posted
Avad - I mentioned Black Beauty straight up near the beginning. Quickly became one of my favorite scores.
The Shrek score doesn't make a great album. The only really memerable track is the Escape from the Dragon sequence, and even then - it works much better in the film. (I bought the score, listened to it twice, and have yet to put it back in :shrug:)
But I want to double-emphasize two scores I mentioned before: Joe Hisaishi's Princess Mononoke (think Japanese Braveheart for the sound of the score), and Spirited Away. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. And apart from his score to the live action film Kikujiro and a (also wonderful) Symphonic Suite of music from Mononoke, these are the only albums of his available stateside. Which is a shame.
posted
Props for the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. The Seat Belts rule all and Yoko Kanno is amazing. I don't know if it's out there (I havn't looked), but the Hellsing soundtrack should be good. It's anime too, so it might be hard to find.
Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I definitely agree with all comments on Cowboy Bebop...I'm a recent Yoko Kanno convert, and I love what I've heard thus far.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
I entirely miss a thread, and I still have something relevant to contribute when I return!
Must-have for instrumentals and culture: The soundtrack to Monsoon Wedding. It's got original score in a classical-Hindustani type marriage and some poppier dance beats and also some remixes of the Fuse Box sequence which is, if you've seen the movie, one of the scenes that makes it shine. That and the first time he sees Alice. The cinematography is beautiful, and then he eats the marigold! Ha!
But I digress. As mentioned, Amelie is merveilleux.
Something I've always tried to find is the soundtrack to A Little Romance. It has the greatest use of Vivaldi's concerto in D - a particular piece I can never find on a classical compilation but I have found on a classical guitar Sugo music Cd called A Walk in the Forest.
I'm a fan of the Beautiful Mind soundtrack, as James Hornery-Cliche as it may be. It's very soothing.
And I don't know who composed it, and I certainly don't like the movie, but the Unfaithful soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous.
If you like O Brother, might I recommend Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood? Along the same lines, but more female.
Glad to be able to contribute.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh! And nearly forgot Million Dollar Hotel (which I'm sure you've got, Speed, but is worth mentioning nonetheless). It's a beautiful mishmash of U2, the nebulous "MDH Band" (Bono, Edge, Danny Lanois & Brian Eno) and some royally funky remixes by Mila Jojovich and even "Anarchy in the USA" to bring the liquid grooves to a screeching conclusion. "Falling at Your Feet," "Stateless," some of the reprises of "Satellite of Love" are particular highpoints, thought they all fuze nicely and fuzzily in with the score. And you can't forget "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" with lyrics by Salman Rushdie. Another proof that the 90s was what U2 was all about.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hey. There's another soundtrack thread now, and I don't want to steal it. But, reading back over this one, I just wanted to thank the people that recommended the soundtrack to About a Boy by Badly Drawn boy. I finally got it, a couple months ago, based on your recommendations. And I love it. It's better than I expected, and I expected good things. Thanks.
Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
dances with wolves (i wanna say john barry) second (third) last of the mohicans
there are several movies (the soundtracks of which i may not have heard, so i don't know if they're exclusively original score) that have, IMO, great main titles and/or original songs:
jurassic park apollo 13 independence day forrest gump the full monty
ok, i lied. i think jurassic park is the only one that may or may not be all original, but i still think the original music on the rest is good.
more often than not, i get too into a movie to notice a soundtrack, and if it's any indication of my tastes (believe it or not, i consider myself a musician), the last soundtrack "i just had to have" was school of rock. sue me. plus, a lot of my choices were already taken. Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Also consider Castle in the Sky and anything else that Joe Hisaishi has done.
Edit: Okay, so I'd like to give a big fat third nomination for Howard Shore, since I apparently have trouble reading and absorbing information at the same time.
And Mayday is absolutely 100% dead-on about the Trigun soundtrack. That's some great stuff.
posted
Okay, I'm back. I've been expanding my collection lately, so I thought it might be time to bump this thread with a few new finds.
First off, my new favorite American soundtrack composer is Harry Gregson-Williams. Apparently, Hans Zimmer gave him a foot in the door, so many of the soundtracks he's done have been the traditonal action-adventure movies. He does a good job with them, too... I have Spy Game, and I quite like it. But apparently he prefers doing quirkier movies-- cartoons and the like-- that give him some unique inspiration. For example, he did Chicken Run, which is a great album (and movie). But my favorite of his soundtracks is Antz. It was a vaguely amusing film, but the soundtrack is genius. Unique and completely swell.
I got into Mr. G-W via his soundtrack to another quirky project: the music for Metal Gear Solid 2. The album is my least favorite of his. It sounded great in the game, but the CD just didn't work. But while I was importing that, I got the original Metal Gear Solid soundtrack. That album is great. It's midi quality music, but composed so well you never even notice. I don't know if it's just because I liked the game so much, but I love the soundtrack in a way I never expected.
I've got plenty of Japanese music lately. The Cowboy Bebop music has been mentioned, and I love it. In fact, I liked the original soundtrack so much that I've got vol. 2 (No Disc), vol. 3 (Blue) and the remixes (Music for Freelance) coming to me. I also liked the Final Fantasy X soundtrack so much that I found a reasonable source for some of Uematsu's prior Final Fantasy soundtracks, and they're in the mail as well. I'll let you know if they're as good.
