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The fourth and final season of HBO's spiritual satire The Righteous Gemstones may be its wildest yet. This week's episode, the fifth of the season, wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve, with two plotlines drawing inspiration from two lesser-known films by two of the 20th century's most visionary directors. In a new interview with IndieWire, the show's creators discuss how elements from Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and George Romero's Monkey Shines made their way into "You Shall Remember."

Barry Lyndon served as the inspiration for a face-off between Jesse Gemstone (Danny McBride) and rival preacher Vance Simkins (Stephen Dorff), complete with slow zooms and Franz Schubert’s “Piano Trip No. 2." Says McBride, film history "is always a point of reference for us, and sometimes that means taking something like Barry Lyndon and injecting it into the stupid s*** we do to try to create something special." Meanwhile,...

In his early works, specifically those after his “propaganda” period”, director Akira Kurosawa looked at the lives of ordinary people after Japan’s defeat in World War II. While “No Regrets of Our Youth” was more about the feelings of hopelessness and disillusionment, especially within young people, “One Wonderful Sunday” takes a different approach, essentially telling the story of two people trying their best not to fully give in to the aforementioned feelings. It is a feature which garnered Kurosawa some attention among his peers and within the film industry as it received an award for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 1948 Manichi Film Awards.

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The story follows a couple, Masako (Chieko Nakakita) and Yuzo (Isao Numasaki), who meet for their weekly date on a Sunday. However, as they only got 35 yen to spend, they are unable to afford the majority of activities,...

Aki Kaurismäki's Fallen Leaves is screening exclusively on Mubi in many countries.Fallen Leaves.There’s a moment early in Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film, Fallen Leaves (2023), that will surely tug at the heartstrings of shy lovers everywhere. A man, Holappa (played by Jussi Vatanen), and a woman, Ansa (Alma Pöysti), sit across from each other in a bar. Between them, his friend tries vainly to flirt with hers, getting nowhere, but Holappa and Ansa themselves do not speak, and instead merely stare meekly into their drinks, the gap of a few meters opening up like a yawning chasm. Then, for just a moment, Holappa looks up from his beer and their eyes meet. And as they do, the first cascading piano chords of Franz Schubert’s “Serenade” are heard and a besuited man takes the karaoke stage to start singing: “Softly my songs plead / through the night for...

The Loki series introduced audiences to the anticipated Multiverse, giving fans the gift of many different versions of Loki to enjoy across parallel worlds. Both Loki and Adam from Only Lovers Left Alive are ancient beings who have lived for centuries, with different perspectives on humanity. Loki's redemption arc in the MCU shows that he is trying to abstain from his past villainous behavior, while Adam has become disillusioned with life and blames humanity for its faults.

Ever since he first blessed the screen with his mischievous presence in Thor (2011), Loki has caught the attention of Marvel fans and other audiences alike. Tom Hiddleston managed to portray the trickster's character with a nuance that made audiences love him or at least sympathize with his character. His character became so popular he got a redemption arc and his own television show.

The Loki series was the first in the MCU to...

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was an Austrian composer known for his Romantic music. He is considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western classical tradition and a forerunner of Romanticism. His works include the famous Ave Maria, the Trout Quintet, Die Forelle and Erlkönig, among many others. Schubert composed over 600 songs and more than 200 chamber and orchestral works during his short life. His symphonies have been praised for their innovative orchestrations, while his piano sonatas are known for their lyrical melodies and youthful freshness. He also wrote hundreds of art songs, lieder, operas, string quartets and masses. During his lifetime he was largely unrecognized as a composer but he is now widely celebrated as one of the world’s most important musicians who greatly impacted musical composition.

Schubert was a genius who wrote over 600 works and managed to leave a lasting impression on the world of classical music.

The Paris-based sales company has a hefty slate for AFM.

Paris-based mk2 Films is kicking off sales on Darren Thornton’s Ireland-set comedy-drama Four Mothers at the AFM this week.

The title is an Irish twist on Gianni Di Gregorio’s 2008 Italian hit Mid-August Lunch that won several awards including the Luigi De Laurentiis prize when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Thornton, whose previous credits include RTÉ comedy-drama series Love Is The Drug and his debut feature A Date For Mad Mary, penned the script with his brother Colin Thornton who also co-wrote the script for A Date For Mad Mary.

