This past week John Williams had his 80th birthday. One of the first thing he will do during his 80th year will be attending the Oscars later this month where the Maestro is nominated for 2 best score awards. Even at this age Williams is at the top of his game.

In honor of the most prolific film composer alive today I wanted to use my weekly film score soap box to celebrate the man who has provided the soundtrack to the imaginations of several generations.

Everyone knows about his contributions to Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, but how many people are aware that he wrote not one, but two classic themes for Lost in Space?

It was John Williams music that made me fall in love with film music. I can pinpoint it all the way back to a single moment in Jurassic Park when the helicopter approached Isla Nublar, the cue still gives me chills to this day, and nearly two decades later I still look to Mr. Williams as the inspiration for a life long passion.

Continue Reading →

This extraordinary documentary Pina by German filmmaker Wim Wenders (justly nominated for an Academy Award) on the choreographer Pina Bausch, his countryman, near-contemporary and fellow visionary, was a long time in coming. An artistic collaboration had been planned for some time but in an instance of epic bad timing, Bausch died just two days before filming was to have begun, having been diagnosed with cancer only five days previously.

The movie is thus haunted by the specter of death and of aging, compounded by the fact that many company members had been with Bausch for twenty-plus years. This theme is stated in the opening piece (returned to periodically in the duration of the movie), in which a long line of dancers chants Fruhling…Sommer…Herbst…Winter as they snake along a train platform, behind and onto a stage and later, on a wind-blown hilltop.

The Tanztheater German expressionist influence is clear in their affects, which ride the line between ecstasy and despair. Are they smiling in the face of death, or ruefully acknowledging that life and death march on regardless?

Continue Reading →

Pretty much every guy has questioned their friends on who they would rather sleep with between Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Just the same, every girl has probably questioned her friends if they’d rather marry Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Matt Damon.

But what about those times where you can’t say “I’d sleep with all of them” and had to decide to actually marry a hot mess like Spears, Lohan or Hilton instead of just kicking them to the hoe-side curb they deserve to be on? Or, what about choosing between killing off Batman, Superman or Spider-Man? Kill/Marry/Fuc by Sarah Huber combines all three.

The way it works, turn to a random page and you have decide one person / object / concept /etc. that you’d want to marry, one you’d want to kill and one you’d want to get down with. Some of these are easy decisions, but others really make you think. That’s right. A book about hooking up, marrying and killing really starts turning the gears for some people.

Continue Reading →

Last month we spent time reviewing the Golden Globe nominated film scores, at the time I had only listened to one of them going in so it was a nice way to start award season and catch up on some great scores. Now that the Oscar nominations have been released I was going to do the same thing, only I have already reviewed most of them

Thankfully I spaced out and didn’t review the second of John Williams two nominated scores yet, The Adventures of Tintin, so I can knock out the last of the major nominated scores and be all caught up in time for the big show next month. After this week I will move onto the two films with Oscar nominated songs to spice things up a bit.

The Adventures of Tintin is the second score from Williams this year and in tandem with War Horse showcases the Maestro’s range as a composer, even today. Based on the action/adventure films Williams has composed for in the past, Tintin  marks a bit of a departure as the music is not dominated by specific themes, it is more a collection of classic action music that sets the stage for the impressive animated film.

Continue Reading →

Before I can go forward with a review of director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film Haywire, I need to make a confession: I’m a big fan of almost all of his films. Sure, he’s managed to make one or two that don’t exactly work (The Girlfriend Experience comes to mind), but he’s never boring and always tries to push filmmaking and creativity in new and different directions.

Given this, I went into Haywire with somewhat raised expectations due to my fondness for his previous works. As the film unfolded I was struck by several things. First, lead actress and MMA superstar Gina Carano is not only beautiful, I would not want to ever make her angry. She’s that tough.

The film also moves quickly and at a running time of 93 minutes, almost seems a bit short. I think that’s a good thing because at the end, I wanted more.

I was also struck by how similar Haywire is to one of Soderbergh’s earlier films, The Limey (which is also my favorite of his films). I guess one reason could be that screenwriter Lem Dobbs wrote both films.

I’m not saying Haywire‘s similarity to The Limey is a bad thing, it was just interesting. More on that a bit later.

Continue Reading →

Last year Trent Reznor lead a resurgence of main stream musicians turning to film scores. The 80′s saw a lot of this trend, most notably Danny Elfman, of Oingo Boingo fame and Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream. The best two scores from 2010 came from popular musicians in Reznor’s The Social Network and Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy. 2011 might be shaping up the same with one notable score by The Chemical Bros. already released.

Reznor is back again, with compatriot Atticus Ross, for another David Fincher score. This time writing the music for a film that seems much more up the ally of the Nine Inch Nails artist. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a dark, thrilling murder mystery that seems a [perfect fit for they style of music Ross and Reznor have made previously.

Much like The Social Network, this score is deceptively complex, with subtle tracks that wash over your mind like the blankets of snow that define the movie. The music is not overly orchestral, but that works to the advantage of the film, helping cement a ton of tension and keeping everything feeling a bit off.

