THE SAND PEBBLES – Jerry Goldsmith
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Director Robert Wise recognized the epic potential of The Sand Pebbles when he read Richard McKenna’s novel, and commissioned Robert Anderson to adapt it for the screen. He assembled a stellar cast, which included hero Jake Holman (Steve McQueen), his love interest Shirley Eckhart (Candice Bergen), his friend Frenchie Burgoyne (Richard Attenborough), the honorable Captain Collins (Richard Crenna) and his apprentice Po-Han (Mako). The film’s setting is colonial China circa 1926 where the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo patrols a tributary of the Yangtze River. China is in tumult as Nationalists, Communists and feudal warlords all compete for land, money and power. Jake, a laconic loner and iconoclast, joins the crew and immediately clashes with the “rice-bowl” coolie system, which runs the ship. In so doing he alienates both the captain and his crewmates. He meets Shirley, a missionary, and we see a spark of romance. Yet their relationship is doomed as war against all westerners erupts and the San Pablo must fight for its life as it sails upriver to rescue missionaries at the China Light Mission. The film was a commercial and a critical success earning eight Oscar nominations including Best Score, which Goldsmith lost out to John Barry’s Born Free. Read more…
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD – Craig Armstrong
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel Far From the Madding Crowd is one of the classics of Victorian-era English literature. The story is an examination of the changing British attitudes and morals of the time, looking at the cultural clash between traditional rural life, the power of the military, and the increasing dominance of wealthy city folk, through the eyes of the central character, the headstrong Bathsheba Everdene, whose relationships with several different potential suitors are intended to represent cross-sections of British society. Director Thomas Vinterberg’s film is at least the fifth theatrical version of the story; written by David Nicholls, it stars Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge and Michael Sheen as the suitors Farmer Oak, Sergeant Troy and Mr. Boldwood, and Juno Temple as Bathsheba’s servant girl Fanny Robin. Read more…
THE COMPANY OF WOLVES – George Fenton
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Company of Wolves is a dark fantasy from director Neil Jordan, based on English author Angela Carter’s mature, sexualized take on the classic Little Red Riding Hood story. The film stars Sarah Patterson as a teenage girl named Rosaleen, who dreams that she lives in a fairytale forest with her parents and sister. In her dream, Rosaleen is given a bright red shawl by her kindly grandmother, accompanied by a warning to stay away from “any strange men whose eyebrows meet in the middle,” Of course, before long, Rosaleen meets a seductive and handsome young huntsman – whose eyebrows meet in the middle – and whose bestial nature proves to be overwhelmingly alluring to the impressionable young woman. The film tackles a number of interesting and complicated themes, ranging from the nature of dreams and nightmares, to emergent sexuality, desire, and revenge. The film, Jordan’s second as a director, co-starred a litany of British character actors, including Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Brian Glover, Stephen Rea, Jim Carter and Terence Stamp, and made liberal use of a number of gruesomely realistic special effects, inspired by the similarly lupine An American Werewolf in London. Read more…
LADYHAWKE – Andrew Powell
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 1985 the sword-and-sorcery genre was still very much at the height of its powers, with successful films like Dragonslayer, Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja and Krull having been released to popular acclaim during the preceding few years. Ladyhawke was less an action-adventure, and more a love story, telling the tale of two cursed lovers in twelfth century France: Etienne Navarre, a brave and noble knight, and Isabeau d’Anjou, a beautiful young noblewoman. The twist of the story comes due to the fact that, despite being in love, they can never truly be together until a curse is lifted – by day, Isabeau assumes the form of a hawk, while Etienne is human; at night, Etienne becomes a wolf, while Isabeau returns to her human form. With the help of a wisecracking thief named Philippe and a kindly priest, Etienne and Isabeau resolve to try to break the curse so they can finally be together. The film was directed by Richard Donner, and stars Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Broderick. Read more…
IT FOLLOWS – Rich Vreeland
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It Follows is a low-budget independent American horror film, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. The premise is deceptively simple: after having sex for the first time with her new boyfriend, a teenage girl named Jay becomes drawn into an inescapable nightmare when he tells her that, now that he has had sex with her, she will be followed by an ‘entity’, which can only move at walking pace, but which will kill her if it catches her. The entity can take on the appearance of any person, cannot be reasoned with, cannot be killed, and can only be seen by the person being followed, and the only way to ‘pass on’ the curse is to have sex with someone else, at which point the entity will begin to follow the new person. However, once that person is dead, the entity moves back down the chain, and begins following the previous person once more… The film stars Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe and Daniel Zovatto, and has become something of a cult sleeper hit, with critics comparing the film favorably to early genre efforts by directors like John Carpenter. Read more…
BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND – Jerry Goldsmith
