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Our 9 Favorite Soundtracks or Scores - 12 Days of TMA

Today we continue our 12 Days of The Movie Advocate lists with our 9 favorite soundtracks or scores

Justin's List :

9. Tokyo Drifter - Hajime Kaburagi

My favorite Seijun Suzuki movie. In Tokyo Drifter, the musical theme is used over and over diagetically and non-diagetically. It gets stuck in my head for weeks after a viewing.
8. Stormy Weather - Various

Stormy Weather is basically a 70 minute music video. The music throughout is incredible. Aside from Leena Horne, it features Fats Waller and Cab Calloway.

7. Scarface – Giorgio Moroder & Various
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pQQHnqBa2E

Sorry, can't embed this one. Apart from my favorite Giorgio Moroder score, Scarface has a lot of great 80's songs in it. Definitely a time and place sort of soundtrack, it's still unbelievably fun.

6. Goodfellas - Various
http://youtu.be/BbwFXngs9Lw

Sorry, YouTube won't let me embed this one. The scene in particular I'm linking to is the montage featuring Derek and the Dominoe's "Layla." Aside from that powerful scene, Scorcese makes liberal use of Phil Spector's girl groups, classic crooners, and more.

Goodfellas – Goodfellas - Music From The Motion Picture

5. Halloween – John Carpenter

Link

Aside from the insanely iconic main theme, Halloween features some great incidental music from the movie's director, John Carpenter. Carpenter clearly knows how to use music to elevate the mood of the movie. In effect, his extremely tense score masks a lot of the financial deficiencies of the movie.

John Carpenter – Halloween Motion Picture Soundtrack

4. Housu - Godeigo

It's the feel-good, feel-bad horror movie soundtrack of the year! Seriously, this movie has the goods. There's nothing about it that I don't like.

3. Master of the Flying Guillotine – Neu!

Famously used without Neu's permission, Master of the Flying Guillotine is the Reese's of movies combining two of my favorite things, over-the-top kung fu action and Kraut rock. If you haven't seen this yet, seriously put it on your Netflix RIGHT NOW!

Neu! – Neu! 2

2. Danger Diabolik – Ennio Morricone

My favorite Ennio Morricone score, even considering his work with Sergio Leone. The Danger Diabolik soundtrack finds Morricone trying his hand at 60's lounge and psych-pop. It's as good as you think it is. The movie is even better.

1. Deep Red - Goblin

While I have a great affection for all of the Goblin soundtracks, my favorite is their work on Dario Argento's Deep Red. Here, they example virtuosic musicianship and interplay between percussion and melody, while creating haunting melodies that stick with you for days afterward. The title theme for Deep Red strikes an uneasy balance between haunting and catchy that's impossible to shake.

Ryan's List:
9. Go

For a hot second in the late-90s, I thought I was going to be a raver because of this movie and, more, importantly, the soundtrack. Sarah Polley is my role model.

Go (Motion Picture Soundtrack) – GO Music From The Motion Picture

8. The Royal Tennenbaums

A soundtrack (and movie) that made me feel impossibly cool in high school, then slightly embarrassed later on, but now I feel confident enough again to say it’s cool. The placement of The Ramones over Gwyneth Paltrow’s bad behavior montage is inspired.
7. Halloween

Iconic, and how often can you say that about a horror movie score?

John Carpenter – Halloween Motion Picture Soundtrack

6. Breathless

Jazzy, sexy, cool, French, saxophone. I want to have sex right now.
5. Gremlins

WE-WE-WE-WE-WAH-WAH, WE-WE-WE-WE-WAH-WAH, WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH. That is how you write it phonetically.
4. Aliens
Editor's note: unembedible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSQmYUaIyE
Otherwise what would every action movie trailer ever be scored with? (runner up: Titanic, for best over use of synth-flute)
3. Dancer in the Dark

Bjork 4 EVER – also LARS 4 EVER.
Björk – Selmasongs: Music From The Motion Picture "Dancer In The Dark"`
2. Jurassic Fucking Park

There’s absolutely no way you can disagree with this. NO. WAY.
"Weird Al" Yankovic – Jurassic Park

1. The Little Mermaid

Fuck y’all haters. ‘Kiss The Girl’ is the SHIT. ‘Under The Sea’ is a GODDAMN CLASSIC. ‘Part of Your World’ will most likely be stuck in your head for the rest of the day now, SUCKER. “Up where they walk, up where they run, up where they play all day in the SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!” I win.

Alan Menken – Little Mermaid

Luke's List:
Side note: my runner up was:

9. Harry Potter Series

I love the scores to these movies so much that just hearing the main theme will send chills up my spine. This is most certainly partially because I love the movies, but that aside, they're just really stirring scores.

Harry Potter Soundtrack – Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets/ Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

8. Darjeeling Limited

Whether or not Wes Anderson is the one who puts together his soundtracks is information I can't find on the internet, so I'll go on thinking that he does. He is undoubtedly a master of composing beautiful images, and his soundtracks, to me, just add to the list of reasons why he understands this medium better than most. Out of all of his movies,I felt this movie had music that juxtaposed and accented the images in the most provocative way. Well done Wes, well done. But there's still a bit too much hip-kid in it for me to really "get down" to it outside of the movie setting, which is why it's not at the top of the list.

Various Artists – The Darjeeling Limited

7. Saturday Night Fever

I love disco, and after seeing this movie in high school, disco became a genre of music I found to be the most equally upbeat and tragic music. This is truly one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen, which is what makes the soundtrack that much more meaningful. Whether you're a brother, or whether you're a mother, you're staying alive.

6. Danger: Diabolik

This one will most likely end up on Justin's list too. He played this at one of our crew's movie fests, and I have to say it's one of my favorite "Justin" picks. It's just got the grooviest, butt shakin'ist little diddies that ever were.

