Movie/TV/Game Scores Through The Ages - Alan's Personal Favourites

That's as good a reason to choose as any in a "favourite" topic. I sometimes as myself which score would I choose to listen to "now" if I have two titles I favour.

All these words reflect my position as well. Never heard of Jennifer 8, but I will definitely check it out now. Kilar's Dracula is also my clear winner. It's in my top5 of best scores of all time, and probably the first score I ever heard in full. My brother used to play it as background music for RPGs and not surprisingly it worked wonders in creating an atmosphere.

My 1992 top5 looks like this:
1.Dracula (Kilar)
2.1492 (Vangelis)
3.Last of the mohicans (Jones/Edelman)
4.Les coeurs brûlés (Cosma)
5.Far and away (Williams)

Other scores I enjoy of that year are Candyman (Glass), Christopher Columbus: The discovery (Eidelman), City of joy (Morricone) and Medicine man (Goldsmith).

Another great year, that's for sure.

Peter

It's worth keeping an eye out for Alan, I often see it in bucket shops going for a couple of quid.

1993 - Jurassic Park - John Williams

Williams' theme from this film is one that is familiar with the general public and it is of a strength and quality that it doesn't suffer from the frequent appearances on TV in inappropriate places. There's not much to be said for the theme that hasn't been said before, but it's a grand theme that's one of Williams' best. It's a very versatile theme: a big statement theme, a more subtle emotional theme, a processional theme, etc and when it builds and gets blasted out by a full orchestra it still has the power to take the breath away.

Cues such as "Journey To The Island" and "Welcome To Jurassic Park" are cues of some length and just fly by when I listen to them. I won't say I listen to all the score when I dip into this CD but it's the best for me from 1993. Williams' other score from this year, Schindler's List, is another worthy title but I find it a bit too emotionally draining to really enjoy very often. I can appreciate it and can marvel at what Williams has done to create such a score, but it's not a favourite in the sense of enjoyment.

Scores such as Trevor Jones' Cliffhanger, Nyman's The Piano (way overused since the film was released), Goldsmith's Rudy and Patrick Doyle's Much Ado About Nothing all have great tracks and themes that are worth a mention for this year. And the quality of Kitaro's score for Heaven and Earth wants me to see this film someday. And Shirley Walker's Batman: Mask of The Phantasm has some great tracks.

But there seems to be a number of foreign titles that are worthy of a mention. Pino Donaggio's Dove Siete? Io Sono Qui is a good score if you like your music strings-heavy (there's little, if any, additional instruments in the orchestration) and tracks such as "La Descente a La Mine" from Jean-Louis Roque's Germinal are great (and again, strings-heavy). Henri Seroka's Kuchnia Polska contains some lovely emotional cues, Norbert J. Schneider's Stalingrad has some particularly powerful but dark cues and (probably my favourite of these foreign efforts) Wojciech Kilar's König Der Letzten Tage probably has my favourite melody of the year as heard in "Die Unmoegliche Liebe".

Quite a good year as it turned out!

I'm not a massive fan of JURASSIC PARK, I far prefer the sequel score.

My choice would go with Kilar or Nyman.

Yes, THE PIANO has been played to death but then, so has JURASSIC PARK.

As usual there are lots I have not heard.

No, I have heard Sommersby. It just doesn't figure in my list.

Yes, heard that one too. But doesn't rate high enough with me to get a mention. Having about 50 titles to choose from for this year alone there are some titles that are favourites of others that won't get a mention.

Here, we see eye-to-eye, Alan. JP is probably both my favourite Williams score and my favourite score of all time.

Honorable mentions that year: ARMY OF DARKNESS (Josep LoDuca), BLOOD IN BLOOD OUT (Bill Conti), DEMOLITION MAN (Elliot Goldenthal), FALLING DOWN (James Newton Howard), GETTYSBURG (Randy Edelman), THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS (Hans Zimmer), MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Patrick Doyle), THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (Danny Elfman), POINT OF NO RETURN (Hans Zimmer), SCHINDLER'S LIST (John Williams), THE SECRET GARDEN (Zbigniew Preisner), SOMMERSBY (Danny Elfman).

It's a fantastic year, maybe my favourite of all time (also when I was beginning to be seriously interested in soundtracks), and all of the above are brilliant in their own ways.

But as I said, there's no beating:

JURASSIC PARK (John Williams)

I already own it!! It's a good one, although it doesn't quite grab me the way, say, Zimmer does with his Asian-tinged scores.

Tim, have you heard Zimmer's House of the Spirits? I'd love to hear your opinion about that one!

Sadly out of print...