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'Brokeback' Scores BAFTAs Quadruple
20 February 2006 (WENN)
Brokeback Mountain was the big winner at last night's Orange British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), scooping Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor honors. Taiwanese film-maker Ang Lee was presented with the David Lean Award For Achievement In Direction, while Jake Gyllenhaal was honored for his performance - beating off competition from George Clooney, who left empty-handed despite being nominated in four categories. Gyllenhaal's co-star Heath Ledger was beaten to the Best Actor Award by Capote actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Golden Globe-winner Reese Witherspoon was named Best Actress for her performance in Walk The Line. Zambian-born star Thandie Newton won the Best Supporting Actress Award for her powerful portrayal of a racially abused woman in Crash, and writer/director Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco won the Best Original Screenplay Award. The Constant Gardener scooped a staggering ten nominations last month, but was widely snubbed by the British Academy, winning only the Best Editing Award. The adaptation of John Le Carre's political thriller was also bested for the Alexander Korda Award For The Outstanding British Film Of The Year by Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. Memoirs Of A Geisha picked up three awards: Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and composer John Williams was honored with The Anthony Asquith Award For Achievement In Film Music for his score for the period epic.

'Star Wars' Theme To Be Released As a Single
20 April 2005 (WENN)
Die-hard Star Wars fans will have something extra to purchase when the final installment is released next month - the theme tune is set to be released as a single. The song - composed and conducted by five-time Oscar winner John Williams and played by the London Symphony Orchestra - could force its way into the top 10 in music charts around the world, a rare achievement for a choral and orchestral piece. Sony BMG will release "Battle Of The Heroes" on May 23. The song depicts the fateful struggle between Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker and his mentor Obi-wan Kenobi. Star Wars: Episode III Revenge Of The Sith is the final installment in the six-part series and stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen. It hits cinemas worldwide on May 19.

Free DVD to Be Offered with 'Star Wars' Soundtrack
16 March 2005 (StudioBriefing)
The soundtrack CD of John Williams' score for Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith will be accompanied by a special 70-minute DVD, Star Wars: A Musical Journey, when it is released on May 3, Sony Classical announced Tuesday. The DVD will feature Williams conducting excerpts from his Star Wars scores behind 16 "music videos" compiled from all six films that will include original dialogue and sound effects. Each "movement," will be introduced by Ian McDiarmid, who plays Senator Palpatine.

Fans Discover Glitch in 'Star Wars' DVD Soundtrack
24 September 2004 (StudioBriefing)
Fans of John Williams are up in arms over an apparent glitch in the new Star Wars DVD set in which the left and right channels fed to the rear speakers in surround sound are reversed in the original Star Wars movie (Episode 4). John Takis, who frequently analyzes film scores for Internet groups, points out that the violins can be heard coming from the left surround-sound speakers and the cellos from the left. "It is essentially a 124-minute audio glitch," Takis writes on the John Williams fansite, www.JW-Music.net. "The sound effects are correctly positioned in the surround channels. It's just the music that's backwards." Takis also takes issue with other aspects of the sound mix for the original movie. "Remember the awesome fanfare version of the Force theme that kicks off the Death Star battle?" he writes "Good luck hearing it this time around -- it's virtually inaudible."

