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“Here” is here.

And Robert Zemeckis’ latest technologically innovative drama stars his “Forrest Gump” team of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, this time embodying a couple living in a house. The angle of the shot never changes – it’s inside the living of a stately home, as time unfolds (and sometimes bends) around Hanks and Wright’s characters. It’s sort of like Disney’s Carousel of Progress attraction – we watch as their relationships change, time changes, devices change – all from a fixed vantage point.

And as you can imagine, there’s a ton of music. There are hardly better indicators of where we are than what music is playing in the radio or out of somebody’s personal music player.

There’s also one great Zemeckis Easter egg for the fans – at one point, somebody leaves the television on. What’s playing? The Beatles’ monumental performance on Ed Sullivan’s show.

Regardless of its importance to the storytelling process, film music is too often an afterthought. There are a variety of theories that composers have as to why, and they’re mostly related to a lack of education. So I’ve decided to take an active stance in educating filmmakers about the role of music in film and the process of how a film score comes into being.

My hope is that by the end of this piece you’ll be more familiar with: A) the history of film music in general, and B) the key composers who have contributed to the development of film music as an art. So—where did this all start?

The Silent Era (1890s-1929) Silent film star Mary Pickford. Somewhere, a pianist is inspired.

During the silent era, films music is provided by each individual theater, either by phonograph or as performed live by flesh-and-blood musicians.

Pearl, the highly acclaimed prequel to Ti West’s X, is a hauntingly beautiful exploration of ambition, madness, and the darker side of the American Dream. Released mere months after its predecessor, Pearl dives deep into the backstory of its titular character, offering audiences a glimpse into the origins of the sinister figure they met in X.

Set in 1918, the film transports us to a world ravaged by the Spanish flu pandemic and the aftermath of World War I. The film’s protagonist, Pearl (Mia Goth), is a young woman living on a remote farm with her strict German mother (Tandi Wright) and her paralysed father (Matthew Sunderland). Her husband, Howard, is away fighting in the war. Pearl dreams of escaping her monotonous life to become a movie star, an aspiration fueled by the films she obsessively watches and the fantasies she concocts while performing for the farm animals.

West...

When TCM channel host Dave Karger used to be a writer for Entertainment Weekly in his early days as a print journalist, he would focus a great deal on interviewing the big pop stars of the day, along with his duties on the film beat. But little did very many people suspect then that what he really wanted to be writing about was “Laura”… not Branigan, but David Raksin’s music for the classic 1945 noir. That was the film that really prompted Karger’s lifelong love of movie scoring.

“His score for ‘Laura’ really turned me on to classic film music, and film scores in general,” says Karger. “And then you go back and you learn that in 1945, there were 20 Oscar nominees that year in the category of best score for a non-musical film — and David Raksin wasn’t even one of the 20 nominees. That’s a score that has...

Nineteen forty-seven was a crucial year for Robert Mitchum’s rising star. The enduring popular classic, of course, is Jacques Tourneur’s seminal Out of the Past, and he headlined Edward Dmytryk’s Oscar-nominated prestige thriller Crossfire. It’s in Raoul Walsh’s noirish, Freudian western Pursued, though, that we see Mitchum crossing the divide between what Hollywood expected of the young man and the godlike figure they got in return.

The performance is a total menu of Mitchum’s various modes: an uneven mix of the young, beefy neurotic with a few too many shirt buttons undone; the high-riding titan who would star in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter; and the varnished-oak elder statesman who still has a few moves left in him, in Dick Richards’s Farewell, My Lovely and Peter Yates’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle. But it’s an unevenness that’s...

In a Variety profile of legendary composer John Williams earlier this year, director Steven Spielberg singled out a reason why the musician's work seems to stand out among his contemporaries.

"Every score he's ever composed, and even the ones that might have the most complicated orchestrations, he always has a beautiful main theme," Spielberg said. "And I don't hear themes being written for movies as much as they used to be by Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann. Film composition isn't a lost art, but thematic scoring is becoming more and more a lost art. And the great thing about Johnny is, he's still got it."

Of course, to say Williams has "still got it" is something of an understatement. The prolific composer is synonymous with the type of sweeping, powerful, emotional music that helped to define blockbuster filmmaking. A crucial part of why those scores clicked with audiences,...

If would be hard to name an artist in any medium who illustrated Flaubert’s famous maxim of creativity better than Ennio Morricone. Morricone, who died in 2020 (at 91), was certainly one of the greatest composers of movie soundtracks who ever lived. But even if you consider him next to his fellow giants, Morricone scaled his own wild peak, inventing his own kind of beauty, his own transcendent cacophony. Yet you would never have guessed it to look at him.

