Woke up early this morning (7:30am!) to get up and ready so I could work my way uptown to meet Sean and Shira for breakfast at H&H Bagels. I got there a little before 9am, and realized when I arrived that this particular location – the factory on 46th Street – didn’t really have much of a storefront with service; sure you could buy delicious bagels, but they wouldn’t even toast – or slice – them. We had to buy …
Thursday: Italian Day
If there’s one thing that NYC has no shortage of, it’s diversity. Cultures from all over the world can be found throughout the city, and anyone who so chooses can learn and enjoy the breadth that the world has to offer – through their food. Unofficially, Thursday became Italian Day. After sleeping in just a tad, I got my morning coffee fix at Grounded, over in the West Village. I had a pumpkin latte (since it was a little chilly …
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Live to Picture
The big finale for the festival was the third and last concert – a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with live music accompaniment for the entire film. This has been done before – Shore has been doing it for the trilogy starting a few years ago, but I never had the opportunity to see it in this manner. The huge orchestra, choir, boys choir, and soloists delivered a tour-de-force performance over the four …
Shigeru Umebayashi Concert / Festival Banquet
We were picked up at the hotel a little after 8pm (we made sure to get to the lobby early this time – didn’t want to miss our ride again!), and we were taken back to the Steelworks for the Shigeru Umebayashi concert. Since last night was so cold, we all had prepared to bundle up – but it was such a mild evening that it was warm in the venue, and my sweatshirt and jacket sat on the chair …
Second Panel / Tan Dun Concert / Late Night Reception
The second panel, “Promoting Film Music” was to be hosted by Doug Adams, but unfortunately he was sick and unable to make the trip to Poland. Nancy Knutsen stepped in, and the panel was a bit freeform, with the topics ranging from soundtrack publicity, to websites, to music festivals and concerts. The last half hour was especially interesting,when one of the gentlemen in the audience got into a rather heated debate (all in Polish) with a few members of the …
Doubt
Doubt is based on the Tony-winning play by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley. Set at a Catholic School in the Bronx in the fall of 1964, the story swirls around the concerns that Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) has regarding Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his seemingly inappropriate relationship with the school’s first (and only) black student, Donald Muller (Joseph Foster). When the younger Sister James (Amy Adams) first notices some odd behavior in Donald, she brings it …
Eastern Promises
When a 14-year old girl dies giving birth, the midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) discovers her diary, written in Russian. Seeking to have it translated, she takes it to a Russian restaurant where she meets Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who agrees to translate it for her. Little does she know that Semyon is actually the leader of one of London’s most notorious Russian crime families, and the diary is directly tied to his organization. His son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) is trying to …
The Last Mimzy
I never read “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”, the 1943 short story by Henry Kuttner and Catherine Moore, so I had no real idea of what to expect when going into the feature film version loosely based on the story, The Last Mimzy. The premise is interesting at the core: a scientist from the distant future – where the human genome has been irreversibly altered and man is unable to survive without the aide of climate suits – sends back a …
The Departed
A few years ago, I had seen Infernal Affairs on DVD – a Hong Kong film about an undercover cop who infiltrated a Triad at the same time as a Triad member infiltrating the police force. Now Martin Scorsese has remade the film as The Departed, and moved the location to South Boston. Jack Nicholson plays Frank Costello, the crime kingpin at the center of the story. A member of his crew, Collin Sullivan (Matt Damon), has just graduated from …
Howard Shore's website
One-and-a-half years after embarking on it, I’ve finished and launched the official website for Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore. Go check it out here and spread the joy!
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