Every now and then I go through a phase where I don't listen to music, per say. Rather, I pop in a recently burned CD, or turn to an iPod playlist, and enjoy some of my favorite film composers' best works. Recently, I've been overcome with Randy Edelman's score for Last of the Mohicans (Promontory--the epic from the end "fight") and Zimmer/Howard's score for The Dark Knight. Music in film has the ability to aid or hinder it...a powerful score adds insight and emotional resonance. I'll let some famous directors comment more eloquently than I could:
Q: In what way does music best enhance film?
"Too broad a question. Let's just say it covers a multitude of sins." -Woody Allen
"The best soundtrack music by-passes your mind and goes straight to your soul. It sort of trips something in your brain, you know you're being transported." -Cameron Crowe
"By revealing something that is not dealt with in the rest of the movie. It should be treated as another leading characters." -Sidney Lumet
"In the obvious way: Music or its absence is the soul of the film." -Fernando Meirelles
"Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there's a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they're put together. It's been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that's true." -Martin Scorsese
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Top Five...Film composers of the last 25 years: (some of my favorite scores in parenthesis)
1. Thomas Newman (Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Meet Joe Black, The Shawshank Redemption, Pay it Forward, Cinderella Man, so many others)
2. John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Saving Private Ryan)
3. Hans Zimmer (Crimson Tide, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator)
4. James Newton Howard (Shyamalan movies, King Kong, The Dark Knight
5. Danny Elfman (Batman, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man)
Honorable Mentions:
-James Horner (Titanic, Glory, Braveheart)
-Michael Kamen (Band of Brothers, The Iron Giant, Mr. Holland's Opus)
-Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs)
-Ennio Morricone (The Mission, The Untouchables)
-Nick Cave, Clint Mansell (Jesse James, Smokin' Aces)
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