Duchess of Evil

My iPod thinks it is currently playing the Rain Battle track from the score to The Greatest Game Ever Played. It is, in actuality, playing a track from The Postman. WTF?

Well, now that's over. Let's see what it plays when I select the score for Transformers.

I'm writing, and listening to Artist->Hans Zimmer on my ipod.

He's done some fantastic scores. The various Pirates, Backdraft, The Rock.

And 'The Burning Bush' from Prince of Egypt still gives me chills every time I hear it.

I listen to a lot of Bear McCreary when working on space pirates - it sets the right tone, and I LOVE his scorework for BSG. I just put him as an artist on shuffle and go. Sometimes I change it up by listening to the PotC scores, because, well...pirates! And sometimes I listen to one of my playlists, entitled "Sweeping and Epic" that has several tracks from favorite scores, including Bryan Tyler's Children of Dune, several Trevor Rabin tracks, and some LotR, among others.

But last night watching SCC, I kept hearing the music and thinking impatiently "When the heck is this finally going to be released? I need some SCC Bear McCreary to add to my writing music!"

I know a soundtrack CD is coming, but man, it's too long away yet.

They've finally released an actual score for Buffy, folks. Christopher Beck is the Emmy winning composer, and of course the disc starts out with that sequence from "Becoming". Highlights (for me) include two pieces from "Passion" including the haunting Remembering Jenny, and the Angel/Buffy theme featured in Moment of Happiness from "Innocence".

I of course ordered mine already. If I wasn't such a collector, I'd've done the mp3 download and then I'd already be listening to it, but no, I just had to have the actual disc, so I won't have my copy until Thursday evening. *sigh*

Secret message to randomeliza - I am totally going to upload the expanded 2-disc score for Prince of Egypt for you this weekend!  I have not forgotten, I swear. 

I can tell today is going to be one of those days when I spam you all with a bunch of posts.  Sorry.

Tracks my iPod has played so far today that move me:

I believe I've said it before, but it bears repeating - of all the tracks Howard Shore wrote for the LotR movies, Amon Hen is quite possibly my favorite.  It has so many of the main themes from throughout the rest of the score, and it has that heroic moment when Aragorn salutes the horde of oncoming Urukai before stepping forward and engaging them, and it has the death of Boromir, one of the more powerful scenes in the movies (that possibly effects me as much as it does because in the book, I strongly disliked his character, but in the movie, Sean Bean made me sympathize with Boromir and love him just a little bit, no mean feat.  His death actually makes me tear up.)

Inama Nushif from Bryan Tyler's Children of Dune is one of the single greatest pieces of scorework ever written.  Powerful, evocative, gorgeous.  Not to mention it utilizes a fictional language that I'm sure Tyler had to come up with how to pronounce, if he didn't make up some of the words.  (I'm not remembering how much of the Fremen language Herbert actually included in the books, offhand.)

You know, the score to Titanic really suffered from the unfortunate popularity of the Celine Dion version of the theme that got played ad nauseum in every shopping center in the world for months and months.  Not to mention the thousands of fangirls who bought the soundtrack and played it over and over again, making it one of the few movie scores to make mainstream bestseller album lists.  But none of that changes the fact that the score is, in fact, one of James Horner's most haunting pieces of work.  Rose is the beautiful piece of instrumental and voice score that the Dion song is based on, but IMO can't touch for sheer beauty. 

Hans Zimmer has produced, over the years, not only a large library of original score work that includes some of the my favorite all time scores ever, but also a large stable of new composers that he fosters, co-writes things with, boltsters their careers, etc.  They have a sound universally unique to their particular group, no doubt a result of having worked together often.  Mark and I can see a movie, and within the first few bars of music, know if it's someone else, or what we refer to as "a member of Zimmer's stable".  Trevor Rabin (Armaggedon, Bad Boys 2), Harry Gregson-Williams (Narnia) , Nick Glennie-Smith (The Rock), Klaus Badelt (PotC)...all have worked with or for Zimmer, and often still do.  A little known fact is that Nick Gelnnie-Smith wrote much of Gladiator, a score credited to Zimmer.  It's kind of like ghost writing a book - the production company wants a "name" for their score, but Zimmer can only do so many per year, and through him these guys newer to the game get the exposure they need to really break out on their own, like Trevor Rabin did. 

Anyway, that's a roundabout way of getting to the next piece of score on my list, The Prince of Egypt.  The vocal songs are powerful, but the score is one of the best Zimmer's ever done.  Two tracks never fail to bring chills up my spine when I hear them.  The Burning Bush and The Red Sea.  Zimmer truly captured the moment when God spoke to Moses, the kind of hushed awe of the scene, and then the powerful reprise when Moses parts the Red Sea...beautiful, beautiful work.  I forget how much I love these pieces until they come up on my iPod, and then I invariably end up listening to them on repeat.

Danny Elfman is one of the most diverse, talented composers working today.  I've loved his work unconditionally since Edward Scissorhands, a score that remians one of the favorites to this day.  In fact, my favorite Elfman track, despite my love for the Batman and Spider-man scores he did, is from that earlier work.  The Ice Dance.  Lovely, and like some works I mention above, haunting. 

That's it so far this morning, but I'm sure the iPod has yet more surpises in store to wow me with.  :)  If I wasn't at work, I'd post files of the songs I've listed to share.  Unfortunately, I can't transfer them from my iPod to my computer. 

Picked up the complete 4-disc score for Fellowship of the Ring tonight, as well as the Narnia score, which didn't come out until today even though the movie was out Friday, and King Kong.

High points:

FotR has everything, every piece of music from the movie, including the prologue. Hard to go wrong with that.

I am particularly fond of Narnia's "A Narnia Lullaby" and "The Wardrobe".

The iPod will have some fun new stuff on it tomorrow. :)