Film music

Sometimes a top notch composer can carry an otherwise mediocre film with a good, solid score. For those interested in the subject, here's a fascinating article by Stephen Whitty, "A film score primer," in The Star-Ledger. My favourite score composer, Bernard Herrmann, died nearly three decades ago. But three great composers of film scores, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and David Raksin, died within the past three months. (Raksin was probably best known for his haunting theme to the 1944 "noir" classic, Laura, which Whitty doesn't mention.)

My sense of the matter is that, among contemporary film score composers, John Williams is overrated and the remarkable Julian Nott is underutilized.