John Barry's passed on. Now, the fear is that Morricone can't be far behind him, after whom we'll have lost every forward-thinking modernist film composer. Seriously, we'll be stuck with the likes of Rota plagiarist Danny Elfman and Hans bloody Zimmer, whose most impressive contribution to the art of film scoring boils down to BWAAAAAAAAAAAAHM!At least Barry left us with an endlessly entertaining body of work.
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6 comments:
Oh, come on! There's always John Williams.
Elfman: The influence of 8 1/2 is there, but there's also heavier strings within the pee wee score too. Just sayin.
Jeffrey - Ah, yes, the bastard child of Sousa marches and Holst's Planets suite!
JM - Oh, don't get me started on Elfman. The man broke my fuckin' heart. I grew up worshiping the ground he walked on until I finally heard Rota. Pee Wee (once my favourite score of all time) is equal parts 8 1/2, La Strada, and misc. Bernard Herrmann. Dick Tracy is just Gershwin with the occasional minor-third swell. The Beetlejuice theme is the closest Elfman's come to an original idea, but it almost doesn't even matter.
I've also thought that Elfman had to be influenced by the Looney Toons scores.
What about nightmare before christmas or Edward scissorhands? Those are two of my favorites along with Pee wee.
Thought you might like to hear this.
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133372739/remembering-james-bond-film-composer-john-barry
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