(4.5/5)

Woodstock exists in cultural memory as the quintessential music festival – the festival that brought together the greatest musical acts of the late 1960s with the counter-cultural generation. Every musical festival since aspires to be Woodstock-like (though sadly, most achieve the comparison only by being doused in rain and becoming mudpits as Woodstock famously did). As a current music-lover and festival-goer who is admittedly under-informed about a lot of the history of rock music and its place in culture at that time, I feel very grateful to Michael Wadleigh and others for preserving the event so well on film.

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Every year, the day after the Oscar presentation, beside the winners there is all sorts of talk about what went well at the Oscar show and what sucked. And every year someone always mentions the musical performances. Some people love those bits and others tend to think they lengthen an already yawn-inducing show and just bog down the entire ceremony.

– Well, we’re about to find out exactly what an Oscar show will be like without all of the performances. Oscar producers have already contacted the nominees and told them their services will no longer be needed. Instead, the music will be played in snippets over the top of clips from the nominated film. Ruffled feathers anyone?

While in some ways I’ll miss the performances (would’ve been damn fun to see Bridges perform his song from Crazy Heart), I do agree that it tends to just slow down the night a little bit. Also, I remember people throwing a fit a few year back when “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” won best song; because the on stage performance was undefendably atrocious. But I had to constantly defend the win (I still do) because within the context of the film, the song absolutely deserved to win. So placing the song within it’s film as to give it some context and depth will be a nice touch I think.

– Next up are the droning on and on speeches (“the single most-hated thing on the show,” producer Bill Mechanic said). The producers have asked potential winners to prepare two speeches: one 45-second bit for the on-stage, “what the Oscar means to you,” and then a second speech to be given backstage to a “Thank You Cam” during which the winner can thank specific people. These bits will be posted online and winners can email them to whoever they choose and even post them on their Facebook profiles.

– Amidst all of these tweaks and changes, apparently they’re going to stick with the way the presentations were given out last year: with the five previous year’s nominees reading the nominees for the Best Actor and Actress categories this year. A lot of people hated that bit last year but I thought that the ones that were done well were pretty good and more big stars is better than less big stars in my opinion. I also like the personal approach some of the actors took to their presentations; looking directly at the nominee and speaking just to them.

The Oscars will be broadcast on Sunday, March 7th. Here are the Best Original Song nominees:
“Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman
“Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman
“Loin de Paname” from Paris 36 Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyrics by Frank Thomas
“Take It All” from Nine Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston
“The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart Music and Lyrics by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Animal Collective have been been one of the most talked-about bands of last year, with their album Merriweather Post Pavilion ending up on many, many top ten lists, and they’re not content with that. They’re premiering their “visual album,” directed by Danny Perez, at Sundance this year – a couple of screenings have already happened, but I think there are a couple more tomorrow. Anyway, from all reports, it’s a trippy, bizarre, mood-driven piece made up of musical motifs and psychedelic images broken up by some short narrative sequences. (A couple of reviews are here and here.) Pretty much what I’d expect out of Animal Collective, actually. It’s unlikely we’ll see this at a theatre near us, but what do you think? Something you’ll hope to find on DVD some day?

The brief, seizure-inducing trailer for the film is after the jump:

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also a possible soundtrack leak from Daft Punk?… Read More

As someone who loves, and I mean loves, film scores, I can’t wrap my head around this.

According to the good folks at Soundtrack Geek, Brian Tyler, one of Hollywood’s hottest composers, has had no less than 6 scores disqualified from Oscar contention by the academy. Also disqualified, Marcel Barsotti’s great Pope Joan score, Nicholas Hooper’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Carter Burwell’s Where The Wild Things. That’s a few big contenders out of the running which brings up the question, what’s left? Quite a bit actually.

SG has a complete list of the eligible scores and there are some great ones left on the list. Michael Giacchino’s Star Trek score is epic, Danny Elfman’s Terminator Salvation score has some pretty impressive pieces but I must admit one of my favourites of the year is Alexandre Desplat’s score for The Twilight Saga: New Moon which is full of both romance and suspense.

Sadly, my favourite score of the year is no where to be seen. The one in question: The Countess. The film written, directed and starring Julie Delpy also features something else: a gorgeous score composed by Delpy herself. It’s pretty impressive and you can get a taste of it here. Not sure if this is an just an oversight or if the score simply wasn’t entered. Either way, not long to wait for the final list.

Rags to riches stories are a dime a dozen but few have ever caught my attention as much as this one.

Mett P-Star (better known to her friends and family as Priscilla). She’s a nine year old girl trying to break into the music world via rap. That, in and of itself is enough of an attention grabber but what really impressed me is the other part of P-Star’s story, the part that features her single father as the man fighting for her success. P-Star Rising incorporates both the struggles of an up-and-coming artist with the story of a single father and his bond with his children. Admittedly, it’s this father/daughter connection that has me interested in the film since most of the stories we hear are of mothers and their daughters surviving through tough ordeals; it’s nice to see the other side of the coin.

P-Star Rising has been making the festival rounds for a while now and I expect we may have a chance to see it on DVD some time soon. Looks promising.

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It’s safe to assume that today, everyone’s familiar with the civil rights movement and the important role that Martin Luther King, Jr. played. Some may even have heard of other leaders, some more well known than others, who fought for and won their freedom but few ever speak of the music that accompanied the revolution though at nearly every turn, it was present. It was there in the background of the sit-ins and sometimes at the forefront of marches; songs and hymns, some new some traditional but all speaking to the moment and the want (need) for action. Documentary filmmakers Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman saw an opportunity to revive the music and so Soundtrack for a Revolution was born.

