Archive
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER – Simon Franglen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
For a while, people sort of forgot what a big deal Avatar was. When James Cameron’s spectacular sci-fi epic first hit screens in December of 2009 it was immediately heralded as a visual masterpiece, boasting some of the most impressive and realistic special effects in the history of cinema, as well as being a groundbreaking step forward in the use of 3D technology and motion-capture. It won three Oscars, was nominated for another six (including Best Picture), and grossed something in the region of $2.9 billion at the global box office, making it one of the most financially successful films ever. But then the backlash came, with some people (rightfully) criticizing the story as being a tired re-tread of both the Pocahontas legend and movies like Dances With Wolves and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, while also noting its ‘white savior’ tropes. And then… well… it all sort of drifted away. Cameron announced that there would be sequels – possibly four of them – and then he went away to go and make them. And, slowly, over the course of more than a decade, almost everyone forgot about the whole thing. Every once in a while some bit of Avatar news would leak out – shooting began way back in 2017 – but more than anything the Avatar sequels felt a little like a mythical thing, some fairy-tale idea seemingly destined to never come to fruition. Read more…
RASHOMON – Fumio Hayasaka
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Renowned director Akira Kurosawa found inspiration for his next film from two short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa – In a Bamboo Grove (1922) and Rashomon (1915). He decided to blend the two narratives and collaborated with Shinobu Hashimoto to adapt a screenplay. Financial backing was secured from the Daiei Film company, Minoru Jingo was assigned production with a very small budget of $250,000, and Kurosawa took the reins to direct. For his cast, Kurosawa brought in Takashi Shimura as Kikori the woodcutter, Minoru Chiaki as Tabi Hõshi the priest, Masayuki Mori as Takehiro the samurai, Machiko Kyõ as the samurai’s wife Masako, and Toshiro Mifune as Tajomaru the bandit. Read more…
SCL Award Nominations 2022
The Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) has announced the nominations for the fourth annual SCL Awards, honoring the best in film and television music in 2022. The SCL is the premier professional trade group for composers, lyricists, and songwriters working in the motion picture, television, and game music industry, and is headquartered in Los Angeles. The nominees are:
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A STUDIO FILM
- MICHAEL ABELS for Nope
- CARTER BURWELL for The Banshees of Inisherin
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
- MICHAEL GIACCHINO for The Batman
- JOHN POWELL for Don’t Worry Darling
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR AN INDEPENDENT FILM
- LEO BIRENBERG and ZACH ROBINSON for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
- SHARON FARBER for Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
- SON LUX for Everything Everywhere All At Once
- ROB SIMONSEN for The Whale
- MARK SMYTHE for The Reef: Stalked
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A TELEVISION OR STREAMING PRODUCTION
- NICHOLAS BRITELL for Andor
- SIDDHARTHA KHOSLA for Only Murders In The Building
- BEAR MCCREARY for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
- THEODORE SHAPIRO for Severance
- CRISTOBAL TAPIA DE VEER for The White Lotus
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SONG FOR VISUAL MEDIA – DRAMA/DOCUMENTARY
- STEFANI GERMANOTTA (LADY GAGA) and MICHAEL TUCKER (BLOODPOP) for “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick
- TEMILADE OPENIYI (TEMS), ROBYN RIHANNA FENTY, RYAN COOGLER, and LUDWIG GÖRANSSON for “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
- TRENT REZNOR and ATTICUS ROSS for “(You Made It Feel Like) Home” from Bones and All
- TAYLOR SWIFT for “Carolina” from Where The Crawdads Sing
- DIANE WARREN for “Applause” from Tell It Like A Woman
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SONG FOR VISUAL MEDIA- MUSICAL/COMEDY
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT, ROEBAN KATZ, and GUILLERMO DEL TORO for “Ciao Papa” from Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
- DANNY ELFMAN for “Light The Match” from Central Park
- BENJ PASEK, JUSTIN PAUL, KHIYON HURSEY, SUKARI JONES, and MARK SONNENBLICK for “Good Afternoon” from Spirited
- MARC SHAIMAN and BILLY EICHNER, for “Love Is Not Love” from Bros
- AL YANKOVIC for “Now You Know” from Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
OUTSTANDING ORIGINAL SCORE FOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA
- NAINITA DESAI for Immortality
- STEPHANIE ECONOMOU for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök
- BEAR MCCREARY for God of War: Ragnarök
- WINIFRED PHILLIPS for Jurassic World: Primal Ops
- CHRISTOPHER WILLIS for Cat Burglar
DAVID RAKSIN AWARD FOR EMERGING TALENT
- ESIN AYDINGOZ
- ANNA DRUBICH
- DEANDRE JAMES ALLEN-TOOLE
- NAMI MELUMAD
- DARA TAYLOR
SPIRIT OF COLLABORATION AWARD
- To be announced at a later date
The winners of the 4th SCL Awards will be announced on 15 February, 2023.
