1-John Williams
2-Alan Silvestri
3-James Horner
4-Jerry Goldsmith
5-Bruce Broughton
6-Alan Menken
7-Joel McNeely
8-Danny Elfman
9-Michael Kamen
10-Marc Shaiman

And a series of questions :

Who's the one...

-whose music corresponds to your personnality : Alan Silvestri
-whose music embody your childhood : Alan Menken
-who makes you cry : James Horner
-who frightens you : Jerry Goldsmith
-who makes you laugh : Marc Shaiman
-who makes the best action music : Jerry Goldsmith
-who's the best from the golden age of film music : Erich Wolfgang Korngold
-who's the most underrated composer : Bruce Broughton
-who's your best hope for the future : Michael Giacchino
-...(s) who are still missing in the above list... :D : Basil Poledouris & James Newton Howard

And that's it ! :D

My top ten would look like this:

1. James Newton Howard
2. Jerry Goldsmith
3. John Williams
4. Michael Kamen
5. James Horner
6. Bruce Broughton
7. John Barry
8. Brian Tyler
9. Alan Silvestri
10. Elmer Bernstein

It is hard to rank composers. I like all the composers above. There are many I like that I did not put on the list. Film Score monthly put out a great issue last year that ranked the top 40 composers as well as the top 10 future stars.

I agree M. Giacchino is going to be one of the next greats. I know one of his assistants. I took a class with him at UCLA and we stay in touch. He keeps me up to date on Giacchino. For those of you who do not know who he is (he scored The Lost World Game for Speilberg which was the first playstation game to use a live orchestra, he has scored all of the Medal of Honor games with live orchestra, he recently scored the video game Frontline, he is the composer for two television shows: Alias and Lost, and he just scored his first huge film: Pixar's The Incredibles which his assistant tells me is going to make him a star...I can't wait to hear it). I also think Brian Tyler is going to be one of the next big stars: Listen to his music and you will see what I mean....Panic, The Children of Dune, and Timeline (highly recommend Timeline).

I can't believe 3 of my top ten died this year. Michael Kamen is the one that got me interested in film music. I remember being in band and having my band director pass out the music to "Robin Hood:Prince of Thieves". Before then I had never really paid attention to film music. Those melodies stuck with me. I quickly purchased the score. The next few scores that caught my attention were: John Barry's "Dances With Wolves", James Horner's "Willow" and "Legends of the Fall", Trevor Jones/R. Edelman's "Last of the Mohicans", and John Williams "Star Wars". I was officially hooked and have been for the past 14 years.

I am curious to see who others think the top ten are. I like the old style of hollywood as well, Bernard Hermann, Alex North, Korngold, Steiner, Freidhofer, Waxman, Alfred Newman, and others, but I think that would be a different top ten list. Randy Edelman (I love his "Dragonheart" score) and Basil Poledouris (one of my favorite scors of all time is "Lonesome Dove") almost made my list. :)

Thanks for your interesting answers man !

You made me think to add another question about the golden age composers btw...

Very difficult. Alan and James are tied on the first place with me. I really can't decide between them :D

1. Alan Silvestri &
   James Newton Howard
2. Jerry Goldsmith
3. John Williams
4. Vangelis
5. Basil Poledouris
6. David Arnold
7. John Barry
8. Ennio Morricone
9. James Horner

They all have a very good sense for melody. That is a key thing for me. I think there are quite a lot composers who are pretty average in that area. Alan is on the first place because he really beats every composer when it comes to rhythm and dynamics in my opinion and he's melodically also extremely gifted. A lethal combination. James is also on nr. 1 because he is a master in dramatic and atmospheric music. He writes very intelligent and complex music. There is no match for him in that area in my opinion. Alan and James leave a small gap behind them. Then come Goldsmith and Williams and then a large gap with the rest.

1-Jerry Goldsmith
2-Elliot Goldenthal

Then Silvestri, JNH
and then all the other composers.
I'm not really into ranking, since it changes from day to day.
Really the only ones I'm sure are Goldsmith and Goldenthal.


