Ennio Morricone's 80th birthday

[Jet_Jaguar]

Today is the 80th birthday of Ennio Morricone, one of the world's greatest and most prolific film composers. As far as I'm concerned, the world of film just wouldn't be the same without him. Many of his tunes are probably permanently imprinted on my brain. Just a few hours ago, I was humming "The March of the Beggars" from Duck You Sucker, which is something I do a lot when bored for some weird reason (when I'm really bored, I hum the song of the Volga boatmen).

Morricone even has a slight connection to Japanese cinema since one of his first film scoring jobs was for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, which was a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Morricone also scored a Japanese tv miniseries from a few years ago about Musashi Miyamoto that I haven't seen. If anyone ever makes an Usagi Yojimbo movie, I think that Morricone would be an excellent choice to compose the score.

Tim Lucas wrote a nice appreciation of Morricone's work on the VideoWatchblog:

http://videowatchdog.blogspot.com/2008/ ... tieth.html

Here's a few of my favorite Morricone pieces that demonstrate the maestro's amazing range:

"The Ecstacy of Gold" from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdNh9f2Wwm0

"Jill's America" from Once Upon a Time in the West: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ienaYD6-ffA

"Four Flies on Grey Velvet": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7aw7DUr ... re=related

"Days of Heaven": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxuvJU0MVaU

"The Stendhal Syndrome" (Super creepy! I think I actually had a nightmare once that included this music. I think that something like this would be great theme music for Jei, especially the part that starts around 5:35): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrMPSTS3PFs

"Lizard in a Woman's Skin": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0pEC26Vzas

"My Name is Nobody": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHouWALbuiI

"Regan's Theme" from Exorcist II: The Heretic (It's really too bad that the movie doesn't live up to the score):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcy9ULOFfVw

"A Fistful of Dynamite" (If I have an all-time favorite Morricone composition, it might be this): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3K63RUa ... re=related

[kony000]

I love Morricone's composition and spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone. I even choose a composition which I want to "hear" on my funeral. It is "Ecstasy of gold" from "The good, the Bad and the Ugly".

Best wishes.

[go]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3gp7B8WC4Q