Archive
THE LION IN WINTER – John Barry
100 GREATEST SCORES OF ALL TIME
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Producer Joe Levine had a contract with Peter O’Toole and was looking for a film to again showcase his talent. He found the vehicle in the Broadway play “The Lion In Winter” by James Goldman that offered dramatic dialogue, which would play to O’Toole’s thespian strengths. Anthony Harvey was brought in to direct the film and they hired an amazing cast to support Peter O’Toole (King Henry II), which included Katherine Hepburn (Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine), their three sons, Anthony Hopkins (Richard), John Castle (Geoffrey), and Nigel Terry (John). Also joining was Jane Morrow (Henry’s mistress Alais) and Timothy Dalton (King Philip II of France). Hopkins and Dalton were both making their screen acting debuts. Read more…
Academy Award Winners 2017
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 90th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2017.
In the Best Original Score category composer Alexandre Desplat won the award for his score for director Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy film The Shape of Water. In accepting his award, Desplat said:
Merci, c’est fantastique. I‘m very grateful to the Academy. My mother is also turning 90 this year so I think she’ll be very happy tonight! Yes, she’s Greek, by the way! Now, Guillermo, thank you, you know, thank you for the letting the music be the voice of your characters and convey the beautiful melancholy of love. That’s for you. I wish to thank Miles Dale, Fox Searchlight, and the music department at Fox. All the musicians who played on the score and those downstairs here, and I wish to thank queen Renee Fleming, Laura Engel, Ray Costa, my friend Katz, and Solrey you elevate my music, everything I write by your musical genius, thank you, but this is not for you, it’s for our daughters Ninou and Antonia. Thank you!
The other nominees were Carter Burwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Jonny Greenwood for Phantom Thread, John Williams for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Hans Zimmer for Dunkirk.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Kristin Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez their song “Remember Me” from Coco.
The other nominees were Mary J. Blige, Raphael Saadiq, and Taura Stinson for “Mighty River” from Mudbound; Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman; Sufjan Stevens for “Mystery of Love” from Call Me By Your Name; and Diane Warren and Lonnie Lynn Jr. (Common) for “Stand Up For Something” from Marshall.
EMPIRE OF THE SUN – John Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
By the end of 1986, Steven Spielberg was probably the most famous and financially successful director in Hollywood. However, although he had directed a handful of the highest grossing films of all time – Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom –he privately expressed a desire to make more serious films. The comparative failure of The Color Purple in 1985 just magnified that desire, so in 1987 he decided to try again, by making a movie based on J. G. Ballard’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel Empire of the Sun. The film starred the then 13-year-old Christian Bale as Jim Graham, an upper class English schoolboy living with his diplomat parents in Shanghai in 1941, whose life is shattered by the outbreak of World War II, and who ends up desperately trying to survive in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Unfortunately for Spielberg, the film – which also starred John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, and Nigel Havers – did not ignite the passions of audiences like his popcorn blockbusters did, and it was only a moderate critical and commercial success; Spielberg would have to wait another five years for his breakthrough into cinematic respectability with Schindler’s List in 1993. In addition, the film was largely overlooked at the Academy Awards, receiving only six technical nominations, but not winning any. Read more…
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