Taking Score of 2004

Another January has barged in upon our complacent consciousness, and that means it's time to take stock of the previous year's harvest of film scores. After a healthy twelve month's worth of listening and watching and reviewing here are my selections for the 15 best and most significant film scores my favorites of 2004 with a non-exclusive emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, and horror scores.

1. TROY (Gabriel Yared)

The best score of the year is, unfortunately, the one that you won't hear unless you've happened to come upon a promo or dubbed CD somewhere online, or heard portions that had been posted to the Internet before Warner Bros execs forced its removal. Gabriel Yared composed the finest score of his career thus far, for Wolfgang Petersen's confounded historical epic, TROY. Tragically, after a single test screening in which a portion of the audience made a couple of negative comments about the music, panicky studio execs decided to replace the entire score at the 11^th hour (its replacement, scored in a rushed schedule by James Horner, reflected the haste of its conception and proved to be bland and uninspired). See my July 8^th, 2004, column for the gritty details. The tragedy is that Yared's extricated score was a magnificent, monumental epic full of exactly the kind of organic accompaniment that would have enriched TROY's visual splendor and given it so much more potency. Yared's music is a fertile tapestry stitched into the very soul of the epic story, its fabric invested with the dust and legendry of ancient civilizations and history, its powerful choruses pulse with the energy of millennia, and every nuance of its orchestration, its motifs and melodies, and its harmonic textures richly detailed with careful thought and consideration. While the opportunity to listen to the score in its proper place on the film soundtrack appears to be lost to us, there are promo or bootleg CDs lurking around (check eBay) which demonstrate what a breathtakingly brilliant score this is, easily the year's finest composition made all the more compelling due to its fate on film.

2. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (John Debney)

Restraining myself from including this score in a tie for

Sony's American soundtrack release of the HERO score.

© Sony

3. FINDING NEVERLAND (Jan A.P.  Kaczmarek)

The year's most melodically lyrical score, Kazcmarek's accompaniment for this gentle drama about the man who wrote Peter Pan soars from the beautifully persuasive to the softly intimate, and from enticing scherzo to ever-so stately and ever-so British theatrical accompaniment. The music sways sweetly and prances wonderfully like the branches of a broad and lovely tree, or the aerial acrobatics of a tiny fairy immersed in pixie-dust. The score's primary theme is a delightful romp for violins and boy's choir, which both suggests the Englishness of the film's setting and period as well as its vivid whimsy and carefree sense of innocence and fun. The score never ceases to amaze or delight throughout its length.

4. KING ARTHUR (Hans Zimmer)

Hans Zimmer's score for Jerry Bruckheimer's epic retake on the legend of KING ARTHUR is tremendously effective and exciting. Following after a gorgeously lyrical, slowly-rolling vocal from Moya Brennan, Zimmer's characteristically hybrid approach (rhythmic-based synth/symph motifs and sparkling choirs skimming over low-end orchestral aggressions) plays out well in a half dozen long cues, wherein the music develops and changes and grows and broods and blasts with all the heft of Arthur's broadsword and all the fragile determination of Guinevere's arrow. It's massive and aggressive when it needs to be, personal and intimate when it needs to be. Carefully calculated for maximum emotional effect, the score, and Zimmer's typical approach to it is, for all its redundant simplicity (perhaps because of that), remarkably effective and emotive, and remains so on CD. Moments are incredible powerfully, richly expressive, persuasively poignant, and handsomely heroic. The use of female voice in places elevates the music far above the furious action it accompanies and pulls the listener/viewer away and out of the action, observing it from a farther distance and allowing us to notice and care about the individual personages and emotions of those playing out the battle.

5. THE TERMINAL (John Williams)

John Williams' 21^st collaboration with Steven Spielberg has resulted in this thoroughly delightful, light European classically toned score for the director's telling of an Eastern European immigrant who takes up residence in an airport terminal after his country of origin has seized to exist due to a military coup. The score reinforces the character's country of origin reflecting his love and longing for home while simultaneously providing a gently frivolous and lightly moving musical portrayal of absurdity and serendipity. The music plays it very straight, lending an honesty and believability to the storyline, while capturing plenty of neat musical nuances and characteristics that seem to react well with the storyline and characterizations.

6. BUBBA HO-TEP (Brian Tyler)

Don Coscarelli's highly inventive comedic horror film, BUBBA HO-TEP, has

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST soundtrack by John Debney.

