TIFF 2018: Hans Zimmer on The Dark Knight, Wonder Woman 1984 & More
Hans Zimmer is no stranger to working with directors who have a ferocious passion. Yesterday, we published our interview with the Oscar-winning composer about his score for Steve McQueen’s thrilling crime drama Widows. Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score blended perfectly with McQueen’s film about three women navigating the criminal underworld in Chicago to pull off a nearly impossible bank heist. They’re attempting to pay off their dead husband’s deaths and forge their own paths,
TIFF 2018: Legendary Composer Hans Zimmer on Scoring Steve McQueen’s Sensational Widows
Hans Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score for Widows gets under your skin. The legendary composer creates a sonic environment that feels as pressurized and cloistered as the predicament of our four heroines. When you see Steve McQueen’s brilliant crime drama, you’ll notice a persistent humming throughout. As the stakes rise for the three women at the center of the story (the widows of three dead criminals who now must pull off a monumentally dangerous heist to pay off their debts and forge a path of their own),
The Riverdale Composer on Mixing Melodrama with Archie’s Innocent Past
Riverdale of the classic Archie comics was a quaint and wholesome every town with a spotless reputation. In print for more than 75 years, a recent shakeup led Archie Comics CCO, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, to create Riverdale. The edgy soap opera saga finally acknowledged that so many rivalries couldn’t remain peaceful and there had to be a dark underbelly in the town. Criminal empires, student-teacher relationships, and murder mysteries plague Riverdale with the heart of the original Archie characters intact.
Jimi Hendrix-Style Cello Hybrid Defines Sicario: Day of the Soldado‘s Brooding Score
Icelandic musician Hildur Guðnadóttir was all over the first Sicario movie: She played the cello throughout the Oscar-nominated score written by her longtime collaborator Jóhann Jóhannsson. He died suddenly this winter. For the sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Guðnadóttir scored the picture herself, but this time around, she cranked up the sense of menace by playing a one-of-a-kind instrument dubbed the “dorophone.” “It’s based on a cello,
How Ryan Lofty Helps Make Every Day Sound Like Saturday on Harvey Street
Ryan Lofty comes from humble beginnings in Robins, Iowa, raised in a log cabin his parents built. With his insanely sweet, talented piano-and-organ-playing mother, he grew up in a household that appreciated music in all its forms. “I went through all the phases… played trumpet in high school band, went to college on a jazz scholarship, toured the country with a rock group, and ended up in California as a DJ… turns out, experience with a lot of genres really helps with producing music for TV.
Bringing the Music of the Muppets to a New Generation of Muppet Babies
There are few American icons that have been more places, done more things, and spread more joy than the Muppets. Miss Piggy, Animal, Fozzie, Gonzo, and of course, Kermit, are always game for an adventure. Music has always been an integral part of their career as entertainers. Andy Bean pens catchy tunes while composer Keith Horn writes the score for a younger generation of Muppets fans. And also, a younger generation of Muppets. Disney Junior relaunched Muppet Babies in March featuring the puppet heroes in toddler form.
Actress-Turned-Composer Amelia Warner Helps Re-Imagine Frankenstein Origin Story in Mary Shelley
It was a dark and stormy night two centuries ago when 18-year old Mary Shelley, staying at Lord Byron’s estate in Geneva, Switzerland, responded to her host’s scary story contest by writing “Frankenstein.” Then came the hard part: persuading someone in London’s male-dominated book industry to publish the story under her own name. Starring Elle Fanning, Mary Shelley, which recently opened wide, tracks the heroine’s love affair with poet Percy Shelley and the crushing disappointments leading up to her creation of the now-classic horror tale.
13 Reasons Why‘s Music Supervisor on Selecting Music for the Mayhem of High School
Netflix’s hit show 13 Reasons Why has had its share of controversy from the beginning. The show centers around teen character Hannah Baker’s suicide, how various traumatic experiences led to her deciding to end her life, and how friends and classmates deal with the knowledge that they potentially had a hand in her decision. Though mental health professionals and other groups have had concerns around the depiction of rape, bullying, suicide, and gun violence,
The Music of Lizzie Strikes a Sympathetic Tone for the Famous Killer
The four-line Lizzie Borden rhyme is graphic, if not particularly sympathetic. A woman commits a double homicide and the victims are her own parents. The real Borden was acquitted of the 1892 murders, but her legacy was condemned to the role of cold-blooded killer. Sundance selection Lizzie, starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart, revisited the infamous crime with a compassion for Borden and explored the motivation that drove her to pick up the axe.