5. Escape From New York

I didn't want to put The Thing on another list, so I'm putting this one, which is essentially the same thing. I'm ashamed to say that I'm just a sucker for electo-synth future music. Maybe it hits a nostalgic nerve ... which wouldn't really make any sense, because I was born in the 80's. Whatever, it's bad ass and totally works. End of Story.

John Carpenter – Escape From New York

4. Back to the Future Series

Now this one hits a nostalgic nerve. I picked this up on vinyl about a month and it has stayed on my turn table since. Every song is upbeat, fun, and unabashedly ridiculous ("I gotta get back in time"). That and I can picture every corresponding scene when I listen to it. Feel good album of Forever.

3. The Keep

This is another "electo-synth future music" soundtrack that I inexplicably adore, except replace "future" with "supernatural." Tangerine Dream has never sounded better. Incredibly cheesy, but equally earnest, exactly like the movie.

2. Brick

Pure brilliance. This is one of those occasions that, despite how good the movie is, without Nathan Johnson's nimble hands at work, this movie would not be as good. It is the Best example of how a soundtrack should work. It should be my number 1 slot. But that's reserved for... .

Nathan Johnson With the Cinematic Underground – Brick (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

1. The White Room

What is the White Room? I'm sure we'd all like an answer to that question. I'll do a full post on this movie eventually, or you can just read about it on your own if you're so inclined, but the short story is that this band called The KLF set out to make a movie, and it went horribly wrong, for many, many reasons. You can only find bootleg copies of it, or crappy versions uploaded to internet video sites, but the soundtrack is available all over the internet ... so also in bootleg form I guess. You certainly can't buy it. Yes, The KLF do(es?) have an album called The White Room, but it's nothing like the soundtrack. The Soundtrack is sample heavy dream pop, purely there to help you reach that real next-level chill. Part of me loves this soundtrack because of the story behind it, which is one of the best stories in music and movie history in my mind, and the other part of me loves it because its cheesy, faux-earnest/earnest/faux-earnest/earnest nature. You have to hear it to believe it. Find a copy and just blissssssss out.

The Klf – The White Room

Ben's List
9. The Red Shoes – Brian Easdale

I had no idea how hard this list would be to put together. It hurts my soul to leave off perfect scores such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, Tangerine Dream’s Near Dark, and Walter Schumann’s Night of the Hunter. To state the obvious, film history overflows with spectacular scores. The Red Shoes is a great place to start. Not only did Easdale compose an exciting, romantic score for the movie itself, he composed the Red Shoes ballet within the film in character as if it were written by fiery young composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). Though his work is less iconic than the other scores on this list, Easdale performed a miracle with The Red Shoes.

http://open.spotify.com/track/0nXpZOVezKSdeM06oNiNFb

8. Scanners – Howard Shore

Howard Shore’s bombastic, monophonic Scanners theme is almost medieval in its simplicity. It’s in the arrangement that Shore’s vision flourishes. The 7 note descending patter is repeated throughout the score ad nauseum, but here as synth strings, there as a low brass quartet, and fully orchestrated over there. Shore’s work with Cronenberg in the 80s was visionary in it’s blending of traditional classical and avant electronic arrangement. In some ways his vision here and in the Videodrome score has yet to be matched.

7. The Thing – Ennio Morricone/John Carpenter

Another painfully straightforward but incredibly effective early electronic score. It’s unclear which passages were composed by Morricone and which by Carpenter, and I’ve heard word that the pair did not get along very well. Regardless, the end result is as cold, isolated, and full of dread as the movie it belongs to.

http://open.spotify.com/album/69KqTyOmKaqxeX48d4FvEh

6. The Bride of Frankenstein – Franz Waxman

Franz Waxman’s work on Bride of Frankenstein is a whole different approach to horror scoring. Remember, this is before Krzysztof Penderecki inadvertently turned swarms of discordant strings into a viable soundtrack option. This is even before serialism, to a large extent. Waxman’s score is a thoroughly modernist affair. His Bride theme is shiny and full of wonder, a devilish suggestion given that it's set to the misguided Doctor’s sacrilegious creation of life.

http://open.spotify.com/album/0SdR3TGz9qtYRddMp5CCFd

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Wayne Bell/Tobe Hooper

Speaking of sacrilege, what better way to score the purposeless slaughter of innocents than with something that sounds like heated metal swallowing itself?

4. There Will Be Blood – Johnny Greenwood

They say that a good score should match the tone of a movie’s visuals without overwhelming them, but Johnny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood soundtrack succeeds largely by ignoring that rule. How many otherwise benign sequences in this movie are wrenched into unbearable tension by Greenwood? Not only does Greenwood’s work suggest Daniel Plainview’s inner fire, at times it even seems to egg the demons on.

3. The Third Man – Anton Karas

Whoever came up with the idea to score this moody noir with upbeat zither music is one of the great accidental geniuses in the history of the movies. The Third Man is about characters that try to hide their feelings, and so the score is mostly surface fluff, but occasionally betrays deep pools of emotion.

http://open.spotify.com/album/5wbldmZLkQ3jQXiW0CvVJN

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark – John Williams

Ironic, isn’t it, that Wagner’s leitmotif concept would reach its peak execution in a movie about a roguish Nazi-killer? John Williams has always been a master of melody, and you probably can hum both main themes from Raiders without any prompting whatsoever. Not only is this music catchy to the point of cultural omnipresence, but it’s really good too!

1. Vertigo – Bernard Herrmann

Of course the greatest movie of all time has the greatest score of all time. In this harrowing journey through the dark realm of obsession even the most casual passages are haunted by shadows. This is one of the great orchestrated works of the twentieth century.

What are your favorites?