I did that again today. My roommate started watching Finding Nemo, so I joined her. About halfway through the movie, a few measures of the score stuck out to me. I thought "that sounded exactly like the Meet Joe Black" soundtrack! Who did that one... Thomas Newman. Wait, he does Finding Nemo too!" I looked it up just to be sure and yep, he did indeed do both of them. Anyone who has seen Pirates of the Caribbean and Gladiator can most definitely do this comparison as well, because that one is the most blatantly obvious similarity I have ever heard. --because it's not just similar... it's identical. Most everyone seems to know the general Pirates of the Caribbean theme, so if you have a Gladiator soundtrack, go to the track "The Battle" and cue it to about 5:50. Voila, we have Pirates. The only difference is the very last note - it goes up whereas in Pirates, it goes down. Of course, those are both by Hans Zimmer.
It's pretty easy to tell if it's a John Williams score, too. Yes, he is a musical genius when it comes to film scores, but he reuses pieces of themes all over the place and after hearing enough of his scores, you are able to recognize other ones. Same goes for John Powell. Most people don't know who he is, but he does a lot of action movies such as the Bourne movies, Italian Job, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, etc. (but has also done ones like Shrek, Ice Age, and Happy Feet). At least with the action movies, it has become pretty easy to tell if it's John Powell-ish or not.
There are also quite frequently composers and directors who work together on almost every movie. For example, M. Night Shyamalan and James Newton Howard. Howard has scored every single one of Shyamalan's movies. Or Danny Elfman (composer) with Tim Burton (director). Or the infamous Steven Spielberg and John Williams. Or Randy (and sometimes Thomas) Newman with any Pixar movie. Or since I just found this list of pretty much all the ones who work together, here you go.
There is one anomaly, however, that I cannot explain. And I didn't exactly take note to which movies and where in the movies they occurred, but in three Sandra Bullock movies now (if not 4), I have heard the same 8-bar (ish) 'theme' somewhere within the movie. The first time I heard it was in Two Weeks Notice. I love that soundtrack, so I became familiar enough with the music to recognize it elsewhere. That is the only one I know the actual track name for. "George's Speech" at about 1:55. I also heard it in The Proposal (I think it was that one), and the other movie(s) I can't remember...I want to say one of them was in Miss Congeniality 2 and the other might be The Lakehouse... but I could be wrong. In any event, I found it odd that that 4-8 bar theme randomly pops into a lot of Sandra Bullock's movies! And they're not even composed by the same people. Weird, huh? Then again, I am probably the only person in the world who has even noticed this. Oh well - I can't help it! Like I said... I am a film score nerd. Need I say more?
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