“Ennio,” directed by Guiseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), is a 156-minute portrait of Morricone built around an extensive interview with the composer. (It also includes comments from a murderers’ row of filmmakers and artists.) The movie opens on a beating metronome, which seems to set the orderly, clockwork rhythm of Morricone’s life. Strolling into his ornately furnished living room, he walks quickly, not like a man of 90, and his voice is light and direct.

John Williams, the veteran film composer known for his work in the “Star Wars” saga, “Jaws,” “Harry Potter,” “Jurassic Park,” “Saving Private Ryan” and dozens of other iconic films, has had a music building dedicated to him by Sony Pictures Entertainment on the historic Culver City Lot, former home of MGM Studios.

The newly named “John Williams Music Building” honors the Academy, Emmy and Grammy Award-winning composer for his contributions to the world of film and music. With 53 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the most nominated individual in Academy history and has had a prolific career that has spanned more than six decades.

“The first time I came to this studio was 1940 when my father brought me here to show me the stage. I was about 9 or 10 years old, and I thought, someday, this will all be mine! It’s finally come to be – it’s only taken me 92 years to get here!

John Williams’ film legacy is being immortalized with a Sony Pictures studio building dedicated to the Oscar-, Emmy,- and Grammy-winning composer.

The newly renamed John Williams Music Building on the Sony Pictures’ Culver City lot was unveiled January 18, with Williams’ longtime collaborator Steven Spielberg sharing his admiration for the musician.

“I have grown up with Johnny from the very beginning,” Spielberg said of Williams. “What he’s done for me is something I haven’t been able to imagine. This building is where all my stress dissipates…when I finally get to this stage of a production, and I know I’m in your hands.”

Spielberg added, “In the end I don’t recognize the movies as mine but as ours. Thank you Johnny, my movies would not be the same without you.”

Williams has earned 53 Academy Award nominations thus far, and collaborated with Spielberg specifically on films like “Jaws,...

Western movie soundtracks have evolved over the decades, incorporating different genres and experimental styles to capture the spirit of the Old West. Composers like Marco Beltrami, Gustavo Santaolalla, and Ennio Morricone have redefined the possibilities of Western scores, earning critical acclaim and awards for their innovative work. Effective Western scores highlight the emotional elements and complex relationships within the films, creating enduring melodies and themes that resonate with audiences.

While Western movies are defined by many iconic tropes, from the formidable antihero to the vast frontier landscapes, the soundtrack of timeless Western movies also plays an important role in tying the entire film together. In the Golden Age of the Western genre, composers like Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin created iconic sounds for frontier life by incorporating recognizable anthems. Later, Ennio Morricone’s eclectic experimentation in Leone’s films forever associated this avant-garde style with the iconic imagery of the lawless West.

It's been 46 years since George Lucas injected the "Star Wars" virus into the pop cultural bloodstream, and, for those who weren't there from the start, I often wonder if they fully understand why the first film captured moviegoers' imaginations and changed the medium forever.

Though "Star Wars" seems more ubiquitous than ever, it was never sacrosanct in terms of non-canonical spinoffs. After a limited series that retold the story of the first movie, Marvel Comics built out the universe in a run that lasted until 1987. Dark Horse Comics picked up that torch in 1991 and had a ball imagining a post-Original Trilogy universe for decades. The Extended Universe books by Timothy Zahn also filled in blanks you didn't know you needed to fill in.

But until recently, "Star Wars" was, as it had initially been conceived, a big-screen saga. It was mythic. As such, its narrative was all big gestures. Luke Skywalker was the chosen one.

Have you heard of a movie about a brilliant quantum physicist who travels to a remote location so he can test a groundbreaking theory that could change the world forever? It’s shot in breathtaking black-and-white, and features Nazis and a doomed romance.

If you’re thinking of Oppenheimer, you’re wrong by a good two decades (in terms of the time setting), as well as a good hundred million dollars (in terms of budget). And yet, like a smaller, distant cousin to the Christopher Nolan blockbuster, German director Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything (Die Theorie Von Allem) is also an artfully made, ambitious period piece where reality sometimes bends to the laws of modern physics.

However, the similarities end there. Nolan’s movie was science-fact, remaining as close to historic events as technically possible. Kröger’s second feature is more of a genre-jumping experiment, combining Hollywood sci-fi...

Film Independent is currently in the middle of a Matching Campaign to raise support for the next 30 years of filmmaker support. All donations make before or on September 15 will be doubled—dollar-for-dollar up to $100,000. To kick off the campaign, we’re re-posting a few of our most popular blogs. Thanks to author Aaron Gilmartin.

Last week in our Know the Score “Anatomy of a Great Film Score” series, we went to outer space to explore Max Steiner’s iconic music for 1933’s King Kong. In this special Halloween-themed bonus installment, we’re coming back down to earth (and checking into a suspiciously dilapidated family-run motel off the highway) to take a closer listen to one of the most iconic horror scores of all time: that for the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic, Psycho.

