Thank god for Alexander Payne. The filmmaker is, and always has been, a true humanist. A writer-director more interested in human beings, something that has always been the special effect of his movies. A two-time Oscar-winning writer, his latest film, The Holdovers, which had its world premiere on Thursday at the Telluride Film Festival, is one of his rare movies in which he doesn’t have a writing credit. David Hemingson did the screenplay, but the idea, an inspired one, came from Payne, a real film buff who was always intrigued by Marcel Pagnol’s 1935 French film Merlusse about a group of boarding school students stuck over the holidays with a much-despised teacher. The director thought it had the bones for a new story and developed it with Hemingson.
Set in 1970, it is Payne’s first period film after a celebrated career for movies like Sideways, The Descendants and many others.
Set in 1970, it is Payne’s first period film after a celebrated career for movies like Sideways, The Descendants and many others.
- 9/1/2023
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
This article marks Part 11 of the Gold Derby series analyzing 84 years of Best Original Song at the Oscars. Join us as we look back at the timeless tunes recognized in this category, the results of each race and the overall rankings of the winners.
The 1970 Oscar nominees in Best Original Song were:
“Whistling Away the Dark” from “Darling Lili”
“For All We Know” from “Lovers and Other Strangers”
“‘Til Love Touches Your Life” from “Madron”
“Pieces of Dreams” from “Pieces of Dreams”
“Thank You Very Much” from “Scrooge”
Won: “For All We Know” from “Lovers and Other Strangers”
Should’ve won: “Whistling Away the Dark” from “Darling Lili”
1970, the year voters embraced monumental pictures including “Patton” and “Mash” and far lesser efforts like “Airport” and “Love Story,” marked a comparably mixed bag in Best Original Song, sporting a truly grand Julie Andrews tune and respectable winner in “For All We Know,...
The 1970 Oscar nominees in Best Original Song were:
“Whistling Away the Dark” from “Darling Lili”
“For All We Know” from “Lovers and Other Strangers”
“‘Til Love Touches Your Life” from “Madron”
“Pieces of Dreams” from “Pieces of Dreams”
“Thank You Very Much” from “Scrooge”
Won: “For All We Know” from “Lovers and Other Strangers”
Should’ve won: “Whistling Away the Dark” from “Darling Lili”
1970, the year voters embraced monumental pictures including “Patton” and “Mash” and far lesser efforts like “Airport” and “Love Story,” marked a comparably mixed bag in Best Original Song, sporting a truly grand Julie Andrews tune and respectable winner in “For All We Know,...
- 11/6/2018
- by Andrew Carden
- Gold Derby
The Newman scoring stage at 20th Century-Fox was overflowing with people – and good will – as Ascap last night celebrated the 30th anniversary of its Film Scoring Workshop with a studio recording session for the 12 lucky young composers chosen to participate.
“This is like a window into the time continuum, where you can look into the future and see those who are going to make a real contribution to film music,” Ascap president and chairman Paul Williams said. “It’s a cultural gift in one sense, but on another level it’s a really smart business investment.”
The performing-rights society sponsors this four-week event for emerging film and TV composers every summer, with Emmy winner Richard Bellis at the helm. Ascap arranges meetings with agents, lawyers, studio executives and experienced composers; this year’s field trips included visits to the studios of Junkie Xl (“Mad Max Fury Road”), Matthew Margeson...
“This is like a window into the time continuum, where you can look into the future and see those who are going to make a real contribution to film music,” Ascap president and chairman Paul Williams said. “It’s a cultural gift in one sense, but on another level it’s a really smart business investment.”
The performing-rights society sponsors this four-week event for emerging film and TV composers every summer, with Emmy winner Richard Bellis at the helm. Ascap arranges meetings with agents, lawyers, studio executives and experienced composers; this year’s field trips included visits to the studios of Junkie Xl (“Mad Max Fury Road”), Matthew Margeson...
- 8/2/2018
- by Jon Burlingame
- Variety Film + TV
Paul Weedon Jul 14, 2017
We chat to Game Of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi about season 6, Jon Snow, Sansa, Westworld and more...
Warning: contains spoilers for Game Of Thrones season 6.
See related Reshoots are underway on The Dark Tower movie The Dark Tower TV series announced The Dark Tower: Elba and McConaughey now confirmed
Summer is finally upon us and with it, well, erm winter, courtesy of the long-awaited return of Game Of Thrones.
A staple part of the show’s success since its first season, composer Ramin Djawadi’s stirring work on season six marked some significant tonal changes for the show, not least because of some shocking plot twists. With season seven set to venture even further in to uncharted territory, it’s a given that we’re in for some big surprises going forward.
Between seasons, Djawadi hasn’t exactly been resting on his laurels, working on the...
We chat to Game Of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi about season 6, Jon Snow, Sansa, Westworld and more...
Warning: contains spoilers for Game Of Thrones season 6.