Trioscope, the company behind “The Liberator” (Netflix) and George R.R. Martin-produced “Night of the Cooters,” has launched its patented Trioscope Platform to license its proprietary technology to third-party content creators.

London-based production house Oiffy and Poland-based BreakThru Films are the first to license the Trioscope Platform for sequences in director Alex Helfrecht’s upcoming love story “A Winter’s Journey,” based on Franz Schubert’s song cycle. The film stars John Malkovich, Jason Isaacs, Martina Gedeck and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson and has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for major territories with MK2 Films handling international sales. Trioscope Europe will provide CG and VFX services for the film.

The Platform offers a suite of practical production tools and software that marries human performance with computer-generated (CG) environments and will provide filmmakers the opportunity to forge stylized final pictures that boast a broad array of imaginative looks, including graphic novel, painterly imagery and more.

Michael Giacchino’s dark symphony for “The Batman” — from his brooding theme for Bruce Wayne to children’s choir for the Riddler and noirish stylings for Catwoman — is the year’s most talked-about score and among his most ambitious yet.

When Warner’s WaterTower label released a “Batman” track in late January, it racked up an astounding 2.3 million views on YouTube — the highest global streaming engagement the label had ever seen for pre-release from a score album. And interest has only grown in the weeks since the subsequent teasings of more Giacchino music and Friday’s release of the movie.

“Michael brought soul, he brought dread, he brought all of the emotional and atmospheric undercurrents that a movie like this requires,” director Matt Reeves tells Variety. “You almost can’t articulate what he brings — you can just feel it, how he expresses himself through music, how it relates to story.

Night has fallen and Bill Murray and his musician collaborators have had a full day of interviews and a surprise pop-up performance at the Carlyle Hotel. (They’ll surprise fans the next day with an impromptu set at Washington Square Park.) They’re still running behind as they discuss what’s next on the agenda. Clearly, it’s time for martinis, as Murray and renowned cellist Jan Vogler pass cocktails to violinist Mira Wang and pianist Vanessa Perez to start their final interview of the day. Their camaraderie reflects their time spent on the road,...

Alex Helfrecht directing 1812-set tale of lovelorn poet.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North America and multiple territories from mk2 Films to the upcoming Bavaria-set European animation co-production A Winter’s Journey featuring John Malkovich, Jason Isaacs, Marcin Czarnik, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson and Martina Gedeck.

SPC has also boarded the project for Latin America, Middle East, Scandinavia, Australia/New Zealand, Turkey, India, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Japan, Thailand, and worldwide airlines.

Alex Helfrecht, who directed 2016 sci-fi and Edinburgh International Film Festival premiere The White King, will helm the story set in 1812 about an itinerant, lovelorn poet who undertakes a cross-mountain trek...

Sony Pictures Classics has taken North America, Latin America, Middle East, Scandinavia, Australia/New Zealand, Turkey, India, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Japan, Thailand rights and global airlines to Alex Helfrecht’s animated movie A Winter’s Journey.

Set in Bavaria in 1812, A Winter’s Journey follows an itinerant lovelorn poet who undertakes a hazardous walk across mountains, ice, and snow – a journey which will bring either death or a new life.

Painted by the animation artists behind the Oscar-nominated Loving Vincent, A Winter’s Journey is a romantic and epic tale which blends live action with CG and painted animation. The world of the film is the first to be built using PlayStation’s “Dreams”, developed by PlayStation Studios’ multiple-bafta-winning games studio Media Molecule. The pic is an adaptation of Franz Schubert’s timeless masterpiece “Winterreise”, the most performed classical song cycle in the world.

The cast includes John Malkovich,...

A piece of classical music can be a sumptuous dish. Flavors combined from different regional influences, refined with time-tested traditions that can be embraced or inverted to surprising ends, all delivered by artisans who’ve spent entire lifetimes honing their craft.

So it’s no surprise that “Now Hear This,” the ongoing documentary series under the PBS “Great Performances” banner has managed to bring viewers into the life of venerated composers in the same way that the modern wave of immersive food series have done for global cuisine. One strong hint comes at the outset of the show’s second season, in an episode on the legendary Franz Joseph Haydn.

Host Scott Yoo sits on a stage playing Haydn’s Quartet in D minor, Op. 42. In successive shots, Yoo is playing a violin and viola, performing each of the four quartet parts of the fourth movement. A wide composite shot...

