NOW PLAYING LI

Ennio Morricone - Days of Heaven

One of his very best, period. That love theme takes the cake, but a lot more is going on there. Now I have The Farmer and the Girl on repeat, my poor CD...

Great action music there!

Ennio Morricone - Once Upon a Time in America

Thus endeth my series. I am definitely open to more discovery, but this was also a largely symbolic endeavor. Versatility is the key point and nothing one can sum up in just mere couple of sentences.

He was a genius and he will be missed.

Ilan Eshkeri & Shigeru Umebayashi - Ghost of Tsushima

A very interesting score. The Eshkeri bit is fairly straightforward though a very decent listen in and of itself. But Umebayashi's contribution is beautiful and reflective. I have the finale on repeat!

Wow, has it really been that long? I remember hearing the news on the radio during my early morning commute to a college internship I had at an ad agency at the time. I remember being in tears on and off throughout the day and my coworkers kept wondering what was wrong. I didn't really want to tell them that it was just a legendary film composer passing, and not something more personal - but in all honesty, as a film music lover, composer deaths do hit hard. They kind of become a part of your life and memories through their music, so as weird as it sounds to some people, it does feel like losing a longtime friend.

Oh gosh yes, absolutely with James Horner too - he was the one who got me into film music oh so many years ago with AN AMERICAN TAIL as a kid. I remember crying my way through THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN because there were little pieces of his genius still to be found there after his death and how hard it was thinking about his life cut short, his grieving family and also what the score might have been had he been able to finish it. It's hard to think that we'll never again hear new creations, sounds and experiments or musical artworks from some of these giants of film music. But we can treasure who we have still and continue to appreciate the contributions of those we've lost.

Jerry Goldsmith - Tora! Tora! Tora!

I am aware I am in the minority on this one, but it's one of my Goldsmith favorites. Brilliant, challenging, intelligent.

Pino Donaggio - Il Carniere

One of his best. It's good that the death of Morricone triggered me te revisit some works of other Italian composers I hadn't listened to in a long time.

James Horner - A Beautiful Mind

One of my top 10 scores of all times, which is quite remarkable as I generally admire a different kind of scoring. Still, Horner is probably the composer I have listened to the most, but this score has many beauty marks.. As a listening experience, on cd, it is perfect, while some of the unreleased music is rather uninspiring, as is the overall ridiculous use in the film and the never-ending unoriginality of Horner in general, but this is something I mostly set aside.

What's your second best song? Mines probably Amii Steward - Il Segreto del Sahara.

Ji-woong Bark - Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom

In a way, it's a hugely degrading synth score, but the evocative, meditative core is instantly rewarding.

Dat main title.

Today, I have played a lot of 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong action music, which is often not very rewarding musically, but effective in context.

Amongst things. The music to some of his early Kung fu films (1970s and 1980s), his heroic bloodshed... There is on occasional ´catchy tune´, but it's mostly the degenerative type of music. Somehow effective in each of the films, but in reality, and especially in the spectacular ones (Lat Sau San Taam-Hard-Boiled, Dip Huet Seung Hung/The Killer), I couldn't care less for the music.

I also listened to a lot of music of the most essential kung fu/ action films of both decades, including a lot of re-use of existing scores (I compiled it myself), original scores and newly composed scores (for am English-based market). Especially these last ones are often musically more interesting, but from a different point of view, they fail miserably in grasping the basic concept. In a lot of these films, there’s a wealth of ingredients that fail; bad acting, bad music, inconsistencies, poor melodrama, humor for the acquired taste (some of it does work, some of it doesn't), whole segments that are almost impossible to enjoy..... But If the choreography, cinematography and editing are good in these action scenes, nothing else matters. I have seen so many films in which a sluggish synthesizer action rhythm isn't obtrusive, nor really elevating it, but it's somehow effective and even enjoyable. There's even some music I despise in and out of context, but still, it doesn't hurt a spectacular scene, which is remarkable.

Going back to John Woo. The Killer has melodramatic ingredients I couldn't care less about, but such melodrama is much more digestible with good music, which is evident in Face Off. It's the only film that almost equals some of his best earlier works, while there's a less rough around the edges approach, and there is a smoother American feel in many ways, in which a cheap synthesizer score would actually have hurt the film. Hard Boiled, devoid of melodrama, has so much music that leaves me cold.

In short, most of it was true torture.

The Killer is a rather notorious example, as so many others. Maybe, I will write a review of the music in a randomly selected Hong Kong 1970s - 1990s action film.