Movie Reviews: 'Catch Me If You Can'
26 December 2002 (StudioBriefing)
Most critics are suggesting that the happiest gift lying among Hollywood's glitter this Christmas holiday may be Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks and Christopher Walken. Nearly all suggest that it is a throwback to the breezy, Rat Pack comedy capers of the late '50s and early '60s, with DiCaprio stepping into what would have been the Sinatra role (and with a bit of an actual Sinatra recording folded into John Williams' Sinatra-esque soundtrack for good measure), playing the cocky conman Frank Abagnale Jr. Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer comments: "Catch Me If You Can is as crisp and trim as a new suit. Well, a new old suit -- say, circa the 1960s." Stephen Holden of the New York Times calls the movie "supremely entertaining" and describes DiCaprio's performance as "sensational ... a glorious exhibition of artful, intuitive slipping, sliding and wriggling." But it is Christopher Walken's adeptness in the role of Abagnale's father that is being mentioned for its Oscar quality. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe writes that Walken does "Oscar-worthy work in the movie." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post argues that Walken "pretty much steals the picture from his more illustrious co-stars." And Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail agrees. "The true thief here," he says, "is Walken, who steals the picture outright." Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post is one of several critics who imply that this may be director Spielberg's best movie ever, calling it "brilliantly made," then writing: "This guy really knows how to make a movie; he's studied the old-movie formulations and effortlessly duplicates them here." Steven Rosen in the Denver Post puts it more succinctly, commenting: "This is one of the year's best movies, as well as one of Spielberg's." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times doesn't go that far. "This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable one," he says. Writes John Anderson in Newsday: "That we're encouraged to admire Abagnale could provide grist for the crypto-fascist talk radio/cable mill, but what Spielberg has constructed is a very adult, very funny, very well-acted daydream." A few -- a very few -- critics do not find the daydream altogether captivating. Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times is one of them. "Spielberg seems to have become too big to tell small stories," Dargis writes, "which is one reason why the film sputters on one too many false endings, as if the finale needed to be important enough to justify the director's involvement." Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune dishes out considerable praise for the performances and direction, but then notes that there's a "catch," explaining: "The movie, good as it is, still left me feeling shortchanged. There's something missing: perhaps an attitude that would have both made Catch more entertaining and taken us deeper into Frank Abagnale's fascinating personality." Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News also finds it difficult to describe his misgivings about the movie. "There is something about Catch Me that fails to fully satisfy," he remarks. "It well could be that its serious underpinnings weigh it down."

New 'E.T.' Package Will Include Old and New Versions
15 October 2002 (StudioBriefing)
At Steven Spielberg's insistence, the $30 DVD package of E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial due to be released on Oct. 22 will offer two versions of the film -- the original 1982 version and this year's 20th anniversary edition, featuring scenes deleted from the original and updated digital effects. "My intention was never to replace the original film," Spielberg said in a statement Monday. Universal Home Video had originally intended to release both versions only as part of a $70 boxed set, which also includes a copy of the script and a CD of the John Williams score.

'Lord of the Rings' Has Best Score Ever
28 August 2002 (WENN)
Movie fans have crowned the music from The Lord Of The Rings the best ever film soundtrack. The epic fantasy flick beat sci-fi classic Star Wars into second place, ahead of two other John Williams-penned scores, Schindler's List (3) and The Empire Strikes Back (4). Howard Shore - who wrote the score to last year's hit film - says, "I'm as thrilled as can be. It's great to translate Tolkien's work into music." Others in the list voted for by 52,000 listeners of UK radio station Classic FM include Gladiator, Titanic, Doctor Zhivago and 2001: A Space Odyssey .

E.T. To Make DVD Debut In October
6 June 2002 (StudioBriefing)
Borrowing a page from Disney, Universal Studios Home Video announced plans on Wednesday to release the restored version of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial on home video for only 10 weeks beginning Oct. 22. The DVD, which will also include the original edition of the movie, will have an SRP of $22.95. The Steven Spielberg classic has never previously been released on DVD. Among some ten hours of "extras" due to be included on the disk will be a video of John Williams conducting a 100-piece orchestra during the New York premiere of the film this year.

Movie Reviews: A.I.
29 June 2001 (StudioBriefing)
Steven Spielberg's A.I. (the movie was conceived by the late Stanley Kubrick) is inspiring praise from some critics and censure from others, probably the most polarized reaction ever to a Spielberg film. It has also inspired a masterfully crafted (positive) review by A.O. Scott in the New York Times. A couple of samples: "Mr. Spielberg seems to be attempting the improbable feat of melding Kubrick's chilly, analytical style with his own warmer, needier sensibility. He tells the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a mood as layered, dissonant and strange as John Williams's unusually restrained, modernist score." Scott concludes: "The final scenes are likely to provoke argument, confusion and a good deal of resistance. For the second time the movie swerves away from where it seemed to be going, and Mr. Spielberg, with breathtaking poise and heroic conviction, risks absurdity in the pursuit of sublimity. ... [He] locates the unspoken moral of all our fairy tales. To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish." Across town, Jack Mathews, the New York Daily News critic, will have none of it. "The ill-conceived final section is a sentimental coda recalling the 'awe' moments of both E.T. and Close Encounters," he writes, "But here is the real genius of Spielberg, whose Midas commercial touch fascinated Kubrick to the end: The very moment that will have viewers reaching for their hankies is the film's most artificial, even on its own terms. The emotion you feel may be real. But nothing else is." Compare that review to this one from Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune: "Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence is pure magic, a three-act movie fantasy that transports us -- as the best films do -- to a world of its own, a place of ambiguous joy and delirious terror." Or consider the review by Peter Howell in the Toronto Star, who calls the film "a genuine collaboration between a fading mentor [Kubrick] and a brilliant student [Spielberg] and the smartest thing likely to hit the multiplexes this summer. A.I. represents a unique union of mind and heart that no machine could ever understand, but could one day learn to envy." Just as enthusiastic about the film is Jay Carr in the Boston Glube: "In a season where most films seem devoted to artificial stupidity, the ambition and execution in A.I. make it a standout, quite apart from its guaranteed place in movie history." On the other hand Joe Morgenstern, the Wall Street Journal film critic, regards A.I. as "a grim disappointment for grown-ups and far too violent for young kinds ... I found it to be clumsy, misanthropic and intractably lifeless." Numerous reviews express ambivalent reactions to the movie. "A.I. is always engrossing," writes Steve Murray in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "but it never fully comes to grips with its central subject, the ethical and emotional question of the responsibility men have toward the machines they make." On a similar note, Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times: "A.I. is audacious, technically masterful, challenging, sometimes moving, ceaselessly watchable. What holds it back from greatness is a failure to really engage the ideas that it introduces. The movie's conclusion is too facile and sentimental, given what has gone before. It has mastered the artificial, but not the intelligence."

