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James Horner
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Filmtracks Statistics:
Average Filmtracks Rating: 3.15 Average Viewer Rating: 3.23 Number of Reviews: 108 Number of Votes: 200,364 Number of Comments: 2,594
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Reviews in Filmtracks' Top 100 Traffic Ranks:
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Reviews in Filmtracks' Top 100 Voting Ranks:
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Filmtracks Editor's Recommendations:
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Related Pages of Interest:
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Additional Quotes:
"I respect Jerry Goldsmith very much, but hope my music isn't too similar. One is always influenced by people
one respects, and I'm very influenced by quite a few classical composers, and admire their work very much, so people
always think they can pigeon hole my music by saying, well, it's this or that. Most of the films that I've been doing
are, in fact, adventure, horror or whatever, and those are the kinds of films Goldsmith does." - 1982, on criticism that his music resembles Goldsmith's
"My trick is that the films are all so different. I have no high ambitions to win 35 Academy Awards. I just
try to be the best at what I can be and work on the best movies I can and not get too wrapped up in the day-to-day ups
and downs of it, which is difficult enough." - 1995, on his craft
"I learned long ago that the vagaries of the Academy are uncontrollable, and that you'll end up committing
suicide if you think your fortune is made by them. It's very flattering to get nominated, and it means a lot to me.
But the score has a deeper personal meaning to me than that." - 1997, on losing the Academy Award to Il Postino in 1996
"What appeals to me about writing film music is that each project is completely different from the other. I
could have chosen to another Star Trek or two or three Star Treks because I was certainly asked, but I
wasn't interested after doing a couple of them." - 1992, on film composers being chameleons
"I had been asked to do a couple of other big films, which I passed on, [including] Harry Potter and
The Lord of the Rings, because I desperately wanted to do Ron's movie [A Beautiful Mind]. Those are
movies that mean something to me on a very basic level. Those are really like art films as opposed to commerce films." - 2001, on choosing his assignments
"I'm a throwback. I know all about the machines, and I work with programmers I've worked with for years. They
know my tastes and predilections. When I work with synths, I don't want what you think of it as synthetic sounds. I
want very organic sounds that I can manipulate. The orchestral stuff, I write at a desk and orchestrate, and then send
it off to the copyist. The synth stuff, I play ideas to myself on the piano, and notate ideas, but most of it happens
by coloring in, like painting, at the actual recording session, because I play everything myself on a MIDI keyboard. I
have an idea, I know how it's going to work in the timing. It's all mathematically perfect, but in terms of fine
tuning it, it doesn't happen until I actually get there and I start playing in the parts myself." - 1998, on scoring without a state of the art studio
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James Horner conducting Titanic in 1997
"I'm a fanatic about Irish music. I love its moody, modal and timeless
quality. I'm different from some other composers, because I don't look at this as
just a job. I think of music as art."
Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1953, James Horner developed a precocious interest in piano at the age of five when he began learning
the instrument. After graduating high school, Horner decided to study music, and he attended the Royal Academy of Music in London, England,
before returning to the United States to receive a degree at the University of Southern California. Horner went on to earn a graduate degree
in Composition at University of California, Los Angeles, and he wrote a contemporary classical piece entitled "Spectral Shimmers," which was
given its world premier by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Eager to find a larger audience for his work, Horner began seeking
commissions to write film music and scored several short films for the American Film Institute.
Horner's entry into commercial film music came courtesy of legendary exploitation filmmaker Roger Corman, who hired Horner to write music
for several early 1980's releases for his production company, New World Pictures, including Humanoids From the Deep, The Lady in
Red and Battle Beyond the Stars. His mainstream breakthrough came in 1982, when he scored both Star Trek II: The Wrath of
Khan and 48 Hrs., and after composing for two of that year's biggest films, Horner found himself in great demand. He had written
36 scores by the time he received his first two Academy Award nominations in 1986, honored for the animated children's feature An
American Tail and the action-packed sci-fi thriller Aliens in the same year. It was during this time that Horner began being
compared to legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith, if only in the signficant quantity and type of projects he handled.
