DANNY ELFMAN: The 15 Best Non-Tim Burton Film Scores #10-6

See #15-11 HERE

#10- TULIP FEVER (2017)
Director: Justin Chadwick

After sitting on a shelf for two years, director Justin Chadwick's period drama Tulip Fever finally saw the light of day in 2017.  Sadly it was a complete misfire and in turn buried the recognition Danny Elfman deserved for the gorgeous score he supplied.  

Led by a smalls string ensemble, a collection of electric chimes and a longing but colorfully rolling piano theme, the score is Elfman at perhaps the most romantically lyrical he's ever been.  It has neither a particularly memorable theme or overly showy vigor about it, so it'll most likely get lost in most collector's minds in due time which is a real shame.  With it's forlonging urgency and feverish qualities it's a score that's easy to get lost in a clouded daydream of your own. 

TULIP FEVER Suite

#09- FIFTY SHADES OF GREY (2015)
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

For director Sam Taylor-Johnson's adaptation of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, Danny Elfman uses far more intellect in his composing than the film actually deserves.  

It could have easily been a phoned-in softcore porn score but Elfman instead assigns a variety of textures, techniques and themes to the characters and their apparent "growth" throughout the film.
Elfman employs a soft-rock ensemble, aided by a stripped-down skittish string section and a soothing choir to balance out it's fluttering of subtle electronic textures.  It's uncomfortably intimate yet cold, constantly threatening to burst with emotion but instead remains unsure of itself, mirroring that of the lead character's feelings to a tee.  It's a lot more musically thoughtful and fascinating than the film itself, and that alone is a great accomplishment that deserves more attention than it's received.  

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY Suite

#08- SCROOGED (1988)

Director: Richard Donner

Elfman's score for Richard Donner's Scrooged is about as Tim Burton-ish as you can get without it actually being Tim Burton.
With it's plethora of jingle bells and creepy "la-la" children's choir used to create a humorously morbid tone to the normally happy sounds of Christmas, Elfman was testing out the waters with similar techniques he would perfect in the years to come.   In the film, the score knocks the balance of comedy and darkness off quite a bit, causing Elfman to confess he didn't quite hit the mark with this one.  That may be the case but it's a still a fan favorite, most likely due to it feeling like a blueprint of what would come to be some of Elfman's best work. 

SCROOGED Suite

#07- A SIMPLE PLAN (1998)

Director: Sam Raimi

A Simple Plan is probably one director Sam Rami's least known films to the average movie-goer but I find it might also be his best.  It's like Elfman knew that and instead of opting for an easily accessible score, he went with something so sparsely cold and challenging it'll only reward with multiple visits.  By taking away the large brass sections he's so comfortable with, Elfman leaves himself only with a large chilly woodwind ensemble and icy piano keys & chimes to create something rather unique to his catalogue at the time.   Like the film itself, it's deceivingly simple at first but with multiple listens you'll pick up on all sorts of tricky little techniques and ideas hidden beneath layers of icy soundscape it creates.  

A SIMPLE PLAN Suite

#06- AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (co-composer Brian Tyler)(2015)
Director: Joss Whedon

For the most the Marvel Cinematic Universe's musical voice has been a real dissociated mess, not really making much of impact apart from Alan Silvestri's bold Avengers' theme.  Halfway through post-production of director Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron Danny Elfman was brought in to pick up composer Brian Tyler's octane-fueld score and it seemed that the results could have been catastrophic.  However Elfman did a fantastic job at mimicking Tyler's sound, giving it a deeper layer of emotion and, most of all, finding brilliant ways to bring Silvestri's Avengers theme into the mix, thus finally bringing musical continuity to the MCU.  It's a real mish-mash of composers' works but through some miracle it actually works quite well and makes for some of the most entertaining near-disaster albums around. 

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Suite*
*Note: the suite only contains music composed by Danny Elfman and not Brian Tyler

#5-1 Coming Next Monday...

