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So you don't think Goldenthal is a more intelligent composer than Zimmer?

Goldenthal uncontrolled dissonance?

Bolt John Powell

Hancock's sister score. Doesn't have as a good theme as Hancock, but it's more enjoyable throughout.

Bare in a mine I don't like disagreeing with intelligent opinions mind you.
I feel dirty.

I bet that's not what she--...oh wait, I'm on probation. Crap.

It's not even free; free dissonance is a child hitting the keys of a piano randomly without knowing what he's doing.

Listen to Toccata And Dreamscapes, tomorrow, when the booze is out of your system Listen Carefully; there's a musical idea, a level of organization, musicianship and both technical and compositional brilliance that you won't find easily. His dissonance is more organized that the vast majority of tonal and plain easily listenable modern scores out there and that music is simply a brilliant craft; period. Not everyone can do it and it's not a matter of tastes; mind you, as Steven already said but seemed to have gone unnoticed, i TOO listen to Zimmer way more frequently than Goldenthal. But it's not about opinions here.

In an age where every hack would call himself an "academic composer" and claim stuff like "every tonal piece of music written from the late romantic era onward is a piece of repetitive junk" or "there's nothing to be said via tonal music anymore or nothing to be written" or that "film music is a clever device that was created and exists only to satisfy the cheap pop urges of the directors"*, people that go on and produce junk that they call serialism but nobody can really perform or listen to (as they say they don't care about their music being performed live by physical instruments, ever, or if anyone listens to that at home) but which in essence sounds like a 4 year old hitting the keys of the piano - or place on a live gig 2 chicks rubbing one another and groaning lesbian moans for 10 whole minutes under the escort of random percussive hits and consider that an "art"* , YES, atonal / dissonant music or "academic" composition (as they call it) or serialism / 12-note / whatever, is in SERIOUS crisis and takes a lot MORE to compose such a coherent and meaningful work in the field, as people like Goldenthal or Penderecki or David Shire or Joel McNeely (i know who killed me) among others as well, managed to do numerous times.

And, like Steven said, of course there's division between artists and composers; it'd be very silly to suggest otherwise, or that it's all about opinions and not real objective means. TASTES and PERSONAL PREFERENCES are the ones circling around subjective opinions, but when it comes to musical writing and composition, there IS objective criteria that set the people doing it apart. To even suggest that in a musical world and history where both Tyler Bates or Graeme Revell (not ditching the later, but i do consider him a very bad composer with some very few bright exceptions) and Beethoven or Tschaikofsky or Wagner (etc) are ALL called composers, yes there IS a means of dividing one's ability and musicianship from another, no matter if some will like it or not.

Through the years I've came in contact with virtually all the types of music out there, from the music of Morocco and Middle-east to China and Asia, modern popular genres, classical music, renaissance and the Middle ages, Baroque, Romantic era, music of the 20th century, film music, rock, pop, trance, rnb, drum n bass, techno, metal of all kinds, everything, progressive acid, dance of all kinds, electronic and electronica; everything; in all that, based on various factors and usually within each genre specifically ('cause in very few occasions you can go cross-genre and be objective and realistic), there ARE objective and actual criteria on musicianship and it takes both composers and also musicians / artists.

Writing music is always a hard thing to do; from the simplest children's lullaby to the most complex dissonance out there. You must have enormous data, experience and most importantly absolute musical knowledge of what you're going to do in specific, in order to start off; however - and i believe this, it takes something more than that, in essence and in spirit, to deliver musical noema after that; it's not just knowledge? otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell John Ottman and John Debney from John Williams himself or Andrew Lockington from Elliot Goldenthal or even the RC troops from Zimmer himself. Just because one tries to write something and finds difficulties, it doesn't strictly and exclusively mean that that thing he tries to write is impossible and extremely difficult. Difficult it is, but impossible; no. Usually, the cause lies within the person himself. One might not be ready yet and they have to realize not transfer the "blame" onto an external factor.

* claims by professors in my university (music department, school of fine arts, composition dpt, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) during the years 2003-2008. I've been there, in person.

* actual "composition" presented live, from a young Greek hack (student of the same uni) who calls himself a composer but manages to get ridiculed everytime he attempts to make such a live gig. I've watched that live, in person, this year.

And that's great

Quite well said, sir.

Poltergeist Jerry Goldsmith

I actually want to marry this score. This really is an excellent score, the epitome of 5 stars IMO.

I love the score, the whole of it; i guess i am the only one?

Wah! I see a lot of my fave Zimmer works mentioned in the last few posts. I think I like Zimmer best when he's doing the smaller films (The Holiday, Spanglish, House of the Spirits). His action scores just bore me (except for my previous Gladiator-infatuation-phase which was mostly due to the Lisa Gerrard parts).
Those tender themes from Pearl Harbor I've heard on SST are simply tops. I must check out The Thin Red Line

Cause it's a very special blend of sounds and unlike many other middles-eastern influenced scores, it has musical and sonic balance.

It's tremendously influential. Whilst nobody really bothered with these sounds prior to BHD and Gladiator, Zimmer brought those instruments and arrangements to the wider western audiences which went (and still go crazy) about it; even to date, at least 2 or 3 scores (including game scores which have been tremendously altered since BHD, especially those coming from the RC itself) resembling or being greatly influenced by BHD are being released.

If we are talking strictly modern film music here, i'd say that the most influential scores of the last 10 years are BHD, GLADIATOR and Powell's Bourne.

oh! in the most influential scores of the last 10 yeares there aren't any Goldenthal scores?

Just Kidding.

Air Force One Jerry Goldsmith

For me, Christmas is partly about playing lots of Goldsmith. Every year for the past maybe 8 years or so (?) I would always receive at least one Goldsmith CD for Christmas. (Twilight Zone: The Movie and Under Fire was a particularly fine set of presents.)