Didn't find any references on the net about this. I saw "Grumpy Old Men" on TV today and immediately recognized some bars from "A Whole New World" from "Aladdin" at the end of the movie. "Aladdin" was made 1992 and "Grumpy Old Men" 1993. Alan Menken wrote the marvelous music to "Aladdin" as well as to a bunch of other Disney movies. But the IMDB pages didn't mention any composer for the soundtrack to "Grumpy Old Men". This is the longest musical theft plagiation quote I've discovered.

Especially if the composers all share the same inspirations.

The 2009 Startrek soundtrack takes a lot from super hero movie sound tracks (Spider man, X-Men, etc) to the point they could just swap the sound tracks and you really wouldn't miss anything.

That's normal. Ennio Morricone works precisely like that. He's composing tunes and themes for future use. I'm sure he has a way of sorting them somehow. Then when he starts to work on a movie, he uses his big collection, copy & paste, and of course gives it a finish.

Ok, still a bit harsh. I should have said "the longest musical similarity".
{"name":"601785","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/7\/77317baa9f5900d9f552ba932a8398d2.png","w":749,"h":146,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/7\/77317baa9f5900d9f552ba932a8398d2"}
These are the two melodies, the melodically differing parts are marked. The first bar is just the pickup bar, which by definition doesn't have "stress" on it. But then happens the following. We have three phrases, bar 2, bar 3 and bars 4-6. Alltogether this is a somewhat uneven structure, compared with a dull repeating 4 bar (or 2 bar) phrases structure (like "You Raise Me Up", which also by the way has perfectly re-used at least two tunes. Cookies if you tell which.) 3 phrases and a structure that is slightly different from "standard" is almost a little bit too much, despite the differing pickup bar and one or two notes.

I've composed some music and a few times I've experienced very strongly how a melody really writes itself. It's a magical feeling and when that has happened, I've always been very satisfied with the composition. But meantime I've always had the feeling that I have rewritten someone else's music. In this case I guess it's quite possible that the two composers really have come up with the same 3 phrase melody "by letting it write itself". Together with the harmonies it has a very romantic promising feeling. Besides, the production times of two movies being released on subsequent years must overlap so much that the composer of the second movie can't have seen the first movie before working on his own music. Or if he has, the music must me in very fresh memory and this would be an intended plagiation.

I actually pay close attention, crappy music bugs the crap out of me. Even if its an excellent movie other wise, a bad sound track will absolutely ruin it for me. I have no real problems with a forgettable sound track. Forgettable is far better than bad.

That's an astonishing blatant theft. As you say, that clip from Grumpy Old Men is instantly recognisable as A Whole New World.

If anyone else here has seen both the A-Team and Full Metal Panic, you might have noticed a song in FMP that borrows heavily^[1] from the A-Team theme.

FMP:

A-Team:

Of course I'm pretty sure it was done on purpose.

Aren't hymns public domain? And the hymn "What Child is This?" was taken from "Greensleeves".

Only if it's past 70 years since the creator's death. (Not that creator.)

"Of Castles and Kings" sounds familiar. We might have it in our orchestra library. We have some 550 titles.

You know, I just realised that some early NCIS episodes leeched the Crimson Tide theme. I thought that sounded familiar.

Yep -- the name of that song in FMP is Tokkou Yarou; which is the name the A-Team was given when the show was aired in Japan (特攻野郎Aチーム; Tokkou Yarou A-Team -- It translates to something like "Special Attack Bastards A-Team").

weird, I had the same thing happen this year -- I noticed a whole new world similiarities in a song from a movie that I just went and saw in the last couple of months -- I whisper/sang it in the ear of the girl I was with and she busted up laughing, so I know it wasn't just me.

I can't think of what movie it was though, it might have been iron man 2, but that doesn't sound right -- maybe towards the end when they're flying away or something... maybe.

I didn't know they were still making Encore. MuseScore looks like a decent program - don't know about the name, though.

Well, the word they use is 野郎 [やろう], which is listed in dictionaries as "rascal", but colloquially is used whenever you want to refer to someone in a crude manner. Like saying "that bastard over there", or such. Literally the kanji mean "rural" (with the implication being "uncultured") and "son".