FAT MIKE & FRIENDS / Home Street Home: Original songs from the Shit musical (2015)

Pierced noses.  Purple mohawks.  Smoking pot.  Shooting heroin.  Self-inflicted cuts.  Pedophilia.  Sucking cock for money.  Anal fisting.  And of course shit-covered titty-fucking. 
It's all part of NOFX front-man "Fat" Mike Burkett's punk-rock musical Home Street Home. 
Co-written by Fatty's now ex-wife Soma Snakeoil and Avenue Q's Jeff Marx, the musical tells the story of a sexually abused teenage girl that runs away to the streets where she is brought in by a group of friendly gutter punks that introduce her to a life of drugs, prostitution and various other forms of debauchery. 
Burkett doesn't do a whole lot of his own on the album, with the exception of a few guitar tracks here and there, and instead leaves it to the likes of members of Alkaline Trio, The Living End, The Descendants, Dropkick Murphys and even nice guy pip-pip folk-punker Frank Turner, whom all lend their vocal & musical talents to the 18 featured tracks. 
Bad Cop/Bad Cop vocalist Stacey Dee stars as the leading character, Sue, who opens the album with "Monsters", an emotional roller-coaster of a song.  It wastes no time making the listener uncomfortable as we learn Sue is being sexually abused by her father (creepily played by blink-182's Matt Skiba), causing her to make a run for it with nothing but her art supplies, a razor-blade and her dad's stolen gun. 
Things lighten up (just a little) with the more upbeat tracks that follow, as we're introduced to the five gutter punks that bring Sue into their oddball street-clique.  "Fecal Alcohol Syndrome" is a personal favorite of mine, with it's washboard hillbilly rocker tempo and sneering lyrics sung by Samiam's Billy Bouchard. 
After a few jaunty numbers "Three Against Me" breaks your heart as a Fat Mike piano (!) ballad, about a boy who was forced out of his abusive household because of his homosexuality. 
"High Achievers", a honky tonk number, features the five gutter punks trying to convince Sue that drugs are the only way to live, using a gaggle of well-respected minds throughout history as examples.  Out of context the song sounds really bad but knowing where it comes from makes for a delightfully catchy little number. 
Frank Turner lends his friendly vocals as the narrative voice of reason to Sue in two separate little ukulele driven ditties called "Bad Decision" and "Another Bad Decision".  If someone is going tell me I'm making foolish choices then I have no problem with it coming from the mouth of Frank Turner. 
"I'm Suicide" is probably the album highlight for me.  An uplifting rocker, sneered with convincing anger and power by Stacey Dee, as her character is nicknamed Suicide by her new peers.  Another highlight is the oddly sweet "Bearly Legal" number about a male prostitute and his john confessing the caring feelings they actually have for each other. 
The bulk of the album is excellent and will most likely surprise anyone already familiar with Fat Mike's work with NOFX or Me First and The Gimme Gimmes.  For some odd reason the songs are out of the order from the actual stage musical they're from but it does make for a better listening experience considering there's a handful of songs that don't actually make the final track-listing. 
As dark as the subject matter is, it's done with a slight smirk and never forgets it's really all about strength and survival. 

DANNY ELFMAN: The 15 Best Non-Tim Burton Film Scores #15-11

Ever since 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, composer Danny Elfman has been the leading musical voice for director Tim Burton's vast filmography of Gothic goofiness and somber beauty.
From the spooky roller-coaster zaniness of 1988's Beetlejuice to the fairytale elegance of 1990's Edward Scissorhands to frightening old-fashioned grandeur of 1999's Sleepy Hollow and right up to the minimalistic pluckiness of 2014's Big Eyes, Elfman has scored all but a small handful of Burton's films.  Much akin to director/composers Steven Spielberg & John Williams, Alfred Hitchcock & Bernard Herrmann or Christopher Nolan & Hans Zimmer, the duo's working relationship is a match made in heaven.

However Elfman hasn't remained exclusive to just Burton and has worked with a vast array of other directors, including Sam Raimi, Gus Van Sant, Joss Whedon, Clive Barker, Guillermo del Toro and many more.

I've selected fifteen of my favorite non-Tim Burton film scores, and included YouTube links to suites I edited together, so you might get a different taste of what the composer is capable of. 

