Three men stand equally spaced on the rim of a great circle. The man with no name, Angel Eyes, and Tuco all want gold, and they have already killed to get it. Now, as the wind whistles through the tombstones of...
[more]Three men stand equally spaced on the rim of a great circle. The man with no name, Angel Eyes, and Tuco all want gold, and they have already killed to get it. Now, as the wind whistles through the tombstones of the surrounding graveyard, they wait to see who will draw first, who will be left standing. As they wait, Ennio Morricone's brutal, eerily shocking theme for Sergio Leone's film "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" peals out, making us jump out of our skins and wince at our expectations of flying lead. But the gunmen are cool, letting Morricone's sounds recede into the desert before their bullets fly.
Ennio Morricone is arguably the greatest film composer of all time. Born in 1928 to a musical family in Rome, Morricone has become a master. Since scoring his first feature in 1961, he has produced over 400 soundtracks -- a herculean average of almost one per month. He's also written for traditional orchestras, rock and jazz combos, and, perhaps most importantly, the unconventional ad hoc ensembles that his distinctive imagination produces. Morricone first grabbed the world's attention with his work on Leone's Westerns. He rejected the opulent sonorities that Hollywood composers conventionally used, and replaced them with desolate, cruel soundscapes of discordant percussion interlaced with grotesque, animalistic howls and wicked guitar tones. With these soundtracks, Morricone effectively created a new genre and set his stamp on the world of film scoring. Never willing to rest on his laurels, Morricone has continued to push himself and music, writing scores for such notable films as "The Mission," "The Untouchables," "Exorcist II," "Bugsy," as well as for such great European directors as Saura, Almodovar, Bertolucci, and Pasolini.
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