-whose music corresponds to your personnality : mhh.... tough one, I guess Goldsmith, otherwise I wouldn't like his stuff so much.
-whose music embody your childhood : There was very little music in my childhood.
-who makes you cry : I never cry hearing music.
-who frightens you : Hans Zimmer! Why can annyone that untalented be so succesfull! Scary, isn't it. Now I know, that's not what you wanted to hear ;)
-who makes you laugh : James Horner. Everytime I hear the fournote thingy, I burst out in laughing.... ;)
-who makes the best action music : Jerry Goldsmith
-who's the best from the golden age of film music : Bernard Herrman? Is he golden Age?
-who's the most underrated composer : Broughton alright.
-who's your best hope for the future : Michael Giacchino sucks. Give me Beltrami!
-...(s) who are still missing in the above list... : ... maybe my humble self? :D

1. JAMES NEWTON HOWARD ( I really can't put in words how much I enjoy his music. Because of JNH I am now a film music fan. )
2. Thomas Newman (he can write some incredible emotional music)
3. Hans Zimmer (Thin Red Line was the score who turn me into a Zimmer fan)
4. John Williams (Schindler's List is a masterpice, and one of my favorite score of all time is Seven Years in Tibet)
5. Alan Silvestri (I was so surprised by his Tomb Raider score. One of my favorite action/adventure score of all time. BTW I'm a Lara Croft fan :D )
6. James Horner (Legend of the Fall, Braveheart, The Mask of Zorro, The Perfect Storm are all great scores but I hate when he is so lazy that all he can do is copy-->paste :angry: )
7. Jerry Goldsmith (a true legend)
8. Howard Shore (for what he did with Lord of the Rings)
9. Brian Tyler (Children of Dune is great, Timeline is great too, let's see what the future holds for him)
10. Philip Glass (I really like the Hours and I like his style)

-whose music corresponds to your personnality : James Newton Howard.
-who makes you cry : James Newton Howard,Thomas Newman.
-who frightens you : James Newton Howard
-who makes the best action music: Jerry Goldsmith, Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard)
-who's the most underrated composer : I don't know :rolleyes:.
-who's your best hope for the future : Brian Tyler
-who's the best from the golden age of film music : Hey I am new to film music I really don't know nothing about golden age.
-...(s) who are still missing in the above list...: Hary Gregson-Williams, Danny Elfman, John Powell ....

Now this is a question which is extremely hard to answer for me, because my most favorite composer is always a different one and putting all of them in a rank list is damn hard (i have the same problem like pogel here ;) ). My most favorite composer at the moment is Michael Kamen, i have just listened to Die Hard and Die Hard 2. But next month it could already be a different one.

Well, here is my "ranking"... as accurate as the local weather report :rolleyes: (i had to cheat a little at some positions):

1. John "Johnny" Williams
2. Alan "Al" Silvestri
3. Elmer Bernstein
4. James Horner
5. Jerry Goldsmith
6. Michael Kamen
7. Basil Poledouris
8. James Newton Howard
9. Harry Gregson-Williams
10. Elliot Goldenthal

others that did not make it into the list: Cliff Eidelman, Randy Edelman, David Arnold, Danny Elfman, David Newman, Howard Shore, Rolf Wilhelm, Hans Zimmer...

Hey!... lets create a sub-ranking for them ;) :

11. David Arnold
12. Cliff Eidelman
13. David Newman
14. Randy Edelman
15. Howard Shore
16. Rolf Wilhelm
17. Danny Elfman
18. Hans Zimmer

Now the questions:

- whose music corresponds to your personnality: A VERY hard question, but i would say it is John William's music
- who makes you cry: Cry?... just kidding ;) , James Horner, Alan Silvestri
- who frightens you: Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard
- who makes the best action music: John Williams, Alan Silvestri, James Newton
Howard
- who is the most underrated composer: Cliff Eidelman
- who is your best hope for the future: Howard Shore
- who is the best from the golden age of music: Elmer Bernstein
- who makes you laugh: Elmer Bernstein
- whose music embody your childhood: James Horner, Elmer Bernstein

BigMacGyver I consider myself a huge film music buff, but I have never heard of Rolf Wilhelm. I am always looking for new music to listen too. Can you tell me a little bit about him...what projects he has scored? I also agree that Cliff Eidelman is highly underrated. I like Eidelmans score to "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (however I recommend you stay away from this badly made film...the music is the only thing that will survive time from that film).

