Working on a current film title is always exciting, for a number of reasons. With The Expendables 3, we got to see the film way early. Granted it wasn’t high art, but I found it entertaining. It also gave me a chance to get a sense of what scenes were important and what the design aesthetic used in the film itself is. Probably the biggest challenge for this project was the timeframe in which it had to take place – …
Three albums came out today. The first one I just handled the art direction on, which was for Brian Tyler’s score to Terra Nova, released by La-La Land Records. The ill-fated sci-fi television show was one of those rare instances where an orchestra was recorded weekly in Los Angeles (at the Newman Scoring Stage at Fox) and it was nice to have been able to visit the sessions a few times. In any case, the biggest challenge for me on this …
Just launched the website for A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project. The brainchild of composer Christopher Lennertz, the idea was to take 25 film composers and create a symphonic work based on a traditional Haitian melody. Proceeds from sales of the resulting album will be sent to the Hands Together charity to benefit Haitian earthquake victims. I built the site with a WordPress framework, and heavily modified a pre-existing template. The biggest challenge on the site was to connect …
The concert this evening was a double-header. The first half was a celebration of music from the Alien film series, and the second was a tribute to Jerry Goldsmith in honor of what would have been his 80th birthday. Conducted by Diego Navarro, music from Alien was preformed, as imagery was projected on screen (it was not meant to be live-to-picture sync, however). Goldsmith’s score to Alien is iconic, creepy and brilliant – and hearing it performed live was bone-chillingly …
In 2001, The Fast and the Furious blazed onto the big screen. Director Rob Cohen’s underground street racing crime flick was a huge financial success, though critically mixed. After a terrible sequel and a mediocre third film in the series, the filmmakers have gone back to the original cast. This one, appropriately titled Fast & Furious, starts out with a prologue sequence featuring Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) leaving his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his gang after a successful run hijacking …
Ahh yes, the fall movie season arrives in style with a new spin on the typical government paranoia film, Eagle Eye. Supposedly inspired by an idea by Steven Spielberg, the movie (written by John Glenn, Travis Wright and Hillary Seitz based on an original screenplay by Dan McDermott) follows Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf), a slacker who is framed for terrorism following the death of his twin brother who was in the military, and Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan), a single mother whose …
… won’t keep the doctor away, but rather will probably put me in the hospital for fatigue! In all seriousness, today marks the beginning of what could be scoring sessions for seven films in a week. Oy! Right now, I will be at: Tuesday:The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (Brian Tyler) Wednesday: The Devil Wears Prada (Teddy Shapiro) Thursday: Nacho Libre (Danny Elfman) Friday: The Lady in the Water Choir Sessions (James Newton Howard) Saturday/Sunday*: Invincible (Mark Isham) Monday/Tuesday*: …
Oh yeah – got my CD signed at the scoring session on Saturday. I think I might scan in all my autographed swag… what do you think?
Let’s be fair here. It was a crappy book. It was a crappy script. Why would anyone expect the film to be anything but crappy? Beats me, but my expectations with Timeline were so low going in, the only thing I was expecting was that it would be at least a little bit BETTER than The Cat in the Hat. Blessedly, I was right on that account. The film is choppier than a cobb salad. They gloss over certain plot …
I got together with Edgar and his friend Patrick to go see Bubba Ho-Tep, the cult film about Elvis (Bruce Campbell) battling a mummy in an East Texas retirement home. Before the film, we went to Baskin-Robbins in Westwood, and Edgar was given a counterfeit 10-dollar bill…. suffice it to say, we’re not going back to that place; the guy was shady and clearly pocketing cash from the register. We got to the theater about 10 minutes before the show, …