I am currently on vacation, so if there is any film music news that's transpired in the last few days you should be able to learn about it on our Message Board.
IN THEATERS TODAY
Living Large - Michal Novinski
Maria - Executive music producer: John Warhurst
Miss or Misses - Bayo Adepetun
Moana 2 - Mark Mancina, Opetaia Foa’i - Song CD due Jan. 10 on Disney
Queer - Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
That Christmas - John Powell
COMING SOON
December 13
Anche gli angeli mangiani fagioli/Anche gli angeli tirano di destro - Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Beat
For a Few Dollars More - Ennio Morricone - Beat
Outlander: Season 7 - Bear McCreary - Sony
RoboCop 3: The Deluxe Edition [reissue] - Basil Poledouris - Varese Sarabande
January 10
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse - Isobel Waller-Bridge - Sony (import)
The Outrun - John Gurtler, Jan Miserre - Decca (import)
January 31
The World of Hans Zimmer Part II: A New Dimension - Hans Zimmer - Sony
Coming Soon
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Danny Elfman - Waxwork
Blade: The Deluxe Edition - Mark Isham - Varese Sarabande CD Club
Blade II: The Deluxe Edition - Marco Beltrami - Varese Sarabande CD Club
Fallen Angels Vol. 2 - Peter Bernstein - Dragon's Domain
Le Grand Meaulnes - Philippe Sarde - Music Box
Lo Squartatore di New York (The New York Ripper) - Francesco De Masi - Beat
Metello - Ennio Morricone - Beat
Oceanus/Parallel Man - Jeff Rona - Dragon's Domain
The Paul Chihara Collection Vol. 6 - Paul Chihara - Dragon's Domain
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light - Debbie Wiseman - Silva
THIS WEEK IN FILM MUSIC HISTORY
November 29 - Chuck Mangione born (1940)
November 29 - Recording sessions begin on Herbert Stothart’s score for Hills of Home (1947)
November 29 - Miklos Rozsa begins recording his score to Moonfleet (1954)
November 29 - Erich Wolfgang Korngold died (1957)
November 29 - Russell Garcia begins recording his score for Atlantis the Lost Continent (1960)
November 29 - Alexander Courage's score to the second Star Trek pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," is recorded (1965)
November 29 - Carl Stalling died (1972)
November 29 - George Harrison died (2001)
November 29 - Shirley Walker died (2006)
November 29 - Allan Zavod died (2016)
November 30 - Gordon Parks born (1912)
November 30 - Edward Artemyev born (1937)
November 30 - Victor Young begins recording his score for September Affair (1949)
November 30 - Christophe Beck born (1972)
December 1 - Peter Thomas born (1925)
December 1 - Gerald Fried records his score for the Mission: Impossible episode “The Diplomat” (1968)
December 1 - John Williams begins recording his replacement score for Rosewood (1996)
December 1 - Stephane Grappelli died (1997)
December 2 - Harry Sukman born (1912)
December 2 - Eddie Sauter born (1914)
December 2 - Milton Delugg born (1918)
December 2 - Cyril Ornadel born (1924)
December 2 - Artie Butler born (1942)
December 2 - Michael Whalen born (1965)
December 2 - Lennie Hayton records his score for the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode “The Monster from Outer Space” (1965)
December 2 - Gerald Fried's score to the Star Trek episode "Shore Leave" is recorded (1966)
December 2 - Richard Markowitz begins recording his music for the three-part Mission: Impossible episode “The Falcon,” his final scores for the series (1969)
December 2 - Francois-Eudes Chanfrault born (1974)
December 2 - John Williams begins recording his score for Midway (1975)
December 2 - Aaron Copland died (1990)
December 3 - Nino Rota born (1911)
December 3 - Karl de Groof born (1923)
December 3 - Franz Waxman begins recording his score for Woman of the Year (1941)
December 3 - Christopher Slaski born (1974)
December 3 - Elmer Bernstein begins recording his score to McQ (1973)
December 3 - Adam Wingard born (1982)
December 3 - Hoyt Curtin died (2000)
December 3 - Dee Barton died (2001)
December 3 - Derek Wadsworth died (2008)
December 4 - Alex North born (1910)
December 4 - Richard Robbins born (1940)
December 4 - Rob Walsh born (1947)
December 4 - Leonard Rosenman records his score for the Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode “One of the Family” (1964)
December 4 - Jason Staczek born (1965)
December 4 - Benjamin Britten died (1976)
December 4 - On Golden Pond opens in New York and Los Angeles (1981)
December 4 - Harry Sukman died (1984)
