FILM MUSIC MUSINGS

 

Here is the  feature on this blog that is akin to the You Tube Film Music Cue of the Day, in that it deals, once again, with one of the great passions of my life:  FILM MUSIC.

I have a huge document called My Top Scores List in which I have picked the Top 5 Film Scores for each year since 1980 along with some commentary on my choices.

You can imagine that by now the list is fairly long and contains a lot of info that I think is blog-worthy so I'm going to start publishing excerpts from the list right here on my blog.

So,

without further ado

Here is Film Music Musings

AFI's 100 YEARS OF FILM SCORES

The American Film Institute (AFI) revealed the top 10 film scores of all time in The Big Picture--AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores in 2010.  A jury of over 500 film artists, composers, musicians, critics and historians selected John Williams' iconic score from the classic film STAR WARS as the most memorable film score of all time.

Rounding off the top 10 were film scores ranging in theme from sweeping epics to westerns, including: GONE WITH THE WIND (#2), composer Max Steiner; LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (#3), composer Maurice Jarre; PSYCHO (#4), composer Bernard Herrmann; THE GODFATHER (#5), composer Nino Rota; JAWS (#6), composer John Williams; LAURA (#7), composer David Raksin; THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (#8), composer Elmer Bernstein; CHINATOWN (#9) composer Jerry Goldsmith; and HIGH NOON (#10), composer Dimitri Tiomkin.

 

Needless to say, I made my own Top 10 Scores of All Time:

 

The top six scores remain the same revealing that the AFI can get it right when it really counts.  I put Spartacus at #7 instead of David Raskin's Laura (a score that has been largely forgotten today except for its Main Title).  The Magnificent Seven remains at #8 and then I've put Ben-Hur at #9 instead of the inexplicable choice of Chinatown on the AFI list (What is the fascination with this movie?  I thought it was a fairly bad film with nothing really distinctive about it including the score.)  And finally, rounding out the Top 10 on my list is Raiders of the Lost Ark giving John Williams three scores in the Top 10 (no composer can touch him, he's the best!!!) instead of the over-hyped score to High Noon which is more significant because of it title song that the score itself.