The score for Psycho is a study in economy. Underfunded, Hitchcock was thinking in terms of working with less...

For Oscar-winning film composer Michael Giacchino (“Up”), Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is the defining movie of his life. It’s what sparked his love of movies and film scores, and what started him on his path to becoming a successful composer, all thanks to John Williams’ rousing, orchestral masterpiece.

Giacchino, who most recently scored Taika Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins” and Juan Antonio Bayona’s “Society of the Snow,” and is prepping a remake of the giant ant movie “Them!” as his directorial feature debut, first saw “Raiders” as a 13-year-old in New Jersey when it opened the summer of 1981. He went back about a dozen times and even sneaked a tape recorder into the theater so he could replay it every night. He also had the soundtrack on vinyl and later bought a second LP containing score, dialogue, and sound effects.

“I think that record,...

Joseph Williams was eight years old when his father John earned his first Academy Award nomination for scoring the sudsy big-screen adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's "Valley of the Dolls." Yes, the legendary composer whose music would whisk moviegoers off to a galaxy far, far away, and make us believe a man could fly once flung us into the ugly, pill-popping drudgery of 1960s Hollywood.

John Williams was the son of jazz drummer Johnny Williams, so music has always coursed through the blood of this brood. But while John could occasionally knock out a magnificently jazzy score, he didn't become the Max Steiner of his era until he delivered the nerve-jangling, two-note motif for Steven Spielberg's "Jaws." Almost 50 years later, he is the most beloved scorer of the post-New Hollywood era. He's practically a rock star. Wherever he conducts an orchestra, there will be a roaring, sold-out crowd.

Joseph...

The below article ran in August of last year. We’re re-posting it here with minor edits to the original text. Special thanks to author Aaron Gilmartin.

***

The subtitle of George Lucas’s Star Wars is (of course) Episode IV: A New Hope. And in 1977 it was a new hope—for Hollywood and for the return of the kind of grand, classic score associated with the Golden Age studio films of the 1930s-‘40s.

In the decade before Star Wars’ release, Hollywood had trended toward using pre-existing songs as soundtrack rather than original orchestral arrangements. Paul Simon’s songs in The Graduate (1967) and the Burt Bacharach/Hal David songs in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969) are just two examples. And in 1977, electronic and experimental music sometimes took the place of traditional orchestration as well.

Lucas was already in the process of compiling his favorite classical pieces (as Kubrick did...

Tár writer/director Todd Field discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

You Only Live Twice (1967) – Dana Gould’s trailer commentary

Tár (2022)

Man With A Movie Camera (1929)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

The Big Parade (1925)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Crowd (1928)

Star Wars (1977)

The Servant (1963)

Parasite (2019) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

The Three Musketeers (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Figures In A Landscape (1970)

M (1931)

M (1951)

I Am Cuba (1964)

The Cranes Are Flying (1957) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Letter Never Sent (1960)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)

The Towering Inferno (1974) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary

The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

The Sting (1973)

The World of Henry Orient (1964) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Thelma And Louise (1991)

Murmur Of The Heart (1971)

The Silent World (1956)

Opening Night (1977)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) – Larry Karaszewski’s...

Warner Brothers released “Casablanca” in New York on Nov. 26, 1942, which just happened to be Thanksgiving. But the romantic World War II drama starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid was anything but a turkey. To say the New York Times review was effusive is something of an understatement: “Warners here have a picture which makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap….And they have so combined sentiment, humor and pathos with taut melodrama and bristling intrigue that the result is a highly entertaining and even inspiring film.”

And critical praise and audiences’ adoration continued when it opened in Los Angeles and nationwide in January 1943. It went on to win three Oscars for Best Picture, director for Michael Curtiz and adapted screenplay for Julius J. and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch. Let’s take a look back on the occasion of the 80th anniversary.

As time has gone by,...

Writer/director Martin McDonagh and actors Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson have become the holy trinity of Irish films thanks to the critical and commercial success of 2008’s “In Bruges” for which Farrell won a Golden Globe, and their current collaboration “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which won best screenplay and actor for Farrell at Venice this past September. Since then, the Oscar buzz surrounding “Banshees” has become deafening.

During his four decade film career, John Ford made classic Westerns and dramas (“The Grapes of Wrath” and “How Green Was My Valley”; he won best director for both). But the no-nonsense filmmaker born John Feeney in Cape Elizabeth, Maine to Irish immigrant parents always revisited his Irish heritage.

The year 1924 saw the release of “The Shamrock Handicap” of which Variety noted “Ford loves everything Irish, and he made the most of the little human-interest touches.” His best-known Irish films, and for...