December 4 - Jay Chattaway begins recording his score for the two-part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Chain of Command” (1992)
December 4 - Frank Zappa died (1993)
December 4 - Tito Arevalo died (2000)
December 5 - Karl-Ernst Sasse born (1923)
December 5 - Johnny Pate born (1923)
December 5 - John Altman born (1949)
December 5 - Richard Gibbs born (1955)
December 5 - Osvaldo Golijov born (1960)
December 5 - Cliff Eidelman born (1964)
December 5 - Jerry Goldsmith records his score for the Room 222 pilot (1968)
December 5 - Jerry Goldsmith begins recording his score to Coma (1977)
December 5 - Ron Jones records his score for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Outrageous Okona" (1988)
December 5 - Masaru Sato died (1999)
December 5 - Dave Brubeck died (2012)
December 5 - Manuel De Sica died (2014)
DID THEY MENTION THE MUSIC?
BLITZ - Hans Zimmer
"Everything about 'Blitz' is perfectly crafted, from the precise, historically-accurate production design to the tension-inducing special effects. Hans Zimmer’s score is fraught with feeling, augmenting the already-intense sequences to something almost harrowing. The performances, led by Heffernan, are vulnerable and honest, as if McQueen pushed each actor to do their very best with the role they were given, no matter how small."
Emily Zemler, The Observer
"McQueen is now known for taking a no-holds-barred approach to how cruel people can be to each other. His 2013 Best Picture winner, '12 Years a Slave,' is an endurance test and displays lengthy scenes of physical abuse on helpless Black slaves. Here, we don’t see as much human-on-human violence, and that’s because McQueen lets the danger of war speak for itself. The opening scene shows firefighters trying to get hold of an uncontrollable hose as fire blazes through bombed houses. The person next to me had to put their fingers in their ears, as the string-heavy score out of a classic horror movie blends with the raving blaze of the fire."
Emma Kiely, Collider
"'Blitz,' too, is filled to bursting with music. Hans Zimmer’s dread-infused score at times evokes the drone of planes and the scream of sirens, but McQueen practically cues up an orchestra in jubilant response. He steers us through the red lights of a night club where Rita and Marcus once embraced with loving abandon, and through a lavish dining hall where a Black jazz band performs for white partyers. In his most audacious stroke, McQueen dramatizes the ghostly purgatory of an Underground station where newly arrived spirits, some of whom aided George on his journey, stand transfixed by song. 'Blitz' shows us their courage, if not the train that will bear them onward."
Justin Chang, The New Yorker
"Across his four previous films, his TV anthology 'Small Axe,' and his entire work as a visual artist, McQueen has repeatedly circled back to the idea of power. Yet it’s rarely presented as a simplistic, binary divide between oppressor and oppressed. Rather it’s an entire infrastructure, one powered by capitalism and monotonous except when touched by human fallibility. In 'Blitz,' Hans Zimmer’s thunderous, relentless score transforms itself into the machine of war, the crunch of metal against metal, or the whistle-whir of death falling from the sky."
Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent
"Certainly, other movies have taken on the Blitz, like 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,' 'Hope and Glory,' 'Atonement,' and 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe,' which begins with a group of siblings heading to the countryside for their safety. But the 'Blitz' here is not a passing coda, invisible threat, or quick sequence of events. McQueen's film is very much about the ordeal of surviving day after day of terror, death, and destruction. Hans Zimmer scores these events with discordant and jarring notes that sound vaguely electronic and metallic as if the sounds were ricocheting off trains and bombs."
Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com
"Meanwhile, we follow the fortunes of Rita, who in her ordinary-lass way is so pert and blonde and feisty that, in her factory head scarf, she could practically be the poster image of a British Rosie the Riveter. (At one point someone literally refers to her as lovely Rita.) 'Blitz' is well-staged, well-acted, and given a creamy deluxe wartime period-piece sheen by the cinematographer Yorick Le Saux. Hans Zimmer’s score sprinkles in discordant notes of dread. But this is mostly the war diary as inspirational crowd-pleaser."