Pogel, what makes you feel so strongly against Michael Giacchino's music? I think he does a wonderful job with the video games he scores (this is a hard job because the game creators still give the composers very limiting amounts of memory to work with), his tv show music works quite well, Alias and Lost (tv composers normally get one week to spot an episode, compose the music, and record the music with an orchestra...so under those conditions I think he does a fine job...one of the few that is allowed to use live musicians in the place of samples like so many tv shows), the verdict is still out for feature films (I can't wait to hear what he has done for "The Incredibles"...I have heard he has several more projects lined up....I can't wait until he gets his first big epic film, then we can see what he can really do). I do think that Beltrami is doing some fine work as well.

As for the Lee who said he liked "The Thin Red Line" by Zimmer...I like it too. But before you get too excited I want you to listen to Charles Ives "The Unanswered Question". Most of the good material from "A Thin Red Line" was taken from Ives. The part of the movie that had the biggest impact on me was when the men were entering the jungle and began to fight...the music starts and you hear the thoughts of the soldiers as they look at all the death around them...the man is asking who is responsible for this, etc. The music you hear during this section of the film is Ives music. It was pretty ingenious of Zimmer to use it.

Rolf Wilhelm is a german score composer, the "german version of john williams". He composed the score for Die Nibelungen, an epic which consisted of two movies, Siegfried (1966) and Kriemhild's Rache (1967). His most recent scores are Loriot's Oedipussi (1988) and Loriot's Pappa Ante Portas (1991). His earliest (jazzy) scores were composed for the 08/15 TV-trilogy in 1955. He is annother score composer, who started scoring in the "golden age" times.

Very few of his scores were made avaiable by an independent label, which i think had been founded by a private owner who was a big fan of Wilhelm and wanted to see the music released. There are 2 compilations avaiable and the complete scores from the 08/15 trilogy, Die Nibelungen, Und Ewig Singen Die Wälder (1959) and Das Erbe Von Björndal (1960). He composed music for more than 60 movies until 1992.

You can find more info about Rolf Wilhelm score releases here

http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog...composerid=2105

Thanks for the information. I will definetely purchase some of his music. I can't wait to hear it. Do you know if any of the films he scored are subtitled in English? I would like to see the films as well.

I have never seen his movies, except for the Loriot movies, i think they are not avaiable outside of germany, the DVD's don't have any english subtitles.

But it seems the two DVD's for "Das Erbe von Björndal" and "Und Ewig Singen Die Wälder" contains a music featurette about Rolf Wilhelm. There are also no subtitles unfortunately, both DVD have been released earlier this year. These movies belong to the "heimatfilm" genre, very sentimental contents and i have always had problems accessing this kind of movie, but the featurette seems to be worth a purchase of the DVD's. The two DVD's for "Die Nibelungen" are also lacking english subtitles.

As for the music, i can recommend the 2 disc complete remastered score for "Die Nibelungen", the remastering is excellent and these old original recordings sound very clear and good.

There are extensive (german) liner notes in the booklet.

A little side story: The production company of the movie runned out of money while shooting the 2nd part "Kriemhilds Rache", Wilhelm had to drop the string section from the orchestra to save money and he was limited to brass and percussion! Therefore, the score of the 2nd part is not as impressive as the score for the 1st part.

I'm very interesting in discovering new composers myself, thanks fo those informations BigMcGyver, Wilhem seems to be a very talented and unknown composer !

I found this to listen some extracts from The Nibelungen (click on the cover):

Thanks for the sound files, Anakin. This is the remastered release.

Here is what Wilhelm has to say about this score (from the german liner notes):

"Beside the single with the two main themes released in 1966 at the release of the movie, the Richard Kummerfeld produced LP's "Die Nibelungen" from 1980 and the released sections of part 2 on Celine 0002 and the expanded CD from Overture OFM 901, the music of both parts is finally released in almost complete form on this Knut Räppold in 2001 produced double CD. I have to thank him for his courage to release this 35 years old movie music.
Now a few notes:
The intense and very expensive production of the Nibelungen-Epic from 1966 in Cinemascope, with enormous set pieces and costumes and a huge cast needed an adequate, big sinfonic music, like you would expect it from a Hollywood-like production. I was able to record the score for the first part with an incredible 75 pieces orchestra in December 1966 in Berlin within 2 days. It worked well, but it costs almost all the money from the music-budget and there was no chance to increase the money of the music-budget, because the overall costs were so enormous. That's why i had to drop the string section, the biggest part of the orchestration, from the orchestra and to score the story of the fights and deaths only with percussion and brass. The sound became more martial and the production costs were decreased.

