Split Decision: "The Fabelmans"

No two people feel the same exact way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the big awards season movies this year. Here’s Ben Miller and Eurocheese to argue over The Fabelmans

EUROCHEESE: Ben, I've never been a huge Spielberg defender, so here's my chance! I was bound to see The Fabelmans through rose-colored glasses because I saw its glowing reception with Steven Spielberg and John Williams in person at the AFI Festival.  Even so, scene after scene landed with me and I left the theater smiling ear-to-ear. I'm curious to hear what didn't land with you...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Volley: Fresh nominees or familiar names for Best Original Score?

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Juan Carlos Ojano and Mark Brinkerhoff... 

CARLOS: I've learned my lesson about the Original score category. It defaults to usual suspects. On the one hand, their loyalty to certain composers gives the opportunity for films to be nominated even when they're not Best Picture nominees. They don't even have to be Best Picture-adjacent (Parallel Mothers, Isle of Dogs, Passengers). On the other the hand this category can be a lazy checklist of familiar names in the way other categories are a lazy checklist of Best Picture heavyweights. Are you feeling the same way?

MARK: Yes. Often times the  familiar “in the club” composers get shortlisted. Considering The Fablemans is positioned to score overall and considering his own track record, we can surely reserve one spot for John Williams...

Click to read more ...

Grammy Nominations for Movie People !

by Nathaniel R

The Grammy Awards aren’t really a crucial topic for The Film Experience. Except when they are. We do love to share the movie adjacent stuff that doesn’t get much press (‘hey, I didn’t know that actor ____ recorded a spoken word album’ etcetera). So herewith some key movie adjacent bits.

Beyonce’s efforts for The Lion King are up for a few pop prizes but that's no surprise since Queen B is a Grammy favourite. Former movie star and still legendary chanteuse Barbra Streisand, another Grammy favourite, has her presumably umpteenth nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for her latest “Walls”... the one with the unexpected unintended Girl-in-the-pit Silence of the Lambs homage cover.  

But there are some less expected showings, too.

Iconic cult director John Waters is up for Best Spoken Word Album for “Mr Know-It-All” where he’s competing with Former First Lady Michelle Obama. That juxtaposition is insane and we couldn’t love it more...

Click to read more ...

Interview: Justin Hurwitz learns the theremin and other "First Man" stories

by Nathaniel R

A lot of people who win two Oscars by the age of 32, with only three films under their belt (not that there's many of those people, mind you) might safely be said to have peaked early. If the Golden Globe nominated score for First Man is any indication however, Justin Hurwitz is still on a steady ascent into his power as a composer. The gifted 33 year-old has scored all four of Damien Chazelle's films. The first three were musicals in spirit or by nature. The fourth, First Man, is less of a departure than expected since the emotive score is crucial to the film's success. 

Chazelle and Hurwitz were college roommates and have been fiercely loyal since. While Chazelle was struggling to get his first films made, always with the plan for Hurwitz to score them, Hurwitz survived by breaking into sitcom writing "I don't take for granted how lucky I was to get to write comedy professionally," he says but the plan was always to be a composer "I am more passionate about music than anything else in the world."  

Our full interview, edited and condensed for clarity, follows... 

NATHANIEL: When did you first know you wanted to be a composer?

JUSTIN HURWITZ: I grew up playing piano, taking lessons since I was six. My parents gave me a synthesizer and a sequencer for my tenth birthday that lets you layer tracks, so I started composing then. I wasn't thinking about movies yet but it was around that same time that I started noticing film scores. The most impactful to me were the John Williams / Steven Spielberg films. Jurassic Park had a big impact on me. E.T. on VHS... I was so in love with that score. 

NATHANIEL: Touchstones for a lot of people!

JUSTIN HURWITZ: As I got into college I discovered composers like Nina Rota and Bernard Hermann and all sorts of others. 

Watching First Man, I thought 'god this most have been an overwhelming film to score,' but on the other hand after La La Land, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps it was a piece of cake?

It was definitely not a piece of cake. In a lot of ways it was my most challenging score...

Click to read more ...

25th Anniversary Memoir: "Jurassic Park"

by Lynn Lee

June 1993.  It was my birthday, and I’d invited a group of my girl friends over for a small celebration that would include a movie outing.  I don’t remember exactly why I picked Jurassic Park.  I hadn’t read the book, I wasn’t yet a full-on movie buff, I didn’t like scary movies, and I wasn’t really into dinosaurs.  Yet something about the tremendous buzz surrounding this “adventure 65 million years in the making” must have penetrated my social bubble because I remember us all being excited to see it.

Whatever our expectations were, Jurassic Park blew them away.  From the moment that opening eerie chorus and single bamboo flute dissolved into the rustle of an unknown, unseen thing in a crate that within three minutes lay savage waste to one unfortunate worker, we were all transfixed in our seats and couldn’t have moved if our lives had depended on it...

Click to read more ...