Film composers

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Angelo Badalamenti, the maestro of mystery

Every film composer hopes that they will have at least one piece of music that they will always be synonymous with. (Some greedy bastards, such as John Williams and Hans Zimmer, have loads.) Whether it’s Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther theme, John Barry’s James Bond epics or, more recently, Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings majesty, it’s a wonderful thing to have elevated a film or television series single-handedly with one’s scoring. And so it has proved with Angelo Badalamenti, who has died at the age of eighty-five.

angelo badalamenti

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Is Hans Zimmer a genius or a charlatan?

If you have visited a cinema in the past two decades, you will know the work of the film composer Hans Zimmer. Since he emerged in 1988 with his score for the Oscar-winning film Rain Man (he recently won his second with Dune, among twelve total nominations), Zimmer has created the music for more than a hundred films, television series and other multimedia projects. His eclecticism both startles and amuses. He is surely the only person alive to have collaborated with the reclusive director Terrence Malick (on The Thin Red Line) and to have composed music for a soccer-based video game, FIFA 19. He has scored romantic comedies, sweeping epics, cartoon animations and thrilling action films.

zimmer