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 […]

The Dark Knight Rises My hometown of Pittsburgh was the shooting location for The Dark Knight Rises. Plenty of movies, TV, and Netflix shows get made here, but the 2011 Dark Knight Rises production was BY FAR the coolest one. Our downtown is mostly high-rise […]

Cornfield Chase I’ve always wanted to double back to the crux of the Interstellar theme, which is really the motif titled “Cornfield Chase.” This was a high-water mark for composer Hans Zimmer. His genius is in not being outsmarted by his own technical skill — […]

Variation 15 (Dunkirk) While Hans Zimmer served as the principal composer for Dunkirk, the score’s soft, ambient, and melodic textures were crafted by Benjamin Wallfisch and inspired by Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934). The film’s most poignant theme is a reimagining of Elgar’s “Nimrod” from his […]

The Last Samurai “The Last Samurai,” released in 2003, is an epic historical drama directed by Edward Zwick and starring Tom Cruise. Zwick has actually directed many of my favorite films; Glory, Legends of the Fall, and Blood Diamond to name a few. The Last […]

F1: The Movie, immerses viewers in the high-stakes world of Formula One racing. The film stars Brad Pitt and is directed by Joseph Kosinski. If you mashed up the films — Top Gun: Maverick, and Days of Thunder (with Pitt’s own Tarantino character) Cliff Booth […]

Now We Are Free “Now We Are Free” is one of Hans Zimmer’s most iconic themes, right up there with “Time” from Inception. Originally composed with vocalist Lisa Gerrard for Gladiator, the piece captures the Roman concept of the afterlife—Elysium—and the protagonist’s final journey home. […]

A Time of Quiet Between the Storms After completion of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune in 2021, Hans Zimmer, was still inspired and continued writing music. This led to the piece, A Time of Quiet Between the Storms. Zimmer tours extensively, bringing his film music to audiences […]

TIME Inception is a 2010 science fiction film written, and directed by Christopher Nolan. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb; a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious. Cobb is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased in exchange for a […]

The Survivor The Survivor (HBO Max) is about Harry Haft, a real-life survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp; a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps, operated by Nazi Germany, in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. In Auschwitz, Haft (Ben […]

Matera Matera is my favorite piece from Hans Zimmer’s No Time To Die score. The key and positioning left me no choice but to add You Only Live Twice here and there as well. This is the final James Bond film for Daniel Craig, who […]

D U N E Hans Zimmer’s DUNE soundtrack is absolutely gnarly — and it plays out brilliantly in the film. I’ll be honest: I don’t know much about the book. The synopsis is incredibly dense, and it’s clearly been a difficult story to bring to […]