Golden Globe Nominations 2022
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has announced the nominations for the 80th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2022.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- CARTER BURWELL for The Banshees of Inisherin
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
- HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR for Women Talking
- JUSTIN HURWITZ for Babylon
- JOHN WILLIAMS for The Fabelmans
This is the fourth nomination for Burwell; the 14th nomination for Desplat, who previously won Globes for The Painted Veil in 2006 and The Shape of Water in 2017; the second nomination for Guðnadóttir, who previously won for Joker in 2019; the fourth nomination for Hurwitz, who previously won for La-La Land in 2016 and First Man in 2018 ; and the 26th nomination for Williams, who previously won Globes in 1975 for Jaws, 1977 for Star Wars, 1982 for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and 2005 for Memoirs of a Geisha.
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT, ROEBEN KATZ, and GUILLERMO DEL TORO for “Ciao Papa” from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
- STEFANI GERMANOTTA (LADY GAGA), MICHAEL TUCKER (BLOODPOP), and BENJAMIN RICE for “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick
- M. M. KEERAVANI and KANUKUNTLA SUBHASH CHANDRABOSE for “Naatu Naatu” from RRR
- TEMILADE OPENIYI (TEMS), ROBYN RIHANNA FENTY, RYAN COOGLER, and LUDWIG GÖRANSSON for “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
- TAYLOR SWIFT for “Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing
The winners of the 80th Golden Globe Awards will be announced on January 10, 2023.
Angelo Badalamenti, 1937-2022
Composer Angelo Badalamenti died on December 11, 2022, at home in New Jersey after a short illness. He was 85.
Angelo Daniel Badalamenti was born in New York City in March 1937, the son of Italian immigrants from Sicily. A piano player from a young age, Badalamenti was already earning money as a pianist accompanying singers at resorts in the Catskill Mountains in his teens; he later studied at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, and then at the Manhattan School of Music, graduating with a master’s degree in 1959.
He began his career as a songwriter, penning works for singers such as Nina Simone and Shirley Bassey using the pen name Andy Badale. He made his film music debut was early as 1973, scoring the blaxploitation action pic Gordon’s War, but his break came when he was hired to be Isabella Rossellini’s vocal coach for David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet. Impressed with his work, Lynch asked Badalamenti to co-write the song “Mysteries of Love” for vocalist Julee Cruise, and then asked Badalamenti to composed the score for the entire film. Read more…
BROKEN ARROW – Hugo Friedhofer
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1949 Darryl F. Zanuck, Director of Film Production at 20th Century Fox decided that the 1947 novel Blood Brother by Elliot Arnold, which explored the Arizona Indian War of 1870-1872 offered a compelling story, which needed to be brought to the bIg screen. He purchased the film rights, AND assigned production to Julian Blaustein, with Albert Maltz and Elliot Arnold hired to adapt the novel and write the screenplay. Delmer Daves was tasked with directing and a cast was assembled, which would cause great controversy. Once again, the issue was criticism of white actors coopting Indian roles. James Stewart at 41 would head the cast and star in his first Western film. Joining him would be Jeff Chandler as Cochise, Debra Paget as Sonseehray, Basil Ruysdael as General Oliver Howard, Will Geer as Ben Slade, and Jay Silverheels as Geronimo. Read more…
EMILY – Abel Korzeniowski
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Brontë Sisters – Emily, Anne, and Charlotte – are powerhouses of classic British literature. Born within four years of each other in Yorkshire between 1816 and 1820, the siblings would craft some of the most beloved works of the early Victorian era: Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, first published in 1847, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, published later that same year, and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published in 1848, are now considered masterpieces, and the fact that they were written essentially simultaneously is astonishing. While there have been numerous screen adaptations of the stories they wrote, there have been few biopics of the actual sisters themselves, which is surprising considering that they all led romantically tragic lives, and died young: Emily of tuberculosis aged 30 in 1848, Anne of tuberculosis she caught from Emily aged 29 in 1849, and Charlotte of a pregnancy complication aged 38 in 1855. This new film Emily, written and directed by Frances O’Connor, is a look at their lives mostly from Emily’s point of view. It stars Emma Mackey, Alexandra Dowling, and Amelia Gething as the three sisters, with Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Adrian Dunbar, and Gemma Jones in supporting roles. Read more…
MALCOLM X – Terence Blanchard
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Malcolm X is a biopic of one of the key figures in the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and tells his life story – growing up subjected to Jim Crow racism in Michigan in the 1920s, dealing with his father’s death and his mother’s mental illness, his youth as a juvenile delinquent, becoming a Muslim while in prison, and eventually joining the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist organization that was denounced as a terrorist group by the FBI. Along with leaders like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X was a prominent campaigner for civil rights, until – like King – he too was assassinated, just as he was giving a speech in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom in February 1965. The film was directed by Spike Lee and starred Denzel Washington as Malcolm, alongside a supporting cast that included Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Al Freeman Jr., and Delroy Lindo. The film was a huge critical success, and earned Washington an Oscar nomination for his powerful lead performance. Read more…
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