BOT's Top 100 Film Scores: The Countdown Thread (2015 Edition) (#1 Revealed Page 14, Full List Page 15)

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43. Gladiator (2000)

Original Music by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard
254 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1

Wins Tiebreaker Over Henry V due to Number of Votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unb3FdsT5fQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvqd2QkrTA


Zimmer the Zimmarian returns to our countdown with one of his best known scores of all. Gladiator's music at times can be a rhythmic pounding on your skull, horns cranked up to 11 blasting in your ears followed up by synthetic horns then crashing in on a different cue to make sure you hear them as well. It's a film score that builds a lot on dissonance and cacophony before melding them into a few identifiable action and dramatic cues that trigger adrenaline and excitement. You can see the origin of Pirates of the Caribbean music in this score.

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42. Goldfinger (1964)

Original Music by John Barry
258 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnW-8YpQpgQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZybVtERg4s


Okay this selection befuddled me a bit. To me, there's two Bond scores worthy of consideration for the Top 100: On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Casino Royale. Anyways, John Barry delivers for the film a bombastic, aggressive, and brassy piece of music that rides on the backbone of very loud horn blasts and snazzy snare drum riffs. It's a nice and fun score.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Numbers of Westeros

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41. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Original Music by Jerry Goldsmith
259 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1
Top 5 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt9dOIdGIeM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARcgqTx3NOg


The fourth and final Star Trek score to make the countdown is the original, the granddaddy of them all. The film itself is a mixed bag, but Goldsmith's music is just stunning. His main theme for the Enterprise is the most enduring piece of Star Trek music aside from Alexander Courage's theme for the original TV show. Goldsmith does a wonderful job of merging classical orchestral pieces with innovative electronica and dissonance cues representing the unknowable and implacable force of Vejur. It's a shame it wound up this low in the countdown.

[Kalderic]

I know Williams and Morricone have written non score pieces.

Horner actually is returning to the concert hall with a new piece for Four Horns and orchestra commissioned by the London Philharmonic. It's premier is coming up and I am very excited for it, especially since I am a horn player and Horner has written some great material for horn in his film scores.

[Blankments]

 

51. Transformers (2007)

Original Music by Steve Jablonsky

227 Points

Top 10 Placements: 2

Top 5 Placements: 2

#1 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEL5atUKRZQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H0JDomv8ac

I'm gonna let Ethan and James defend this inclusion this high up. 

I kid, I kid, it's actually a score that has some pretty good cues and tracks, but there's also a bit too much clanging metal and sturm and drang for my taste. Steve Jablonsky knows how to turn a good theme and it does show in the samples posted. How much you like the rest of the music depends on how much you like the factory mechanic style of much of the score.

 

In CAYOM-verse, Thomas the Tank Engine just showed up at #51. Sweet

[Blankments]

Also, the best thing about this list is getting tons of new music to jam to

[James]

 

47. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Original Music by John Williams

246 Points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awgAzxysyu0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIl7-rDOuTM

Star Wars finally arrives, with the final film of the Prequel Trilogy first at the plate. John Williams does a very good job of playing on existing themes developed in the previous five movies while also adding in one very strong theme and a bunch of nice little cues and incidental dramatic music. Especially in the second half of the film the score gets more operatic and in-your-face as the Sith unleash fire and fury on the galaxy and Anakin falls to the Dark Side. It's not the best Star Wars music, but it's certainly a good way to send a franchise out....for 10 years.

 

It actually is.

 

 

And the best SW movie but that s another story.

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Countdown will resume on Friday. I got a handful of little things to do tonight and tomorrow is the Age of Ultron.

[chasmmi]

Wish I'd sent in a list for this. Apologies
 

 

Will silently hope for Raiders from the sidelines (well that and BTTF )

 

[Avatree]

Say what you want about the Star Wars prequels but John Williams gave it his all. Many things were lost from the originals to the prequels, but the music was not one of them.

