TV and Movie Soundtracks

[Cat]

I have this weird "thing" for TV and movie soundtracks.

I have lots which I return to again and again (anything Y&R from the 80s) but i'll mention two for now.

1. is the soundtrack for Steven Soderberg's Traffic, starring Benecio del Toro and Michael Douglas. There is a scene where MD is flown in a helicopter over Mexico City and the music playing during that scene is particularly evocative.

2. is anything composed by John Barry for the James Bond movies. The opening credits were always an art in of themselves, but the music really took it to another level. Case in point: Moonraker. Not-great Bond film. Awesome song sung by Shirley Bassey.

Another was We have all the time in the world, sung by Louis Armstrong for Her Majesty's Secret Service. Armstrong was dying at the time so that whole song is especially poignant.

[Sylph]

Oh, I hope this topic lives and thrives! I am such a fan... Mostly of those huge, bombast pieces requiring enormous orchestras. And I'm a fan of ethnic instrumentation.

But I wouldn't know where to start!

[EricMontreal22]

I'm such a whore for Barry's Bond work as well--and I love the opening songs--even the cheesiest ones like All Time High--I seriously would buy a DVD of just the openign credits for each film. lol (Moonraker is a fave too)

I dunno where to start too. Watching tons of BHitchcock recently and knowing that my musical hero Stephen Sondheim says he's one of his fave composers, ahs made me really respect and love Bernard Hermann's classic scores. Similarly I love the lush work in the same style that Pino Donaggio did--think his over the top huge scores for DePalama's 70s films like Carrie and Dressed to Kill. So melodramatic and gorgeous.

i LIKE John Williams but I hate the cult/"everything eh does is wonderful" fanbase he has--it probably unfairly turns me off.

Elmer Bernstein was underated--two that come to midn are his grogeous To Kill a Mockingbird piano based score, and one of his last scores for Far from Heaven where he was meant to sound like he was composing for a 1950s "women's picture' melodrama and did a great job.

I admit while I prefer full orchestra, I think some synth scores are amazing--tho they started as trendy, and by the late 80s seemed cliched and cheap becuase producers would use them to save money, not for stylistic reasons. The best are for me Giorgio Moroder's oscar winning Midnight Express, American Giogolo and Cat People scores--cool, icy, hypnotic and creepy and also filled with melancholy melody. Gorgeous stuff. Vangelis and Tangerine Dream did some great work too.

I've told Sylph but my fave current composer workign is Japanese Jo Hisaishi, msot famous for his exclusive partnership with Hayao Miyazaki and his animated films. While his live action work is much more jazzy and inoclassical, his Miyazaki work has ranged from sweeping, gorgeous epic themes (his theme for Nausicaa was, maybe dubiously, a favorite of figure skaters for ages) to intimate hautning slow themes, and synth work.

Some examples of his work

1984's gorgeous Nausicaa theme:

Porco Rosso on full orchestra:

The impossibly gorgeous opening theme and love theme from 1986's Laputa Castle in the Sky (using piano and synths as his earlier work often did):

Another gorgeous score and scene for one of the most magical quiet scenes I know in any film--from Spirited Away:

[EricMontreal22]

Found a good medley of Pino Donaggio's work!

[SteveFrame]

I am big fan of Movie & TV soundtracks too.

My favorite full TV soundtrack are the ones for the Queer as Folk series. I am usually not a big fan of club music but those soundtracks have some really good ones.

Some other full soundtrack albums I like are The Big Chill (big fan of the 60's/early 70's music); Sleepless in Seattle was a very good well rounded movie sountrack album. Same with Forrest Gump (probably my favorite soundtrack album of all time). Pulp Fiction was another good soundtrack album. The Godfather soundtracks I loved too.

Now of course I am a big fan of musicals - so many of the old Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals are really good soundtracks for me.

*********************************************

Now as far as individual songs and all from movies, I have a lot of faves.

Beautiful Maria of my Soul from the movie, The Mambo Kings is one of my all time favorite songs from a movie. It was so haunting and such a major part of that movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePOlWWqkGIk

I love all the opening themes in the Alfred Hitchcock movies. They always went along so well with building the suspense. My faves were Psycho and Vertigo.

And then one of my favorite other movie songs is when Doris Day sings Que Sera Sera in The Man Who Knew Too Much. She sits at the piano trying to get her son to hear her. It was such a great musical moment in a film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVuEC3r7a-o...feature=related

[JackPeyton]

The Big Chill, Clueless, & Cruel Intentions are my faves.

[EricMontreal22]

Well here's the thing. Do we mean pop songs gathered by the producers to fit the movie or do we mean songs for musicals (which the theatre fag in me would point out ar eusually on cast recordings unless they're from an actual movie musical) written for the story, or do we mean the scores? I thought this was more about scores...