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In my review of Supergirl earlier in this series, I remarked how a number of Jerry Goldsmith scores are essentially ‘parallel universe’ scores, inferior versions of films John Williams scored. From the late 1970s through the mid 1990s, Goldsmith wrote a lot of great music for some truly awful movies, and if you look at his filmography during that period, you can see the pattern developing: where John Williams had Superman, Goldsmith had Supergirl; as Williams had Raiders of the Lost Ark, so Goldsmith had King Solomon’s Mines; and so on. Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend is basically Goldsmith’s Jurassic Park, eight years before Steven Spielberg broke all box office records with his dinosaur movie. It’s a family adventure directed by Bill L. Norton, starring William Katt, Sean Young, Patrick McGoohan and (inexplicably) Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes in an early acting role; it tells the story of Susan and George Loomis, a paleontologist and her husband, who discover a mother and baby brontosaurus in Africa, and try to protect them from hunters who want to capture them. Read more…
THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY – Cat’s Eyes (Rachel Zeffira, Faris Badwan)
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Duke of Burgundy is a new erotic drama from the progressive British director Peter Strickland. The highbrow antidote to Fifty Shades of Grey, it tells the story of the sadomasochistic lesbian relationship between Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a professor with a special interest in lepidoptery, and Evelyn (Chiara d’Anna), her maid and lover who slowly becomes her consensual sex slave. The title refers to the particular breed of butterfly with which Cynthia is fascinated, and acts as a metaphor for emergent female sexuality, while the entire look of the film is a loving homage to those European soft core movies of the 1960s and 1970s directed by the likes of Jess Franco, Tinto Brass and Just Jaeckin. Their films were shot in muted, earthy tones through misty, gossamer filters, and were serious and earnest and explicit in an unashamed way, celebrating sexuality in all its forms, and The Duke of Burgundy approaches things in a similar way. The film was screened at various film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, the London Film Festival, and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, to generally positive critical reviews. Read more…
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI – Malcolm Arnold
GREATEST SCORES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Original Review by Craig Lysy
One day, out of curiosity, producer Sam Spiegel happened to purchase the novel “Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï” by Pierre Boulle, which was, at the time, the talk of the day. He read the novel on a plane flight and by the time he arrived in London, he was determined to bring the story to the big screen. Complications arose immediately as his trusted screenwriters, Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, were on the infamous McCarthy blacklist of people accused of Communist sympathies, and were forced to ghost-write, while Boulle, who could not speak, let alone write in English, was assigned the sole writing credit. Spiegel brought in David Lean to direct the film and they assembled a stellar cast for the project, including Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson, Jack Hawkins as Major Warden, William Holden as Captain Shears and Sessue Hayakawa as the brutal Colonel Saito. Read more…
HUGO FRIEDHOFER – Fathers of Film Music, Part 9
Article by Craig Lysy
Born: 3 May 1901, San Francisco, California.
Died: 17 May 1981.
Hugo Wilhelm Friedhofer was born in San Francisco into a musical family, his father being an accomplished cellist who trained in Dresden, Germany. His musical gifts surfaced early and he began playing the cello in earnest at the age of 13. He was not fond of school and so quit at 16, obtaining work as an office boy. In his teen years both music and art competed for his affections, and it was not until the age of 18 that he finally decided to pursue music for a career. He enrolled in night classes at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco, and then later studied harmony and counterpoint at Berkeley, where he gained employment as a cellist for the People’s Symphony Orchestra. Read more…
DRAGONHEART 3: THE SORCERER’S CURSE – Mark McKenzie
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The enduring longevity of the Dragonheart film series is one of the most unexpected in current mainstream cinema. Surprisingly, we are now on the third film, following the original movie back in 1996, and the first sequel – ‘A New Beginning’ – in 2000. This new film is actually a prequel to the original film, and tells the story of a young squire named Gareth (Julian Morris), who goes in search of a ‘comet’ he observed falling from the sky, which he believes holds enough gold for him to train to become a knight. However, instead of finding a comet, Gareth finds a dragon named Draco (voiced by Ben Kingsley) who is being hunted by an evil sorcerer. After Draco saves Gareth’s life, the two quickly become friends, and begin to work together to defeat the sorcerer and stop his reign of terror. The film is directed by veteran British TV director Colin Teague, and has an original score by Mark McKenzie. Read more…
CINDERELLA – Patrick Doyle
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Walt Disney are currently undertaking an interesting exercise whereby they are re-making many of their animated classics as live action films; last year, Sleeping Beauty was re-imagined as the action packed Maleficent, and next year Beauty and the Beast is set to hit cinemas in an all-new setting. This year, however, it is the turn of Cinderella, which was originally produced by the mouse house in 1950, and is now receiving a lavish big screen re-telling from director Kenneth Branagh. For those who don’t know, the story is largely based on the popular fairytale novel Cendrillon by Charles Perrault, first published in 1697, and tells the story of a young woman who is mistreated by her cruel stepmother and her wicked step-sisters, and dreams of escaping her life of domestic drudgery. One night, when her family is away attending a ball given by a handsome prince, to which Cinderella has been expressly forbidden from going, she is visited by her kind fairy godmother, who uses her magic to create a ball gown and glass slippers for Cinderella to wear, and a carriage to take her to the palace. At the ball, the Prince sees and instantly falls in love with the beautiful Cinderella, but circumstances contrive for her to have to flee the palace at the stroke of midnight, before the Prince learns her identity. His only clue is one of the glass slippers, which Cinderella accidentally leaves behind in her haste… The film stars Lily James as Cinderella, Game of Thrones alumnus Richard Madden as the Prince, Cate Blanchett as the Stepmother, and Helena Bonham-Carter as the Fairy Godmother, and has a glorious original score by Patrick Doyle. Read more…