See related Reshoots are underway on The Dark Tower movie The Dark Tower TV series announced The Dark Tower: Elba and McConaughey now confirmed
Summer is finally upon us and with it, well, erm winter, courtesy of the long-awaited return of Game Of Thrones.
A staple part of the show’s success since its first season, composer Ramin Djawadi’s stirring work on season six marked some significant tonal changes for the show, not least because of some shocking plot twists. With season seven set to venture even further in to uncharted territory, it’s a given that we’re in for some big surprises going forward.
Between seasons, Djawadi hasn’t exactly been resting on his laurels, working on the...
- 7/13/2017
- Den of Geek
Jerry Goldsmith was already a veteran film composer with numerous iconic scores under his belt by the time he was enlisted to work on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). He’d worked in radio and television through the 1950s, contributing music to classic shows such as The Twilight Zone (1959) and Perry Mason (1959) before making the move to film, writing scores for films as diverse in subject matter (and sound) as Stagecoach (1966) and Planet of the Apes (1968) in the 1960s and Chinatown (1974) and The Omen (1976) in the 1970s. Goldsmith’s rich orchestral scores for such films, which were informed and influenced by early 20th century modernist composers, are both experimental and economical in their use and development of thematic material. He explained, “What I really try to do is to take one simple motif of the material for the picture, and a broad theme, and construct it so they always can work...
- 6/6/2017
- MUBI
By Doug Oswald
Three teenage boys discover a gunshot outlaw and nurse him back to health in “The Spikes Gang,” a 1974 western directed by Richard Fleischer available for the first time on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Lee Marvin plays Harry Spikes, an outlaw who inspires Gary Grimes, Ron Howard and Charles Martin Smith to join him as outlaws. Harry is calm, cool and calculating, endearing himself to the boys who have romanticized his life as an outlaw.
Will (Grimes), Les (Howard) and Tod (Smith) are farm boys seeking excitement and adventure and find it in Harry who recovers from his wounds with the boy’s help. The three boys are bored with the farm life as well as the harsh treatment they receive from their parents. Harry offers the boys a reward for helping him, but they turn him down instead asking to join Harry who declines their offer. The boys,...
Three teenage boys discover a gunshot outlaw and nurse him back to health in “The Spikes Gang,” a 1974 western directed by Richard Fleischer available for the first time on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Lee Marvin plays Harry Spikes, an outlaw who inspires Gary Grimes, Ron Howard and Charles Martin Smith to join him as outlaws. Harry is calm, cool and calculating, endearing himself to the boys who have romanticized his life as an outlaw.
Will (Grimes), Les (Howard) and Tod (Smith) are farm boys seeking excitement and adventure and find it in Harry who recovers from his wounds with the boy’s help. The three boys are bored with the farm life as well as the harsh treatment they receive from their parents. Harry offers the boys a reward for helping him, but they turn him down instead asking to join Harry who declines their offer. The boys,...
- 4/14/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
The film music culture over the years has a developed a bit of an elitist complex in the way we talk about the artform, leading some to believe that if you don’t have little black dots as prevalent as you have red blood cells in your veins then you must not be trying very hard. After all, we were born with this, right? It’s in our DNA.
Arguable, at best. A lot of people say we were born with certain aptitudes toward this gig but I would argue that while that might be true about musical intuition and a predisposition toward cognitive retention of scales and other functional repeating mathematical sequences, quality skilled composition only comes out of tireless practice, varied experience and loads of trial and error. It’s not a far-flung theory then to assume that there could be a serious self-esteem issue working against emerging composers,...
Arguable, at best. A lot of people say we were born with certain aptitudes toward this gig but I would argue that while that might be true about musical intuition and a predisposition toward cognitive retention of scales and other functional repeating mathematical sequences, quality skilled composition only comes out of tireless practice, varied experience and loads of trial and error. It’s not a far-flung theory then to assume that there could be a serious self-esteem issue working against emerging composers,...
- 6/13/2013
- by Deane Ogden
- SCOREcastOnline.com
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 16, 2012
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
The 1969 film The Sterile Cuckoo, an amalgam of comedy, drama and romance, marks the directorial debut of the late filmmaker Alan J. Pakula (All The President’s Men)
Liza Minnelli and Wendell Burton fall for each other in The Sterile Cuckoo.
Liza Minnelli (Lucky Lady) stars as Pookie Adams, a kooky coed who falls in love with a reserved young college student, Jerry Payne (Wendell Burton, Fortune and Men’s Eyes). The eccentric Pookie actively pursues the shy boyish-man and helps him through the tough first months in school. They both benefit from the relationship, with Jerry gaining self-confidence and Pookie finally coming to grips with her unhappy home life. But it’s through their awkward relationship that Pookie actually prepares Jerry for the world of “weirdos” she doesn’t fit in with.
Based on the novelby John Nichols and written by Alvin Sargent,...
