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Alf Clausen, 1941-2025
Composer Alf Clausen died on May 29, 2025, at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 84. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease since at least 2017.
Alfred Faye Heiberg Clausen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in March 1941, and grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. He learned piano and French horn as a child, and later studied music at North Texas State University and at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Clausen moved to Hollywood in 1967 in search of television work, wanting to become a full-time composer, and soon found himself working as a music director on shows as diverse as The Partridge Family, Donny & Marie, and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour.
Throughout the 1980s Clausen was a prolific television composer, scoring 62 episodes of Moonlighting between 1985 and 1989, and scoring 96 episodes of Alf between 1986 and 2004, while also working as a film orchestrator for composers such as Ira Newborn (Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dragnet, The Naked Gun) and Lee Holdridge (The Beastmaster, Splash).
Clausen’s career took a defining turn in 1990, when he was hired as the principal composer for the massively successful animated sitcom The Simpsons, beginning with its second season. Over the next 27 years, he wrote original music for more than 560 episodes, contributing an eclectic blend of parody, pastiche, and heartfelt orchestration that became a hallmark of the show’s identity. His work earned him two Primetime Emmy Awards – for the songs “We Put The Spring In Springfield” in 1997 and “You’re Checkin’ In” in 1998 – and over 21 nominations, which when combined with the six Emmy nominations he earned for Moonlighting made him one of the most nominated composers in television history. Read more…
CONGO – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Following the success of Jurassic Park in 1993, screenplays adapted from the action/adventure novels of Michael Crichton were suddenly hot commodities; one such screenplay was Congo, which was adapted by John Patrick Shanley from the 1980 novel of the same name, and which had been kicking around Hollywood for more than a decade. The resulting film was directed by Frank Marshall and stars Dylan Walsh as Dr. Peter Elliot, a primatologist who is traveling to the Congo to return a gorilla named Amy – who he has taught to communicate using sign language via a special glove – to her home in the wild. Meanwhile, Dr. Karen Ross (Laura Linney) is sent to the Congo to find a missing research team led by her ex-fiancé Charles Travis, which was in the area on an expedition to find rare blue diamonds that could revolutionize laser communications, but which vanished after a violent, mysterious attack. Elliot and Ross end up on the same plane together, where they are joined by Herkimer Homolka (Tim Curry, sporting one of the weirdest accents in movie history), a mysterious Romanian treasure hunter who is obsessed with finding the mythical Lost City of Zinj, which is rumored to contain vast diamond reserves. Read more…
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING – Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s hard to believe that Tom Cruise has been making Mission: Impossible movies for almost 30 years. He was 34 when he first took on the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt in the first franchise installment back in 1996, and here he is again, now aged 62, still fighting bad guys, hanging out of planes, and sprinting for all he’s worth. If the press reports are to be believed, The Final Reckoning will be the eighth and final Mission: Impossible movie, and Cruise and the gang clearly wanted to go out with a bang – almost literally. It continues the plot of the last film, Dead Reckoning, and again sees Ethan and his IMF colleagues battling with his nemesis Gabriel for control of an artificial intelligence system nicknamed ‘The Entity,’ which was designed to sabotage digital systems, but has since achieved sentience and ‘gone rogue’ with the capability to infiltrate all of the world’s major defense, military, and intelligence networks. It is the fourth M:I film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and co-stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, and Pom Klementieff, with Henry Czerny and Angela Bassett in major supporting roles. Read more…
THE KING AND I – Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1950 composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II adapted the play “Anna and The King of Siam” (1944) by Margaret London into a Broadway Musical titled “The King And I”. It had a very successful run of 1,246 performances and in 1951 they secured backing from Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox Studios to do a film adaptation. Charles Brackett was assigned production with a $4.55 million budget, Ernest Lehman was hired to write the screenplay, Jerome Robbins was tasked with creating the choreography, and Walter Lang given the reins to direct. Casting was problematic as Rodgers rejected Maureen O’Hara who had a trained soprano voice, which led to Deborah Kerr landing the role of Anna Leonowens, although her singing voice required dubbing by Marni Nixon. Joining her would be Yul Brynner as King Mongkut of Siam, Rita Moreno as Tuptim, Terry Sanders as Lady Thiang, Martin Benson as Kralahome, and Rex Thompson as Louis Lenowens. Read more…
CASPER – James Horner
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Casper is a family-friendly fantasy comedy film based on the ‘Casper the Friendly Ghost’ character created by Joe Oriolo and Seymour Reit, originally popularized in mid-20th century cartoons and comic books. Directed by Brad Silberling (in his directorial debut) and starring Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman, and Cathy Moriarty, the film is centered around a kind and lonely spirit who lives in an old mansion in Maine called Whipstaff Manor. Greedy heiress Carrigan Crittenden inherits the manor from her late father and, hoping to find a rumored treasure hidden inside, she and her assistant Dibs try to get rid of its supernatural inhabitants – Casper and his three mischievous uncles Stretch, Stinkie, and Fatso. When they are unable to evict the ghosts, Carrigan hires Dr. James Harvey, a therapist who specializes in paranormal psychology and helping ghosts “move on.” He arrives with his teenage daughter, Kat, but instead of exorcising the house Kat and Casper grow close, and Casper begins to remember details about his life and death – which leads to them deciding to get rid of Carrigan and Dibs instead. Read more…
A LITTLE PRINCESS – Patrick Doyle
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Director Alfonso Cuarón’s A Little Princess is an adaptation the 1905 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which is now regarded as a timeless classic of children’s literature. The story centers on Sara Crewe, a kind and imaginative young girl raised in India by her wealthy British father, Captain Crewe. When World War I breaks out, Captain Crewe is called to the front lines, and Sara is sent to a boarding school for girls run by the stern and cold-hearted Miss Minchin. At first, Sara enjoys a privileged status at the school, thanks to her father’s wealth and her own charm, but her life is turned upside down when news arrives that Captain Crewe has died in battle and his assets have been seized. Stripped of her wealth, Sara is forced to become a servant at the school, but despite her hardships and Miss Minchin’s cruelty, Sara refuses to give up her belief that “all girls are princesses,” and with the help of her friend Becky, a fellow servant, and Ram Dass, the mysterious servant of a wealthy neighbor, Sara clings to her imagination and dignity. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2025, Part 2
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
I’m pleased to present the latest installment in my on-going series of articles looking at the best under-the-radar scores from around the world.
