Wish List and Zimmer

Watched The Holiday last night (was supposed to watch Babel, but I blame girl TMY for making me miss Blood Diamond, Babel and many other things because well. It's just her fault.)

Show's okay
But I wanna buy the soundtrack. Hans Zimmer ya know. And something buyable by him since... well... since a while... Since The Last Samurai, actually.

(Technically I did d***loa* Batman Begins and King Arthur, both of which I would have gladly bought if I had a little more money and less itchy d***loa*ing instincts). I stayed away from The Da Vinci Code (for apart from being an absolutely horribly made film, and I say this not because I'm Christianly and all, but it's really horribly made, Zimmer couldn't quite save the film as he's done before for many bad films), Madagascar, Pirates 2 (trust me, any frequent listener of Zimmerisque music will understand me when I saw that the music for Pirates is an insult to the Zimmer fan base), and The Weather Man (which I have not seen).

Since I'm ranting about Hans let me just say that he's my favorite film composer, right beside Johnny Williams and Joe Hisaishi (the remaining superstars like elfman, ottman, goldsmith, silvestri, arnold, doyle, marianelli, morricone, horner, santaostupidlala, lag far behind).


Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard/Batman Begins

I remember when I was 15 or so, the only recognizable film music for me was Star Wars and maybe Indy Jones and perhaps Superman. All John Williams. Then I think my brother played the soundtrack for Backdraft on the speakers and it converted my musical religion to Hans Zimmer. I listened to Backdraft for a trillion times, and listened to it everyday for the next year or so.

So you can credit two people for my immense passion for soundtracks, my brother and Hans Zimmer.

Then when I finally got mildly bored of it, I watched The Rock, and that was it. My love for his music was re-affirmed.

Then the internet started flourishing and I checked out his works, and found out the beautiful lionish roar roar music from The Lion King was his work. Then in my mind there was no other composer who could do music like him.

Then I listened to Crimson Tide. Then I decided that he's one of a kind. And that was it. No one's ever gonna convince me there's a better composer than he is.

Then I watched As Good as it Gets, and since then I decided in my head that As Good as it Gets is the most amazing romantic CD I've ever heard and will dare play in front of anyone.

Then there was Gladiator, which many wonder why it did not win the Oscar for.

Then Hannibal came out, and the brood and the blood in the notes turned out to be one of my greatest inspirations for my assignments.

Then he scored Pearl Harbor, which despite being a cinematic failure, had one of the best most epic/romantic main theme I've heard in years.

Then at different points of time I listened to music from Driving Miss Daisy, a film from the 80s, and I used the main theme for two of my CIMP talent nights.

Okay. I'm boring you.
Just saying.
If you ever wanna start buying someone's CD, buy Hans Zimmer.

(to be fair, anything John Williams is pretty good. And Harry Gregson Williams. And certainly some John Ottman. And a little bit of David Arnold wouldn't hurt. And the occasional bearable stuff by Danny Elfman)