But the recordings were made under time pressure and were very demanding, so they became a "Tour de force" for the brassists and therefore i was not able to correct certain mistakes during the sessions, because most of the pieces still fitted the scenes and were covered by loud SFX during the fight scenes. A release of the isolated music, like this release, seemed to be impossible at that time and had never been considered.
Beside these flaws there was annother problem: The original tapes from 1966 were not completely avaiable and we had to take some pieces, especially during the 2nd part, from a 19cm-mono copy. Nevertheless, we hope music fans and collectors enjoy the CD, since it is an almost "historical" original recording and not a re recording. The "Nibelungen-Team" Knut Rappold (producer), Roland Kusche (sound engineer) and Rolf Wilhelm (composer) would appreciate that. "

Wilhelm is a very versatile composer and did a lot of comedies. The compilations show that very well. I am a bit surprised that he did not score any more movies since 1992. It seems he is concentrating on conducting classical music in concerts now.

And here is a FMS online article about the Label and some opinions on Wilhelms music:
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/articles/2..._CD_Reviews.asp

Ok, here we go:

1. James Horner - My favourite composer. In my opinion the absolute No. 1 when it comes to emotional music. My favourite Horner scores: "Willow", "Legends Of The Fall", "Sneakers" and "Glory".
2. John Williams - This man is a genius; the king of writing great, memorable themes. My favourite Williams scores: "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back", "Hook", "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" and "Far And Away".
3. Jerry Goldsmith - Another genius. I especially like Goldsmith's action music with the great trademark rhythms. Very exciting. The way he uses electronics in his scores is just perfect. My favourite Goldsmith scores: "The Wind And The Lion", "Total Recall", "First Knight", "Under Fire", "Lionheart", "The Sand Pebbles" and "Papillon".
4. Alan Silvestri - Incredible composer. Always comes up with beautiful themes, but what I like most about Silvestri's music, is his heroic action music! My favourite Silvestri scores: "Judge Dredd", "The Abyss", "The Mummy Returns" and "Back To The Future".
5. James Newton Howard - Such a great composer. My favourite Howard scores: "Waterworld", "Dinosaur", "Wyatt Earp" and "Treasure Planet".
6. Basil Poledouris - Very talented composer. COmes up with beautiful melodies and his action music is awesome! My favourite Poledouris scores: "Conan The Barbarian", "Farewell To The King" and "Lonesome Dove".
7. David Arnold - Another very talented composer. I like the music Arnold composed for the recent James Bond films. My favourite Arnold scores: "Independence Day", "Tomorrow Never Dies", "Stargate", "The Musketeer" and "Last Of The Dogmen".
8. Michael Kamen - I love Michael Kamen's music! My favourites are: "Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves" and "The Three Musketeers".
9. John Barry - The music this man wrote for the James Bond films is fantastic! My favourite Barry scores: "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "The Living Daylights".
10. John Debney - A very good composer. My favourite Debney scores: "Cutthroat Island" (one of the best scores ever, just perfect) and "The Passion Of the Christ", of which the music works GREAT in the film.

Dennis

Willow and Legends of the Fall are also among my personal horner favorites. Others are Apollo 13, Aliens and The Land Before Time. I don't understand why some people don't like this man or his music. I don't think he is that repetitive, he just has some great musical ideas and inserts them whenever it is possible and supports the movie. Many people don't like that, but i don't have a problem with it.

I haven't heard Sneakers yet. Maybe you can tell me more about this score?

Annother question regarding Horner: Has anybody listened to his score for Commando and can recommend it?

Dennis, you have the Sand Pepples of Jerry Goldsmith among your favorites. Do you have the re- recording or the original recording (varese limited edition) or both? Which one would you recommend?