What’s the matter with Pearl? Plenty, as it turns out in Ti West’s terrifically enjoyable postscript to his spring release X, which saw a 1970s film crew fall brutally afoul of an elderly farmer and his wife while shooting a porno in their barn. Unusually for a horror film, X had the same actress — Mia Goth — as both the final kill (the farmer’s psychotic wife Pearl) and the final girl (sex-film starlet Maxine), and this intelligent, not to mention almost indecently hasty prequel explains the reasons.

Pearl, screening out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, is that rare horror franchise follow-up that, while mindful of expectations from its predecessor’s core gore audience, has considered artful new ways to drill down into the essence of the original.

First, a quick digression into the appeal of X and Ti West’s films in general: West has an...

The messy politics of the Indo-China War didn’t confuse writer-director Samuel Fuller; as the machine gun- toting Nat King Cole snarls, hating Commies is an end unto itself! Fuller’s second outrageous Cold War combat fantasy pits a handful of French Legionnaires and mercenaries against the might of the International Communist Conspiracy, to stop the flow of Chinese and Russian weapons into Vietnam. Commander Gene Barry has an ally who could be straight from a Terry and the Pirates comic strip: Eurasian adventuress Lucky Legs. Young Angie Dickinson is the good-time-girl / wronged spouse / caring mother who also maintains cordial pillow-talk relations with the Red vermin. If those are the Good and the Bad, Lee Van Cleef’s Chinese General is the Ugly: his troops guard the China Gate, the key to Commie victory!

China Gate

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 111

1957 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date April 8, 2022 / Available from Amazon.

Michael Curtiz’s flashy and splashy wartime morale booster began as a pre-Pearl Harbor show of support of our Canadian friends’ contribution to the war effort. A vehicle for James Cagney, its script is a trifle about bush pilots competing for a woman and then showing The Right Stuff when it comes time to join up to fight. Cagney’s ‘bad boy’ act is always good, but what slays us now are the stunning Technicolor images filmed in and over the vast Canadian forest country with its endless crystal clear lakes. The aerial work in 3-Strip Technicolor is breathtaking, especially in this full new digital restoration.

Captains of the Clouds

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1942 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 113 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date March 22, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Reginald Gardiner, Air Marshal W.A. Bishop, Reginald Denny, Russell Arms, Paul Cavanagh, Clem Bevans,...

They’ve hit us with three remakes of this one, one about another actress and two about music stars — maybe the next will be about a TikTok star. Thanks to an unexpected full digital restoration from original Technicolor elements, this 1937 original once again plays like a winner. Silent legend Janet Gaynor is Esther Blodgett, soon to become the famous Vicki Lester. Fredric March gives one of his best performances as a matinee idol running his career into the ground with drink. David O. Selznick’s classy production takes some cynical jabs at The Biz yet characterizes Adolph Menjou’s producer as an all-wise, all-forgiving saint. The Wac adds great extras in full HD — a swing musical short and a sarcastic Merrie Melodie cartoon that spoofs the main feature.

A Star is Born (1937)

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1937 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 111 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date March 29, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March,...

Angels With Dirty Faces

Blu ray

Warner Archive

1938/ B&w / 1.33:1 / 97 Minutes

Starring James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, The Dead End Kids

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Released on a Thanksgiving weekend in 1938, Angels With Dirty Faces was a holiday treat with an unexpected punch; it could have been just another morality play dressed up in gangster drag but James Cagney’s powerhouse performance puts it in a class by itself. Cagney plays a rags-to-riches mobster named Rocky Sullivan, a charismatic cock of the walk who treats the tenement sidewalks like a Broadway stage. Long before his scandalous celebrity made headlines, Sullivan and best friend Jerry Connolly were teenaged partners in penny-ante crime until a botched train-yard robbery sealed their fates—Jerry escaped but the usually nimble Rocky was, for once, too slow. While Sullivan cooled his heels in reform school, Jerry went to church and stayed there—now...

Pedro Almodóvar’s poetic conviction and creative fluidity flow through this moving baby-swap drama about two single mothers and buried secrets from the Spanish civil war

Not parallel actually: that would mean they don’t touch. Here we have convergent mothers; intersecting mothers whose lives come together with a spark that ignites this moving melodrama, which audaciously draws a line between love, sex, the passionate courage of single mothers, the meaning of Lorca’s Doña Rosita the Spinster and the unhealed wound of Spain’s fascist past. Pedro Almodóvar’s new movie has the warmth and the grandiloquent flair of a picture from Hollywood’s golden age and the whiplash twists and addictive sugar rush bumps of daytime soap.

As ever with Almodóvar, there are gorgeously designed interiors with fierce, thick blocks of Mondrian colour, huge closeups of the female leads and overhead shots of food preparation. It’s impossible...

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be taking a trip to Vienna for a six-week programming initiative including a symposium and film series with a distinct cinematic connection to that fabled Austrian city.

