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Best Film Scores -- What's Your Pick?


DonaldM

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I don't know about the best, but some of the mose recognizable and memorable scores I can think of are:

 

Star Wars

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Rocky

 

Now if you want to delve into sound tracks, just about every John Hughs film ever made had a soundtrack full of memorable songs - plus others from the era that weren't his, like Footloose, Beverly Hills Cop, and Back to the Future (which was also a great score by the way).

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Try "Catch Me If You Can". Somewhat un-Williams-like for a Williams score. The '60s cool, pre-Mad Men title sequence is great.

 

Very un-Williams. When I first heard it I thought Henry Mancini had risen from the grave to write it!

There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who can read binary, and those who can't.
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Hmmmm...

 

Ocean's Eleven

The Incredibles (best Bond rip ever!)

Oh Brother Where Art Thou

Pan's Labyrinth

Just about anything by Henry Mancini

And the most exciting big band chart ever written: The James Bond Theme - Monty Norman and John Barry

 

Instrumentation is meaningless - a song either stands on its own merit, or it requires bells and whistles to cover its lack of adequacy, much less quality. - kanker
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Others have noted it, but Morricone's music in Cinema Paradiso is exquisite. Captures the sense of nostalgia so perfectly. We just purchased a copy--the director actually had the music playing on the set during the filming, one reason why it all meshes so perfectly.
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The Wizard of Oz deserves a mention in this thread.
Great Harold Arlen songs... but I just don't think of people singing songs in musicals as being film scoring.

 

You're forgetting a lot then. The wicked witch music, The tornado scene, the spooky forest music, the Valkyrie-type flying monkey music, the poppies, the triumphant music when the wiz is handing out diplomas ( aka "Throne Room music"), the strings chords at the end. There must be 45 minutes of non-sung, actual film scoring in the movie.

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You're absolutely right that the music was great throughout. I was just considering the film scores for most musicals as secondary to the songs.

 

Fair enough, difference of opinion. :cool:

 

OZ is really in a category by itself, there's really nothing like it. In the last 3rd of the movie, there are no songs whatsoever, so I don't really consider "Wizard" as a musical, not in the traditional sense. Most musicals have very little if any underscoring. I consider it more of a hybrid film, there was no musical version of Oz before the film came out, unlike something like My Fair Lady.

 

Back on Topic:

 

We saw "Breakfast at Tiffanys" over Xmas, and I was reminded what a great score it had.

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Too many to call a favorite, but the few I'm listening to lately are:

 

Battlestar Galactica (all seasons), Bear McCreary*

 

Sum of All Fears, Jerry Goldsmith

 

Solaris, Cliff Martinez

 

The Prestige, David Julyan

 

(*Seriously, the music from BSG was unbelievably good ... better than anything else I've ever heard written for a TV series. Bear McCreary is an incredibly talented composer, one I hope to hear a lot more from in the future.)

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Probably another one that deserves mention here is Howard Shore for Lord of the Rings. Some really good thematic orchestrations there.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world...those who can read binary, and those who can't.
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