Tomie.
Grease.
In response to your critique of the score in There Will Be Blood, i actually found it captivating, and matched the tone of the film perfectly. It was interesting for me to see, or hear, rather, the music overlap scenes, blurring the lines between space and time.
Ok, so here we diverge! Firstly, ‘Kevin Salyers’, I don’t know what “Tomie” is: perhance do you mean “Tommy: The Rock Musical”?, with music from “The Who”? In which case, I concur. But I cannot concur with criticisms of "Grease"’s music, ‘Samurai Panda Poetry’. That music sold (and continues to sell) that film more than Olivia’s or Scientology Boy’s acting.
Gone With The Wind or Heaven’s Gate.
I agree, the music in THERE WILL BE BLOOD conflicted with the film. But I thought both were interesting in their own rights, they just never…meshed like I expected them to, and therefore, the music detracted from the movie viewing experience for me. The whole was less than the sum of its parts, unfortunately. The music didn’t seem to fit emotionally with what I was experiencing visually. And I love Arvo Part (whose compositions were also used in the score). Granted, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is an example of a movie I’ve intended to re-watch from the moment I left the theater since I have the nagging suspicion I missed out due to the rigid expectations I went in with: morally unambiguous villainy, epic linear narrative, etc….
The absolutely horrendous 80’s crap music of the otherwise masterpiece TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. It almost made me go out of the screening room, and Wang Chun should be severely punished for this :-)
okay, uhhh, I don’t know. I know my favorites, though. The Straight Story, and Contempt.
Stefan, the Wang Chung score MADE To Live and Die in L.A. the extremely fab wanton 80’s masterpiece that it is. That and the shoulder pads. As for THE worst score ever, Four of the Apocalypse by Lucio Fulci. Painful in all regards.
The Wild Blue Yonder without the OST is another film.
Anyone of the many scores Goblin did for Dario Argento films.
Distingue-Tomie is a Japanese horror film.
I thought that the original score for ‘Drugstore Cowboy’ was pretty obnoxious; too many farty-sounding synth horns, totally ruined the mood of certain scenes. The non-original stuff was great, like Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’ and John Fred & The Playboy Band’s ‘Judy in Disguise,’ but that score sucked.
Has to be the three note score of SPARTACUS.
Nope. I definitely meant Ataru Oikawa’s Tomie.
LOL. I agree on To Live And Die In L.A – however i love the Goblin Dario Argento scores.
Killing Fields – Mike Oldfield’s score is phenomenally distracting, and there are some other serious musical lapses as well
re: Distingue
I’ll grant you that, that the music of the film is far better than the performances. But i hate it. All of it. It makes me cringe to think of “You’re the one that I want…”
Lord, the torture. That’s the only movie i’ve ever seen that i fully wish i hadn’t.
I will agree with Tommy, to a certain degree. The first half of the film i quite enjoyed, but it starts to drag and the long musical pieces don’t help. The same thing happened to me with Sweeney Todd.
The first Transporter movie. The only one I’ve seen of the series…and even that’s too much. Just plain awful music that was so out of place throughout. I will probably spend the rest of my life spitting literally or figuratively on that movie. I might even risk my personal well-being to give either Jason Statham or Luc Besson (who co-wrote and co-produced) a kick in the junk just to make a point on how much I hated it.
Even on imdb.com on the message boards for the film, someone has started a topic called: Worst Soundtrack Ever!
’Nuff said.
I just watched Vengeance Is Mine and while not the worst soundtrack, it doesn’t fit the film at all. It’s like cheesy 60s cop/spy show music.
Philip Glass’s score for No Reservations (a truly awful movie anyway) was depressingly awful. Intrusive, repetitive, and uninteresting.
I’ll say The Killing Fields as well, the use of John Lennon’s “Imagine” at the end may be one of the most uninspired and corny uses of song I have ever heard, I now can’t stand the movie.
Paul Schrader’s Light Sleeper (1992). An amazing film with an amazingly awful soundtrack. And I agree with To Live and Die in L.A.’s incredibly cheesy soundtrack. Hmmm…both films star Willem Dafoe…curious…
Though I have already confessed to liking the movie elsewhere, when Celine Dion, true Canadian icon that she is, starts singing at the end of Titantic, I just feel a sudden urge to go to the bathroom. Don’t know why, but there it is. Also, the saccharine score by John Williams to ET always hits me the wrong way. When they all fly away on the bicycle across the moon, it is all too much – I wish the music would fly right over the moon with them.
If musicals apply, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
also the music to Juno just annoyed me, except for the henry louis polsar intro
oh yeah….Oldboy….so so stupid….if music had to evoke no emotion then Oldboy should win that award
To JP – the use of “Imagine” in Killing Fields might be one of the worst-ever mis-uses of a pop song – think about the ideology and modus operandi of the Khmer Rouge, and what that ideology did to Cambodia once put into practice. Now consider the song’s lyrics. Extraordinarily ill-chosen, and to just assess the magnitude of that gaffe in purely cinematic terms, it does tell us that Roland Joffe’s understanding of the material was not especially deep or complex, and that if the film succeeds at any level whatsoever (it does, and most of it comes down to Haing Ngor’s unforgettable performance), it probably did so in spite of the writer and director, and not because of them.
has anyone seen a film called I AM A CAT by Kon Ichikawa? worst synth music to accompany a bad film.
Lost Highway – It really felt like Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti was trying to get in touch with the wastelands of Generation X here, when they should have stuck to their guns.
Wild at Heart – Same deal, except it was a bit more appropriate for the (purposely)daft main characters, but when the ‘shredding’ was used externally it became a total bother.
Atonement’s Oscar-winning score pissed me off.
Howard Shore’s stuff for the new Lord of the Rings. I always found it very generic, and I know Shore’s capable of collaborating much more experimentally and energetic from his work on Cronenberg projects.
Distingue
Unbelievably, “There Will Be Blood” actually got a gong from the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival for “Outstanding Artistic Contribution (Music)”. Man, I wanted to mute Jonny Greenwood’s incredibly obtrusive score from the get-go. It was so freaking ‘audible’! Hasn’t he read Claudia Gorbmann? This BAD film sound totally detracted from what would have otherwise been a very fine film. For me at least …