The museum announced today the series launch on December 10 and running through January 31. It is designed to explore what the museum describes as the “large community of predominately Jewish, Austrian-born film artists and professionals who helped shape the films and industry of classical era Hollywood.” Titled “Vienna in Hollywood: Emigres and Exiles in the Studio System,” the series is presented in collaboration with the USC Libraries and the USC Max Kade Institute. The Austrian Consulate General in L.A. also is offering support.

Bill Kramer, director and president of the Academy Museum, said: “During the classical Hollywood era, so many beloved films and so many components of the movie industry were developed and shaped by Austrian émigrés,...

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced Vienna in Hollywood, a new six-week program launching on Dec. 10 that explores the history of the predominantly Jewish, Austrian-born community of filmmakers and professionals who helped shape the classical era of Hollywood.

Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe including actor-director Erich von Stroheim and composer Max Steiner were major players in the early establishment of the American film industry in the 1920s. Due to Nazi persecution, a larger wave came in the ‘30s and ‘40s, bringing in talent such as the directors Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang; actors Hedy Lamarr and Peter Lorre; producers Eric Pleskow and Sam Spiegel; screenwriters Vicki Baum and Gina Kaus; and composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Ernest Gold. With a symposium and film series, Vienna in Hollywood will pay tribute to these artists and many more.

The two-day symposium is titled Vienna in Hollywood: The Influence and...

A dark desert highway isn’t just something in an Eagles song — it’s what some Angelenos will be taking to Palm Springs this weekend to experience the particular shade of nightfall that is film noir. The Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is resuming at the Palm Springs Cultural Center after a pandemic-mandated time-out last year, offering a slate of a dozen familiar or obscure picks over the course of one concentrated weekend, some of them unspooling in rare 35mm prints.

Alan K. Rode, a familiar presence to L.A. repertory filmgoers, not to mention noir fans around the country, is returning as producer and host, joined as a presenter by cohort Eddie Muller, the host of TCM’s “Noir Alley.” TCM is signing onto the Palm Springs event as a presenting sponsor for the first time.

Films range from one of the quintessential noirs, “The Big Sleep,” on the...

The Daimajin Trilogy

Blu ray – All Region

Arrow Films

1966

Starring Miwa Takada, Kojiro Hongo, Hideki Ninomiya

Cinematography by Fujio Morita, Shozo Tanaka, Hiroshi Imai

Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Kenji Misumi, Kazuo Mori

Japanese monsters seem to bring out the best in home video companies—Arrow Films’ The Daimajin Trilogy is the most beautifully wrought Blu ray release since Criterion’s momentous Godzilla set. Though the films themselves don’t match the kaleidoscopic allure of Matt Frank’s cover illustrations, the Daimajin movies remain rousing entertainment for both monster-crazy kids and seasoned movie fans who should appreciate the sky-scraping samurai’s exciting if utterly predictable adventures.

Predictable, because each film in the trilogy is essentially the same movie—same beginning, same middle, same end. Utterly predictable but then so are the Bond films—the lack of any real surprises is fundamental to their comfort food aesthetic. Produced one after another in...

A wealthy young woman escapes her tyrannical mother to fall hopelessly in love in this magnificent Hollywood melodrama

The towering 1942 romantic melodrama Now, Voyager, starring Bette Davis and Paul Henreid has been re-released, and its audiences will once again get swept away in the emotional tsunami created by Max Steiner’s orchestral score; the music’s almost outrageous grandiloquence matches the passion and absolute seriousness of the film, and underscores Steiner’s reputation as the Tchaikovsky of the Hollywood golden age. The film was a sensational success and its keynote scene where Henreid suavely lights two cigarettes at once – one for him, one for Davis – was much copied by saucer-eyed fans. Clive James confessed that he attempted it while trying to impress a girl on a date, only for her to say she didn’t smoke, leaving him looking like a walrus.

Charlotte Vale (Davis) is a young woman from...

The MonsterVerse lives! Not even a year ago it seemed likely that Godzilla vs. Kong would end up being the final bout in the series of movies that launched back in 2014 with Godzilla. But the surprisingly robust box office success of the titanic prize fight — $407 million at the worldwide box office and counting after four weeks, even with the movie being offered for free until the end of this month on HBO Max — has led Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures to believe there’s still lots of life in this shared universe…. including a possible Son of Kong movie?!

According to THR, talks recently commenced with Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard about coming back for a fifth entry in the series. That would make Wingard the first director to helm a second film in the franchise, with all the others until now basically one-and-done efforts. There’s no timetable...

Godzilla and King Kong are not characters one approaches lightly. As two of the most iconic monsters in cinema, the big ape and even bigger lizard carry plenty of history on their shoulders as they march into Godzilla vs. Kong, the new monster mash-up from Warner Bros. and HBO Max. Composer Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie Xl) is of course keenly aware of this since he had the task of updating their sounds for 2021.

