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Mikis Theodorakis, 1925-2021
Composer, songwriter and political activist Mikis Theodorakis died in Athens, Greece, on September 2, 2021, at the age of 96.
One of the most important figures in modern Greek music, Theodorakis wrote more than a thousand works encompassing songs, symphonies, operas, ballets and film scores. Internationally, however, he remains best known for the music of Zorba the Greek, Z and Serpico, which brought the sound of modern Greece to audiences around the world.
Michail Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios on July 29, 1925. He began composing as a teenager and studied at the Athens Conservatory before continuing his education at the Paris Conservatoire. His early concert music showed the influence of European modernism, but Theodorakis increasingly sought to combine classical technique with Greek folk traditions, Byzantine music and popular song.
His first film scores were written for Greek productions during the early 1950s, and he soon began working internationally. Among his early credits were Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962), Anatole Litvak’s Five Miles to Midnight (1962), and Michael Cacoyannis’s Electra (1962). The latter began one of his most important director-composer relationships and established the intensely Greek musical language that would soon make him internationally famous. Read more…
BEASTMASTER 2: THROUGH THE PORTAL OF TIME – Robert Folk
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A belated sequel to the 1982 original, Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time sees Marc Singer returning to the role of Dar, a barbarian warrior who can communicate with and control animals, and who in the first film uses this power to defeat an evil wizard. In the sequel, Dar learns that his previously-unknown half-brother Arklon (Wings Hauser) plans to conquer the world with the help of a sorceress named Lyranna (Sarah Douglas). Arklon and Lyranna use a trans-dimensional portal – the eponymous portal of time – to travel to contemporary Los Angeles, where they intend to steal a nuclear bomb and bring it back to their world with them; Dar and his animal companions also travel through the portal to stop them, teaming up with a local woman named Jackie (Kari Wührer) along the way. The film was not well-received by critics at the time, but there is a fun and campy time to be had with it, and although allegedly director Sylvio Tabet stole the film out from underneath the original director Jim Wynorski, resulting in lawsuits and acrimony, he nevertheless keeps the action moving at a decent clip in what would prove to be his only effort behind the camera. Read more…
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