An intellectually stimulating art-house treasure all too easily overlooked amid the near-constant flood of Netflix content, “An Easy Girl” depicts a transformative summer in the life of a 16-year-old girl, but not the one described in the film’s title. That label — which writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski employs ironically, calling into question the patriarchal idea that a woman’s worth is tied up in how “hard to get” she plays it — refers to the protagonist’s 22-year-old cousin, no girl at all, but a comely temptress who breezes into the coastal French city of Cannes like a seductive tropical storm, turning heads and jostling perceptions wherever she goes.

Shifting gears from her widely panned “Planetarium”, Zlotowski delivers a relatively modest but far more thought-provoking project — a Rohmerian moral tale, à “La Collectionneuse,” with a shrewd feminist twist. It’s at once a striking auteur statement (launched during Director’s Fortnight at...

Rosalie Varda, a seasoned French film producer who is the daughter of late New Wave filmmaking icons Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy, has been appointed senior advisor at MK2 Films.

MK2 Films is part of the arthouse production, sales and exhibition group headed by Nathanael and Elisha Karmitz which had five movies in competition at Cannes last year and in 2018.

Under this newly-created position, Varda will be advising Nathanael Karmitz at MK2 Films on the acquisition and distribution strategy, in France and abroad, with regards to the company’s prestigious library which boasts more than 800 movies, including many classics by François Truffaut, Charlie Chaplin, Alain Resnais, as well as Varda and Demy, among others.

Activities linked to its library are a significant part of MK2 Films’ business. MK2 Films recently signed a non-exclusive deal with Netflix in France giving the streaming service access to 50 movies from MK2’s library, notably pics by Truffaut,...

Juliette Schrameck, the managing director of French film group MK2 (“Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire”), has stepped down.

During Schrameck’s decade-long tenure, MK2 had five movies playing in competition at the Cannes Film Festival two years in a row, in 2018 and 2019. Last year’s competition titles included Mati Diop’s Grand Prize winner “Atlantics,” and Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Young Lady on Fire,” which picked up Cannes’ best screenplay award and a Golden Globe nomination.

Schrameck was also highly involved in the development and co-production of many prestige projects, notably Pawel Pawlikowski ‘s Oscar-nominated “Cold War.”

Before being appointed managing director by MK2’s co-ceo Nathanael Karmitz in January 2015, Schrameck spearheaded international sales and acquisitions for the company for five years.

Schrameck announced her departure from the company on Thursday and said her new career chapter will soon begin. “I didn’t think the period...

New projects from Fernando Trueba, ‘Loving Vincent’ filmmakers and a ”Nordic Sex Education”.

Screen has been on the ground at animation pitching event Cartoon Movie in Bordeaux this week, hearing about 66 feature film projects at various stages of concept, development and production.

Here are five which generated particular buzz among attendees:

Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary (Fr-Den)

With Cartoon Movie tracking the attendance of its delegates to each pitch, the most popular – by a decent 10% margin – was this France-Denmark co-production with 316 audience members from the 800 people at the event. The second feature from French director Rémi Chayé, it...

Paris-based company is also launching sales on live-action, animation hybrid A Winter’s Journey.

Paris-based sales company mk2 films has boarded sales on Irish animation director Paul Bolger’s family CGI animated feature Outfoxed!, featuring a screenplay by popular compatriot musician and screenwriter Barry Devlin.

The Ireland-set tale revolves around a family of urban foxes that embarks on an adventure-filled day-trip to the countryside, after one of its cubs asks to see where he was born. Devlin has delivered a screenplay that will appeal to both young and older audiences.

The UK-Ireland-Benelux-Germany production unites top European animation houses Dublin-based Monster Entertainment...

MK2 has boarded Alex Helfrecht’s “A Winter’s Journey,” a feature blending live-action, CGI and hand-painted backgrounds made by the creative teams behind “Despicable Me” and “Loving Vincent.”

Adapted from Franz Schubert’s “Winterreise,” the film stars Gaspard Ulliel, John Malkovich, Martina Gedeck, Charles Berling and newcomer Gabriella Moran.

Set in 1812 Bavaria, the film tells the story of a lovelorn young poet who, banished from society, is forced to wander across mountains, ice and snow on a dangerous journey that will either lead him to death or to a new life.

“A Winter’s Journey’ is a passionate love story with epic visuals. It’s an animated film… putting performance at its core and speaking the international language of music and art,” said Helfrecht.

