Credit where credit's due.

Yes. This is very much not planned. And very much not what I ever wanted this blog to be about. It did, however, strike me out of nowhere that I need to get this out there:

There are three people out there who deserve to have their faces chiseled on the side of Mount Everest. Large enough to be seen from outer space. At least.

Hans Zimmer.
Clint Mansell.
and
Alan Silvestri.

Now... if you have not heard these names before, never talk to me again. And step into a pit of quicksand. Because I'm pretty sure that you have enjoyed at least some of their achievements without apparently paying them the credit that is due.
Because there three guys are without a doubt in my mind the greatest composers the world has ever seen. Really. Screw Beethoven, hell, even screw Tchaikovsky (who, if you don't know that either, is awesome. Google him!). These guys are better.
And you don't even have to be into classical music to be into it.

I began my love for soundtracks with Requiem of a Dream, really. It's soundtrack was the first ever that I actuall noticed as such, music you could listen to without the annoying distraction by the movie.
So, for a while, Clint Mansell - who is responsible for the tunes, was my utter hero.
I mean, come on, he made this:

What kind of human being is not touched by the magnificence of this incredible buildup??? This song, allthough I've heard it about 5 million times, still gives me the goosebumps!

Now, in numbers alone he hasn't done all too much, but the sheer quality of his composings makes up for the "lack" in quantity.

For example, he made the Soundtracks for:

2000 Requiem for a Dream (well, d'oh!)

2005 Doom (actually, I did not know that untill I researched it just now. Yay! Extra points for awesomeness!)

2006 The Fountain (omgomgomgomgomg!)

2006 Smokin' Aces

aaaaand of course

2010 Black Swan (oh hell yes!)

The next soundtrack I really noticed as such was a rather obvious one, it was this:

Now, this masterpiece was brought to us by Hans Zimmer, and for the first time ever, I started searching the internet for a soundtrack composer to see what else he did. Oh and what a list this guy has to show!

My favorites (since 2000, everything else might get out of hand):

2000 Gladiator (very high up there in my personal ranking!)

2001 Black Hawk Down
2001 Hannibal (come ON!)

2003 Pirates of the Caribbean

2005 Batman Begins (might be one of my favorite ongoing soundtracks, actually!)

2006 Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest

2007 Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End

2008 Batman: The Dark Knight (apparently, the Batman people liked him just as much as I do)

2009 Sherlock Holmes (the movie sucked, the music was still great though)

2009 Illuminati (again, stupid movie, awesome soundtrack)

2010 Inception

2011 Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides

2012 The Dark Knight Rises

This is quite amazing, right? Right.

Now, to my shame I have to admit that with the last musical hero on my list, I have been quite ignorant for a while. I saw a movie, heard a good soundtrack and kiiiindasorta automatically implied "Yeah, must be Hans Zimmer. What a genious!"

But just today, I discovered that a bunch of soundtracks that I really liked were in fact made by Alan Silvestri instead.

How I found out, I hear nobody ask?

Well, I was watching Top Gear (love that show!!), heard a tune that I knew, liked but couldn't quite connect with a movie at once, headed over to a page that identifies songs used in TV shows (oh-so-usefull!!!) and stopped dead. The page only listed the composers name and the name of the song. NOT the movie. Which means I still didn't know what I was really looking for, just that Zimmer wasn't among the listed people. Soooooo I went over to youtube to find this:

Oh my oh my! The last 17 seconds alone are freaking amazing! So, as of today, Alan Silvestri completes the Trinity of Awesome.

HIS list is rather nice to look at, too:
2001 The Mummy Returns

2003 Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The cradle of life

2004 Van Helsing (VAN FUCKING HELSING! I LOVE THAT SOUNDTRACK!!!

2007 Beowulf 

2010 A-Team - The Movie

2011 Captain America: The First Avenger

2012 Marvel's The Avengers

Man... Nice work!

The truly amazing thing about classical soundtracks (as opposed to random songs by random bands fitted to the pictures) as I see it is this: It's not just beautifully written music, but it has a very hard job: It HAS to evoke a very specified sort of emotion for the listener. Ever seen a scary movie without the background music? It's fucking BORING. So the job for these guys is to go about creating a song that makes you feel happy, uncomfortable, thrilled, scared or sad and all of that in a very limited setting - the motion picture. I can't imagine how hard this is, which makes the results as we hear them even more incredible.

Another lovely side effect of listening to soundtracks: It takes you places.

Yes, you could argue that of course your brain connects the music you hear to the images you see, especially if you've seen a movie more than once, but that can't be the punchline. Hell, I've BEEN at the Shire, the Matrix, the Caribbean with the characters, all the while sitting, eyes closed, in a dirty subway somewhere in germany. Just look at some of the comments on youtube, there are lots and lots of people writing things like "This makes me feel like I'm a spartan!"... You cannot down-science this with sheer associations.

Oh well... I think I've made myself clear: Never. EVER. Underestimate a soundtrack. And do listen to it for funsies. If you're feeling funky, try to analyse what it's doing to you. And why. And how. And most of all...

* * *

...lean back and enjoy, here are my favorite pieces of cineatic sound-art...

Always capable of brining me to tears... as is this:

well, this one pretty much covers it for Zimmer, right? ;)

oh god this is just heavenly...

notice the tapping sound? For me, this has a highly uncomfortable feel to it. Like the heartbeat of a tiny frightened being.

This is utterly beautiful. When I heard it the first time, I was a bit confused by the slightly oriental touch and wasn't sure if it fitted the movie very well... But screw that, listening to it, don't you just wanna close your eyes and levitate for a bit?

I would have loved to include the track "Journey to Transilvania", but Youtube and the stupid GEMA decided that this might in some way harm anyone.

On to the work of other people...

This one HAS to be here. I used to fall asleep to the The Fellowship Soundtrack. I love the hobbits/shire theme the most. This music is powerfull, it fits incredibly well with the theme and is an opera by itself and thereby almost wasted on a movie.

Ooooh Danny Elfman. <3

to be continued.