"Watching the rough cut of a film he is scoring, Danny Elfman hunches in his seat, singing notes into a pocket tape recorder," describes Rosina Rubin in Premiere. "These abbreviated melodies capture his first instincts about the movie, harmonizing on its ideas and emotions. 'One of the great challenges,' he says, 'is to get inside the director's head and view the film through his perspective.'" This is just what Elfman does, especially in his dark, extravagantly dramatic, and funnily ironic collaborations with director Tim Burton. Beginning his musical career with the band Oingo Boingo, of which he is still a member, Elfman is a self-taught musician who stumbled into composing film scores. And since his first taste of the freedom allowed in movie music, Elfman has gone on to score numerous films, including Beetlejuice, Batman, Dick Tracy, Edward Scissorhands, and Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas. "I'm...