MK2 Films has acquired international sales rights and will begin pre-sales at the Efm. “Helfrecht’s unique vision for this adaptation of Franz Schubert’s...

Stearns Matthews, a Bistro and Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs Mac Award-winning vocalist, recently released December Songs. This album is the first male recording of Maury Yeston's 1991 song cycle, which is inspired by Franz Schubert's beloved Winterreise song cycle. With this album, Matthews' shimmering and spirited tenor instrument better connects Yeston's cycle to his inspiration while allowing listeners to get lost in these snow-covered tunes.

“For an intellectual product of any value to exert an immediate influence which shall also be deep and lasting, it must rest on an inner harmony, yes, an affinity, between the personal destiny of its author and that of his contemporaries in general.”—Thomas Mann, Death in Venice Barry Lyndon. I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t know that name. Barry Lyndon means an artwork both grand and glum. Sadness inconsolable. A cello bends out a lurid sound, staining the air before a piano droopingly follows in the third movement of Vivaldi's “Cello Concerto in E Minor.” This piece, which dominates the second half of the film, steers the hallowed half of my head to bask in the film’s high melancholic temperature. Why should I so often remember it? What did I have to do with this film? I only received it with...

The Piano Teacher

Blu-ray

Criterion

2001 / 1:85 / Street Date September 26, 2017

Starring Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel, Annie Girardot

Cinematography: Christian Berger

Film Editor: Monika Willi, Nadine Muse

Produced by Veit Heiduschka

Music: Martin Achenbach

Directed by Michael Haneke

Her serene face a fragile mask just waiting to crack along with her sanity, the tortured spinster at the center of The Piano Teacher is a Blanche Dubois for the S&M set.

Her name is Erika Kohut, a brilliant but merciless tutor entrenched in a swank Viennese conservatory where she brings a surgical precision to her teaching (while leaving the anesthesia at home). She’s a harsh mistress, no doubt, but she’s merely assumed the mantle of her mother, a clinging horrorshow who monitors her middle-aged daughter’s every move while provoking nightly brawls that begin in the living room and end in the bedroom; a sick parody of a bad marriage.

Rebecca Lea Sep 18, 2017

We take a look at the movie version of Stephen King's Needful Things, starring Ed Harris...

The film: A mysterious new shop called Needful Things opens in the town of Castle Rock, owned by the mysterious Leland Gaunt (Max von Sydow). The residents discover that the antique shop provides them with exactly what they’re looking for, no matter how specific. The price to pay isn’t of the ordinary variety, however, and Gaunt invites his customers to commit pranks on their fellow townsfolk which steadily escalate in complexity and consequence. It soon attracts the attention of Sheriff Alan Pangborn (lately of The Dark Half and now in the form of Ed Harris).

See related The Croods 2 has been cancelled

See also: the BFI's Stephen King season continues this weeek.

A satire on greed culture, small town politics, and mob mentalities, Needful Things is one of...

The year 1990 was the beginning of a new decade that just had survived the neon excesses of the ’80s. This fresh start was seen in the world at large with the reunification of Germany, the unification of Yemen, the release of Nelson Mandela and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as the U.K.’s prime minister.

It was also the fledgling days of the internet, when the first web server was created, providing a foundation for the World Wide Web as we know it.

Read More: ‘Animaniacs’ Reboot Being Developed by Steven Spielberg, Amblin TV and Warner Bros. — Exclusive

Over on television, “Saturday Night Live” welcomed the new talents of Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and Julia Sweeney.

The year also marked the end of an era for shows like “Alf,” “227,” “Newhart,” primetime soap “Falcon Crest,” Nickelodeon’s slime purveyor “You Can’t Do That on Television,...

After the best surprise possible to kick off the new year — the announcement that Claire Denis would be imminently beginning production on a new drama, one starring Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu, and Xavier Beauvois — the Beau travail director was also able to finish it in in times for Cannes. Now set to open Directors’ Fortnight, the first look has arrived.

Adapted from Roland Barthes‘ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, which deconstructs the language of love, the film also has a new title after initially going by Dark Glasses. Screen Daily reports the English title is Let the Sunshine In (aka Un Beau Soleil Intérieur). Also starring Bruno Podalydès and Josiane Balasko, Directors’ Fortnight Artistic director Edouard Waintrop, says of the film. “What touched us is that it marks a radical change in tone for Claire Denis. We like it when film-makers try something new.”

