Mad Kudu Buck wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:44 pm
I like John Barry's "Somewhere in Time" and "Hanover Street". And I don't know why people don't like Barry's "The Man With the Golden Gun" score. The opening song is crap, of course, but I love the bit of music where Bond comes into the hotel suite while the girl is in the shower.
Somewhere in Time, Hanover Street, The Black Hole, The Last Valley, Raise the Titanic, Robin and Marian, King Kong (1976), Zulu, The Quiller Memorandum, High Road to China, Masquerade, Indecent Proposal, The Specialist, The Scarlet Letter, Mercury Rising, Enigma, The Deep, Game of Death, Mary Queen of Scots, The Tamarind Seed, etc. and those are just his more "obscure" or less recognized works. All deserving of high praise!! I haven't even mentioned the likes of Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa, Body Heat, The Lion in Winter, The Ipcress File, Born Free, and the Bond films! Dances, Africa, Lion, and Born Free he would win Oscars for.
My 3 favorite Bond scores are You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and The Living Daylights. Thunderball is sublime too! But all his Bond scores are excellent, even The Man With the Golden Gun which you mentioned, even though Barry himself admitted it was his least favorite one, the one he was most disappointed with. The opening song by Lulu is crap but I love the instrumental version of it, especially towards the end when Bond is flying to Scaramanga's island. It's such a sweeping lush piece. I love how Barry would always take the title song (good, bad, or ugly) and do an instrumental version of it and it was always superb! I like the title song by Duran Duran for A View to a Kill but the instrumental version of it is just sublime!! It's basically Tanya Roberts' theme in the movie. Everything Barry touched turned to.... GOLD! GOLDfiiiiiiiinger!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And you're right that all the great composers unfortunately have passed away. There's no one left except maybe Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman who have been around for a while and have done some good scores off and on. But even Zimmer's stuff gets repetitive as he's been using that "wall of noise" signature of his for about 15 years now, since BATMAN BEGINS. I liked his 90s output much better, including GLADIATOR! Interestingly he did the score for the most recent Bond film, which we have yet to see as it's been delayed again and again due to Covid. So did Thomas Newman, whose SKYFALL score I actually liked but SPECTRE was just a rehash of his score for SKYFALL - very lazy. But that whole movie was crap so whatever. But yeah I don't even recognize any of the modern-day composers. Modern scores are so unimpressive and practically non-existent. Some ambient noise here and there and some plink-plink sounds thrown in. What the heck is that????
My top 5 composers would be:
1. John Barry
2. Jerry Goldsmith
3. John Williams
4. Miklos Rozsa
5. Ennio Morricone
Gotta throw in Bernard Herrmann as an honorable mention too. My top 3 film scores of all time would probably be BEN-HUR by Rozsa, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE by Barry, and THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY by Morricone.
As for Tom Selleck movies, aside from "Runaway", I never could get into them. It's disappointing that he was never offered (or never accepted) the kind of movies that I'd want to see. It's the same with John Ritter - a very talented guy on "Three's Company", but all his movies are relatively awful.
Really? Not even AN INNOCENT MAN or QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER? I thought both were better than RUNAWAY.
Yes. That's probably the best "Tom Selleck movie" of them all - although he has a 10-second scene, then another brief scene as a corpse. (same director as Runaway)
COMA is a neat little suspense/mystery thriller but I wouldn't call it a great film. About on par with RUNAWAY actually. Same director, as you mentioned. Both AN INNOCENT MAN and QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER are better than COMA so it's definitely not the best "Tom Selleck movie".
I think a movie Tom Selleck would have been perfect for is "No Way Out" (1987). Imagine Tom Selleck as the main character instead of Kevin Costner.
You know, I can see that. I do like the movie quite a lot. You can make a case here that it's better than INNOCENT MAN or QUIGLEY.
Good electronic/synth theme by Maurice Jarre too! Has this "DC intrigue/paranoia" feel to it. Actually he used synths effectively in WITNESS too (great Harrison Ford movie).