Favorite Musical Score ?

[johnmiic]

I used to buy movie scores for Star Wars & Star Trek before I bought rock albums because, as a kid, I thought they were rarer. So there's plenty I like.

Batman (Danny Elfman 1989)
LOTR - The Fellowship of the Ring
Star Trek II, III & VI
Star Trek (TV) Music from Amok Time & The Doomsday Machine
Star Wars & TESB
Superman
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Symphonic Suite Yamato - the original music from Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato by Hiroshi Miyagawa. As good as any spaghetti western soundtrack by Ennio Morricone`, ( this guy is that good in my opinion). Preceeds John Williams Star Wars by a few years.

These are also great:

Last of the Mohichans
Last Starfighter (Out Of Print)
Back to the Future
The Rocketeer

Batman (1960's TV Out Of Print)
Batman Begins
The Village
The Time Machine (2002)
Yellow Submarine

You can download the updated Last Starfighter Soundtrack for free here-I did and enjoy it on my Ipod nowadays:

Download The Last Starfighter Soundtrack.zip from megaupload.com - Filestube.com - download everything

Songtracks:

Empire Records
Scrubs (TV)
Charmed (TV)


Still waiting on 6MDM and Buck Rogers (TV) soundtracks to be released someday.

[GSPUSA]

Van-Halen: Eruption

[Hector]

I'm surprised nobody has said close encounters of the 3rd kind.

I only listed there...but had it been five...Close Encounters definitely makes it.

Ok...five now...

1. Superman
2,. Star Wars
3. The Natural
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
5. Legend (I love the American-released Tangerine Dream soundtrack, the European-released Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack is nice but too traditional).

[Hector]

I mean, who doesn't get goosebumps listening to The Natural (and I'm kinda shocked no one else besides me has even listed it)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54-6yimtjtA

Yes...chills and thrills every time...definitely Randy Newman's best track by a mile...

[BlackKnight]

Team America.
The Song Worked 3 different ways too.

[Tyme2tyme]

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2. Kelly's Heroes
3. Star Trek TMP
4. Silent Running

[Brue]

Star Wars set the standard -

All of the soundtracks listed are great but I wouldn't count many of them as "Musical Scores". The score I feel id the musical background or accompaniment to the film. Those pop tunes that add spice or even the numbers in a musical are part of the soundtrack but not the score.

Think about films like Batman (89) that had 2 separate discs released - the Elfman Score and the Prince album.

i am not sure about the distinction but i would say that a score would be music composed for a film and a soundtrack is (often) existing music compiled for a film.

[huedell]

Star Wars set the standard -

All of the soundtracks listed are great but I wouldn't count many of them as "Musical Scores". The score I feel id the musical background or accompaniment to the film. Those pop tunes that add spice or even the numbers in a musical are part of the soundtrack but not the score.

Think about films like Batman (89) that had 2 separate discs released - the Elfman Score and the Prince album.

i am not sure about the distinction but i would say that a score would be music composed for a film and a soundtrack is (often) existing music compiled for a film.

YELLOW SUB...like BATMAN has both... to me, the difference
in YELLOW SUB with the prexisting pop songs is that many of them
are used in their entirety akin to a full music video...while in BATMAN
it's just snippets or larger chunks of PRINCE songs.

I'm not limiting the use of pop songs as you had suggested, and, still,
as much as I like PRINCE and his BATMAN stuff... AFAIC Elfman/Prince
does not stand a chance against Martin/Beatles.

if I was JUST a score? Well, that makes it tougher, doesn't it?

For sure, Elfman and Martin cannot (IMHO) stand up to Williams' best.

If I had to choose, I'd probably end up picking STAR WARS like you did.

[johnmiic]

I spec. Elfman for Batman which is a film score. I'm using film score and soundtrack interchangeably. Most of the world seems to do that these days. I don't consider Prince's music a score but merchandising. The Elfman score was very much in demand and highly anticipated when the Batman film took off in 1989. Prince's music for Purple Rain might be a film score but his songs for Batman are not.

Yellow Submarine was more than a story based on the song Yellow Submarine. It seemed to me it celebrates Beatlemania, the `60's and pychadelia. Martin's symphonic score is very, very good but the main focus is the Beatles songs included for that film. Music video's did not exist at that time the film was made. If you're going to invoke comparison you can compare Yellow Submarine to Help! and A Hard Days Night, and perhaps the Monkees HEAD, Heavy Metal, Rock & Rule, Flash Gordon, ( or other films of this type that I may not have seen). I don't think you can really compare it to full scores for other films.

I would not go so far to say if Williams is better than Morricone`, Martin, Elfman, Goldsmith, Hermann, Safan or Horner. All the soundtracks/scores listed in this thread so far are good.

[Hector]

Man...I forgot Queen's Flash Gordon...

[starsky]

star wars and indiana jones!

[The Bat]

Gladiator

[MLoudin]

For me:
Glory
Forrest Gump
1941
are the first three I think of...

[huedell]

I would not go so far to say if Williams is better than Morricone`, Martin, Elfman, Goldsmith, Hermann, Safan or Horner.

All opinion of course, but I have yet to see someone use motifs/themes
as brazenly as Williams, and do so wonderfully 99.9 percent of the time
with those pieces.

I think the moment I became a true believer was when DUEL OF THE FATES was introduced in PHANTOM MENACE.

Forget your bad feelings about the prequels for a moment (if need be)...
and singularly note that outside of the quality of the REST of the movie,
the way Williams ressurected his knack for STAR WARS music
15 years later with a totally exciting new piece in DUEL OF THE FATES
was proof of his worth right there.

[david_b]

POTA, Raiders, Galactica and Superman (main themes primarily..)
Space:1999 and Next Gen's 'Best of Both Worlds' (for television)