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I love to hear what the original score sounded like to Gangs of New York (by Elmer Bernstein, I think?)

Excellent comments, Rich. Goldsmith isn't my favorite, though he has done some very fine scores, I think, including Chinatown and Planet of the Apes. I like him less when he is aping John Williams -- I'm not all that pleased with the Star Trek themes, though they are fine for the movies. But...

Agreed about Witness (which I said earlier). The score is atrociously wrong for the movie.

In order to defend my opinion properly, we watched The Treasure of the Sierra Madre again this weekend (great movie!) The only objectionable music is that one theme, the "prospecting" theme, which is a simple variation of Dvorak's "Humoresque," used humorously in other movies like Mr. Deeds Goes...

Oh, I completely disagree about Punch-Drunk Love. The music represents his neurosis. I think it's one of the most brilliant scores ever conceived (and the movie is good too).

I'm not crazy about the zither in The Third Man, but it's certainly original -- a specific choice often works because nothing else sounds like it.

I actually think the problem with Ladyhawke's score is the mix of rock and orchestra/traditional. If they had gone for an entire rock score, it might have worked. But the orchestra stuff makes the rock stuff look/sound bad.

A Knight's Tale is one I wouldn't change. If one adapts some sort of medievel music as a score, the movie will be revealed as a shallow teen version of Rocky or Karate Kid. But with the anachronistic rock score, it becomes a creative cinematic experiment. Keep the score. P.S. Ladyhawke...

I was part of that other thread, but now something's changed: somebody's actually replacing a score to a movie.

There are plenty of movies like Ladyhawke with bad scores, but I don't think these are worth... fixing. I was going more for classic, good films with scores that could be replaced. Here's another one I think deserves a change: Witness P.S. I'm not a John Barry fan, overall. The Bond...

Oh, I like most of Max Steiner fine. And by the way, I think the score to Dr. Zhivago is perfectly respectable, as composition. But why so much repetition? It's like he ran out of ideas, so he just recycled them, over and over. It isn't like theme and variations. It's just the same cues...

Hi, Ray! Love your comments. I agree, that a music score shouldn't be dismissed because its style seems out-of-date. Certainly Gone With The Wind's music is endless, and might seem too much for us now, but that was the prevailing style, and as such, it works very well. I also think most...

I guess there are plenty of bad scores which could be replaced, but what if they were replaced by worse ones? I'm not sure we have anybody right now (except maybe John Williams) who can do a score as well as Bernard Herrmann or David Raksin. And by the way, I don't mean to offend anyone's...

I thought of another one: Murder on the Orient Express

Jonny_L: I just watched a movie from the 70s, Chinatown, and the score by Jerry Goldsmith is just superb! Classic work.

Additionally, I think quite a lot of movies would play better with no score at all. The scenes would be better "unamplified."

I recognize that such things wouldn't be able to be done -- probably there are no surviving separate music tracks for Treasure, so the dialogue and music are inseparable. I actually like Max Steiner for many things, certainly King Kong (the original sweeping score) and Gone With The Wind are...

There's a major piece of news on the web. A movie, Major Dundee, directed by Sam Peckinpah, is being re-scored. This must be a first, setting a precedent (if it's successful) for other older movies. So, let's make a list and send it to ... er, ... them! www.filmscoremonthly.com/...Friday.asp...