What is your top 5 (or 10) scores for this summer? Mine would be:

1. Mission: Impossible 2
2. The Patriot
3. Gladiator
4. X-Men

Best score I've heard all year: Howard Shore's THE CELL.

Favorite theme: John Williams' THE PATRIOT. It's journeyman Williams, he could probably have dashed it off in his sleep, but still easier on the ears than most of what I heard this summer.

Most listenable new score overall: Michael Kamen's X-MEN.

Biggest disappointments: Jerry Goldsmith's HOLLOW MAN (which is okay, but neither film nor score were up to what I hoped for); James Horner's PERFECT STORM (perhaps the worst score I've heard this year, and the film was tedious beyond belief); and Takayuki Hattori's GODZILLA 2000.

Biggest surprise: also GODZILLA 2000: J. Peter Robinson's original additional music, including some slick adaptations of Ifukube themes not heard in the original version, pumped up the American version of GODZILLA 2000 quite a bit. The only time I can remember when an American version of a Godzilla film actually has a soundtrack preferable to the Japanese original.

My favorite new albums of the year have tended to be the FSM Silver Classic issues, especially BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, TORA TORA TORA, and THE OMEGA MAN. Hats off also to Prometheus for finally bringing forth Goldsmith's THE CHALLENGE.

Chicken Run
On The Beach (Released May 28... Not quite summer yet, was it? If it wasn't, oh well. )

The Patriot made the best score
Hollow Man scores with the best all around album; it all flows together for me. It's not a powerhouse score, but it's just plain good.

but after hearing The Cell in the theater, I have to put that at the same level as Patriot, for its inventiveness, something Howard Shore seems to do on a daily basis.

2 Mission Impossible

3 Gladiator......very close 3 with MI2

1. The Patriot
2. Dinosaur
3. What Lies Beneath

Best Re-release:
Jaws
Marnie

Way of the Gun (Kraemer) and Hollow Man (Goldsmith). It's not like it used to be, but it'll do.

Nothing else.

On CD, I thought THE PATRIOT was a familiar but solid score from Williams. Likewise, it never failed to deliver what was called for onscreen. Whether stirring or reflective patriotism, familial love, or in underlining and stressing tragic sadness and anger, Williams nailed it all perfectly. Too bad the film turned strictly into a revenge fantasy towards the end.

THE PERFECT STORM overall was a surprisingly refreshing effort from Horner, though excessively repetitious (and perhaps inappropriately conceived for the film -- I still haven't decided on whether Horner "missed the boat” scoring THE PERFECT STORM or not; it's definitely a rare occasion where he has misappropriated the needs of a film in spots; regardless, it's a solid album).

I liked Morricone's MISSION TO MARS for the most part when I saw the film, but have yet to pick it up. I'll get it sometime.

Much like the film, Goldsmith's score to HOLLOW MAN was an intriguing effort that didn't completely pay off. I wouldn’t fault Goldsmith, though, because the film went in the wrong direction and Goldsmith was just supplying it with the kind of music it needed. For me, it's nice listen on CD up until "Find Him." After that, again, as with the film, I found little of interest.

1.Hollow Man
2.The Patriot
3.The Perfect Storm
4.The X-Men
5.a tie between What Lies Beneath
and Frequency

Just off the list:
Gladiator
Hamlet
The Big Kahuna
Scary Movie

1.Mission Impossible 2
2.Gladiator
3.The Perfect Storm
4.The Patriot
5.Titus
6.Armageddon (HGW)
7.Star Trek: Next Gen. 3CD set
8.Hollow Man

Though the film may very well be a misfire, I'll reserve judgement until I've seen it.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST and PETER'S FRIENDS remain the only films I haven't seen that Branagh has directed. The rest are noteworthy films that I've enjoyed (even the excessively hyperactive FRANKENSTEIN has a strange energetic charm that's hard to resist once caught up in the action). While musicals generally are not my thing, Branagh imbues his films with such thrilling energy that I'm certainly interested in seeing how his unusual approach to Shakespeare came off.

Oh, and you really should watch Peter's Friends, also very good!

It was the only SCORE of the summer that was truly great...and boy was it. It has nothing to do with the music itself--I'm not a "Oh, I like it because it's evil" type of listener.

To me, the score was perfectly conceived and executed, with the utmost care for detail and an artistic finesse that Goldsmith has defined in the industry.

No one is or ever was quite so good at taking a little and developing/extracting from it a whole heck of a lot.

1. Mission: Impossible 2
2. X-Men
3. Chicken Run
4. Gladiator
5. Hollow Man

That's Scores