The Guardian has a spot-on article about the use of classical music in movies. “Handel indicates that the snobs have arrived, Mahler that someone is about to die, but not before pouting about it, and Wagner is a sure sign that big trouble’s a-brewing…Vivaldi’s ludicrously overplayed Four Seasons invariably indicates that the stuffed shirts are having brunch; Beethoven’s Ode to Joy announces that Armageddon may be just around the corner; and anytime an aria by Verdi, Bellini or Puccini is heard, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone is going to get raped, stabbed, blinded, buried alive or impaled.” It includes a list of the most overused works, starting unsurprisingly with Carmina Burana: O Fortuna, used “in every film trailer promoting motion pictures involving battle axes” and now “the biggest musical cliche of them all.” (Sometimes trailers do get their very own score. Soundtrack.net has a list of the most frequently used trailer music in their database.)