What I'm trying to find out in this thread is mostly what kind of music is out there that I'm missing. I listen to a lot of music from the movies of the 20th and 21st centuries, but I still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what the best stuff is. So here I'm going to list a few of the movies who's scores I love, but mostly I'm going to wait to see which old fossil here will enlighten me to the really classic films and composers I know little about.
In no particular order:
The Buccaneer - Elmer Bernstein
Star Wars Saga (esp. ANH) - John Williams
Mission Impossible II - Hans Zimmer
Glory - James Horner
The Page Master - James Horner (not 100% sure)
Sons of Katie Elder - Elmer Bernstein
The Magnificent Seven - Elmer Bernstein
The Mummy - Jerry Goldsmith
The Mummy Returns - Alan Silvestri
Treasure Planet - Not sure about his one
Now, that looks like a pretty limited list, but it's just off the top of my head pretty late at night here. I've heard of a lot of composers, such as Herbie Hancock and Henri Mancini, but I don't know enough about them to even know if I'm spelling their names right or if they're even serious composers. I'm pretty into the old Disney Classic Movies collection, which some of you may remember featured films such as Kidnapped with Peter Finch, The Story of Robin Hood with Richard Todd, Candleshoe with Jodie Foster, and other great films like Old Yeller, In Search of the Castaways, Escape to Witch Mountain, and The Apple Dumpling Gang. I lot of those movies had great little film scores, but I don't know the history behind that time period. Was this one guy working with one production company on a bunch of different scores, or was there a shared style that people like John Williams picked up on for ANH but have since moved away from to produce, in my opinion, inferior scores for the last three Star Wars films?
I'd really like to know what's going on. There are so many great old movies with great music, but it seems like no one cares anymore. Westerns had such flare, but nobodies raving about them anymore, so it went out of style and people like me, who weren't privileged enough to have lived through slightly older times, really miss out on that experience.
Any help is appreciated. I know a few of you have a knack for this kind of thing, so I'll be looking forward to some answers. Thanks guys!