Free Republic

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer who wrote the iconic theme tune to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, has died aged 91. His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Giorgio Assumma, who said he died in a hospital in Rome early on Monday.

Early on in “The Hateful Eight,” John Ruth (Kurt Russell) keeps repeating the line “slow like molasses.” Later on, another character informs his gang that their mission is going to take patience. This describes “The Hateful Eight” well, too: It deserves your patience. “The Hateful Eight,” the latest film by Quentin Tarantino, shows the very odd path that one of the greatest living filmmakers has decided to take. While many directors start out conventional and then experiment once they have clout, Tarantino has abandoned much of the nonlinear storytelling on which he made his name (with "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp...

Quentin Tarantino has admitted that Ennio Morricone's movie score for The Hateful Eight was originally composed for The Thing, Gigwise reports. Talking at a post-screening Q&A session with Interstellar director Christopher Nolan in Los Angeles, the Tennessee director stated that most of the music Ennio Morricone created for his new film was in fact written for John Carpenter's 1982 classic The Thing. “I had a little voice in my head saying, ‘This material deserved an original score.’ And I’ve never thought that way before, I’ve never had that voice before. I didn’t ever want to trust a composer with the...

Iconic film composer Ennio Morricone has crafted a brooding, brutal opening song for the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, "L'Ultima Diligenza di Red Rock."

There are few directors who care as much about music in their films as Quentin Tarantino, and across his filmography are an array of fantastic moments and scenes, cut with carefully curated tracks. While his upcoming "The Hateful Eight" boasts a new score by the legendary Ennio Morricone, it doesn't mean that Tarantino has left his jukebox cuts aside.

Terrence Malick hasn't always had the easiest time with composers. James Horner had spoken out loudly on multiple occasions about his difficulties during the making of "The New World," and going all the way back to the director's sophomore feature, "Days Of Heaven," the legendary Ennio Morricone admitted it wasn't always an easy process working on that movie.

While “The Hateful Eight” nearly never saw the light of day after the script was leaked in January 2014, the film is now rounding into shape for a Christmas 2015 release. Quentin Tarantino and much of the cast -- including Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Dern -- descended on Comic-Con Saturday (July 11) to tease the flick and announce that legendary composer Ennio Morricone will score the film.

The name Ennio Morricone has become synonymous with film, having provided the backdrop to countless classic movies. The Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor and former trumpet player is credited with writing the music for over 500 film and TV series and at 86 years old he still towers like a monolith above all others. It was for these reasons that I made my way to the O2 Arena for what must be one of his last UK performances.

You might be walking about humming Ennio Morricone’s songs and you won’t even know it. In his long and prolific musical career, he has written more soundtracks for cowboy movies than one would care to remember. He is the man we have to thank for the actual term “spaghetti western.” He is the guy who helped turn Clint Eastwood into a household name. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fist Full of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More are some of the most popular movies that featured Morricone’s soundracks.

Once Upon A Time In The West is a rare film. The movie is over 40 years old, was snubbed by critics (including Roger Ebert) and shunned by audiences on its release, but Sergio Leone's follow-up (but not sequel to) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is now a staple of even commonplace stores in the Louisville area, like Wal-mart or Target. On IMDB.com's list of the 250 highest user-rated films, it places #20. And that's not just with the general public. Film critics now often cite this as one of the best motion pictures of all time. What...

Some time ago, in my eternal quest to set the record straight, I suggested that the true hero of the motion picture industry wasn’t Thomas Edison or D.W. Griffith, not Chaplin or Keaton, not Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer, but the anonymous fellow who first came up with the notion of putting salt on popcorn, thus turning packing material into a concession stand bonanza that costs more per-pound than lox and caviar put together. But there are others who, more often than not, get overlooked while far too much praise is lavished on actors and directors. I refer to...