I don't think Horner is repetitive at all. Of course, he re-uses certain phrases/motifs from other scores, BUT there's always an emotional or thematic reason, it has nothing to do with being lazy. Many people say Horner's music "sounds all the same". People who say this don't know what they're talking about. Because the man re-uses phrases/motifs from previous scores doesn't mean his scores sound the same. I think some of the Media Ventures scores sound more alike than any of Horner's scores. Try to compare "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan" with "To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday", try to compare "Beyond Boarders" with "Balto", try to compare "Sneakers" with "The Missing". If you do this you'll probably agree it's stupid to say Horner's scores sound the same.

It's mainly a suspense score (Horner's "crashing piano" is very much in evidence here). In the score, Horner also uses a saxophone (brilliantly played by Branford Marsalis) to create an unique, kind of jazzy mood. Actually, I'm not a big fan of suspense scores, but this score is amazing in my opinion. "Sneakers" is one out of the four Horner scores I rate 10 out of 10. The music is very much like the suspense music from "Apollo 13" and "Clear And Present Danger", only MUCH better I think. I'd say listen to some soundclips and if you like what you hear, give it a try ;)

Yeah, I heard the "Commando" score. I think it's one of the weakest Horner scores I've heard to be honest. I'd say only buy it if you like "48 HRS.", "Another 48 HRS.", "Red Heat" and "Gorky Park". If you don't like those scores I wouldn't recommend "Commando".

I own the original recording, the Varese Sarabande Club release. I'm not a big fan of rerecordings to be honest. I've never heard a rerecording which was better than the original. The rerecording of "The Sand Pebbles" is missing A LOT of exciting cues and in my opinion, the performance of the original is better/clearer. The original is conducted by Lionel Newman, the rerecording by Goldmsith. Well, the differences are very, VERY minor. So I'd say, go for the original recording.

Dennis

THAT IS SO TRUE.

About Commando, I completely love it ! It's all about rythmic construction, with long tracks and cool 80's cheap sounds (as a Silvestri fan, I can't miss that !). There's also a beautiful theme for Alyssa Milano...

Guys, How come no discussion on Ennio Morricone any of these lists?!

I like his scores for Mission to Mars or Once Upon a Time in America, but these two are the only Morricone scores that i have heard so far, which is not enough to make him one of my favorites, when i mostly enjoy scores of composers like Elmer Bernstein, John Williams or Alan Silvestri.

BTW, i am just listening to The Magnificent Seven! Great score! :up:

I loved Morricone's score for "The Mission". This, I feel is his finest score till date.

Morricone, mh.

His music for non-westerns is pretty good (Once upon a time in America is just phenomenal)

The thing that bugs me about Morricone is the Italo-Western-Sound he helped to create.

When I'm watching a western, I want to hear bold and "Magnificent" music as composed by Bernstein and Goldsmith. (He has actually been one the best Wester-composers ever, in me eyes.)
I think Morricones western-scores do not offer much, that I would assiciate with the genre, the landscape or anything.
You could play Once[...]West to the images of Once[...]America and it would work.

While the Morricone sound is pretty much bound to "gangster-movies" (you know, 30s stuff, not ghetto-movies), the westen-genre simply requires a more masculine and americana approach.

All in my humble eyes, my friends tend to see it diffrently.

My top 10 is well... I don't know if I even get to ten but these are the most important ones:
1) The absolute number one is Alan Silvestri.
2) James Horner.
3) John Williams.
4) Michael Kamen (RIP).
5) Jerry Goldsmith (RIP).
6) James Newton Howard.
7) Hans Zimmer.
8) Marc Mancina - It's thanks to his Speed-score I started to listen to filmmusic.
9) Christopher Young - His Hard Rain score is classic.
10) Don Davis.
11) Marco Beltrami.
12) ... who knows.

You say that Horner's scores all sound the same maybe that's because you start to recognise his styles. I'm having that lately, I start recognises the styles.

Hey ! forgive me for telling you this :) I dont respect anyone who puts james horner on their top 5 list. he's been going on and on with the same theme for over 15 years, so I wish that he will be rejected from now on !!

Another excellent score from Morricone is "The Untouchables". The main title is brilliant. The film "Once Upon a Time in America" is a masterpiece and the score is indeed very good too. And of course "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "The Good The Bad and The Ugly" should be mentioned too. I think he's not on anybody's list because he scores in obscurity nowadays. Why isn't he scoring more big Hollywood movies? His greatest works emerged from that.