Striking a Balance of Cruelty and Whimsy for the Score of A Series of Unfortunate Events
Child marriage, infant abuse, insatiable greed, and murder plots do not seem like the makings of a family program. And yet, Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events achieves just that by channeling the highly stylized essence of Daniel Handler’s classic thirteen book series for young adults. Now in season 2, the plots have grown wackier and darker. The show is reliant on composer Jim Dooley to maintain levity. Dooley can attest to the music’s influence,
Mudbound & Come Sunday Composer Tamar-kali’s Singular Path
At less than 2% of all composers, the percentage of female scoring artists working in the film industry is the lowest and most out of balance with the number of men getting hired. There isn’t any official data on how many of those are women of color, but it’s an even smaller fraction. With her critically acclaimed score for Mudbound, and now with her new work for the film Come Sunday,
The Beyond Skyline Composer on Making Aliens Sound as Big as They Look
Captain America: Civil War star Frank Grillo will not be appearing in the Avengers’ showdown against Thanos later this month, but he’s been busy battling aliens of his own. Grillo leads the human fight against an intergalactic invasion in Beyond Skyline. The film is something of a family drama with Mark (Grillo) trying to reconnect with his son Trent (Jonny Weston) during the chaos. Composer Nathan Whitehead wrote the eerie and epic score that weaves together a tense father-son dynamic with colossal creatures.
The Composing Team for Life Sentence Gives A New Beginning a Fresh Sound
Time seems to go by too fast. You rush to work, cram in family events at night and meet friends on the weekend. Suddenly weeks, months and years fly by. What we often forget is that life is also long. Much longer that Stella expected on new CW dramedy Life Sentence.
Lucy Hale plays a cancer patient who believes she has months left to live, only to find out she’s been cured.
Lean on Pete‘s Composer on why This Gorgeous Film Needed a Live Score
Though the score created for Lean on Pete is placed only in chosen scenes, those scenes are chosen expertly. The score is a powerful element that helps bring cohesion to the emotional and physical journey taking place in the movie. Lean on Pete is by acclaimed filmmaker Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years), and is based on the novel by Willy Vlautin. The story’s centered on fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer),
Composer Chris Willis on Scoring Armando Iannucci’s Darkly Hilarious The Death of Stalin
Armando Iannucci said that he wanted to take a break from the insanity of American politics after creating the critically acclaimed, depressingly believable satire Veep on HBO. After five years of looking at the inanities and insanities of Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)’s rise, fall, rise and fall in Washington D.C., Iannucci needed a palate cleanser—so he turned his attention to the very end Stalin’s ruthless, murderous grip on the Soviet Union with The Death of Stalin.
How the I, Tonya Composer Helped Recast an Infamous Villain as a Tragic Character
When the news hit in 1994 that Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan had been struck in the knee just before a performance, viewers were gripped. As the sensational story unfolded and the assailant became tied to rival Tonya Harding, America thought it would never forget the event. Nearly 25 years later, it turns out that the details have grown fuzzy – some even remembering Tonya swinging the baton herself. Three-time Oscar nominated I, Tonya returned to the scene of the crime and uncovered fresh perspectives on the infamous event.
Early Man Co-composer on Collaboration & Finding The Right Caveman Yells
To soundtrack fans, British composer Tom Howe may not be a household name, but he’s been clocking eighteen hour workdays for over a decade, and has over sixty IMDB credits to his name. He believes some of the most rewarding and successful projects on that list have been collaborations. Howe got on the international radar by creating theme music for The Great British Bake-Off. In 2017, he scored the music for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and created additional music on the blockbuster Wonder Woman itself.
Sundance 2018: American Animals Composer Captures Four Students’ Wild Alter Egos
A tribal orchestration sprinkled with sounds of the wild opens American Animals to the contrasting sight of establishing shots of Lexington, Kentucky. Composer Anne Nikitin immediately sets the tone for the rambunctious docudrama about a daydream gone too far. A group of college aged men concoct a movie style plan to steal valuables from a university, to initially hilarious result. As the events grow more sobering, Nikitin dials up the drama and brings us back to reality where the scheme collides with consequences.
Sundance 2018: The Tale Composer Delicately Threads a Fragile Story of Adolescent Abuse
For decades, documentarian Jennifer Fox had convinced herself that the sexual abuse she’d suffered as a child was consensual. In revisiting her memories and the events under the light of adulthood, Fox had a reckoning with the true nature of the events. Her memoir, starring Laura Dern as Jennifer, is laid bare in Sundance premiere The Tale. After decades of employing coping mechanisms to avoid the atrocities of sexual abuse she experienced as a child,
Sundance 2018: Talking to The King Composer About How Elvis’s Life Mirrors Modern America
If you were going to try and diagnose America’s current overall political and social health through the lens of Elvis Presley’s life, you’d want documentarian Eugene Jarecki as your filmmaker. And for Jarecki, composer Robert Miller was the man he tapped when he thought about how to create a score that would help elucidate the connections he was trying to make, while also living comfortably in a film that would be filled with indelible music,