I'm kinda snobby - I usually dislike pop soundtracks for movies. Sometimes they get the feel rigth, but often they feel like gimmicks ("your fave band is playing for this movie!") Even though I'm not a big fan I will admit that some like Pulp Fiction did define the movie. But I know some movie makers have been upset that in the past 30 years or so pop soundtracks have become such an important selling point of movies that producers will even tell them bands or songs that they have to shove into their movies to help promote--sometimes with no rhyme or reason. (54 had two great soundtracks because they got some people who really knew disco--both the hits everyone knows and obscure great classics to make the CDs worth getting for example)

I love musicals but we should prob start a new thread there--but Stephen Sondheim is basically my god (sad I know) and I'd always be sure to at least have the original cast albums of Company, Passion, Follies, and A Little Night Music anywhere I might be stranded.

But I gave my starting list of composers As for TV scores (not songs)--that's harder--I know Buffy has a scorte cd coming out finally (one cue--the great Angel/Buffy love theme was on their pop soundtrack) and I've always LOVED Angelo Badalamenti (who has done arrangements and string arrangements for pop groups from Pet Shop Boys on) and his score for Twin Peaks--original songs and instrumentals is perfection.

[Cat]

Both! Anything you like!

Like JP mentioned Cruel Intentions, the soundtrack of which I have. It's light and poppy but I still bring it every once in a while. That movie is a lot more fun than people give it credit for.

A pop song soundtrack I love is Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. The love theme on that (when Clare Danes and Leo Di Caprio spy each other for the first time through the exotic fish tank) is all swoony and romantic, and Radiohead's Exit Music (For A Film) -- played during the closing credits -- is by turns spooky, sinister and perfect for the film.

Pulp Fiction is a given -- because Tarantino chose the music specifically for shaping the feel of his scenes, and not just a pop song to slap on as filler.

Eric, you mentioned Bernard Hermann's music for Hitchcock's films. I have two compilation CDs of his film music (not all for Hitchcock). Psycho, I cannot play at night! But Vertigo and Marnie are probably the two most sweeping themes. Kill Bill 1 (even though I'm not crazy about that movie) had Darryl Hannah in a nurse's uniform sashaying down a hospital hallway whistling to Bernard Herrmann's "Twisted Nerve." His music is so powerful, it's like all my childhood fears or nightmares put to musical form (if that makes any sense). Badalamenti's score for Twin Peaks worked in much the same way.

[Cat]

Oh, and I don't know whether anybody has ever seen any Pedro Almodovar movies, but he uses composers which, like Hitchcock, really get under the skin of the film.

Like in Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown -- the music as she records the dubbing of a film.

When it's not specially composed music, the songs are no less moving:

From Talk to her (not my favorite movie but this sequence is). Caetano Velaso sings "Cucurrucucu Paloma."

From Volver, Penelope Cruz lipsynchs to Estrella Morente:

[SteveFrame]

I am like Eric in some ways that I don't just like Pop Songs thrown in to a movie. I lke to songs to define the movie or be a part of it. Just like it was with Beautiful Maria of my Soul - that song was almost like a character in the movie.

I feel the same way about Pulp Fiction that others do.

And the music in The Big Chill totally defined that movie. It set the mood, defined the era, and just set the overall tone for the movie.

[Sylph]

I would like to know two things:

1. What do you all think about Hans Zimmer's scores? I don't have a strong dislike for them, but at the same time, I cannot escape the feeling that it's the symphonic equivalent of pop music. He makes a 100-piece orchestra often sound like several players because of cheap orchestration, especially when he ruins the otherwise OK piece with synth overdubs. Another thing I don't like is the fact that he's not very fond of woodwinds (Bruckheimer's fault partially), his constant use of electric cello and the unbelievable amount of composers of "additional music" he uses. I know people hate it when he relies to much on lower strings to depict dramatic moments, but I kind of like it.

2. What did you think about the music for The Lord of the Rings? Again, I'm torn on this one: although there are very good pieces, I don't know whether the orchestration is plain awful, good or exceptional. I hate the sound, the engineers really scr*wed this one and there was much talk about it. What I mind the most is that it all seems so repetitive and monophonic.

[Toups]

Anyone know the music that plays end of this clip?

I love Zimmer! My favorite score is from Pearl Harbor. I can listen to it over and over.

"Tennessee"

"Brothers"

"And Then I Kissed Him"

My favorite piece from the ending of The DaVinci Code: "Chevaliers de Sangreal"

[Sylph]

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End - End Credits

[EricMontreal22]

Cat--I think we have a LOT of tastes in common. Huge Almodovar fan (I finally bought the recent box set) and while I always forget to look at the composer (s?) he uses, the use of music (not just score but pop songs too) in his work is masterful. Bad Education was kinda a Hitchcock hommage and it had Hermann elements in the score.

Steve--totally agreed. Big Chill is an iconic soundtrack but one that some movie producers now bemoan--as it really was the one that started the trend of huge selling pop music soundtracks--even though for that film it made complete sense.

[Sylph]

Harry Gregson-Williams: Ibelin (Kingdom of Heaven OST)