Holkenborg, a lifelong aficionado of nearly every style of music, cites the composer for the original King Kong (1933), Max Steiner, as a personal inspiration and influence. And of course Akira Ifukube’s legendary themes from 1954’s Godzilla (also known as Gojira) are nothing to sneeze at either. Yet, in a decision reminiscent of his and Hans Zimmer’s past choices with iconic DC superheroes, Holkenborg elected to go another way with the music in Godzilla vs. Kong...

Cary Grant and co-star/missus Betsy Drake do honor to the ‘family picture’ genre — with a filmic boost to child foster programs that offers a positive message, avoids most clichés and generates some sly fun too. What we see resembles real life, even if Cary Grant should never be shown washing dishes. Betsy Drake’s take-charge mother sets family policy as she opts to take in first one and then two foster children. It’s also the film debut of little George Winslow, before he picked up the ‘Foghorn’ nickname. Plus there’s a cute dog and some kittens that offer a sex education lesson. The recent biography of Cary Grant should renew interest in this entertaining and socially admirable show. It’s warm & fuzzy yet not at all saccharine.

Room for One More

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 95 98? min. / Street Date January 26, 2021 / available through the WBshop / 19.99

Starring: Cary Grant,...

Thomas Newman and Steven Soderbergh hadn’t worked together in nearly seven years when the director called the composer about joining his next film “Let Them All Talk” in October 2019. “I was in London finishing up ‘1917’ and he said he had this movie and he was interested in me doing it,” Newman tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Btl Experts: Film Composers panel (watch above). “It was like late October of 2019 and we did it in January, February, pretty soon after I got back from London. We were able to record when people could actually smile at each other and see their faces.”

The HBO Max film is the duo’s fourth collaboration, following “Erin Brockovich” (2000), “The Good German” (2006), which brought Newman one of his 15 Oscar nominations, and “Side Effects” (2013). But the score is arguably the most unique one Newman has done for the Oscar winner. For one, Soderbergh...

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“A Reluctant War Hero”

By Raymond Benson

Howard Hawks’ biopic of American war hero Alvin C. York, Sergeant York, was the highest grossing film of 1941. It received many accolades, including a Best Actor Oscar for star Gary Cooper and a trophy for Film Editing. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay (John Huston was one of four writers involved), Supporting Actor (Walter Brennan), Supporting Actress (Margaret Wycherly), Cinematography, Art Direction, Music Score (by Max Steiner), and Sound Recording. The film was released in the summer of ’41 and did very well at the box office. By the time it was playing in rural America later in the year, though, the attack on Pearl Harbor had occurred. The mobilization to prepare for war helped give Sergeant York a second wave of financial success and it continued to play on U.S. screens...

Ya like quality pro-intervention propaganda? Warners’ filmic call to arms inspired America’s reluctant warriors via a superhuman feat by a highly decorated WW1 veteran… and promptly got into hot water with the United States congress. Howard Hawks’ highly effective load of sentiment and sanctimony makes Tennesseans look like denizens of Dogpatch, U.S.A.. But America loved it, even favorite Gary Cooper’s cute ‘aw shucks’ mannerisms that compare shooting the enemy with shooting a turkey. That’s how we baby boomers learned about patriotism.

Sergeant York

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1941 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 134 min. / Street Date October 13, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, George Tobias, Stanley Ridges, Margaret Wycherly, Ward Bond, Noah Beery Jr., June Lockhart.

Cinematography: Sol Polito

Second Unit Director: Don Siegel

Film Editor: William Holmes

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee, Howard Koch, John Huston...

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By Darren Allison

“Casablanca - Classic Film Scores for Humphrey Bogart” (CDLK4639 ) was originally recorded on September 6th & 7th, 1973 and released on vinyl (on both the RCA Gold and Red Seal label in 1974). It was also released on a Quadraphonic LP the same year. The album masters were remastered at BMG Studio D on August 18, 1989 and from that came the CD for which we are probably most familiar (a successful series which came in a dark blue coloured tray and recognised by the silver film strip across the top right of the cover of the 20 page booklet). The recordings by Charles Gerhardt and The National Philharmonic Orchestra are quite spectacular, from the opening Warner Bros logo and the superb suite from Casablanca (1942) to Passage to Marseille (1944) to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)… in fact, name just about any Bogart classic and it...

Ciné-Real, the U.K.’s remaining 16mm film club, is launching a podcast as part of Keep Film Alive, a global campaign supported by stalwarts like Quentin Tarantino and J.J. Abrams.

The club, which is now an institution in London, was founded in 2011 by award-winning filmmaker Liam Saint-Pierre (“The Last Storm”) and veteran projectionist Umit Mesut. It has since attained cult status, spawning an acclaimed short film, “The Way of the Dodo,” directed by Saint-Pierre.