Through the 1990s, Horner continued to work on an increasing number of prestigious productions, however, including Legends of the
Fall, Apollo 13, and Braveheart, before finally winning an Oscar in 1997 for his score to James Cameron's blockbuster,
Titanic, as well as its theme song, "My Heart Will Go On," which became an international hit for Celine Dion. In subsequent years,
Horner remained one of the most prominent composers in Hollywood, turning down offers to score both the Harry Potter and The Lord
of the Rings franchises. Acclaim in the 2000's and 2010's included high praise and/or awards consideration for A Beautiful
Mind, The Legend of Zorro, Avatar, and The Amazing Spider-Man. His final year of production in 2015 yielded no
less than five scores and a concert work.
Instead of maintaining a career in the bright spotlight of Hollywood blockbusters, the composer opted in the 2010's to primarily work on
international arthouse-style projects that interested him personally. An avid pilot, Horner was killed in a tragic plane crash near Santa
Barbara, California on June 22, 2015, leaving behind a wife and two daughters and devestating the film music community.
(see legend below for abbreviations and codes)
| Title | FR |
VR | VT |
RD | TR | Dates |
Notes | 2016: | | The Magnificent Seven (co-wrote) | **** | 3.40 | 183 | |||| | 1,574 | 12/16 | themes only | 2015: | | The 33 | **** | 3.15 | 172 | ||| | 1,790 | 03/16 | | | Southpaw | *** | 2.92 | 155 | ||| | 1,587 | 11/15 | | | Living in the Age of Airplanes | **** | 3.48 | 95 | ||| | 2,152 | 09/21 | | | Wolf Totem | **** | 3.99 | 346 | ||| | 1,282 | 06/15 - 07/17 | | | One Day in Auschwitz | ** | | | | | | | 2014: | | (none) | 2013: | | Romeo & Juliet (rejected) | | | | | | | | 2012: | | The Amazing Spider-Man | **** | 3.82 | 1,338 | |||| | 320 | 07/12 | | | First in Flight | *** | | | | | | | | For Greater Glory (Cristiada) | **** | 3.24 | 236 | |||| | 1,411 | 09/12 | | 2011: | | Black Gold | **** | 3.36 | 383 | ||| | 1,223 | 02/12 | | 2010: | | The Karate Kid | *** | 3.23 | 592 | ||| | 1,130 | 06/10 | | 2009: | | Avatar (AW) | ***** | 3.83 | 8,904 | ||||| | 125 | 12/09 - 05/21 | multiple albums | 2008: | | The Boy in the Striped Pajamas | **** | 3.33 | 380 | ||| | 564 | 02/09 - 05/18 | multiple albums | | The Life Before Her Eyes | ** | 2.93 | 496 | || | 1,028 | 04/08 | | | The Spiderwick Chronicles | **** | 3.38 | 814 | ||| | 495 | 01/08 | | 2007: | | (none) | 2006: | | Apocalypto | ** | 2.88 | 990 | || | 589 | 12/06 | | | All the King's Men | *** | 3.16 | 729 | || | 779 | 10/06 | | 2005: | | The New World | **** | 3.60 | 1,308 | ||| | 300 | 02/06 | | | The Legend of Zorro | ***** | 3.98 | 1,552 | || | 280 | 11/05 | | | Flightplan | *** | 3.22 | 797 | || | 815 | 11/05 | | | The Chumscrubber | ** | 2.82 | 407 | || | 1,079 | 11/05 | | 2004: | | The Forgotten | ** | 2.78 | 657 | ||| | 612 | 10/04 - 10/11 | | | Troy (co-wrote) | *** | 2.90 | 4,726 | ||||| | 50 | 05/04 - 01/18 | multiple albums | | Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius | ** | 3.02 | 798 | || | 726 | 05/04 - 10/11 | | 2003: | | House of Sand and Fog (AW) | *** | 3.14 | 1,112 | || | 374 | 12/03 - 03/09 | | | The Missing | ***** | 4.05 | 