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I’m still not sure what inspired me to see Wah Do Dem (What They Do). Was it the odd sounding title? Norah Jones’ name in the credits or the interesting sounding synopsis; take your pick as any one of those may be correct. As the film opened, I started to think that perhaps I’d made a grievous mistake. The characters were a little too hipster for me, the music wasn’t what I’d expected and the acting even less but already comfortable in my seat, I thought to give the film a try.

Max wins a Jamaican cruise. For a year he and his girlfriend have been planning the trip which will give them free access to Jamaica aboard a liner which will provide all the food they can eat and the R&R they may need except a few days before the trip, Max gets dumped. After unsuccessful attempts to convince any of his friends to go with him, the lure of Jamaica is just too good to pass up and he decides to take the trip alone. When the ship finally arrives, Max takes off for the tourist free areas of the city, meets a few locals, goes to a beach and loses his stuff. If that’s not bad enough, he also misses his ride back to the US and ends up with no money and no clothes or shoes (other than the swim trunks he’s wearing) on a trek to the American embassy in Kingston, four hours away.

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Glenn Gould was a genius. A child prodigy turned world class pianist, he broke social boundaries and pushed the classical music establishment. He was well spoken, flamboyant and charming but what of the man behind the long coat, scarf and hat? Though the media often (if not always) chose to concentrate on Gould’s eccentricities, much was never revealed of the man behind the myth.

Over the years, documentaries and even feature films (some more straight forward and accessible than others), have tried to shed some light on the inner workings of Glenn Gould and Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould follows in that tradition using a combination of interviews, archival footage and Gould’s personal notes to shed some light on Gould’s life outside the public eye.

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Director: Gregor Jordan (Buffalo Soldiers, Ned Kelly)
Screenplay: Bret Easton Ellis, Nicholas Jarecki
Producer: Marco Weber
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Jon Foster, Amber Heard, Rhys Ifans, Chris Isaak, Austin Nichols, Lou Taylor Pucci, Mel Raido, Brad Renfro
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 98 min.

On the surface, The Informers appears to have everything going for it: great source material, a fantastic cast, a good director so what went wrong? The film, which premiered at Sundance earlier in the year, has been universally panned and for good reason too, it’s a mess of a film with no direction and nothing to say.

Based on a collection of short stories from a man infatuated with the 1980s, Ellis’ original work from which the script was based is itself a mess; a collection which was put out as a gap filler for his (at the time) continuously delayed “Glamorama.” Frankly, Ellis’ work started getting old sometime after “American Psycho” and though I can appreciate his stories, he has mined his own themes to the point of obscenity.

It’s difficult enough to adapt a film from one book but The Informers suggests that it may be impossible to create any semblance of a film from a collection of loosely tied short stories. Robert Altman may be able to pull it off but as much as I like director Gregor Jordan’s work, he’s no Altman and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

So what’s the film about? If you know anything about Ellis, your guess of “excess of the 80s and the me generation” is pretty accurate. The joy of watching adaptations of Ellis’ works is seeing how different filmmakers get at that theme but Jordan fails to do get at anything beyond the surface. The film is a mess of threads and ideas varying from complete disaster to mediocre. Add in the fact that the stories run their course interspersed between each other and it’s all that more confusing. There are simply too many characters and stories to keep track of and the film would have been better served by having each story told independently of the other. Heck, this would have made a great anthology film.

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It feels like I need a tracking spreadsheet dedicated to Steven Soderbergh. To say the man is busy is an understatement; he’s downright prolific and though some projects are falling through the cracks, others are just getting started.

We already know that his next project is the martial arts actioner Knockout but it looks like Soderbergh will follow that up with the previously announced Liberace, a biopic about the famed performer.

According to Collider, Soderbergh recently told a French newspaper that they had already done wardrobe and costume tests with Michael Douglas who will play the titular role of Liberace. Matt Damon is also signed on to the picture in the role of Scott Thorson, Liberace’s longtime companion.

Soderbergh insists that Douglas “amazed” him though I still can’t see the actor portraying the role of the flamboyant performer. Could this be a possible run at Oscar for Douglas? Sure sounds promising.

Reviews are starting to roll in for John Hillcoat’s The Road and from most sources, the reviews have been very positive. Not that it’s much of a surprise considering the pedigree; Cormac McCarthy is a genius with a pen and Hillcoat is no so shabby himself when it comes to directing great films.

While the rest of us eagerly await the film’s October 16th release date, we can bask in the knowledge that Hillcoat already has a new project to jump onto once promotion and film festival jumping is complete. Hillcoat has signed on for another adaptation, this time Nick Cave’s “The Death Of Bunny Munro” which tells the story of a “sex addicted travelling salesman on his final road trip.”

I’m not very familiar with Cave’s work outside of his music, and even then I’m a fan in passing but I like the idea of another Hillcoat project and one that sounds as promising as this one. I can’t be the only one excited to see what a sex addicted travelling salesman looks like never mind what sort of shenanigans he gets himself into.

This will not be the first time that Hillcoat and Cave have worked together. Cave created the score for The Road, the two worked together on The Proposition and Hillcoat also directed the Bad Seeds film Babe, I’m On Fire.