In no order, alive composers:

1. John Williams
2. Alan Silvestri
3. James Horner
4. John Morris
5. Mark Snow
6. Christophe Beck
7. James Newton Howard
8. Danny Elfman
9. Graeme Revell
10. Marc Shaiman

Favorite dead composers, in no order:

1. Ron Grainer
2. Jerry Goldsmith
3. Michael Kamen
4. Franz Waxman
5. Alex North
6. Elmer Bernstein
7. Rick Patterson (Did my favorite version of the The Pretender theme, Season 3.)
8. Harry Sukman - Salem's Lot was an excellant score.
9. (Blank for now.)
10. (Blank for now.)

- Whose music corresponds to your personnality: Christophe Beck; dark and lighthearted when needed.
- Whose music embodies your childhood: Jerry Goldsmith; had ups and downs.
- Who makes you cry: Well, a few have. But the msot often: Christophe Beck
- Who frightens you: Danny Elfman; he said he listens to gypsy music all the time. That scares me. :D
- Who makes you laugh: I'd say the last time I laughed was listening to Rosenman's ST:4 - his music for the hospital chase was perfect and makes me laugh.
- Who makes the best action music: Jerry Goldsmith
- Who's the best from the golden age of film music: Franz Waxman, if I got "Golden Age" right.
- Who's the most underrated composer: Tons of them. John Morris, Craig Safan, Joel Goldsmith and many more.
- Who's your best hope for the future: Christophe Beck
- ...(s) who are still missing in the above list?: Basil Poledouris and Velton Ray Bunch and Ron Jones.

And I don't respect guys like you. I could write a very long novel about how wrong you are and that you just don't understand filmmusic, etc., but I'm not going to because I would waste my time. A couple of things I want to make clear:
- James Horner is one of the best filmcomposers, whether you like his music or not, there are loads of examples that prove he's a master at writing emotional music which works very very well in the film.
- If you're looking for original music please don't listen to filmmusic (of course it's not entirely unoriginal!) but if you want to hear real original music, please listen to modern, atonal, experimental stuff.
- If James Horner reuses themes/motifs/phrases it isn't because he's lazy; James Horner sometimes reuses a theme because there's an emotional link, or because he feels it's needed in a particular scene/sequence whatever. So he actually does it to improve certain scenes, so I don't understand what's the problem.

"I don't respect anyone who puts James Horner on their top 5 list", come on, if you can't respect people's opinions, I hope you'll leave this board soon cause I can't stand that kind of people.

Anyway, I've wasted too much time already and I won't reply to your messages again, Jin.

Dennis

Jin, a rule on this board is that we respect each other. Different people have different tastes. There is nothing wrong with that, it makes the world a more interesting place. You can discuss a composer's work respectfully, but not like kicking admirers of a composer in the stomach with "I hate composer A". I'm sure you wouldn't like too that when people do that to your favorite composers. Dennis has made his point about Horner and you should simply respect that. So please leave it like this. Nothing good comes out these I-hate-composer-discussions, only bitterness.

I simply won't allow any composer bashing here on this board, no matter what composer it is. I don't want any hateful threads appearing here like we see on so many other film music boards. The final consequence is the deletion of the offending member and I don't have a problem with doing that very easily.

BTW, the regular members are all doing a great job! ;)

Very well said ESB. If this guy has no respect for me or the other fans of Horner or Horner himself then I'm sure the feeling is mutual. Everything Dennis has said is right. First time I heard of Horner was with Titanic and he did one hell of a job with that one. So what's the problem with re-using? Beltrami used in The Faculty an exact same track as in Mimic. I would like to see you trying it what Horner does: coming up with the right tones for a scene, the right notes. Nobody can reject him and if they do, they're making a big mistake. They need him for big epic movies like Troy and Braveheart. And I'm sure if James Cameron ever makes another movie he will use Horner for the music. There is still so much I can say but I shut up now because whatever you think the problem is, it's just not worth it man!

James Cameron is in fact making a new film, Battle Angle or something like this, apperently it'll be shot in 3D, no, not CG, but with IMAXy 3D-cameras.
Which is cool, because it'll be great to see a feature film in "real" 3D.