See the Amazon synopsis for Barthes...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon Live In Concert, A One Night Only Special Event:

Film Screening with Live Score Performed by Wordless Music Orchestra

on Saturday, April 8, 2017 at Kings Theatre, Brooklyn

Producers Joseph A. Berger and Michael Sayers, in association with Wordless Music and Warner Bros. Pictures, are pleased to announce Barry Lyndon Live In Concert at Brooklyn’s extraordinary Kings Theatre on Saturday, April 8, 2017, at 8pm. Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece will be projected in a new 2K Dcp restoration, with live musical accompaniment by Wordless Music Orchestra, led by renowned conductor Ryan McAdams.

Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), is a young, roguish Irishman who’s determined, in any way, to make a life for himself as a wealthy nobleman. Enlisting in the British Army and fighting in Europe’s Seven Years War, Barry deserts, then joins the Prussian army, gets promoted...

Getting to experience a Stanley Kubrick movie on the big screen is always a treat, especially in 2017. But when you throw in a 50-peice orchestra performing a live score, that experience suddenly becomes even more jaw-dropping.

Such will be the case on April 8 when the musicians of the Wordless Music Orchestra take the stage at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn to accompany “Barry Lyndon.” The original score, which has been newly transcribed by composer Frank Cogliano, will be performed in its entirety and synced live to the film.

Read More: How Live Film Scores Are Finding New Life in the Age of Netflix

Last Tuesday night, members of the Wordless Music Orchestra performed a preview concert of selections from the one-night-only event, and you can check out a first look at their arrangements in the video below.

Songs performed include Handel’s Sarabande, the third movement of Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto in E Minor,...

“Perhaps 90% of the reality of the universe is invisible to us,” muses a young audiophile, his face glazing over with the wonder of infinite possibility. Like each of the five subjects that feature in Panamanian director Ana Endara Mislov’s “The Joy of Sound,” the curly-haired kid sees the world best through his ears, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

A short, scattershot, and entirely charming documentary that combines the unmediated vitality of Les Blank with the gentle inquisitiveness of Ira Glass, “The Joy of Sound” is — per its title — a project that reverberates with pleasure from start to finish. Conceived in response to a Doctv initiative that called for Latin American filmmakers to make documentaries about the subject of happiness, Mislov’s hour-long movie is positively drunk on “la felicidad del sonido,” even if it doesn’t entirely ignore the splendor of occasional silence or the...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question:

Last Friday saw the release of Garth Davis’ “Lion,” the musical score for which is the gorgeous result of a collaboration between two giants of the neo-classical movement, Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka. It’s just the latest indication that we’re living in a fascinating, vibrant time for movie music, and December boasts a number of films that will only add more fuel to that fire. With that in mind, we asked our panel of critics to name their favorite film score of the 21st Century.

Tasha Robinson (@TashaRobinson), The Verge

There are some really striking contenders out there, topped by Susumu Hirasawa’s manic,...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon Live In Concert, A One Night Only Special Event:

Film Screening with Live Score Performed by Wordless Music Orchestra

on Saturday, April 8, 2017 at Kings Theatre, Brooklyn

Producers Joseph A. Berger and Michael Sayers, in association with Wordless Music and Warner Bros. Pictures, are pleased to announce Barry Lyndon Live In Concert at Brooklyn’s extraordinary Kings Theatre on Saturday, April 8, 2017, at 8pm. Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece will be projected in a new 2K Dcp restoration, with live musical accompaniment by Wordless Music Orchestra, led by renowned conductor Ryan McAdams.

Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), is a young, roguish Irishman who’s determined, in any way, to make a life for himself as a wealthy nobleman. Enlisting in the British Army and fighting in Europe’s Seven Years War, Barry deserts, then joins the Prussian army, gets promoted...

The Oscar-winning composer talked about his process and collaborations with Anthony Minghella and Xavier Dolan at London’s Barbican.

Oscar-winning composer Gabriel Yared discussed his process and collaborations with directors Anthony Minghella and Xavier Dolan during an event at London’s Barbican on Wednesday (April 20).

Yared told the audience that one of the biggest challenges facing contemporary composers is the temporary music track, which is often used by filmmakers during production to serve as an atmospheric guideline.

Yared explained that the problem occurs when composers are brought on-board late in the production process and have to compete with an existing soundtrack. He said: “Nowadays, when you receive a film it is already temped with pieces of music from this or the other film.

