Intellimusica

Pan’s Labyrinth Lullaby This month marks 20 years since Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth premiered. Most people remember it as a dark fairy tale, with the faun, the Pale Man and the labyrinth itself. The film went on to win three Academy Awards. This has […]

The Time We Have Love of Your Life, the new Amazon Prime film starring Margaret Qualley, is scored by Dustin O’Halloran — and “The Time We Have” is a standout. Dustin O’Halloran has long been one of my all-time favorite composers. To me, his aesthetic […]

The Gift “The Gift” is a variation of the theme It Can’t Last from the video game soundtrack of The Last of Us Part II. It’s a sparse, minimal piece from my favorite composer, Gustavo Santaolalla. This is a great etude for beginner guitar players. […]

Shy Girl – Variation I I LOVE this theme from The Newton Brothers’ Carrie soundtrack. “Shy Girl – Variation I” is so minimal and original. It’s not what I expected at all. Typically, you get nearly 25 cues from a Mike Flanagan/Newton Brothers jam sesh […]

Éowyn’s Dream “Éowyn’s Dream” is a short cue from Howard Shore’s Return of the King score. The scene only appears in the extended edition, so it’s a bit of a deep cut. The scene is quiet and intimate. Late at night in the Golden Hall, […]

The Final Mission The main reason I love Jared Michael Fry’s Heart of the Beast soundtrack is that it’s thematic and sentimental. It’s OK, the composer can tell you how to feel, just like John Williams’s enduring film scores do. To me, modern soundtracks tend […]

Porch I love this piece at the end of Infinity War, as Thanos limps out to his porch. I only mildly get into the Avengers movies. I’ve seen most of them, and my favorites are probably the first Iron Man and Thor: Ragnarok. However, Infinity […]

Beautiful Lie If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the director’s cut of Batman v Superman on HBO Max. It adds a full 30 minutes to the film, and that extra time develops the characters and storyline so much better. It’s essentially the “Snyder […]

Ak’a Tamaani Ak’a Tamaani is a wild and earthy piece from Heart of the Beast. The title means “long ago,” “in days of old,” or “many years ago” in the Central Alaskan Yup’ik language (Yugtun). Composer Jared Michael Fry’s score for Heart of the Beast […]

Dear Child Dear Child (Liebes Kind) is a six-part German psychological thriller that landed on Netflix in September 2023. It was a genuine phenomenon: 52.5 million views and 253 million hours in its first months, making it Netflix’s second most-watched title of late 2023. The […]

Bring Forth Fate No spoilers! Mainly because I haven’t seen HOPE yet — but I desperately want to. It has excellent reviews, not to mention the largest budget in Korean film history. I’ll see it in a few days and update this post when I […]

Day One The inception of Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score is very similar to Gustavo Santaolalla’s Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. With the latter, Ang Lee sent a script to Santaolalla, who wrote and recorded the entire score before a single frame was shot. Lee’s genius was deciding […]