Let's start with #15-11:

#15- CHARLOTTE'S WEB (2006)
Director: Gary Winick

Known for light-fare comedic films like Letters to Juliet and 13 Going on 30, director Gary Winick chose Elfman to compose his 2006 adaptation of E.B. White's classic children's novel Charlotte's Web.
A delightful mixture of childlike innocence and playful Americana, Charlotte's Web relies mostly on light strings and plucky pianos, with a soft layer of choir and highlights of a guitar & fiddle.  Fans of Elfman's lush early 90's work, such as Sommersby and Black Beauty will find this a wonderful companion, only here we get a style that's less dramatic and brimming more with joyful friskiness  It's not the sort of score to stir one's emotions with memorable themes but more so with constant inoffensive charm and confidence to never overwhelm with unnecessary flair.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB Suite

#14- THE WOLFMAN  (2010)
Director: Joe Johnston

The story behind Danny Elfman's score for director Joe Johnston's 2010 adaptation the 1941 horror classic The Wolfman is just as messy as the actual film itself.
Fortunately the composer's morbidly melodramatic oeuvre as a standalone listen is a delightfully vicious experience.  Elfman made it no secret that his primary influence on this assignment was Wojciech Kilar's deeply heavy operatic score for Bram Stoker's Dracula.  This is lush Gothic romanticism as some of it's best with it's bold bass-heavy strings almost overpowering the pounding brass and percussion.  While most film scores would assign individual themes for each character, setting and emotion, Elfman opts to cleverly reconstruct the leading theme into whatever sentiment it's coinciding moment in the film calls for.  Search no more for good ol' fashioned cinematic horror music at the top of it's game.

THE WOLFMAN Suite

#13- WANTED (2008)
Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Being a big fan of Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov's dark fantasy Night Watch duology, Danny Elfman jumped at the chance to work on the stylish comic book action-thriller Wanted.  

The composer brought a unique voice to the action scoring genre with a dense, bass-heavy, Eastern European flavored thrill-ride.  It's grungy electronic accents mesh so well with the adrenaline-fueled orchestra it never distracts from the actual compositions, unlike a few other modern composers who can't seem to get the balance right. Even though it's not your stereotypical action music, this cleverly textured score still manages to get the heart racing in all the right places.

WANTED Suite

#12- THE UNKNOWN KNOWN (2013)

Director: Errol Morris

Being the openly liberal minded composer that he is, Danny Elfman couldn't pass up scoring Errol Morris' scathing documentary on former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known.  

Utilizing the a string section, a piano and the occasional choir & marimba, Elfman juggles a dramatically solemn and playfully ominous score that reflects the shady yet chipper former Cabinet member to a tee.  A great deal of the score echoes that of Philp Glass' minimalistic rhythmic approach to scoring and that comes as no surprise, considering director Morris' number of collaborations with Glass in the past.  At first listen the music is sparse and overly serious but upon closer inspection you'll find a fascinating array of textures and techniques all done with a subtle scathing smirk.

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN Suite

#11- JUSTICE LEAGUE (2017)

Director: Zack Snyder & Joss Whedon

After taking over for director Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon promptly let composer Junkie XL go from composing duties on Justice League.  In turn, he recruited his Avengers: Age of Ultron collaborator, Danny Elfman, who was no stranger to olde tyme orchestrated super-hero music.  Sadly none of this helped the quality of the film and still ended up being a complete stinker but fortunately we got a pretty damned fun score out of the bum deal.
It's your pretty standard superhero composing with bold brass, string ostinatos and muscular fanfares a plenty, however it's solid writing with good old orchestral power merging with a clever use of modern textures and rhythmic techniques.  What got me squealing like a child in a candy store was Elfman making use of John Williams' Superman theme, Hans Zimmer's Wonder Woman theme and of course his own 1989 Batman theme.  Whether or not it truly works for this incarnation of the characters is debatable but it sure makes for a highly entertaining stand alone listen.

JUSTICE LEAGUE Suite

See #10-6 HERE