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
The 1969 film The Sterile Cuckoo, an amalgam of comedy, drama and romance, marks the directorial debut of the late filmmaker Alan J. Pakula (All The President’s Men)
Liza Minnelli and Wendell Burton fall for each other in The Sterile Cuckoo.
Liza Minnelli (Lucky Lady) stars as Pookie Adams, a kooky coed who falls in love with a reserved young college student, Jerry Payne (Wendell Burton, Fortune and Men’s Eyes). The eccentric Pookie actively pursues the shy boyish-man and helps him through the tough first months in school. They both benefit from the relationship, with Jerry gaining self-confidence and Pookie finally coming to grips with her unhappy home life. But it’s through their awkward relationship that Pookie actually prepares Jerry for the world of “weirdos” she doesn’t fit in with.
Based on the novelby John Nichols and written by Alvin Sargent,...
- 7/30/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
One of the joys of the Warner Archive program is that movies and television shows for small groups of fans can be released. The restoration costs seem to have reached a reasonable scale and these direct-to-order projects don’t really require the bells and whistles higher profile releases deserve. As a result, we can revel in the stuff we grew up or recall fondly. In my case, that includes a ton of Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears stuff that has been coming out over the last year or two. It also meant I finally got a good copy of the pilot to the Search series.
And while some will turn their noses up to those offerings, they may begin salivating at some of the others that have been released; titles which I personally find not worth our time and attention. One such series is the short-lived NBC clunker Man from Atlantis, best...
And while some will turn their noses up to those offerings, they may begin salivating at some of the others that have been released; titles which I personally find not worth our time and attention. One such series is the short-lived NBC clunker Man from Atlantis, best...
- 8/2/2011
- by Robert Greenberger
- Comicmix.com
In what many consider to be the Bible of film composing, Fred Karlin’s “On the Track” (affliliate link), Jerry Goldsmith is quoted as saying that he was “never embarrassed to use a factory preset”. In interviews, Danny Elfman has mentioned that he used StormDrum 2 extensively on his “Terminator Salvation” score. In several network television shows that are currently airing, you will hear many familiar Omnisphere, Symphobia, and Reaktor patches morphing and wafting their way through the sonic fabric.
Amongst composers, “I design all my own sounds” seems to be a phrase that we like to use. Of course, we cannot be Just Like everyone else, right? However, if you are a composer yourself, then you know the intrinsic value of not having to reinvent the wheel on every single project you take on. With abbreviated schedules being what they are nowadays, who has the time?
That being said, what...
Amongst composers, “I design all my own sounds” seems to be a phrase that we like to use. Of course, we cannot be Just Like everyone else, right? However, if you are a composer yourself, then you know the intrinsic value of not having to reinvent the wheel on every single project you take on. With abbreviated schedules being what they are nowadays, who has the time?
That being said, what...
- 11/19/2010
- by SCO Staff
- SCOREcastOnline.com
On the heels of a killer column post from SCOREcast co-host Lee Sanders on Wednesday about "Surviving the Crunch", James Olszewski asked a very pertinent question:What do you recommend to develop a passable roadmap on a compressed timeline?... I'd like to get a peek at what one of these roadmaps looks like (even if it's just scribbles and random notes). Being the "planner" I am, I'm already thinking of some sort of template. Maybe something that takes you progressively from random notes to roadmap to spotting to cue sheet.... Does anything like that already exist?This is a great question, and one that could be met with as many different answers as there are composers that exercise this practice. In this post, I'm going to show you a handful of the things that I do in my work that help me achieve a cohesive plan when taking on a new set of visuals to score.
- 7/27/2009
- by noreply@blogger.com (Deane Ogden)
- SCOREcastOnline.com
For me, horror movies will always be fondly, profoundly linked to the sweet, wonderful and wide eyed rapture of my late-night trash TV-drenched childhood. Those bygone, misspent hours when I’d subject myself to every manner of sublime cinema, splitting open fantastic and macabre realities that potentially could and in some cases did, exist. One of the too-many-to-count strange shockers that left a major, destiny altering impact on me was veteran small screen director Sutton Roley’s obscure Sci-Fi tinged skin crawler Chosen Survivors, a movie whose chilly, nihilistic, future-shock premise hooked my Twilight Zone weaned sensibilities while also managing to exploit my acute fear of bedroom invading bats.
Before we proceed, let me explain a bit about that fear…
See, there was this one time when I was no more than 8, I was reading a particularly upsetting issue of Marvel comics’ groundbreaking Tomb Of Dracula series, alone, in my...
Before we proceed, let me explain a bit about that fear…
See, there was this one time when I was no more than 8, I was reading a particularly upsetting issue of Marvel comics’ groundbreaking Tomb Of Dracula series, alone, in my...
- 6/24/2009
- by no-reply@fangoria.com (Chris Alexander)
- Fangoria
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