Your Favorite Soundtracks?

For over a year now I have talked about movies (and very happy to do so) on here; and from time to time I mention a soundtrack because I must admit I get a little bored with only talking about the acting or directing, etc.... But I also LOVE music.

To me, soundtracks and movies go hand in hand and are a very important aspect to filmmaking. I have spoken about this topic a lot on my blog. Soundtracks can make a movie better and sometimes worse. Although that is rare, I believe. More often than not, they are probably just movies that might not have had much in the budget for the music or the filmmakers chose a different direction and didn't concentrate on the score. Either way, when you hear a song from a movie, doesn't it make you think immediately about the film? It does for me.

I have my favorites, absolutely; and I have discovered some new ones along with the movies they are connected to in my research about this topic. Case in point: Back in October 2011 I posted about the soundtrack for The Sweet Hereafter, a movie I hadn't seen yet even though it was released in 1997. But once I listened to the songs and read a bit more about the film, I immediately put it on my Netflix queue. I watched the film a couple months later and, even though it was a hard subject matter, I enjoyed the film. Currently, I have Local Hero - a movie from the early 80's that I wrote a soundtrack (scored by Mark Knopfler) post about and I will be watching the movie soon. (This is one of the perks of this job - discovery of movies I missed, for whatever reason, that turn out great and I get to tell you all about them.)

We all have our favorites (and even create our own life's soundtracks) but I finally want to ask you all, "What are your favorite soundtracks?"  Tell me the ones that you have on your IPod, in your CD player right now or the ones you turn to when you want to escape for a little while.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Movie Soundtrack MP3