WOLF TOTEM – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a long 2½ years, since the summer of 2012 and The Amazing Spider-Man, to wait for a new James Horner score. In the intervening period he has had at least one score rejected (Romeo & Juliet, eventually scored by Abel Korzeniowski), and left at least one other project under unclear circumstances (Ender’s Game, eventually scored by Steve Jablonsky), all the while making dark mutterings about how unhappy and disillusioned he is about the state of the Hollywood film music scene overall. The fact that all this was coming from a man who, for almost 30 years, had been at the forefront of the entire genre, one of the leading public faces of the industry, with literally dozens of scores for mainstream blockbusters under his belt, was troubling; was Horner’s career about to follow that of composers like Bruce Broughton, Trevor Jones, and the late Basil Poledouris, whose bold, emotional, symphonic writing had become passé for Hollywood’s young directors? Thankfully, the answer to this question, at least for now, appears to be a resounding no: he’s back with a full slate of five films scheduled for 2015 and 2016, the first of which – this one – ranks among his very best. Read more…
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE – Henry Jackman, Matthew Margeson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Kingsman: The Secret Service is an espionage action-adventure film based on the comic book series by Mark Millar and David Gibbons; it pays healthy homage to the James Bond films and several other spy franchises, but peppers its plot with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek British humor and intentionally over-the-top violence. Directed by Matthew Vaughn, the film stars Colin Firth as Harry Hart, codenamed Galahad, a dapper English gentleman who is actually an undercover spy for an elite independent espionage agency called the Kingsmen, who hide behind the façade of a bespoke Savile Row tailor’s shop. When one of their operatives is killed, Hart recruits Gary Unwin, nicknamed Eggsy, a young petty criminal whom Harry knew as a child. Seeing the potential for greatness in Eggsy, Harry enrolls him into an elite school for potential Kingsman recruits, but before long the Kingsmen are embroiled in trying to foil a sinister world domination plot masterminded by billionaire consumer electronics mogul Richmond Valentine – and Eggsy is along for the ride. The film co-stars newcomer Taron Egerton as Eggsy, Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine, and has a stellar supporting cast that includes Michael Caine, Mark Strong and Mark Hamill; it’s also one of the most fun films I’ve had the pleasure of seeing at the cinema in quite some time, coming across as an enjoyable romp which both lovingly embraces and pokes fun at genre clichés. Read more…
Academy Award Winners 2014
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 87th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2014.
In the Best Original Score category French composer Alexandre Desplat won the award for his score for directed Wes Anderson’s quirky period comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel. In his acceptance speech, Desplat said:
“Merci. Merci beaucoup. Wes [Anderson], you’re a genius. This is good! You offered me a great view from the Grand Budapest. Thank you. It’s been a beautiful decade for me in Hollywood. I’ve worked with great directors and producers, and I’m very grateful. I need to thank Laura Engel, Mark Graham, Katz, my Greek mother. Solrey [Lemonnier], I met you long ago, for my first session, you played a violin, and you made everything happen for me. So, this is for you. Thank you”
The other nominees were Desplat again for The Imitation Game, Jóhann Jóhannsson for The Theory of Everything, Gary Yershon for Mr. Turner, and Hans Zimmer for Interstellar.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were John Legend and Lonnie ‘Common’ Lynn for their song “Glory” from critically acclaimed civil rights film Selma.
The other nominees were Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois for “Lost Stars” from Begin Again, Glenn Campbell and Julian Raymond for “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from Glenn Campbell: I’ll Be Me, Shawn Patterson for “Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie, and Diane Warren for “Grateful” from Beyond the Lights.
THE AVIATOR – Dominic Frontiere
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I would wager than 99% of the people reading this didn’t know that there was a film called The Aviator released 19 years prior to the Oscar-winning Howard Hughes biopic directed by Martin Scorsese – but there was, and this is it. The film is a period action adventure directed by George Miller – not the famous director of Mad Max and The Witches of Eastwick, but the less famous George Miller who directed The Neverending Story Part II and that movie about a seal called Andre. It stars Christopher Reeve as Edgar Anscombe, a rough and ready pilot working for the postal service in the 1920s, who reluctantly agrees to take a passenger, a rich heiress’s daughter named Tillie Hansen played by Rosanna Arquette, on his latest run. Naturally, the plane crash lands on a remote mountain range in Nevada, and the pair must fight to survive against the elements, most notably a pack of hungry wolves that sees them as their next meal. Read more…
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