#alan silvestri

[mikyapixie]

First poster for the 20th anniversary of The Polar Express!!!🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

[doyouknowthismusical]

[masonskaya]

[tigreblvnc]

You definitely like Hans Zimmer. Is he your favorite composer? 👀

Absolutely not! There are many composers that I love.

Here is a list with those I can think of right now and my favorite movies they composed the music for:

Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Avengers (2012).)

Alexandre Desplat (His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (2007), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Imitation Game (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018), The Shape of Water (2017), The Sisters Brothers (2018).)

Bernard Herrmann (Psycho (1960), Twisted Nerves (1968), Taxi Driver (1976).)

Brad Fiedel (Terminator 2 (1991).)

Danny Elfman (The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), Spider-Man (2002), Alice in Wonderland (2010).)

Dario Marianelli (V for Vendetta (2006).)

Ennio Morricone (The Great Silence (1968), My Name Is Nobody (1973), Kill Bill (2003), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015).)

Hans Zimmer (The Lion King (1994), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002), Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), Kung Fu Panda (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), Dune (2021).)

Harry Gregson-Williams (Shrek (2001), Narnia (2005).)

James Newton Howard (Batman Begins (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), Fantastic Beasts (2016), Raya and the Last Dragon (2021).)

Joe Hisaishi (Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), Ponyo (2008).)

John Williams (Star Wars (1977), Catch Me If You Can (1980), Hook (1991), Harry Potter (2001).)

James Horner (Jumanji (1995), The Magnificent Seven (2016), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).)

Pino Donaggio (Carrie (1976).)

Ramin Djawadi (Westworld (2016).)

Ryuichi Sakamoto (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), The Revenant (2015).)

Thomas Newman (Meet Joe Black (1998).)

[bastionofbibliophiles]

Today In "Unreasonably Good Soundtracks"

The Source: "The Polar Express" (2004)

The Song: "Seeing is Believing"

The Composer: Alan Silvestri

[ivovynckier]

Film composer Alan Silvestri, Robert Zemeckis' house composer, made a contribution to Christmas movies.

[holy-shit-comics]

[moorheadthanyoucanhandle]

EVERYTHING EVERY TIME ALL IN ONE PLACE

Playing wide in the multiplexes right now:

Here--A spot in a living room in an upscale eastern Pennsylvania suburb--that's the title locale of this latest from Robert Zemeckis. It's our static vantage point for, essentially, the whole movie, looking across the room through a picture window that offers a view of the big brick colonial-era house across the street. 

We see the view there before it was a living room--long, long before. As in, we see it during the extinction event that ended the Cretaceous Period, sixty million years ago. We see it as a woodland make-out spot for indigenous lovers (Dannie McCallum and Joel Oulette), and as a burial site. We see it as part of a dirt road leading up to the aforementioned historic manse, which once was occupied by William Franklin (Daniel Betts), estranged Loyalist son of Benjamin (Keith Bartlett).

After the house is built, we get glimpses of the lives of its early 20th-Century inhabitants, like an enthusiastic aviator (Gwilym Lee) whose wife (Michelle Dockery) frets about his flying. They're followed by a whimsical inventor (David Fynn) and his sexy flapper wife (Ophelia Lovibond). This guy is trying to perfect a reclining chair; his working title for it is "Relax-y-Boy." And we see the house's early 21st-Century occupants, an African-American family; Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird are the parents, and Anya Marco-Harris is the beloved housekeeper.

But the movie's main focus is the midcentury family that takes the place over after WWII: Dad (Paul Bettany), a combat veteran and a seething, disappointed functional alcoholic, his sweet, quietly unfulfilled wife (Kelly Reilly), and his oldest son (Tom Hanks), an aspiring artist. The son gets his beautiful girlfriend (Robin Wright) pregnant, so there goes both art school and her college dreams. They move in with the parents, and stay for decades.

So the movie packs in a lot of history (and prehistory), a lot of longings fulfilled and unfulfilled, and cultural references ranging from the Spanish flu to the Spanish Inquistion sketch from Monty Python. But I'll admit that when I realized we were going to be parked in one place for the whole thing--I went in not knowing this--I panicked for a moment.

I needn't have worried. Zemeckis has always been a skillful showman, and while the audacious experiment of Here is by no means an unqualified success, it certainly never bored me. The script, by Eric Roth and Zemeckis, is based on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, and Zemeckis employs comic-book techniques like overlapping inset panels to interweave the various timelines and bounce them off each other thematically. It's an impressive and confident exercise in narrative, and it does carry a cumulative emotional punch.

There are downsides, however. The fixed point of view means that the actors tend to seem a bit far away from us a lot of the time, and when they are brought up into the foreground it somehow feels forced. Zemeckis may have been worried about this distancing too; Alan Silvestri's music, though pretty, is ladled on a bit thicker than it should be, as if to telegraph what we're supposed to be feeling.  

Much more jarringly, though, the people in Here often have an ersatz, CGI "Uncanny Valley" look to them. The leads were taken all the way back to teenaged through some sort of real-time computer tech, and while the results are tolerable, they aren't perfected in realistic terms.

It must be admitted, however, that Hanks and Wright transcend this limitation, especially Hanks. The other actors sometimes feel like cyber-phantoms, but Hanks is so vibrant that he can project his humanity right through the program. And after Apollo 13, Castaway, Captain Phillips and Sully, it's also a relief to see the poor guy stay put.

[mikyapixie]

20 years ago today The Polar Express released in theaters!!!

This is one of the best Christmas movies!!!

[demonsee2]

The Image Quartet

[myvinylplaylist]

Judge Dredd Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1995)

Epic Records

[random-jot]

I miss big bombastic horn sections in movie scores

There’s just something so joyful about Indiana Jones escaping from the nazis while the soundtrack goes BA BAAA BADUM BA BAAA BAAAAAH

[masonskaya]

[mjf-af]

someone at work must have had the BTTF twinkle as their phone notification sound all I know is I heard those notes and I was awoken