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My personal favorite film score of all time has to be from The Mummy (1999). Jerry Goldsmith's score is just perfect. Sure, its Egyptian-sounding (half steps, slidy-strings, etc) but it just seems to carry the weight of 3000 years of ancient history in it. From the very opening shot down the pyramid, you know that Egypt is loving powerful and scary. Great use of brass and choir. My absolute favorite moment in the score has to be O'Connel's hero theme (7:09 here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh8ihtzzNtU). To me, this is more iconic and memorable than Indiana Jones' theme. Christ, my nine-year old self ran around the house fighting imaginary mummies with this blasting in the background. Definitely an example of a score that is vastly superior to the film it was in (though I do love me some Mummy). I also find it interesting when film scores follow rock chord progressions; an example of this would be the main hereo's theme in Lord of the Rings (I don't know the track name, but it's bombast and plays during Fellowship when the 9 of them get together and walk by the camera). That main chords of that song are quite rock based: you have a Am C Am, and then it goes in to the all-too-typical four chords Am F C G (as seen in MGMT's Kids, Avril Lavrigne's Complicated, Toto's Africa, etc etc). It's sneaky, but it definitely hits those chords and I'm sure that has a lot to do with how memorable and thrilling the tune is.
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Dec 20, 2012 21:43
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:15 |
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Darko posted:One of my most annoying pet peeves is people who judge a score based on how "hummable" it is. Essentially, there's an "it's only good if I remember it" way of determining quality that doesn't make much sense. Whoa whoa, I could hum the asteroid field song all day. Needless to say, I often overwhelm people and make them feel uncomfortable when I do, also the key changes are tricky. I think "hummable" scores are perfectly reasonable to expect when the characters or situations the score is trying to represent are equally "drawable"... That is, iconic characters (spider-man, Indiana jones), easily recreated in the minds eye, seem to go best when there are memorable auditory representations as well. Whereas non "drawable" characters or movies, like Pride and Prejudice or The Kings speech, don't have the same expectations for what the score should do. I'm not saying a score can't be great without being hummable (although I find your asteroid field example misses the mark, perhaps maybe Gandalf's death suite in Fellowship, or Galadriels theme? Apologies for using only LOTR songs), I'm just saying I understand the criticism when it's aimed at movies like ASM.
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Dec 21, 2012 23:53
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