Williams To Conduct Angela's Ashes Score At Boston Pops Concert
28 January 2000 (StudioBriefing)
For one of his "Evening at Pops" programs in Boston this spring, John Williams is planning to conduct music from his score for Angela's Ashes (1999), featuring author Frank McCourt appearing as narrator and Yo-Yo Ma playing cello, the Boston Globe reported today (Friday). Williams told the newspaper that he produced two CD soundtrack albums, one for English-speaking countries narrated by actor Andrew Bennett, who is also the narrator of the film. Another, for the rest of the world, sans narration. "There's a broad foreign market for soundtrack recordings, and people felt the narration would be a problem there, " he said. In the liner notes for the CD, director Alan Parker observes that when he heard that Williams had agreed to write the score for his film, it was "akin to winning the lottery."

Getting Forceful
3 May 1999 (StudioBriefing)
The marketing strategy for Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) moves into hype speed this week with the release of John Williams' score and a slew of new Star Wars toys. In the liner notes for the CD, George Lucas writes, "I like to think of the Star Wars films as silent movies, movies whose stories are carried forward visually and by a musical score." The first video from the soundtrack (for the single Duel of the Fates) is scheduled to premiere today (Monday) at 2:30 p.m. on VH1 and repeat one hour later on MTV. Many toy stores and department-store chains opened at one minute past midnight today (Monday) to help reduce an anticipated crush of fans later in the day. Items going on sale range from cheap action figures for kids to -- perhaps the ultimate adult Star Wars toy -- the "Star Wars Special Edition Hummer, " a black ATV featuring Darth Vader's picture, priced at $145, 000. The midnight sale at Toys R Us in Los Angeles was carried live on the Internet by America Online's Entertainment Asylum <http://www.asylum.com>, which has been airing a daily video "show, " TPM News, hosted by Jeff Gouda and Tad Davis presenting Episode 1 updates and features since April 19.

Star Wars Music Video To Debut Next Week
29 April 1999 (StudioBriefing)
Lucasfilm producers are putting the final touches on a four-minute music video for John Williams' Duel of the Fates, in which he conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in an adaptation of music from a key scene in the Episode 1 movie. Lucasfilm said on Wednesday that the sequence embodies the "conflict between the light and the dark" that is at the heart of the tale. Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times reported that the video will premiere on VH1 on Monday at 2 p.m.

First New Star Wars Single To Hit Radio Soon
8 April 1999 (StudioBriefing)
Sony Classical plans to release the first single from the soundtrack of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) on May 4 or May 11, USA Today reported today (Thursday), without citing sources. The newspaper said that both dates have been floated. The release of the single, an instrumental composed and conducted by John Williams will coincide with that of a Phantom Menace story album for kids on May 4.

Star Wars New Music Coming In Early May
17 February 1999 (StudioBriefing)
Sony Classical says it plans to release John Williams' soundtrack recording of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) in early May, just before the release of the film's May 21 opening. Williams will be conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, which he also conducted for the original Star Wars (1977) movie 22 years ago.