© Sony

7. SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (Edward Shearmur) Sony Classical SK 92932.

Edward Shearmur's score for Kerry Conran's delightfully retro SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW beautifully conveys the sound and feel of Hollywood's golden-age film music. The thoroughly orchestral composition is a large, full-blooded symphonic score that energizes almost every moment of the film. Enhanced by choir, the music is strident and powerful, lavish in its orchestral flourish and intimate with soft, emotive melodies. It's a thoroughly wonderful score, as much in its own right as in its ability to recall an earlier period of film scoring. In the midst of today's hybrid symph-synth film scoring sensibility, the thunderous symphonic purity of the score may be as unique as STAR WARS was in the midst of late 1970s pop scoring culture.

8. THE INCREDIBLES (Michael Giacchino)

Walt Disney Records 61100-7.

After several notable years scoring video games and television, composer Michael Giacchino scored a hit with his effervescent score to Pixar's THE INCREDIBLES. The lively music fits the fast-paced CGI animated film as well as one of Mr. Incredible's spandex herosuits, well poised for lift-off and rippling with energy. The music is big, bold, optimistic and vividly heroic, full of eloquent and jazzy suspense figures, rhythmic intimacies, and lavishly bombastic action and adventure strides. The score emanates with the kind of John Barry-esque adventure and romance that gave the James Bond films such an unforgettable musical atmosphere, while creating a terrifically stalwart main theme that is all Giacchino's own.

For Roland Emmerich's latest scientifically implausible but emotively

Harald Kloser's soundtrack for THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.

© Varese Records

William Ross's elegant and elegiac score for Jay Russell's poignant examination of the life of a Baltimore firefighter captures much of the heroism, bravery, camaraderie, and passionate dedication embodies by members of the fire service. From the Irish winds that herald the Rookie's first day to the eloquent melodies that comfort his demise in the line of duty, Ross's score is confident and heartfelt. He creates a sense of teamwork and energy when scoring scenes of firefighting, lends a contemporary rock combo or quirky pop beat to accompany life in the firehouse. In its action cues, the score shares the kind of hybrid rhythms that are prevalent nowadays, but also finds that they work as potently here as in other films. The synth/symph riffing creates a persuasive emotional underpinning to events, capturing the spirit of the moment more than the flavor of the specific activity. But the film's most powerful moments are, of course, those that resonate most profoundly, accompany the solitary moments along in the pit beneath the fire, when firefighter Jack Morrison reflects upon the career that has led him to this moment. The score shares the multifaceted personality of Jack Morrison and in its accompaniment of his final moments and subsequent memorial, crafts a moving and fitting musical tribute to firefighters and public safety personnel in real life as much as in cinema.

10a. THE PUNISHER (Carlo Siliotti)

Italian composer Carlo Siliotto has invested the dark superhero actioner, THE PUNISHER, with a thoroughly eloquent and richly melodic orchestral score. Siliotto has taken his gift for musical eloquence and intimate, romantic-idiom melodic structure and generated a fine and compelling score for Jonathan Hensleigh's take on Marvel Comic's revengeful hero. Even his action cues are invested in such symphonic orchestral sensibilities that they layer the film with such an intrinsically organic color and musical texture that it really gives the story a feel of emotional import. The emotive nuances of the story are emphasized by Siliotto's very emotive music. The spare integration of the electric guitar and subtle female voicings work very well in refreshing the film's musical texture. The score expressively conveys the film's varied emotional elements within the context of an adventure score that remains focused on character interactions, backstory, and motivation more than it does on dissonance and furious action. By eschewing the obvious and emphasizing these underlying characteristics more so than more predictable action scoring, Siliotto conveys one of the most meaningful action scores of the year.

10b. TIMELINE (Jerry Goldsmith)

The year's second most significant rejected score and the last composition to fall gracefully from Jerry Goldsmith's fertile imagination the music for TIMELINE, thankfully rescued from oblivion by Varese Sarabande, thunders mightily with a potent mix of orchestra and synths. Goldsmith crafted a score rich in heaving, rhythmic action as well as in intimate riffing and poignancy. Brutal orchestrations dominate the action while trumpetlike calls from synths echo heroically amidst the dissonant rhythms. The score has echoes of dozens of Goldsmith scores that preceded it, and yet created its own cohesive sensibility as a strongly hewn action score, pulsing with energy, breathing with furtive suspense, and crying out with heroic triumph. It remains a distillation of all of Goldsmith's expertise as a composer of fantastic action music and a final epitaph for film music's most influential maestro.

11. HERO (Tan Dun)