“I think this is really dishonest. The editor and the director get used to the music and then when they hire the composer, he has to fight with all these habits and sometimes even edit...

The Oscar-winning composer talked about his process and collaborations with Anthony Minghella and Xavier Dolan at London’s Barbican.

Oscar-winning composer Gabriel Yared discussed his process and collaborations with directors Anthony Minghella and Xavier Dolan during an event at London’s Barbican on Wednesday (April 20).

Yared told the audience that one of the biggest challenges facing contemporary composers is the temporary music track, which is often used by filmmakers during production to serve as an atmospheric guideline.

Yared explained that the problem occurs when composers are brought on-board late in the production process and have to compete with an existing soundtrack. He said: “Nowadays, when you receive a film it is already temped with pieces of music from this or the other film.

“I think this is really dishonest. The editor and the director get used to the music and then when they hire the composer, he has to fight with all these habits and sometimes even edit...

Late last week, we published a video essay from Kevin B. Lee, chief video essayist at Fandor, about the spaces in Chantal Akerman’s final documentary, No Home Movie. Lee estimated that about 70% of the film took place within the walls of the filmmaker’s dying mother Natalia’s apartment. To re-orient himself in Natalia’s apartment, Lee reorganized the footage by room. Initially, he edited the video to music, using Schubert’s Impromptu D. 899 Op. 90 No. 3, not coincidentally the same music used in Michael Haneke’s Amour, which also follows an elderly woman’s demise. But after receiving some complaints, including from the distributors of the film, Lee reassessed […]...

As I struggled, as every year, to get my end-of-year lists finished in a reasonably timely fashion, it occurred to me that I could publish half of the classical list earlier if I could find a reasonable way to split it into categories. Thus the non-contemporary/contemporary divide this year. The newer composers' work requires more listening; that's the only reason the older repertoire comes first.

1. Ivan Moravec Twelfth Night Recital Prague 1987 (Supraphon) Supposedly this release of a previously unissued concert recording was approved by the pianist shortly before his passing in July 2015. Certainly it's hard to hear anything of significance that he wouldn't have liked about it, because it is a magnificent testament to everything that made him one of the greatest pianists who ever lived: one of the most beautiful piano tones ever heard, allied to liquid phrasing that gave him one of the greatest legato touches ever recorded.

“Dear White People’s” use of Schubert’s Piano Trio in E Flat made me giddy. I’ve always associated that piece of music with Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” and loved it being reimagined for a modern tale of love, deceit and identity crisis. Camera department gets a lot of attention but the sound for your film shouldn't be an after-thought. It is the audio component (Texture of an actor’s voice. Ominous sound effects. Enchanting score) that solidifies the audience’s suspension of disbelief. David Lynch, a director who is always asking us to believe in the bizarre, said it perfectly: “sound is a great “pull” into a different world. And it has to work with the picture – but without it you’ve lost...

A major glossy magazine that used to be devoted largely to music -- but long ago fell under the spell of Hollywood celebrity -- still continues to cover music, specializing in listicles that seem designed mainly to provoke ire in those who care more about music than does said magazine (named after a classic blues song, in case you can't guess without a hint). This summer it unleashed a list of songs that, with that aging publication's ironically weak sense of history, managed to overlook the vast majority of the history of song. To put it bluntly, if you're claiming to discuss the best songs ever written and you don't even mention Franz Schubert, you're an ignoramus. My ire over this blinkered attitude towards music history festered for months, so I finally decided to do something about it by writing about some of the timeless songs omitted in the aforementioned myopic listicle.

Notes from Hollywoodland: Rose’s Heady, Meaningful Tolstoy Update

“It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up,” realizes the titular protagonist of Leo Tolstoy’s famed novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Considered a masterpiece of Russian literature and published in 1886, director Bernard Rose takes the text and transposes it to the turn of the following century in Hollywood with his 2000 film Ivans xtc., an undertaking that sounds tedious but actually makes for quite an apt and inspired adaptation. One hardly needs to be readily familiar with Tolstoy’s novella to appreciate or understand what the film is ultimately up to, but doing so provides an alternative subtext in approaching what Rose is doing—specifically that one of humankind’s most enduring tragedies is to embrace the superficialities of existence instead of building a meaningful life, just as as Tolstoy’s character...

