Which of his scores do you feel are the most overlooked compared to some of his others? I think the following deserve a lot more praise.
Jane Eyre
JFK
The Towering Inferno
The Poseidon Adventure
Hook
The Patriot
Sabrina
Empire of the Sun
Go to bed Frank or this is going to get ugly .
Except for Jane Eyre, these are hardly overlooked scores, most were at least nominated for an Oscar. Try also;
The Reivers (also nominated)
The Missouri Breaks
Cinderella Liberty (very 70s but worth a listen)
The Sugarland Express
He has many, but "Hook" and "Nixon" top the list.
Originality needs a reboot.
The Reivers.
I'll Teach You To Laugh At Something's That's Funny
Homer Simpson
The Reivers
Empire of the Sun
1941
The Terminal.
shareDracula, Monsignor, Images, his earlier work for TV. Wouldn't have thought Hook, Empire of the Sun, and JFK were among the "most" overlooked.
shareI haven't heard a lot of his scores, but I decided to buy IJ & the Crystal Skull and I enjoyed every track. I bought The Force Awakens, but unfortunately my home CD player does not like the CD and my car stereo does not represent orchestral music well - any quiet parts are inaudible partly due to road noise, etc.
I don't own any other IJ soundtracks, so I can't compare it to those, but I recognize the themes from the prior films and the new ones are nice.
The Crystal Skull theme may be similar to Kylo Ren's theme, but I would need to listen back to back.
One other thing - my friend and I loved the Jurassic Park score and bought The Lost World score when it came out. He didn't really like it, but I went ahead and bought it anyway. The LW score is never mentioned, so it must not be popular. I thought it was disappointing at the time. I'm not sure I have seen the full movie again since I saw it in the theater.
The Reivers (1969) and The Cowboys (1972). At first it looked like John Williams would be a great composer of Americana and Western music but the films he was given led him away from these areas. He had a real knack for it.
shareIn between Spielbergs Jaws of 1975 and Lucas Star Wars of 1977, Williams scored Alfred Hitchcocks final film, Family Plot in 1976. Quite a trifecta: Spielberg Hitchcock Lucas. And Family Plot feels like a Spielberg movie because of its fanciful score.
Williams called the great composer Bernard Herrmann ...whom Hitchcock had fired from Torn Curtain after Herrrmann had scored Vertigo and Psycho, to ask permission to work with Hitchcock, which was granted. I saw Williams at a seminar in 1977 and he discussed this.
I like the 1941 march and I wish it had been switched to Raiders. Spielberg didnt say that, but he did say that 1941 was Williams best march.
Finally, Williams score for the third act blimp into Super Bowl climax of Black Sunday was truly thrilling especially as the blimp descended into the stadium. Too bad what followed on screen wasnt too good...