This article, the second of 2025, covers another six scores released in the first quarter of the year from a wide array of genres and countries, including a quirky Italian comedy-drama, a Spanish documentary feature about a contemporary Christian music group, an Italian WWII drama, a French animated film about Frida Kahlo, a Finnish crime drama TV series, and a Swedish animated film about a super-hero baby! Read more…
CAROUSEL – Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Alfred Newman
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In 1945 composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II adapted the 1909 play “Liliom” by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár into a Broadway Musical titled “Carousel”. It had a very successful run and in 1955 they secured backing from 20th Century Fox Studios to do a film adaptation. Studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck and Henry Ephron would manage production with a $3.3 million budget. Ephron would also write the screenplay, and Henry King was given the reins to direct. A fine cast was brought in, including Gordon MacRae (replacing Frank Sinatra) as Billy Bigelow, Shirley Jones as Julie Jordan, Cameron Mitchell as Jigger Craigin, Barbara Ruick as Carrie Pepperidge, and Gene Lockhart as the Starkeeper. Ruick, of course, would go on to become John Williams’s first wife when they married later in 1956. Read more…
HAUNTED – Debbie Wiseman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Set in 1920s England, Haunted is a British supernatural romantic drama which stars Aidan Quinn as Professor David Ash, a skeptical psychologist and academic who specializes in debunking claims of the supernatural. Still grieving the death of his twin sister Juliet many years earlier, Ash is invited to Edbrook House, a remote English country estate, to help a young woman named Christina Mariell (Kate Beckinsale), who believes her home is haunted. At Edbrook, David meets Christina and her two brothers, Robert (Anthony Andrews) and Simon (Alex Lowe), along with their old nanny Miss Webb (Anna Massey). While David initially maintains his scientific skepticism, he begins experiencing inexplicable phenomena – ghostly visions, eerie voices, disorienting memories, and suchlike – and then as David becomes romantically involved with Christina, the house’s sinister secrets slowly begin to reveal themselves. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2025, Part 1
Original Reviews by Jonathan Broxton
I’m pleased to present the latest installment in my on-going series of articles looking at the best under-the-radar scores from around the world.
This article, the first of 2025, covers seven scores released in the first quarter of the year from a wide array of genres and countries, including tender romance score from Japan, a fantastic historical animated action-adventure TV score from France, a jazzy Swiss period drama, a Japanese animated short film, a Norwegian nature documentary TV series, a French period TV series, and a French action-adventure score with a gender-swapped twist! Read more…
THE SWAN – Bronislau Kaper
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
In May of 1955 Don Schary, MGM’s Executive for Film Production, was seeking a film to showcase the studio’s marquee star, Grace Kelly. He believed he found the story and so bought the film rights to a Hungarian play entitled “A Hattyú, Vígjáték Három Felvonásban” (The Swan, A Comedy in Three Acts) written in 1914 by Ferenc Molnár. Schary took personal charge of production, allocating a budget of $3.094 million. John Dighton was hired to write the screenplay and Charles Vidor was tasked with directing. Joining Grace Kelly in the starring role of Princess Alexandra would be Alec Guiness as Crown Prince Albert, Louis Jourdan as Dr. Nicholas Agi, Jessie Royce Landis as Princess Beatrix, Brian Aheme as Father Carl Hyacinth, and Agnes Moorehead as Queen Maria Dominika. Read more…
THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN – Stephen Endelman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There’s trouble brewing down in the Welsh valleys. It’s 1917, in the waning years of World War I, and there’s an Englishman who works for the ordnance survey in the village of Ffynnon Garw. He’s measuring the local mountain, Ffynnon Garw itself, but he’s come down from the mountain saying that it’s ten feet short of actually being classified as a mountain, and is now officially a hill. The villagers don’t like this one little bit, so they try to concoct lots of unusual reasons for the Englishman to stay in Ffynnon Garw while they physically make their hill ten feet higher, so that it’s a mountain again. And that’s why this smashing little film has one of the longest titles in living memory: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. Read more…
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