Kate’s Classical Corner: Hannibal, Ep. 3.08, “The Great Red Dragon”

As a classical musician, I can’t help but be influenced in my interpretation of Hannibal by its amazing score and soundtrack, composed and compiled by music supervisor Brian Reitzell. This is not intended to be a definitive reading of Reitzell or showrunner Bryan Fuller’s intentions in regards to the music, but rather an exploration of how these choices affect my appreciation of the given episode. Read my review of “The Great Red Dragon” here.

Classical pieces featured:

Alleluia from Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1773): Hannibal experiences his arrest from his mind palace

This famous movement from Mozart’s solo motet, beautifully performed here by boy soprano Aiden Glenn (the piece was originally composed for a castrato), is a fitting choice to represent how Hannibal elects to experience his arrest and incarceration at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Kate’s Classical Corner: Hannibal, Ep. 3.06, “Dolce”

As a classical musician, I can’t help but be influenced in my interpretation of Hannibal by its amazing score and soundtrack, composed and compiled by music supervisor Brian Reitzell. This is not intended to be a definitive reading of Reitzell or showrunner Bryan Fuller’s intentions in regards to the music, but rather an exploration of how these choices affect my appreciation of the given episode. Read my review of “Dolce” here.

Notturno in E-flat major, Op. 148 by Franz Schubert (1827): Cordell presents Mason with culinary options

This lovely piece for piano trio was likely chosen by Reitzell purely for its beauty, but it is also appropriate as a piece that feels inevitably repetitious, with the theme circling back on itself and the larger form of the piece doing so as well. This ties in nicely with the episode’s themes of...

Kate’s Classical Corner: Hannibal, Ep. 3.01, “Antipasto”

As a classical musician, I can’t help but be influenced in my interpretation of Hannibal by its amazing score and soundtrack, composed and compiled by music supervisor Brian Reitzell. I’ll be reviewing Hannibal season three for Sound on Sight and along with each review, I’ll be writing up a few notes (or this week—thanks to the sheer volume of music—many, many notes) on the episode’s scoring and soundtrack choices. This is not intended to be a definitive reading of Reitzell or Bryan Fuller’s intentions in regards to the music, but rather an exploration of how these choices affect my appreciation of the given episode. Read my thoughts on “Antipasto” here.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy (1894): Gideon and Hannibal eat dinner, Hannibal tends his snails

Based on L’après-midi d’un...

Complete list of winners and nominees of the 2014 Grammy Awards, held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center on Sunday February 8. Winners will be updated as they're announced during the telecast and pre-telecast. Record Of The Year “Fancy,” Iggy Azalea Featuring Charli Xcx “Chandelier,” Sia **Winner** “Stay With Me (Darkchild Version),” Sam Smith “Shake It Off,” Taylor Swift “All About That Bass,” Meghan Trainor Album Of The Year **Winner** “Morning Phase,” Beck “Beyoncé,” Beyoncé “X,” Ed Sheeran “In The Lonely Hour,” Sam Smith “Girl,” Pharrell Williams Song Of The Year “All About That Bass,” Kevin Kadish & Meghan Trainor, songwriters (Meghan Trainor) “Chandelier,” Sia Furler & Jesse Shatkin, songwriters (Sia) “Shake It Off,” Max Martin, Shellback & Taylor Swift, songwriters (Taylor Swift) **Winner** “Stay With Me (Darkchild Version),” James Napier, William Phillips & Sam Smith, songwriters (Sam Smith) “Take Me To Church,” Andrew Hozier-Byrne, songwriter (Hozier) Best New Artist Iggy Azalea Bastille Brandy Clark...

Is Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) the greatest conductor ever? While there are some who, in preference to his highly inflected, interventionist style, would prefer a more straight-forward conductor such as his contemporary Arturo Toscanini, many cognoscenti believe that at the least Furtwängler, when heard in his favored 19th century Austro-Germanic repertoire, ranks supreme of his type in the pre-stereo era. The aforementioned Toscanini himself was an admirer; asked who aside from himself was the greatest conductor, he named Furtwängler, and also pushed for the German to take over the directorship of the New York Philharmonic when Toscanini relinquished its reins, though controversy prevented that.

While Furtwängler was a more versatile conductor than some observers give him credit for, his reputation is based firmly on his masterful conducting of the symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner, and Brahms and the operas of Wagner. He said, "A well-rehearsed concert is one in which you have...