Finally, my favorite of the Japanese music is the soundtracks to the Silent Hill games, composed by Akira Yamaoka. Actually, I only have two of them. Silent Hill 3 (the PS2 game) came with the soundtrack. It took me a couple of listens, but after I got into it, it became one of my two or three all-time favorite albums. It's one of the ones that I have to make myself not listen to so that I won't get sick of it. It's ambient electronic music with strangely addicting and understated melodies running through it. It's even got the occasional vocal track, but it's worked into the mood so seamlessly that it doesn't break the atmosphere. I liked Silent Hill 3 so much that I ordered Silent Hill 2, and it was just as good. No vocal tracks on this one, but equally addicting and brilliant. The crazy thing about it is how different it is from what you'd expect. It's the soundtrack to a Japanese survival horror video game. But if you didn't know it was Japanese, you might never guess. If you didn't know it was horror music, you'd never guess. If you didn't know it was music from a video game, you'd never guess. In fact, it's not even that obvious that it's a soundtrack at all...it sounds more like an extraordinarily well composed album of electronic music. But at the same time it's the perfect music for the games. It works so well on so many levels that I can't even describe it.
Okay, that's my shameless bump of this thread. I don't know if anyone else has any fresh suggestions, but those are mine. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
John Williams, James Horner, Enrico Morricone, Danny Elfman...all great.
I noticed that Glory by James Horner wasn't mentioned. The music from that soundtrack is used over and over again in trailers for movies and advertisements for TV shows or the background music in the emotional scenes of biographies...
Do any of these composers have their work used more then once, on different soundtracks?
Posts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
My all time favourite is BEN HUR, by Miklos Rosza. But a very close second is the soundtrack to McKENNA'S GOLD, a big late 60s western starring Gregory Peck. The music is by the immortal Quincy Jones, and is fantastic. Unfortunately the album's unavailable I think, which is a pain in the butt, because mine got stolen from my dorm in college!
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Got more than a few that have been mentioned (and I heartily agree that the last song on the Princess Bride soundtrack should have been left off -- I suppose we should be grateful it wasn't done in rap).
My current favorite for car listening is the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. Really gets you going, although there is a tendency to want to drift alongside boat trailers at stoplights and raise the long nines...
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I definitely need to get some of these soundtracks. Actually, I think I have them, but I am reformatting my hard drive on Monday and need to find a way to keep all of *cough* my music. Arrgh, one of my speakers blew so I have not listened to my music for a while, but I will remedy that this weekend.
I don't know if these two movies fit in to your category Speed, but while I was growing up my favorite soundtracks were Robin Hood (the one with Kevin Costner) and Willow. They complemented Dungeons and Dragons unlike any other music I ever heard. Of course, my music collection was really small, but if you are 10-17 and into the whole role-playing thing, I highly recommend those two albums (which I have not heard for well over 10 years).
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Walker and Straight To Hell are two great movie soundtracks by the late Joe Strummer (formerly of The Clash).
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
MAGNOLIA's Score by Jon Brion is nothing short of amazing.
and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM's score by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet will have you clawing at the walls, it's that jarring and effective.
Posts: 1572 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
now that i think about it MAGNOLIA's Orignial Motion picture soundtrack counts too. not just the score, but hte entire album worth of music AIMEE MANN wrote just for the film (well, fleshed out for the film). so...go buy it.
Posts: 1572 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just got a new one and I thought it was worthy of ressurecting the thread for.
BT is a genius. He's been one of the most original and fresh voices in the techno/ trance scene for a while. Somebody making movies noticed this, and let him do the score for the movie Monster. I hadn't seen the movie, but when I heard that he'd done the soundtrack I bought it immediately, sight unseen (so to speak). It didn't disappoint me.
First off, it's a two disc soundtrack. There's a DVD and a CD. The DVD is actually the primary medium for the soundtrack. It was composed for surround sound, and the DVD contains the soundtrack in DTS audio, as it was meant to be heard. It also has a stereo mix. It's about 2 hours long, which is another reason it was released on DVD, and it's pretty much a single work, with tracks fading into each other. Absolutely brilliant stuff. It's hard to believe it was composed by BT--it's not trance. It's very ambient, kind of like Eno, but with fascinating melodies and rhythms coming through often enough to make it more accessable than some other pure ambient music. It's played with real instruments, but it has sounds and samples woven through it also. And the 5.1 is used to full effect, making it a completely immersive experience.
Of course, there's a CD with it as well. It contains a stereo mix of about half the tracks (mainly the more melodic ones), and it's great. Well worth the price of the disc even if you don't have the equipment to take advantage of the surround sound experience.
I'm getting a fairly hefty collection of soundtracks, and it's not often anymore that I'm really surprised by a movie score. This one did it for me. Just thought I'd share.
[ August 15, 2004, 12:34 AM: Message edited by: Speed 2: Cruise Control ]
Posts: 127 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