The Ciné-Real monthly podcast will focus on the making of classic films, and will host international guests. Kicking off proceedings on July 23 will be an episode on “King Kong” (1933), which featured groundbreaking stop-motion animation by Willis O’Brien, and a pioneering musical score by Max Steiner. Joining the show will be four-time Primetime Emmy nominee Steven C. Smith (“Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed”) and author of “Music by Max Steiner,” and Dan Richards, founder and...

Well, that didn’t last very long. Less than three weeks after Gone with the Wind was taken off HBO Max following criticism for its lack of context about the movie’s depiction of slavery and People of Color, the sweeping Hollywood epic is back. And along with it comes several warnings and special features that add welcome perspective on a movie that’s inception and legacy is complicated—to say the least.

If you go to HBO Max right now and click on Gone with the Wind, you’ll be greeted by a four-minute introduction from film historian Jacqueline Stewart of Turner Classic Movies. Stewart, who is a Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, says the following:

“You’re about to see one of the most enduringly popular films of all-time… but Gone with the Wind was not universally praised. The film has been repeatedly protested,...

Composer Max Steiner, whose scores for “King Kong,” “Gone With the Wind” and “Casablanca” placed him in the movie-music pantheon, isn’t much discussed today. He seems to belong to that old-school, pre-synthesizer world of orchestral scoring from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s.

But as author Steven C. Smith points out in his engrossing new biography of the three-time Oscar winner, “Music by Max Steiner” (Oxford University Press), the Austrian wunderkind pioneered the art of film scoring and ranks as “Hollywood’s most influential composer.”

His music essentially saved Rko’s “King Kong,” the 1933 giant-ape-wrecks-Manhattan fantasy, forcefully demonstrating the power of dramatic underscore to create mood, propel the action and provide emotional support (and disproving the widely held studio-executive theory that audiences of the time would “wonder where the music came from”).

Steiner went on to score some 300 films over a 35-year career, mostly for Rko and Warner Bros., although...

Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies, and Warner Bros. are teaming up to bring the "Eighth Wonder of the World" back to the big screen this March with the re-release of the classic King Kong (1933).

Taking place in over 600 Us theaters, the King Kong (1933) screenings will take place on Sunday, March 15th (at 1:00pm and 4:00pm). We have the full details below, and for more information, visit:

https://www.fathomevents.com/events/tcm2020-king-kong-1933

"Though it’s a genuine icon of American cinema, and one of the most instantly recognizable creations ever put on screen, 1933’s King Kong has not had a nationwide theatrical re-release in 64 years. That changes on Sunday, March 15, when Fathom Events unleashes “Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World,” on more than 600 movie screens nationwide as part of the yearlong TCM Big Screen Classics series.

Last given a big-screen re-release in 1956 – when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president,...

” Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. Those chains are made of chrome steel.”

Though it’s a genuine icon of American cinema, and one of the most instantly recognizable creations ever put on screen, 1933’s King Kong has not had a nationwide theatrical re-release in 64 years. That changes on Sunday, March 15, when Fathom Events unleashes “Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World,” on more than 600 movie screens nationwide as part of the yearlong TCM Big Screen Classics series.

Last given a big-screen re-release in 1956 – when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the average movie ticket cost 59 cents, and not a single manmade item was orbiting the earth – the original theatrical version of King Kong is back to dazzle the digital era with it’s all-analog marvels. Adding to this rare cinematic event, TCM Primetime Host Ben Mankiewicz will offer all-new insight and commentary on one of the most well-known, influential...

The original 1933 King Kong is roaring and rampaging its way back to movie screens across the country this March -- something it hasn't done in 64 years! Fathom Events and the TCM Big Screen Classics series are giving the legendary adventure its first nationwide theatrical release since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. More than 600 movie theaters across the country will play King Kong for one day only: Sunday, March 15.

Full details are in the announcement below, and it's incredibly exciting to help bring King Kong to the screen for the first time in the 21st century. While it has, of course, played in repertory houses and specialty cinemas, King Kong hasn't been released across the country since 1956, and while the world has changed in amazing ways since then, it's quite amazing to think thatKing Kong remains an enduring cinematic legend. Moviegoers can search for their local participating theaters and purchase tickets...

Two on a Guillotine

Blu ray

Warner Archives

1965/ 2:35:1 / 107 min.

Starring Connie Stevens, Dean Jones

Cinematography by Sam Leavitt

Directed by William Conrad

Imagine shock-meister William Castle directing a Disney movie and the result might be something like Two on a Guillotine. William Conrad, narrator of Rocky and Bullwinkle and star of television’s Cannon, is at the wheel of this thrill ride and he’s happy to rehash a few of Castle’s favorite scare tactics for his own purposes – the moans and groans of a carnival spook house and even a wire-drawn skeleton. There’s no denying Conrad’s effort has some of the Saturday matinee charm of creep shows like House on Haunted Hill but the sunny locales and aggressively perky demeanor of co-stars Connie Stevens and Dean Jones make you wish Frederick Loren would drop by with a well-aimed champagne cork.

