[Closed] HANS ZIMMER

I guess you're talking about things which I think are better than the Transformers style for that kind of film, in which case I really love the three Matrix scores, a lot of Powell's efforts (particularly Bourne), Final Fantasy, SWAT, Elfman scores like Wanted, some Beltrami stuff (I Robot is excellent). Give me more time and I'll probably think of a bit more. All these prove that you can put intelligent music in less-than-intelligent films if you want to.

I think Da Vinci Code fails in the film too. It makes the film too heavy, trying too hard at times and not very subtle. In discussion with friends, we came to the opinion that it's not really Zimmer's thought, but rather the heavy hand that Ron Howard tends to have. He's far from a subtle storyteller, except some scenes in A Beautiful Mind, somehow - The Missing - and Apollo 13. Maybe Ransom could join the group.

The problem of the storyline it carries is really that there is no action. The film (and book from what I reckon, I tried to read it) is about guys talking in a house (the Teabing house sequence), so there isn't enough of ACTION (characters in action, not necessarily fully fledged chases, that would mean dialogue-less research in a library, see Seven for that) to carry it as a good film, which speaks with visuals (to Howard's and Goldsman's credits the Nicean scenes are told with flashbacks, but STILL it's not visual enough)

Zimmer's score is perfect for the kind of film it is too, but it takes itself too seriously. It does fit the genre called intellectual thriller, just as did Hannibal - the more classical approach, religiously-inclined choral writing also referential of some more modern works (Gorecki!), the tingling celesta writing, sensible choral lyrics (for the first time Zimmer's choral lyrics actually make sense). The thing is that it's too in-your-face and too serious. The lack of humor is a big flaw of the film to me too. Zimmer shou;ld have used the same kind of irony that made him deconstruct Mahler in Hannibal.

NP - Moulin Rouge Promo - Craig Armstrong

Lovely compilation. I would love to get a copy of the instrumental backing for all of the tracks. No one can do moody and tragedy and romance like Craig Armstrong can. His orchestral writing is similar to how John Barry does it, IMO, with lots of dense and slow strings accented by an instrumental solo or choir. Good stuff.

How could it be differently with the theme that carries? And where did humor fit in there?

I am sorry mate, firefox - the evil american weapon - didn't auto-correct me!

Unfortunately I just don't think Da Vinci Code was the most cinematic of books, yet it received a very straight-down-the-line adaptation. While I enjoyed reading it, it's pretty ludicrous, but you can get away with that a little more on the written page when you can dress it up in ways which just don't work on the screen. My problem with the music is that it's one of those scores which just keeps on saying "Look how IMPORTANT this scene is!" but if you do that for every scene (which it does), it gets very grating very quickly. I'm sure in this instance that I'd rather have heard from one of Ron Howard's other two favourites, Horner or Newman - Horner may have fallen into a similar trap but would probably have pulled himself back from the brink just in time.

However, it's a pretty awful film anyway, and we did get a very good album out of it, so things didn't work out entirely badly.

I haven't read the entire books, just some passages and reviews. To be honest i think it's hugely overrated and it got too much than what it truly deserved; too much hype, short lived though, and the movie was just as good as it deserved; maybe a bit more than that too.

That's true. The marriage of music and visuals in that long scene was very spot-on, very cleverly constructed, tremendously effective and quite stirring. I remember how i noticed that everyone in the packed theater back then was really stunned and speechless by that last long scene and the music played a predominant role in that; it grabbed you and was filling the whole theater, really in the foreground instead of the opposite which usually happens.

The problem is when Zimmer compose without scoring the sequence. I mean ,usually, he compose long suites and then he waits for the final edit of the film and he ,one of his underlings or the editor adapt his suite into the sequence.

Sometimes it works, but usually it seems too forced. (sometimes he compose for the scene, and then he makes a really good scores like The last Samurai )

Ironically this is one of the reasons why I listen his music, because it has his own life without the images.

A great comment, Jordi, but are you sure Zimmer works that way? I always thought he composes stuff to scenes and then puts them into suites for the scores, but I have no idea what he really does. If someone could enlighten me, please, be my guest.

Now that's something new I learned I did know Zimmer almost always arranges his scores into suites for album presentation. And methinks he did a pretty bad job on some! Like cutting out 75% of Lion King and putting the final battle cue first and the preceding battle music later in PoTC 3!!

Yeah. But it would've been more fun if a real complete was released along with the regular OST to see what way Zimmer wanted us to listen to it.