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PROVIDENCE – Miklós Rózsa
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Providence served as the first English-language film from renowned French director Alain Resnais. True to form Resnais provides us with a drama about an unsympathetic, spiteful, alcoholic novelist, which again features his trademark playful surrealist touches and recurring use of characters shackled by recurrent memories. The story reveals Clive Langham (Sir John Gielgud) spending a painful night in his bed suffering from age ending health problems, vainly trying to create a final story based on his family played by Ellen Burstyn (Sonia), Dirk Bogarde (Claude) and David Warner (Kevin). He is an incredibly bitter man, drunken and tormented, who reveals through a series of flashbacks an unsympathetic, spiteful, conniving family. Clive makes each of his family members interact in a variety of bizarre settings – courtrooms, mortuaries and werewolf-haunted forests. It is apparent that his perceptions are distorted by a terrible bitterness and guilt, the full extent of this is not made clear until the end, when his “real” family members come to his house to celebrate his 78th birthday. The film was both a commercial and a critical success, earning the 1978 César Award for Best Film. Read more…
Passionata Film Scoring raising funds for Oklahoma Tornado Relief
The tornado which devastated parts of Oklahoma the other day has left many people dead and thousands homeless. My friend Phil Watkins, of Passionata Film Scoring, is currently running a silent auction to raise money for the American Red Cross and the Oklahoma Tornado Relief Fund.
Please see the following message from Phil for further details on how to donate to this worthy cause. Read more…
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
NOTE: There are plot spoilers in this review that were unavoidable as I wanted to sensibly talk about the music and its context within, and impact upon, the film, If you haven’t seen the film yet, I might suggest waiting to read this until you have.
The second of director J.J. Abrams’ newly-revamped “alternate timeline” Star Trek movies is Star Trek Into Darkness, one of the most anticipated films of the early summer months of 2013. Set one year after the events of the last Star Trek film, Into Darkness finds Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the Starship Enterprise – First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), Chief Medical Officer Bones McCoy (Karl Urban), Chief Engineer Scott (Simon Pegg), Navigation Officer Sulu (John Cho), Communications Officer Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Ensign Chekov (Anton Yelchin) – on a mission to observe a primitive humanoid race on a distant planet. When one of the crew members finds his life in jeopardy Kirk is forced to violate the Starfleet prime directive of non-interference in order to rescue him, and upon his return to Earth is demoted by his commanding officer, Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood). However, things suddenly change when a mysterious terrorist named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) attacks a Starfleet installation and murders several high ranking officers, before fleeing to Kronos, the home world of the brutal and warlike Klingon race. Given permission to go after Harrison by Starfleet Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), and with a cache of prototype photon torpedos on board, Kirk and the crew sets off on a covert mission… but before long doubts about Harrison’s identity, and his motivations, begin to surface. Read more…
LA MULA – Óscar Navarro
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
La Mula is a drama based on the novel by Juan Eslava Galán, written and directed by Michael Radford, which tells the story of a soldier named Castro (Mario Casas) who finds a mule on the battlefields and travels through the country with it, observing the effects and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. The film, which was disowned by its director during post-production, was actually completed in 2010, but sat on a shelf for almost four years, until all its legal and distribution issues were resolved. Thankfully, for score fans, the film was released in 2013, which gave us the chance to hear its wonderful music, written by young Spanish composer Óscar Navarro – this is his debut feature score, and it’s a gem. Read more…
OSZUKANE – Bartlomiej Gliniak
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Oszukane – known in English as “Decieved” – is a Polish drama film directed by Marcin Solarz. It stars Sylwia Boroń and Carolina Chapko as Aneta and Natalia, two teenage girls who meet by chance, but then discover that they are actually twin sisters, separated at birth as a result of a mistake made by the hospital in which they were born. The score for the film is by a young, exceptionally talented Polish composer, Bartlomiej Gliniak, who impressed with his breakout score Teah in 2008, and is building quite a reputation for himself as one of the rising stars of Polish film music. Read more…
THE RIGHT TO LOVE: AN AMERICAN FAMILY – Edwin Wendler
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In The Right to Love: An American Family director Cassie Jaye, along with support from her sister and mother, sought to chronicle a family’s story of courage during the highly charged, divisive and controversial California Proposition 8 election in 2008. Bryan and Jay Leffew, a Californian married gay couple and their two adopted children Daniel and Selena chose to fight against the ballot initiative whose passage would end marriage equality. They decided to put a human face on this important issue by posting their home videos on their YouTube channel, “Gay Family Values”. It was hoped that these videos would break down stereotypical misconceptions and reveal that in the final analysis the sum of our similarities exceed the sum of our differences. Despite their heroic efforts the proposition passed and marked the first time in the history of the United States that a majority of citizens voted to strip fellow citizens of equal rights under Law. The film earned one Silver and three Bronze awards during the 33rd Annual Telly Awards. Read more…
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