Greatest motion picture composer of all time.

[AgentF]

this thread makes me salivate.

ennio morricone and nino rota are in each other's arms at the top.

 

[Poindexter Arachnid]

Morricone is the man. In the top 3 for me.
Rota's work on The Godfather is brilliant.

 

[FigerPuppet]

Clint Mansell (The Fountain, Moon)
Bent Fabricius-Bjerre (A bunch of iconic Danish classics)
Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings, duh)
Hans Zimmer (Lion King, Batmen, The Last Samurai - NOT Shitception)

And a few others.

 

[The Ü™]

This Wendy Carlos score made me cry, as did the movie:

Clint Mansell (The Fountain, Moon)

Don't forget Doom.

 

[Gloriana]

Of all time? I'm a sucker for Ennio Morricone too.

I like Phillip Glass' stuff, and I like Yann Tiersen (even though he has only scored a few films). I'm also a huge fan of Danny Elfman.

I do love John Williams, but yeah, his stuff has a certain bland quality to it, it's hard to explain. I mean, I wet my pants with glee whenever the Star Wars theme is played loudly, I can't fucking help it, but I don't have a lot of his stuff on my MP3 player. His stuff is like comforting junk food to me. I don't mean that in a snarky way, I just mean that it has more of a pop music feel to me.

 

[Within]

Sorted in order of appreciation, descending. <- Not a Julyan reference.

Clint Mansell
Michael Giacchino
Ennio Morricone
John Murphy
Hans Zimmer
Howard Shore
David Julyan
Yann Tiersen
tomandandy
Michael Nyman
Danny Elfman
Asche & Spencer
Michael Andrews

 

[93JC]

John Williams, and it's not even close.

He is the composer all other composers aspire to be. His music transcended the genre and for the first time motion picture scores became truly 'pop'. Guys like Silvestri, Horner, Zimmer, Giacchino: you wouldn't even know their names if not for John Williams.

 

[Stephano]

So I bring this thread back to life..

I usually hate soundtracks and I find most of them boring and uninteresting. Most of all traditional scores with a standard orchestra and cheesy melodies. (Don't want to be mean, I don't name any composers to not offend anybody)
But I enjoy Hans Zimmer's works very much. His music gives me thrills every time I listen to it, just great. I don't like the older ones that much (<2000s).

Favorites: The Dark Knight Triology (Co-Composer: James N. Howard), Gladiator, the Kung Fu Panda movies (together with John Powell), the 2 Sherlock Holmes, the Pirates of the Caribbean series (I think he has done the first one together with Klaus Badelt), Inception, Angels & Demons... I think that was it.

Oh, and I love John Powell's score to How to train you Dragon. Really one of the best musical pieces of all time.

A few of my favorite tracks:

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

Bernard Herrmann.

 

[anti-villain]

My favourites (in no particular order):

Basil Poledouris
James Newton Howard
John Williams
Jerry Goldsmith
Alan Silvestri

 

[Totenkindly]

Okay, just as with James Horner, I have caught John Murphy reusing notable cues.

The ones i ran across involved 28 Weeks Later, Sunshine, and Kick-Ass, two separate cues each used (with slight modification, but obviously not even near enough to result in me not noticing) in at least two of the movies in that selection, and maybe more if I'd scan each movie in its entirety. It was bad enough that I didn't even realize he did all three of those movies until I recalled the similarity of the cues and looked him up at IMDB.
.
I'd have to rewatch 28 Days Later to see if he does it there.

I actually liked the cues, it's just that they were pretty memorable scenes. (The intro zombie chase in 28WL matches the Big Daddy-Kicks-Warehouse scene in K-A... the Suited-Capa-trying-to-beat-timer in Sunshine matches Hit Girl saving BD and KA in K-A... and others as well.)

 

[Ivy]

I don't know many of the names in this thread- at some point I'll probably go down a Google rabbit-hole checking them out.

But for me- Thomas Newman is my favorite. I came to him through American Beauty and Six Feet Under, but I also LOVE his Pixar scores.

I also like David Arnold who does the music for the BBC Sherlock series, and after I looked him up I found that he did a lot of Bond soundtracks I liked as well. I think some (not all) of his stuff can tend to feel dated after a while but it's very exciting while it's current.

 

[Ivy]

Oh- and by way of a PS, Morricone is amazing, and Mancini is also fun.

 

[Totenkindly]

I tend to like Newman's Six Feet Under and American Beauty stuff better, but he's still good... Did we skip over him elsewhere in the thead? I don't remember....

 

[Stanton Moore]

HAHA!! love this^^

My favorite is John Williams. Zimmer did some good things.
Williams liberally 'borrowed' his best film music from Prokofiev, Stravinski and Rachmaninof. Not melodies, but orchestration techniques. The scene when the droids are walking around on Tatuine(sp): straight outa Russian music.
So go and listen to the originals.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

John Barry
Lalo Schifrin
Ennio Morricone
Alan Silvestri (80's)
James Horner (80's)
Basil Poledouris
Pino Donaggio
Georgio Moroder
John Carpenter
Fabio Frizzi
Goblin
John Barry
Bernard Herrmann
Miklos Rosza
Danny Elfman
Thomas Newman
Howard Shore
John Williams
Elmer Bernstein
Jerry Goldsmith
Maurice Jarre
Nino Rota

 

[The Ü™]

And then there's this little forgotten gem:

 

[Cloud of Thunder]

Thomas Newman is my favorite composer ever. His music is both grand and introspective.