graffiti
West Side Story
Purple Rain
Saturday Night Fever
Car Wash (the orig)

Forbidden Zone was actually a product of Oingo Boingo (actually The Mystic Nights of the Oingo Boingo). If you get the DVD there are some old clips of the band before Danny took over from his brother Richard.

There is a difference between the score of a film (the musical bed) and the soundtrack to the film. These are sometimes controlled by two different people as well (Composer and Music Supervisor). You'll have one person writing a score and another person picking out music for the soundtrack.

Danny Elfman is one of my favorite score writers/composers. I'm also a big Boingo fan.

I also like the stuff Dave Grusin did on "On Golden Pond" as well as other stuff he has done.

I like Peter Gabriel's soundtracks and other music.

I like Michael Nyman and Mark Isham as score writers as well.

I don't really have a favorite music supervisor. But if you like Tarantino soundtracks then you may want to check out other movies that Karyn Rachtman has worked on. She was the music supervisor for most of his films.

I like the juno soundtrack becuase im a big Kimya Dawson and Moldy Peaches fan.

SLC Punk soundtrack seems like it would be pretty good, along with the american hardcore soundtrack.

to bad i dont buy these things.

I always find myself going back to these:

Wild At Heart
Lost Boys
Bright Lights, Big City
Honeymoon In Vegas

to name a few:
The Mission (1986) - Ennio Morricone (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001553/) to see the list of films he has contributed to
The Fifth Element
The Graduate

Zweiblumen
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The Last of the Mohicans
The Two Towers

These two are, in my opinion, the two best classical pieces since Mozart's Requiem.

Anything by Bernard Herrmann

A few of my favs:

Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
Vertigo
Psycho
Fahrenheit 451
Taxi Driver

But most especially:

The Day the Earth Stood Still




........................... Klaatu barada nikto

I picked up the LOTR soundtracks... and then all the SWI-VI episodes.

it's very interesting to listen to them, especially the Star Wars. I can tell just where they are in the movie by the score.

LOTR I don't know as well, but it's very pleasing to listen to.

One of my favorite movie soundtracks is Not Another Teen Movie. I never saw the movie, but the soundtrack is awesome, if you like 80s pop music performed by hard 90s bands:

1. Tainted Love - Marilyn Manson
2. Never Let Me Down Again - Smashing Pumpkins
3. Blue Monday - Orgy
4. The Metro - System Of A Down
5. But Not Tonight - Scott Weiland
6. Message Of Love - Saliva
7. Bizarre Love Triangle - Stabbing Westward
8. 99 Red Balloons - Goldfinger
9. I Melt With You - Mest
10. If You Leave - Good Charlotte
11. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want - Muse
12. Somebody's Baby - Phantom Planet

The standout tracks:

Rocky Horror Picture Show ..........

This thread makes me sad.


CHARLIE CLOUSER

OK lets see

the SAW soundtrack, most notable "Hello Zepp"


CLINT MANSELL

Requiem for a Dream soundtrack


The Fountain Soundtrack



and, well, my lunch break is over and I wanna finish this post so... Maybe i'll visit later.

A few soundtracks I enjoy:

Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago - Maurice Jarre
Elevator to the Gallows - Miles Davis score
Anatomy of a Murder - Duke Ellington score
The Piano - Michael Nyman score
The Shining - A variety of non-original music composed by a variety of classical artists.
32 Short Films about Glenn Gould - A variety of non-original music played by Gould.
All the Mornings of the World - Bass viol music by Marais and Sainte-Colombe
So I married an axe murderer - A variety of mostly cheesy songs and excellent soundbites from the movie.

Garden State was good. Donnie Darko. A Goofy Movie.

I agree about the Star Wars soundtrack. You can listen to it and visualize the movie pretty well.

Btw, I started playing the clip of The Day the Earth Stood Still, then I started up Quentin's clip in the OP.
They blend awesomely. ;P

Danny Elfman is one of my favorites, as well, but my favorite work of his is the soundtrack to Black Beauty. It's nearly impossible to find, but I somehow snagged a promotional copy of the CD on eBay a few years ago. Score!

Other favorites:
Gladiator
Sweeney Todd
The Lion King
The Little Mermaid
Forrest Gump
Juno
Garden State
Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Darjeeling Limited (and along with this, The Royal Tenenbaums & The Life Aquatic)

I really enjoy soundtracks for the most part. I haven't watched LOTR or SW lately, but I'm sure I'd be just as taken by their soundtracks as some of these above.

Takemitsu Toru wrote music for films before he became known as a Really Big Composer. Whenever i listen to his stuff on its own, i get to thinking that it needs a movie.
Of the films he worked on, "Woman in the dunes" and "Ran" are probably the most well known.

One of the annoying things about movie music is that it creeps into your life. You hear the music, you think there ought to be a movie. So you're listening to whatever -- Miles Davis on the way home from work. It's raining, you're standing on the train. The window is flecked with raindrops. You imagine yourself (w/o the headphones) as the focus of a movie about a souful guy/gal who... You have the music down, anyway.

I used to translate old movies. I have the scores from a number of Japanese films written into my memory. Some of those '50s films are really lush.

Despite the conservative family values that move the plot, there are a lot of things i like about "Paris, Texas".

Nastassja Kinski

Hunter Carson -- child actors don't get better than this. It's a good performance for any actor.

the shots of Texas -- what you'd expect in a rehash of "The searchers", but it works anyway. The shots of small town bars and laundromats evoked memories of a certain small town in Texas 35 years ago -- even the smells. I didn't even know i had those memories.

But what made me want to watch the film again was the opening credits with Harry Dean Stanton stumbling around the desert to Ry Cooder's guitar. Again, it's what you'd expect in a homage to John Ford, but it works anyway.

In towns the size of Paris, Texas... they still look that way (just with newer trucks).

In my last post I forgot about the . The score was composed by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geinoh_Yamashirogumi, a Japanese musical collective. It's great!

Akira, I love the movie and I love the soundtrack. It never dawned on me to pick it up. I'll have to get this.

o takemitsu's film music...kwaidan is still my favorite. woman in the dunes and face of another are also great. ran too, but those three films are brilliant.

hukkle is also one of my favorite sound movies.

jacques tati:
"monsieur hulot's vacation" and "playtime" are both brilliant for sound.

the driving sequencein tarkovsky's "solaris" is great.

i dislike soundtracks or music for films that push you around, that tell you what to think. i like music for films that does something else, enhances or emphasizes elements within the film or, like takemitsu's sound does in the first segment of kwaidan, turns your perception of what you're seeing inside out.
just watch it and you'll see.

other bits i really like:

in la haine, the sequence with the dj who puts the speakers up in an hlm window and spins a mashup involving edith piaf.
clockwork orange, of course. the chain fight sequence to rossini's the thieving magpie in particular.

von trier's dancer in the dark. one of the best musicals ever.

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is the soundtrack from Sliver. A couple of songs by Enigma and Massive Attack I keep going back to.

The Breakfast Club.. an oldie but a goodie!

I personally loved the soundtrack to Garden State. One of the best imo.

I was going to start my own film scores thread but this seems to fit my purpose just fine....

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.