Get The Music Right First.. Bernard Herrman, Jerry Goldsmith, Hans Zimmer and more PACIFIC RIM

It came as absolutely no surprise to find that the guitar parts on the stirring Pacific Rim soundtrack by

Ramin Djawadi are the work of Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello

Always amazed how people underestimate the importance of the soundtrack. The first thing people remember from Hitchcock is the music from Psycho - yet in both recent biopics of Hitchcock his celebrated music collaborator Bernard Herrman is barely mentioned.

I'm a huge Bernard Herrman fan and his contribution to music in general is hugely underestimated in my opinion.


Brilliant film soundtracks are not some lost art however. Hans Zimmer's music to Inception is a recent but no less but brilliant example.

You will have noticed that the Edith Piaf song Je Ne Regrette Rien is used by the team over headphones as the signal to wake up. Perhaps also you noticed the evil 'Mal' memory is played by Marion Cotillard, who played Edith Paif in the movie of her life.

how about this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVkQ0C4qDvM

.....link shows Hans Zimmer's magnificent main theme of Inception is the opening chords to Je Ne Regrette Rien . but slowed down as if heard as if heard several levels down...

That is soundtrack work that makes the spine tingle.

My favourite long time film composer is probably Jerry Goldsmith, who has done so much great work that even today I stumble across old movies with great themes that I didn't know here his. Just n the last two weeks, Logan's Run and The Blue Max. Wow - the Blue Max. Can't think of another movie so let down by it's central star, George Peppard, truly a Viking longship of acting. If Clint Eastwood had been cast in that role the movie would be a classic.

I digress again. Anything with Jerry Goldsmith's name on it under music is worth watching. (I have already mentioned his abandoned Judge Dredd soundtrack in my cathartic explosion on that movie last year)

Dragging this down to a much lower level friends are amazed how I get so into writing, driving etc. It may be because I do go to some effort to create playlists and soundtracks for this purpose. Every serious piece of writing, every serious activity, has had its own playlist and I'm very rarely wrong with it.

I've just started playing Eve Online (I'm keeping a diary, could go up here maybe) and though the soundtrack is suitably atmospheric for a game which is infamously an "interactive screensaver" I would would probably have lost interest after a few hours if not for the playlist I've created to play to it. Eve's music is good but if you are playing it hardcore you need something to keep interested.