One thing I truly enjoyed about this movie was the soundtrack. It was larger than life, and majestic. It was almost like a rallying cry to stop the bad guys and tame the west. Anyone else really like the music to this movie?
shareAbsolutely. I was just watching it again on broadcast TV, and after the main characters get run out of John Cleese's jurisdiction, I was thinking of how wonderful the soundtrack was.
shareI love the soundtrack. It is sweeping and monumental, just like the movie is. Not in an epic kind of way, but because of all the story threads, the grand cast, and such great characters. What impresses me most about this movie, even more than the soundtrack, is the fact that all these different components come together so amazingly well.
-He's not as tough as he thinks.
-Neither are we.
--- Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorff, "THE STING" (1973) ---
Have to disagree... I hated the score. It's bombastically overwrought.
Prime example: When Emmett (Scott Glenn) takes the bandage off his head and reaches for his gun.
Just awful.
Luxuriate in the eclectic...
http://www.eccentric-cinema.com
Congratulations. You just raised the pretentiousness bar.
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Yeah, it was effeminate when it should have been brawling and virile and it often sounded more knights-arrant than cowboy. The overuse of the already cliched and stereotyped bells for "winter/snow" in the first snow scene when they bring the horses up the hill was downright embarrassing. When the composer isn't lifting from Aaron Copland, he's trying too hard to make it "Western" and he goes all folksy with a fakey hoedown-fiddle sound.
Too bad. Sounded like he was trying to bring new life into Western scoring and took the whole project way too seriously. If he was going to lift musical types he at least could have lifted from the best of Bernstein, Goldsmith, Friedhofer and Newman. The score is a distracting, almost spectacular failure.
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Are you talking about the "This ought to do" scene ? That was one of my favorite in the movie! I'd like to get that picture of Danny Glover with the two Henry rifles printed on a tee shirt.
shareHe's lifting off Copland because he was asked to. The whole idea was to make a traditional western and to do that you need music in the style of the 50s and 60s westerns which was often inspired by Copland. What would you have had? 80s
Synthesizers?
I would absolutely agree. The soundtrack was amazing. I do think I found a more recent movie that takes the cake for best soundtrack, especially for a western. I just recently saw Good For Nothing. It's a fun movie, with a unique story line. It's a New Zealand twist on the old "spaghetti westerns". The movie was great, but like Silverado, the soundtrack is what really stood out. John Psathas and the New Zealand National Orchestra did an incredible job composing the score for this film. The music really connected you to the film and the characters in it. Here's a trailer for the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRYZNCVeZDY
Give me a break! The music was composed by Bruce Broughton, not John Psathas and the New Zealand National Orchestra, who played it-not composed it.
And the music had nothing to do with "Spaghetti Westerns" or "New Zealand!
But I do agree that it was a great score. Of course it was derivative of Copland (a lot of open 5ths in the brass), but how do you write a Western score without being somewhat derivative.
We're lucky to have great film composers like Bruce Broughton still writing great music for films, but don't worry, he and the few remaining great film composers will be dead soon, so you can have your lousy synthesizer/hip-hop garbage for the rest of your musically illiterate lives.
Bombastic? It's a Western! Beam me up, Scotty, beam me up!!
I was equally blown over by the score. I like it, especially the use of orchestra, but the mix is awful. True, I did think of the beef commercial (sad that most of us associate Copeland's great opus with an ad), but for me it was just too darn loud. I have trouble hearing dialogue anyway, so the CC is great, but there needs some balance. I'm also basingy comments after watching in 2014, not 1985. I'm sure that load ness didn't bother me so much in 1985!
Oh, ya… everything is derivitive. Sometimes you've just got to get over it.
Yes sir, I just bought it finally the other day, happy to have it in my collection. Great movie, great score, one of my all time favorite westerns.
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