Continue Reading →

Like a successful spy, the quiet and grippingly brilliant Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sits unobtrusively amidst the flashier year-end Oscar contenders—alternately heartwarming (We Bought a Zoo), Artistic with a capital “A” (Hugo, The Artist), tragic (War Horse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close), scene-devouring and envelope-pushing (Shame), glossily true to life (Iron Lady, My Week with Marilyn) or purpose-built to sweep awards (The Descendants, Carnage).

Based on the classic spy novel, this film adaptation necessarily abridges Le Carré’s densely plotted story far more than did the famous 1979 six-episode BBC miniseries starring Alec Guinness (who, for generations of fans, is the quintessential George Smiley). And yet it feels in no way over-simplified or dumbed down. Quite the opposite.

A raft of the world’s finest actors (nearly all male—this is a man’s world)—Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones and Gary Oldman as protagonist George Smiley—play high-level operatives in the British Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. When a mole is detected, it’s up to Smiley to ferret out which of his colleagues is the double agent.

Continue Reading →

The Simpsons are the kings of prime time animation. Lasting an astounding twenty-three seasons and counting, The Simpsons is an institution that has spanned generations. So the collecting of these episodes is something that fans have enjoyed since the earliest days of TV on DVD. Fox has been releasing these sets for over a decade now and we find ourselves in an interesting era of the show.

Most people consider these early and mid 2000s seasons of the show to be the worst era during the impressive run. The show seemingly was stale and the spark was missing. At the end of the day the show survived and has since rebounded to become a relevant, often hilarious show.

One of the things I was most excited about when I dug into this set was the plethora of special features. The Simpsons sets have always set the standard for insightful and worthwhile special features, anchored by the amazing cast and crew commentaries that have accompanied every single episode since season one, making over 300 episodes worth of anecdotes, insights and inside knowledge of the creation of an institution.

Continue Reading →

Nothing like awards season to let you focus in on some fantastic film music! The Golden Globe nominations went out this week and in honor of that Film Score Friday is going to cover the nominated scores each of the next four weeks. I say four weeks because we already covered the excellent War Horse by John Williams. So let’s start off big with Hugo by Howard Shore.

Howard Shore is one of today’s leading composers, everyone and their mother knows his stuff from The Lord of the Rings, but Shore has had an impressive career beyond Middle-Earth. So it was an immediate pleasure to realize he was writing the music to Scorsese’s cinematic love letter to film.

Shore brings a fantastic French sound to the table. Much like Michael Giacchino’s Ratatouille score, Shore takes a the French style and makes it work beautifully within his own bag of tricks. The French influences are in almost every aspect of the score, yet at no time does it sound like wall to wall French music.

Continue Reading →

On last week’s episode of The Bitcast I was challenged to put my video game money where my film score loving mouth is. So this week I decided to give you all a special edition of Film Score Friday: a top five rundown of my favorite video game scores of all time.

The music in video games has often been considered an after thought that had little to no bearing on the games themselves. Only a handful of franchises had transcendent music, and everything else was just deemed filler.

Now that video games are growing to near cinematic heights of popularity and quality, the music in these games has also seen a renaissance. High profile film composers are taking on video game projects, marquee games are releasing sound track albums and the film score community is finally accepting video games as source of quality music.

Continue Reading →

Holy $#!^. It really is a challenge to clean up your mouth after playing Saints Row: The Third. It’s not because you are going to say the game is $#!^ or a waste of your &@*%ing time, but because there are so many moments where you burst out with, “Did that $#!^ really jut happen?” that the game’s foul mouth and your own just get blended together.

Saints Row: The Third is the end of a trilogy of progressively more extreme satires of the original Grand Theft Auto experience. The first Saints Row was somewhat grounded in reality while the second added a more fantastic storyline and more head scratching plot twists and more “Can they really get away with that?” moments.

Saints Row: The Third is like the Spinal Tap of the series. Take everything they have built… and turn it up to 11.

Gameplay:

Saints Row: The Third controls much like a standard third person open world action game on the surface. Players punch, shoot and carjack their way through various missions or just reign chaos upon the poorly defended denizens of Steelport. What Saints Row: The Third has done to change things up is a constant stream of mix and match gameplay mechanics to keep the player constantly feeling like they are doing something new.

Continue Reading →

Sonic the Hedgehog is a seminal video game character. Who knows what the world of video games would look like today if not for the little blue speed ball. So it is with that respect that the venerable Sonic Team has made the newest and most nostalgia heavy Sonic game short of bringing it back to 16-bits.

Sonic Generations is a love letter to all things Sonic, providing game that takes you through the entire Sonic history. The game revolves around a mysterious being that is disrupting space and time. As a result, modern Sonic comes face to face with his classic self and the two speedy hedgehogs go on an adventure to set right the Sonic universe.

Gameplay:

There are two main gameplay types in Sonic Generations. The first is a classic super speedy 2D Sonic platforming style of level, and the second is a more modern 2D-3D hybrid style that is common amongst today’s Sonic games. The game has a pretty nifty story explanation for the two types levels, making the switch in gameplay between Acts natural. Each Act One is run by classic Sonic in his typical fashion and each Act Two by modern Sonic.

Continue Reading →