Hear, Hear

The much-lauded composer Hans Zimmer (The Thin Red Line) basically rips a hole into the side of modern day movie scores. He says too many scores are like cows grazing and do not sound like the composer put too much thought into it. To this I say, hear, hear. When I started wading into the Oscar selections for this category in the past few months, it occurred to me that I barely noticed most of them. The ones that I remembered were not all that memorable, either. People rave about Dario Marianelli's score to Atonement, but honestly I hardly remember a note of it. Aside from the part where it assassinates the ending. (I know. Sore subject.) The one that I most remember from last year, and that best worked with the film, was Warren Ellis and Nick Cave's work on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I also thought Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood were good work. Beyond that, I'm not sure I could tell the scores apart. Most are annoyingly conventional.