I didn’t get swallowed by a black hole, I didn’t killed myself either.
Instead, I have been very busy, writing up something, fiction related, as a form of mental challenge.

Before going in the topic, here a little story of my life. Before I was like ten, I used to not give two shit about music in movies. However, tunes had stuck in my mind. Especially, this one. It was actually the year I watched “Predator” that I actually started to pay attention to the music. Because, Predator would not be as awesome in my eyes without Alan Silvestri’s score.

Back on the topic. The subject of today will be a composer whose the music regularly come back in my winamp playlist: the Italian Ennio Morricone.
When one ask to another who is his favorite composer, excluding those working in anime, the most common answers are Harry Gregson Williams, Hans Zimmer, or Danny Elfman.
In a matter of personal opinion, I’ll state that I find Danny Elman boring, and sometimes repetitive. Maybe it is after hearing too many of his collaborations with Tim Burton. But in the end, his compositions does nothing on me.

Ennio Morricone is different. Ennio Morricone is one of the most prolific and most widely known over all generations in the age of cinema. First, he had come to be known from his collaborations with the director Sergio Leone. Ironically, while it made him known to the public, this collaboration seemed to have left a stigmata on his person, armchair critics often seeing the Spaghetti Western genre as a lesser genre; therefore, in the eyes of these critics, composers working for this genre could not possibly be taken seriously. This led him to be nominated five times for the Oscars in the Best Music and Original Score in the 1979–2001 period, and yet he never won them. He still received the Honorary Award. In regards of the attitude of critics toward him, it’s the equivalent of “We were fucking bitches, but at last you’ll have an award.”

It’s like the attitude of french critics toward movies that are not of the genres usually well regarded by them. To give you an idea of how french critics can be uptight snobby bitches, Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” got booed when it received the “Palme d’Or” in 1994. This alone makes me ashamed of my critics and this could explain why french cinema are stuck with romance movies recycling the same fucking recycled love triangle about a husband cheating on his wife but doesn’t know that his wife cheat on him with his best friend. Seriously, what happened to the french cinema? For one gem like “Leon the Professional”, “Le Professionel” or “Amelie Poulain”, we got a dozen of shitty love polygon movies.

Let’s leave my rage here and let’s go back to Ennio Morricone. His contribution is not just boiled down to his collaboration with Sergio Leone. He worked with actors and directors of many nationalities. This allowed to broaden the scope of his style, very lyric, very epic and so very italian, if one listened to italian classic music like Verdi’s to grasp the italian style.

Another distinctive trait of Ennio Morricone is how he direct orchestras himself, with little fault in his performances, when other composers usually use professional orchestrators.

But what made Ennio Morricone stand out is the impact of his music on the popular culture. You know one’s music is a big deal when it get used in many medias, like Tarantino’s movies, or Metal Gear Solid 4. It’s a big deal, when your youngest siblings whistles the tune of The Good, the Bad and The Ugly w/o knowing who made it or where it comes from, but whistle it anyway. This is just how intense his music is.

If you ask me what are my favorites from this composer, here they are, in order of preference:

There are more, those are about what I can think off the top of my head.

I hope that people who played Metal Gear Solid 4 or watched Kill Bill movies will all check the works of Ennio Morricone. The man is close to be 80 this year. If the Grim Reaper feels nice in this time period, after having taken away many great persons.

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