1,468 | ||| | 238 | 11/03 - 03/09 | | | Beyond Borders | *** | 3.21 | 1,318 | || | 406 | 11/03 - 03/09 | | | Radio | ** | 2.93 | 635 | || | 621 | 11/03 - 03/09 | | 2002: | | The Four Feathers | **** | 3.42 | 2,022 | || | 386 | 09/02 - 01/09 | | | Windtalkers | *** | 2.90 | 1,934 | ||| | 362 | 10/01 - 11/23 | all albums | 2001: | | Iris | *** | 3.37 | 1,468 | || | 879 | 12/01 - 01/09 | | | A Beautiful Mind (AW) | **** | 3.79 | 4,390 | ||| | 119 | 12/01 - 01/09 | | | Enemy at the Gates | *** | 3.53 | 6,641 | ||| | 93 | 02/01 - 01/09 | | 2000: | | How the Grinch Stole Christmas | *** | 2.80 | 3,247 | ||| | 132 | 11/00 - 01/23 | all albums | | The Perfect Storm | **** | 3.61 | 3,439 | || | 171 | 06/00 - 06/08 | | 1999: | | Bicentennial Man | *** | 3.70 | 3,256 | ||| | 272 | 12/99 - 04/08 | | 1998: | | Mighty Joe Young | ** | 2.73 | 1,291 | | | 347 | 12/98 - 03/08 | | | The Mask of Zorro | ***** | 4.13 | 8,886 | |||| | 19 | 06/98 - 05/24 | all albums | | Deep Impact | *** | 3.36 | 2,245 | || | 115 | 05/98 - 03/08 | | 1997: | | Titanic (AW) | ***** | 4.11 | 27,540 | ||||| | 4 | 11/97 - 06/18 | multiple albums | | The Devil's Own | *** | 3.78 | 466 | || | 440 | 04/97 - 11/11 | | 1996: | | Ransom (co-wrote) | ** | 2.47 | 185 | || | 745 | 11/96 - 11/11 | | | To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday | ** | 2.77 | 258 | || | 831 | 09/96 - 11/11 | | | The Spitfire Grill | ***** | 3.95 | 1,648 | ||| | 368 | 09/96 - 08/08 | | | Courage Under Fire | ** | 3.05 | 1,137 | | | 370 | 09/96 - 05/07 | | 1995: | | Jumanji | ** | 2.86 | 434 | ||| | 444 | 09/96 - 05/22 | multiple albums | | Jade | * | 2.44 | 306 | ||| | 1,465 | 08/09 - 01/11 | multiple albums | | Braveheart (AW) | **** | 4.15 | 28,275 | ||| | 2 | 09/96 - 04/22 | all albums | | Balto | **** | 3.46 | 1,232 | || | 177 | 09/96 - 02/19 | all albums | | Apollo 13 (AW) | ***** | 4.26 | 10,483 | |||| | 37 | 09/96 - 05/19 | all albums | | Casper | **** | 3.57 | 2,654 | ||| | 138 | 09/96 - 04/21 | all albums | 1994: | | Legends of the Fall (AW) | ***** | 4.23 | 9,894 | |||| | 27 | 09/96 - 04/21 | all albums | | The Pagemaster (AW) | *** | 3.43 | 836 | || | 439 | 09/96 - 03/16 | all albums | | Clear and Present Danger | *** | 3.08 | 666 | ||| | 435 | 06/98 - 11/22 | all albums | 1993: | | Swing Kids | ** | 2.81 | 219 | || | 595 | 06/98 - 11/11 | | | We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story | *** | 3.35 | 319 | || | 474 | 09/96 - 11/11 | | | The Pelican Brief | ** | 2.92 | 297 | || | 682 | 06/98 - 11/11 | | | Once Upon a Forest | **** | 3.40 | 314 | || | 568 | 08/98 - 08/08 | | | Searching for Bobby Fischer | *** | 3.81 | 492 | || | 672 | 06/98 - 07/15 | all albums | | Hocus Pocus (co-wrote) | *** | 3.17 | 129 | ||| | 2,200 | 11/22 | multiple albums | | Jack the Bear | ** | 2.76 | 228 | || | 1,077 | 12/01 - 08/20 | all albums | | House of Cards | *** | 2.90 | 134 | || | 1,787 | 05/10 | limited | | A Far Off Place | *** | 2.94 | 200 | || | 732 | 06/97 - 02/15 | all albums | | Bopha! | * | 1.95 | 355 | | | 1,019 | 01/00 - 08/06 | | | The Man Without a Face | **** | 3.61 | 1,096 | | | 685 | 06/98 - 09/06 | | 1992: | | Thunderheart | **** | 3.11 | 267 | || | 559 | 06/98 - 11/11 | | | Patriot Games | ** | 