Really, is he? Finally! After what 7-8 years since Titanic? I know he did Ghosts of the Abyss but I don't count that as movie more as documentary. I always wondered why there are always several years between the movies he makes. I know he always keeps close to the business. Apparently he wrote First Bloob part II with Stallone and was the producer of Point Break. But it's his directing. Is it because most of his movies are so gigantic and needs big budgets. Call me one film that I don't know of him and that he directed it between Terminator II and Titanic?

A 3D film from James Cameron?! Man, that's going to be very cool indeed. I love James Cameron!

Dennis

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...m_james_cameron

I take it the thing if for real since there are debates in the visual effect buisness/fanbase which VFX company will do the effects.

Anyhow, I take it Horner will score it, so I can't wait to hear another rendition of the four note motif :D (kidding)
Or maybe it'll take Horner to a whole new level?
Who knows....

I LOVE James Cameron's work. The guy is brilliant, he's one of my favorite directors. And yes the film is called "Battle Angel Alita" and the main character will be fully CGI. It's a big science fiction film and some sort of Japanese anime story. Horner is good in writing dramatic music, but with all respect he's no match for Alan when it comes to writing action music. PLEASE let Cameron choose for Alan!

Emile, in many ways I agree with you. As you all know, Horner is my favorite composer and Silvestri is the number 4 on my list. If I were a director and I had to choose a between Silvestri and Horner:
- I would go for Horner if I needed action music that still contained a certain emotional touch.
- I would go for Silvestri if I needed REALLY BIG, HEROIC, FANTASTIC SOUNDING action music.

If the film Cameron is going to make is a huge action/adventure movie with big special effects and thrilling rollercoaster-ride action/chase sequences (and I've little doubt it won't be such a movie) --> ALAN SILVESTRI, no doubt about it!!

Dennis

Yup. I saw Windtalkers yesterday. Horner wrote some beautiful dramatic music, but his action music was of much lower quality than the rest of the score. Again, I respect Horner, he's in my top 10 of composers, but it really showed that not every composer can write high quality action music. If I were Cameron I would choose Horner for slow epic, dramatic films and Alan without a doubt for dynamic action suspense films like this one seems to be. Horner will get his chance later with Cameron :D And please NOT Brad Fiedel!

BTW, PERFECT choice of Cameron, a science fiction film. It's the genre that he does best and he has the chance to raise the standards for the genre again.

Well I lied about what I said of Horner's scores. It wasn't Titantic but it was Jumanji the first score I heard of him. I don't own that score but it's the first movie I remember seeing with his music.

I got a good question: How would a movie like Windtalkers sound with Alan Silvestri's music? I always wanted to see him a good war movie but where the action is on top not drama.
I thought Windtalkers was a good movie even with James Horner's music. Got the score on the computer.
I got to say that Horners score for Aliens was very good too for all those action scenes but his music sucked for 48 Hours. OK that movie is old and he was still very young. Maybe it was bad because he was in his starting period? It sounded like he was educated by Robert Folk that guy from Police Academy. When I watched the first 48 Hours I had the feeling I was watching a Police Academy of some sort but then with a way better script and way better actors. It was just his music that didn't please me very much. That's why I ask is his score better for Another 48 Hours? Is it more like we are used to?
If I ever become a director I want to work with everybody once in a while Horner, JNH, Zimmer, Williams, Beltrami, John Debney, you name it but most of the time with Alan. I love this guy, I charish (hope that's spelled right) his artworks. He's the man.

Hey all,

Oh no. I really think he is one of the worst filmcomposers (if not THE worst).

As much as I hate to say it: Definately not. It's the same all over again, the same style, the same sounds, and nothing new. If I were you I'd skip it. I consider 48 HRS. to be one of Horner's weakest efforts.

Dennis

I'm not going to buy the score, just wanted to know. I hope the story is good then at least.

Emile, if you want to hear Horner's very best action scores (and they're really really good) get:
- Krull
- Willow (in my opinion Horner's finest score)
- Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
- The Mask Of Zorro
- The Rocketeer

You won't be disappointed!

Dennis

I have Willow and The Rocketeer. I borrowed Krull and Star Trek II but didn't find them interesting enough to buy. I have heard The Mask of Zorro in the film. Sorry but I know Horner well enough to say that in my opinion his action music just doesn't reach the same heights as action music from Alan, JNH and Goldsmith. Horner's strong point is dramatic epic music, not action music.