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Disney has played with A Christmas Carol before, but is Mickey or the Muppets better?

It's likely that no book in human history has been adapted as many times as A Christmas Carol. Every year brings some made-for-tv movie that plays on Charles Dickens' classic tale of miser Ebenezer Scrooge changing his ways thanks to three Christmas Eve ghosts. It's impossible to count how many versions there have been, including TV shows. 

For Disney feature films, a recent turn was the 2009 CGI animated film where Jim Carrey voiced and performed Scrooge and other roles. It wasn't that bad a film, but it suffered from some padding, while many can complain about the "uncanny valley" of the CGI.

For most Disney fans, there are two takes on the story that shine bright: 1983's Mickey's Christmas Carol and 1992's The Muppet Christmas Carol. Both are still held as wonderful classics for the holiday season,...

Audiences viewing Steven Spielberg’s new “West Side Story” will see many differences from the 1961 version, including a younger cast, revised screenplay and new choreography. What hasn’t changed is the music by Leonard Bernstein, the result of four high-profile experts who teamed up to record the score anew.

Oscar-nominated composer David Newman oversaw all of the arrangements and orchestrations; Tony-winning songwriter Jeanine Tesori supervised all of the vocal performances; Grammy-nominated producer Matt Sullivan was on set throughout, supervising the music during shooting; and world-renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Bernstein score with both the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The involvement of Dudamel and Newman were legendary composer John Williams’ idea. Williams, who has been Spielberg’s musical partner for 47 years, recalls Spielberg initially asking him to be music director on the film, “and I said, ‘you should get Gustavo to conduct the score. He’s done...

Composer-arranger Sid Ramin, a longtime associate of Leonard Bernstein who won an Oscar, an Emmy and a Grammy for his work in film, TV and theater, died of natural causes Monday (July 1) at his home in New York City. He was 100.

Ramin won a 1961 Academy Award for adapting the music of “West Side Story,” which he had originally orchestrated for composer Leonard Bernstein on Broadway in 1957 (with fellow arranger Irwin Kostal). He won a 1961 Grammy for the “West Side Story” soundtrack album, and a 1983 Daytime Emmy for music for TV’s “All My Children.”

Ramin’s musical career encompassed every aspect of show business. He started in the early days of live television, arranging for Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theatre” from 1948 to 1956. “There was no second take,” Ramin once reminisced about the insane pace of live TV. “What you did was on the air, good or bad.”

He began...

If Marc Shaiman wins an Oscar on February 24, the long-time composer and lyricist will enter that rarefied ranks of showbiz status: He’ll have an Egot. But he’s trying not to think about that part. “Oh, my God, the whole Egot thing, I can’t even go there,” Shaiman said with a laugh during a recent interview.

With his sixth and seventh Oscar nominations under his belt for his work on Rob Marshall’s “Mary Poppins Returns” — a Best Song nomination for “The Place Where Lost Things Go,” shared with his long-time creative partner Scott Wittman, plus a solo nomination for Best Score — Shaiman could finally seal the deal. In 2003, he won both his first Grammy and first Tony for his and Wittman’s “Hairspray,” and he’s since been nominated again by both awards shows for other projects.

Shaiman’s path to Egot glory started somewhat inauspiciously, thanks...

Comprising one of contemporary Hollywood’s great songwriting duos—who brought music and lyrics to Broadway hit Hairspray, and collaborated on acclaimed NBC musical drama Smash, among many other projects—Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman faced the biggest moment in their storied careers, with Mary Poppins Returns. A sequel to a timeless Disney classic, which has left its indelible mark on generations of viewers, Rob Marshall’s film called for an original score and an array of original songs that could capture the ineffable essence of what made Mary Poppins a groundbreaking piece of cinema.

Following up with the (now-grown) Banks children of Cherry Tree Laneas they navigate the challenges of adult life, the sequel’s songs were inextricably tied into advancements in plot, as much as they were a respectful homage to a spirit of magic, joy and wonderment first conjured up in the Sherman Brothers’ songs and the score of Irwin Kostal.

In my opinion, kid’s movies are among the best ever made but are often over-looked because they usually lack tragic drama or passionate physical romances, but that’s what makes them great. They are a fantasy escape into a world we’ve never seen but we all wish we had. And that’s what Mary Poppins did so brilliantly in 1964 and I don’t think that anyone anywhere can honestly say that they didn’t yearn for Mary to fly to their doorstep and teach them magic when they were little.

With expert flair, Walt Disney made a spirited, visually captivating and touching adaptation from the P.L. Travers books and it was the first film from his studio to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Featuring a knockout, Oscar-winning performance of prim, proper British beauty and intelligence by Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins, Disney studios most expensive film up to that time,...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents a new print of the 1965 musical classic “The Sound of Music” as the fourth film in its series “The Last 70mm Film Festival” on Monday, July 30, at 7 p.m. at the Academy.s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The evening will also welcome actress Kym Karath, who played Gretl, the youngest of the seven Von Trapp children in the film.

Based on the Broadway musical, the film follows Maria (played by Julie Andrews in her second Oscar®-nominated role) a young woman who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed navy captain (Christopher Plummer). The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards® including Actress (Julie Andrews, “Maria”), Actress in a supporting role (Peggy Wood,” Mother Abbess), Art Direction – Color (Art Direction: Boris Leven; Set Decoration: Walter M. Scott, Ruby Levitt), Cinematography – Color (Ted McCord), Costume Design,...

Royal Albert Hall, London

For those of us who know our musicals from DVDs and Christmas TV, John Wilson's Hollywood Prom delivered a pleasurable shock. His orchestra, with its nine-piece percussion section and full-blown jazz big band, blasted out a surround-sound version of music that is usually squeezed through the tiny speakers of a telly.

Without the tap dances, chorus girls and (often flimsy) plots, the music had to stand up for itself. Wilson, who has brought a passion for authentic performance to movie soundtracks, shone a glittering spotlight on arrangers such as Ray Heindorf, Conrad Salinger and Lloyd "Skip" Martin. They were Hollywood's invisible men, who toiled behind the tinsel to stretch three-minute ditties into extended suites (This Heart of Mine) or craft subtle tone poems that became huge hits (Secret Love, sung beautifully by Clare Teal).

A tag team of vocalists interpreted familiar songs from movies made between...