Owen Gleiberman, Variety
"And so George’s odyssey begins. His homeward bound journey is as fraught with mishaps, fatal accidents and unexpected moments of kindness as the one Odysseus himself took, only it doesn’t take 10 years. George hops another train and meets three brothers his age who had the same idea about turning around and heading straight back home. They share an exhilarating ride on the roof after George accepts a dare, which gives composer Hans Zimmer and his orchestra a chance to let rip with a percussive, thrumming score. Once he makes it back to the outskirts of the Smoke, he must find his way back to Stepney Green in the East End of town, a trip many a Londoner would be stumped to work out today were it not for the invention of Google Maps."
Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter
THE NEXT TEN DAYS IN L.A.
Screenings of older films in the Los Angeles-area theaters.
November 29
THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (David Raksin) [Nuart]
CHINATOWN (Jerry Goldsmith) [New Beverly]
CHOPPING MALL (Chuck Cirino) [Los Feliz 3]
FAME (Michael Gore) [Vidiots]
FLASH GORDON (Queen, Howard Blake) [Alamo Drafthouse]
I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS (Keegan DeWitt) [Los Feliz 3]
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS [New Beverly]
KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Joe Hisaishi), THE SECRET OF NIMH (Jerry Goldsmith) [New Beverly]
MOONRAKER (John Barry) [Vista]
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Bernard Herrmann) [Vidiots]
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Richard O'Brien, Richard Hartley) [Vidiots]
SATURDAY, SUNDAY AND MONDAY (Pino D'Angio, Greco, Antonio Sinagra) [Academy Museum]
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Nacio Herb Brown, Lennie Hayton) [Nuart]
THE WIZARD OF OZ (Harold Arlen, Herbert Stothart) [Vidiots]
November 30
BATMAN RETURNS (Danny Elfman) [New Beverly]
THE BIRDCAGE (Jonathan Tunick) [Vidiots]
DAISIES (Jiri Slitr, Jiri Sust) [Los Feliz 3]
DR. SEUSS'S HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (James Horner) [Alamo Drafthouse]
E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (John Williams) [Aero]
FAME (Michael Gore) [Nuart]
FLY AWAY HOME (Mark Isham) [Vidiots]
GREMLINS (Jerry Goldsmith) [Alamo Drafthouse]
IT'S A GIFT [Vista]
KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Joe Hisaishi), THE SECRET OF NIMH (Jerry Goldsmith) [New Beverly]
LOVE ACTUALLY (Craig Armstrong) [Alamo Drafthouse]
THE MALTESE FALCON (Adolph Deutsch) [Vidiots]
MISERY (Marc Shaiman) [Vidiots]
MOONRAKER (John Barry) [Vista]
NAKED LUNCH (Howard Shore) [New Beverly]
THE PEANUTS MOVIE (Christophe Beck) [Academy Museum]
THE PRESTIGE (David Julyan) [Los Feliz 3]
READY TO WEAR (Michel Legrand) [Academy Museum]
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Richard O'Brien, Richard Hartley) [Nuart]
THELMA (Nick Chuba), NEBRASKA (Mark Orton) [Aero]
December 1
BATMAN RETURNS (Danny Elfman) [New Beverly]
CINDERELLA (Oliver Wallace) [Vidiots]
THE DEFIANT ONES (Ernest Gold) [Academy Museum]
ELF (John Debney) [Alamo Drafthouse]
IT'S A GIFT [Vista]
KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Joe Hisaishi), THE SECRET OF NIMH (Jerry Goldsmith) [New Beverly]
LA ULTIMA CENA (Leo Brouwer) [Academy Museum]
LIFEBOAT (Hugo Friedhofer) [Academy Museum]
MEMENTO (David Julyan) [Los Feliz 3]
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Richard Rodney Bennett) [Alamo Drafthouse]
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Andrew Lloyd Webber) [Nuart]
THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (John Williams) [Academy Museum]
TITANIC (James Horner) [Vidiots]
THE WIND RISES (Joe Hisaishi) [Vidiots]
December 2
BONA (Lutgardo Labad) [Academy Museum]
ELF (John Debney) [Alamo Drafthouse]
FEMALE TROUBLE [Vidiots]
ROBOCOP (Basil Poledouris) [Los Feliz 3]
SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (Perry Botkin) [Alamo Drafthouse]
THE SPOILERS [New Beverly]
THELMA & LOUISE (Hans Zimmer) [Culver]
December 3
THE SPOILERS [New Beverly]
December 4
ALIEN (Jerry Goldsmith) [Vidiots]
BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (Wojciech Kilar) [Academy Museum]
THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES (Tigran Mansuryan) [Los Feliz 3]
FLASH GORDON (Queen, Howard Blake) [Alamo Drafthouse]
THE INSIDER (Lisa Gerrard, Pieter Bourke), HEAT (Elliot Goldenthal) [Egyptian]
NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION (Angelo Badalamenti) [Alamo Drafthouse]
STRANGE DARLING (Craig DeLeon), MADEMOISELLE (Antoine Duhamel) [New Beverly]
THE TRIP [Aero]
December 5
BY HOOK OR BY CROOK (Carla Bozulich) [Academy Museum]
THE ENGLISH PATIENT (Gabriel Yared) [Los Feliz 3]
STRANGE DARLING (Craig DeLeon), MADEMOISELLE (Antoine Duhamel) [New Beverly]
ZIEGFELD GIRL (Herbert Stothart) [Aero]
December 6
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (Danny Elfman) [New Beverly]
FEMALE TROUBLE [Alamo Drafthouse]
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (John Barry) [New Beverly]
PERFECT BLUE (Masahiro Ikumi) [Nuart]
RESERVOIR DOGS [New Beverly]
VIOLENT NIGHT (Dominic Lewis) [Alamo Drafthouse]
THE WIND RISES (Joe Hisaishi) [Vidiots]
December 7
DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Laurie Johnson) [Vidiots]
GREMLINS (Jerry Goldsmith) [New Beverly]
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD (John Powell) [Academy Museum]
JACKIE (Mica Levi), SPENCER (Jonny Greenwood) [Aero]
THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN (James Horner) [Vidiots]
NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (Udi Harpaz, Misha Segal) [New Beverly]
NOT FADE AWAY [Aero]
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (John Barry) [New Beverly]
PARAJANOV: THE LAST SPRING [UCLA/Hammer]
PLANET OF THE APES (Jerry Goldsmith) [Academy Museum]
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (Richard O'Brien, Richard Hartley) [Nuart]
ROPE [Vidiots]
THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Michel Legrand) [Egyptian]
December 8
ANDRIESH (Igor Shamo, G. Tirceu), THE FIRST LAD (Yevgeni Zubtsov) [UCLA/Hammer]
THE DARK CRYSTAL (Trevor Jones) [Fine Arts]
ELF (John Debney) [Alamo Drafthouse]
FRUITVALE STATION (Ludwig Goransson) [Aero]
GRAY LADY DOWN (Jerry Fielding), CLOUD DANCER [New Beverly]
GREMLINS (Jerry Goldsmith) [New Beverly]
IMITATION OF LIFE (Frank Skinner) [Academy Museum]
KLAUS (Alfonso G. Aguilar) [Alamo Drafthouse]
MATINEE (Jerry Goldsmith) [Academy Museum]
MOULIN ROUGE (Craig Armstrong) [Egyptian]
RACETRACK [Los Feliz 3]
SPARTACUS (Alex North) [Vidiots]
THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (John Williams) [Alamo Drafthouse]
WAITING TO EXHALE (Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds) [Vidiots]
THINGS I'VE HEARD, READ, SEEN OR WATCHED LATELY
Heard: Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (Gray); Tron (Carlos); The Manions of America (Stevens); Truands (Coulais)
Read: The Striker Portfolio, by Adam Hall, aka Elleston Trevor, aka Trevor Dudley-Smith
Seen: Mystery of the Wax Museum; Doctor X; The Food of the Gods; Wicked; A Real Pain; The Lady in Question; Gladiator II
Watched: Columbo ("Short Fuse")
| 
