I posted this in the After Hours thread:
"Fuck. One of the last of the really greats is gone. He was still so active, too; he did Far From Heaven just two years ago.
I don't share the general enthusiasm for To Kill A Mockingbird (the book's much better), but I'll be the first to admit that is one of the most fantastic film scores in history. And ask someone about musical themes for Westerns, I can almost garantee that it'll be the Magnificent Seven theme that'll be zipping through their head. The Ten Commandments, Hud, The Great Escape, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Animal House, Airplane!, American Werewolf in London, Ghostbusters, The Black Cauldron, The Color of Money, My Left Foot, The Age of Innocence, Canadian Bacon, The Deep End of the Ocean, and Rat Race; more than perhaps any other composer, Bernstein crossed all eras and genres with his work. From the epic to the initimate, from the intelligent to the low-brow, he tackled everything.
Truly a great that won't possibly receive the coverage he deserves.
Too many of the greats are passing; where is the new generation to take up their mantle?"