Stevens is Cassie Duquesne,...

” You know that room on the third floor that’s always locked? Well it was open. There’s a box in there that has a woman’s body in it with no head! “

Connie Stevens in Two On A Guillotine is available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive. Order info can be found Here

This Warner Archive cult-favorite from William Conrad has never looked cooler thanks to this Blu-ray upgrade in 1080p HD. Twenty years ago, a little accident with a guillotine trick left magician Duke Duquesne’s wife and on-stage assistant without a head… and their baby daughter Cassie without a mother. Now The Great Duquesne may have another trick up his sleeve. He dies, leaving Cassie a sizable inheritance if she’ll spend seven nights in his spooky mansion. With a fearless young reporter at her side, Cassie braves terrors that could be the work of evil spirits – or...

Stars: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Gladys Cooper, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville | Written by Casey Robinson | Directed by Irving Rapper

The secret at the heart of the Boston social scene is Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) – a shy, repressed, mentally unstable young woman, tortured by her overbearing mother (Gladys Cooper). Charlotte’s older sister (Bonita Granville) arranges for a visit from the esteemed Dr Jaquith (Claude Rains), who recommends a stay at his hospital in Vermont. The retreat proves life changing. Charlotte’s adventurous spirit is awoken, and she takes a voyage to Brazil. En route she meets the unhappily married Jerry (Paul Henreid). The pair fall in love. Having said farewell to Jerry – apparently forever – Charlotte returns home, and finds that while she has been transformed, her increasingly ill mother hasn’t changed at all. It’s now a question of whether Charlotte’s increasing self-confidence can continue in the great yawning mansion,...

First the movies were silent, and then early Hollywood composers like Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold filled them with sound. By the time “American Graffiti” arrived in 1973 with a chart-topping soundtrack that ranged from Fats Domino to The Beach Boys, it was clear that songs — and not just scores — could be woven into the auditory fabric of a film. Since then, the cinematic relationship between image and music has only grown more exciting, more open-ended, and more liable to get lost in translation.

Fortunately, a brilliant new breed of interpreter has emerged over the last few decades: the music supervisor. And no music supervisor has been more instrumental in shaping the best movies of the last 30 years than Randall Poster. After producing an unsuccessful indie called “A Matter of Degrees” with some of his friends in the early ’90s, Poster realized that his passion for (and encyclopedic knowledge of...

This must be an official Bette Davis month… Criterion has two vintage Davis pictures on offer, and TCM is devoted to a roundup of the actress’s work as well. This one qualifies as the all-time champion Women’s Weepie, but one that holds up as a great picture on all levels. Director Irving Rapper guided this best-ever drama, in which a put-upon Ugly Duckling throws off oppressive familial chains and blossoms into a woman of the world. She then makes choices of personal nobility and selflessness, that will challenge anybody’s notions of saint-like deportment. It’s the kind of show normally gets discussed over coffee, not by film critics, so the extras on this one are especially interesting.

Now, Voyager

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 10004

1942 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 117 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 26, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper, Bonita Granville.

The slate of awards hopefuls is new each year, but there is always a sense of continuity, of new contenders’ connections to the past.

For example, Alexandre Desplat, a strong Golden Globes and Oscar possibility this year for his score to Sony’s “Little Women,” can trace the influence of his predecessors on his work. Growing up in Paris, Desplat knew he wanted to be a film composer. “When I was very young, I was collecting soundtracks and it was an education. I learned to listen to music outside the film. When home video arrived, I would watch a movie over and over, to figure out when the music started and when it stopped and why.

“I listened to Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Maurice Jarre. And my parents had earlier scores, by George Duning, Bernard Herrmann and many others. I was also very much into the earlier Hollywood composers: Max Steiner,...

Exclusive: The looming new year brings with it a double anniversary in the singular career of the great Danny Elfman. It will mark the 40th anniversary of the composer’s first film soundtrack as well as the 40th anniversary of Oingo Boingo, the new wave band with a brassy boneyard sound and loads of lyrical mischief in alt-rock standards like Dead Man’s Party, Only A Lad, Little Girls and Weird Science.

Elfman remains a movie maestro in high demand and the Los Angeles native has no plans to pass off the baton anytime soon. Still, Elfman has found himself contemplating his legacy more in recent seasons and the thought process has led the erstwhile rock star to a new and unexpected place: the classroom.

With “Making Music Out of Chaos,” Elfman’s just-released addition to the highly regarded MasterClass series, the 66-year-old...