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And we're back live



40. Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Original Music by Alan Menken
259 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1

Wins Tiebreaker over Star Trek due to Number of Votes


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yiv38eYr5Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkJzUxqciqk


Like most of the Disney musicals of the Renaissance era, Beauty and the Beast is best known for its songs, but Alan Menken also composes a dramatic and moving film score that weaves cues of song music into normal instrument context, while also adding in some potent non-song themes of his own.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Numbers of Westeros

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39. The Third Man (1949)

Original Music by Anton Karas
264 Points
Top 10 Placements: 3
Top 5 Placements: 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEsWi88Qv0


Our next film is one of the quintessential film noirs out there. Anton Karas' music is based around an iconic theme that utilizes a zither as the focal point, giving the music an eccentric and offbeat flair to it; a fitting decision for a film that utilizes misdirection to drive its main character from mystery to mystery.

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38. Up (2009)

Original Music by Michael Giacchino
267 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjAWAUc_33k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwrUjS8t2OE

Up was Michael Giacchino's third outing with Pixar (He has done 4, soon to be 5) and for many it is his best musical performance of tthem all. The centerpiece of the score is of course "Married Life," which details the main theme of the film in an emotional, moving way. The music in general for the film is a mix of old-school adventure bombast with wistful string and piano cues.

[Empire]

Glad Up ranked so high! Such a great score!

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37. Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Original Music by Clint Mansell
274 Points
Top 10 Placements: 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hMEXq97gDk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLJllk-0o6c


The film that launched Clint Mansell's career features a shrieking, haunting, off-putting score that serves to unerve the audience as they watch the four main characters slowly lose everything in their lives. A number of the film scores on this countdown are built around a single theme that overcharges the music. Requiem for a Dream is one such film with its piece Lux Aeterna, a music cue that rapidly exploded onto the pop culture stage for a time following the film's release.

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36. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Original Music by Klaus Badelt (officially)
280 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1
Top 5 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TTUBMTInVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_h-6cnD1M


You knew this was coming. There was no way the first Pirates would miss the countdown if #2 and #3 had gotten onboard the train. Anyways, Curse of the Black Pearl features a film score full of sharp adventure cues and a mix of instrumental and Zimmer-synth music to cast the score on a whirlwind adventure. It features several notable cues that endure through the original trilogy and beyond. You can tell that some of it is inspired by Gladiator, but it's not similar enough to be just plagiarism, the music in Black Pearl has its own unique identity and energy.

[ddddeeee]

 

 If ddddeeee hadn't been lazy this could have been around 20 spots higher.

 

I'd have given prominence to Frankenstein, Much Ado and Great Expectations.   Though the Non Nobis cue is one of the most powerful ever to me.

Edited May 1, 2015 by ddddeeee

[Kalo]

Pirates over Requiem and Beauty and the beast is just ludicrous! 

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35. Psycho (1960)

Original Music by Bernard Herrmann
287 Points
Top 10 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTrVgpDwPk


Herrmann and Hitchcock reunite on this list for what's possibly the best known musical cue and film for each. Herrmann's music for the film has a lot of traditional 1950s film mood music, but what sets it apart from films of that era is when events click into high gear and he shifts into the main cues for the movie, which are dominated by shrieking, panicked violins and other string instruments. They're discomforting and alarming and help jazz up the tension and thrills.

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34. Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Original Music by Philip Glass
306 Points
Top 10 Placements: 3
Top 5 Placements: 2
#1 Placements: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOEDsZbR6jE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlICjvs0KIs


Koyaanisqatsi is a meditative documentary-ish film on the world falling out of natural balance. It's fitting that for the film, Philip Glass provides a musical background that stands apart from most other scores. The music is impressive, bombastic, disconcerting, fluid, and operatic, slowly building layer upon layer of prelude music before activating the power drive. A lot of it feels quite symphonic, no surprise given Glass' background.

And then the organs kick in.