2.88 | 907 | ||| | 470 | 06/97 - 11/22 | all albums | | Sneakers | **** | 3.53 | 690 | ||| | 596 | 09/96 - 04/24 | all alb ums | | Unlawful Entry | * | 2.28 | 215 | || | 903 | 06/98 - 02/19 | all albums | 1991: | | Class Action | ** | 2.68 | 163 | || | 1,108 | 06/98 - 11/11 | | | An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (AW) | **** | 3.36 | 1,076 | || | 263 | 07/98 - 01/08 | | | The Rocketeer | **** | 4.00 | 2,846 | ||| | 197 | 09/96 - 04/21 | multiple albums | | My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys | *** | | | | | | | 1990: | | Extreme Close-Up (TV) | *** | 2.95 | 112 | || | 1,847 | 05/10 | limited | | I Love You to Death | **** | | | | | | | | Once Around | ** | 2.64 | 179 | || | 986 | 07/98 - 11/11 | | | Another 48 Hrs. | ** | 2.16 | 105 | || | 2,215 | 03/22 | all albums | 1989: | | In Country | **** | 3.25 | 223 | || | 775 | 12/96 - 03/13 | multiple albums | | Field of Dreams (AW) | ** | 3.14 | 964 | ||| | 237 | 06/98 - 03/22 | all albums | | Glory (AW) | ***** | 4.27 | 11,537 | |||| | 51 | 08/97 - 01/22 | all albums | R | Honey, I Shrunk the Kids | ** | 2.96 | 208 | || | 1,372 | 08/09 - 08/24 | all albums | | Tummy Trouble | *** | | | | | | animated short | | Dad | **** | 3.08 | 251 | || | 780 | 08/97 - 04/24 | all albums | 1988: | | The Land Before Time | ***** | 4.07 | 4,510 | |||| | 77 | 07/98 - 04/21 | multiple albums | | Cocoon: The Return | ** | 3.01 | 159 | || | 1,467 | 08/09 - 03/16 | all albums | | Willow | ***** | 4.20 | 5,993 | |||| | 72 | 05/98 - 08/22 | all albums | | Red Heat | * | 2.64 | 249 | || | 729 | 07/98 - 11/11 | | | Young Guns (rejected) | ** | | | | | | | | Vibes | ** | 2.95 | 271 | || | 634 | 09/96 - 02/14 | multiple albums | 1987: | | *batteries not included | *** | 2.94 | 150 | || | 1,566 | 08/09 - 08/20 | multiple albums | | Project X | *** | 2.86 | 273 | ||| | 607 | 10/97 - 09/20 | all albums | 1986: | | Off Beat | ** | | | | | | | | An American Tail (co-wrote) (AW) | **** | 3.81 | 503 | |||| | 983 | 08/09 - 05/19 | multiple albums | | Where the River Runs Black | ** | 2.58 | 146 | || | 1,569 | 08/09 - 04/16 | all albums | | Aliens (AW) | *** | 3.43 | 1,595 | ||| | 173 | 05/01 - 10/08 | all albums | | The Name of the Rose | ** | 3.06 | 194 | || | 1,366 | 08/09 | multiple albums | 1985: | | Commando | ** | 2.85 | 521 | || | 299 | 12/03 - 08/15 | multiple albums | | In Her Own Time | ** | | | | | | | | Volunteers | **** | | | | | | | | The Journey of Natty Gann (co-wrote) | **** | 3.36 | 148 | ||| | 1,487 | 08/09 | multiple albums | | Surviving: A Family in Crisis | ** | | | | | | | | Cocoon | **** | 3.77 | 865 | ||| | 394 | 10/97 - 12/13 | all albums | | Heaven Help Us | *** | | | | | | | 1984: | | The Stone Boy | ** | | | | | | | | Star Trek III: The Search for Spock | *** | 3.12 | 926 | ||| | 477 | 06/03 - 06/22 | all albums | | Streets of Fire (rejected) | * | | | | | | | 1983: | R | Uncommon Valor | *** | 2.93 | 172 | || | 1,731 | 10/10 - 08/24 | all albums | | Something Wicked This Way Comes (co-wrote) | *** | 3.05 | 257 | |||| | 1,179 | 08/09 - 03/24 | multiple albums | | Between Friends (TV) | *** | | | | | | | | Krull | **** | 3.55 | 1,119 | ||| | 258 | 08/97 - 08/15 | all albums | | Gorky Park | *** | 2.98 | 146 | ||| | 1,497 | 08/09 - 04/24 | all albums | | The Dresser | ** | | | | | | | | Brainstorm | *** | 3.02 | 160 | ||| | 1,448 | 08/09 | | | Testament | *** | 2.94 | 172 | | | 776 | 12/96 - 03/13 | multiple albums | 1982: | | 48 Hrs. | * | 2.24 | 170 | || | 1,490 | 03/11 - 03/22 | all albums | | Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | ***** | 4.10 | 1,479 | |||| | 211 | 06/03 - 01/22 | all albums | | P.K. and the Kid | ** | | | | | | | | Rascals and Robbers (TV) | *** | 3.00 | 108 | || | 1,769 | 04/11 | limited | | A Piano for Mrs. Cimino (TV) | ** | | | | | | | 1981: | | Angel Dusted (TV) | *** | | | | | | | | Wolfen | *** | 2.85 | 185 | ||| | 1,352 | 08/09 - 08/12 | multiple albums | | The Hand | * | | | | | | | | Deadly Blessing | ** | 2.46 | 78 | || | 2,243 | 11/23 | multiple albums | | The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper | ** | | | | | | | | A Few Days at Weasel Creek (TV) | ** | | | | | | | 1980: | | Humanoids From the Deep | ** | 2.19 | 122 | || | 1,725 | 11/11 - 11/23 | all albums | | Battle Beyond the Stars | **** | 3.68 | 546 | ||| | 531 | 09/01 - 12/23 | all albums | 1979: | N | The Lady in Red | *** | 2.71 | 62 | ||| | 2,282 | 11/24 | | | Up from the Depths (co-wrote) | * | | | | | | | | (reviews listed with a "co-wrote" indicate that either the composer wrote the score with another person or that more than one composer worked separately to provide a score for the production)
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Status:
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N
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R
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Awards:
| AW |
- or a golden year indicates that the music won or was nominated for a major award
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Ratings:
| FR |
- Filmtracks Rating ("Varied"
indicates a split rating with no overall designation) |
VR |
- Viewer Rating (overall average) |
VT |
- Vote Total (for viewer ratings)
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Comments:
| Comment Total (the number of messages posted in the review's comment area)
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Review Depth:
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- Massive Review (over 4,000 words)
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- Very Long Review (between 2,200 and 4,000 words)
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- Long Review (between 1,200 and 2,200 words)
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- Average Review (between 800 and 1,200 words)
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- Short Review (under 800 words)
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Traffic Rank:
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Popularity Rank (lower numbers indicate more cumulative reads; new reviews take time to climb the ranks)
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Dates:
| 1st
| - indicates the month and year during which the review was first published
| 2nd
| - indicates the month and year of the review's most recent significant revision (if any)
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