“Dear White People’s” use of Schubert’s Piano Trio in E Flat made me giddy. I’ve always associated that piece of music with Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” and loved it being reimagined for a modern tale of love, deceit and identity crisis. Camera department gets a lot of attention but the sound for your film shouldn't be an after-thought. It is the audio component (Texture of an actor’s voice. Ominous sound effects. Enchanting score) that solidifies the audience’s suspension of disbelief. David Lynch, a director who is always asking us to believe in the bizarre, said it perfectly: “sound is a great “pull” into a different world. And it has to work with the picture – but without it you’ve lost...

Czech Philharmonic/Jirí Bělohlávek with Jean-Yves Thibaudet Janáček: Taras Bulba Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 Dvořák:Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" Carnegie Hall Nov. 16, 2014

Since I previewed this Sunday afternoon concert, I'll skip repeating the background information -- except to note that I've since learned this was the group's first NYC appearance in ten years -- and get right to considering the performance itself. To give away the conclusion up front, in my notes, I used the words "perfect" and "wonderful" a lot.

The Janáček tone poem opened the program. It's not a favorite of mine (actually, it may be my least favorite piece by this composer), but Bělohlávek and his band can't be faulted. Tempos were a bit on the quick side (23 minutes total), welcomingly limiting the bombast somewhat, yet everything was still crystal clear. Early on the concertmaster, Josef Špaček Jr., demonstrated his magnificent combination of warm tone, supple phrasing,...

If you haven’t read Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française, you should remedy that as soon as possible. As great-yet-not-quite-complete works of art go, it’s right up there with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and any attempt to make a film about Don Quixote ever. Its big-screen interpretation comes with awards hopes and two leads, Michelle Williams and Rust And Bone’s Matthias Schoenaerts, with the chops to carry its great swells of emotion. Check out its new trailer below. brightcove.createExperiences(); Williams plays Lucille Angellier, a French villager whose husband has fallen into the hands of the Germany army. The arrival of a Wehrmacht officer called Bruno (Schoenaerts) as part of that occupying force, not to mention a small army of refugees fleeing Paris, throws everything that wasn’t already into flux into that state of disrepair for her. Worse still, she begins to feel things for Bruno that could cost her dear.

★★★★☆Implanting the dark heart of Gothic fiction into his signature cinematic carcass of deadpan humour and beatnik contemplation, indie provocateur Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) is the story of two misanthropic vampires who have been in love for centuries, witnessing the humanist revival of classical art and literature and its sad decline into the vulgar and uncouth yield of contemporary populist culture. Vampires have never seemed as stylish and refined as they do here, inhibiting the poise and self-assurance of a Shoreditch hipster with the style and grace of classically-trained concert pianist. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a musician who once gave Schubert a String Quartet, but is now a suicidal romantic.

Jason Statham’s 2010 action-thriller The Mechanic was a throwaway hitman thriller that was a lot more fun and a lot less po-faced than it first appeared. It had a terrific poster, a bit where Stath stuck on some Schubert (not even at gunpoint) and more double-crossing than a stack of hot cross buns. Simon West handled that one and now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the monkey wrench is being passing to versatile German director Dennis Gansel for a sequel that will see Statham back in action as ronin-like hitman – or ‘mechanic’ – Arthur Bishop.Gansel is a filmmaker who Hollywood has been trying to get its claws into for some time now. Back in 2008 he got good notices for The Wave, a pungent social satire about a teacher who establishes a dictatorship in his classroom, and terrorist thriller The Fourth State followed four years later and also impressed. The Mechanic...

Which music stars went home with awards at the 2014 Grammy Awards? Find out with this full winners list.

Winners in each category are bolded.

Record of the Year

"Get Lucky" -- Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers

"Radioactive" -- Imagine Dragons

"Royals" -- Lorde

"Locked Out of Heaven" -- Bruno Mars

"Blurred Lines" -- Robin Thick feat. T.I. and Pharrell

Album of the year

"The Blessed Unrest" -- Sara Bareilles

"Random Access Memories" -- Daft Punk

"Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" -- Kendrick Lamar

"The Heist" -- Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

"Red" -- Taylor Swift

Song of the year

"Just Give Me a Reason" -- Jeff Bhasker, Pink and Nate Ruess (Pink feat. Nate Ruess)

"Locked Out of Heaven" -- Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine and Bruno Mars (Bruno Mars)

"Roar" -- Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Bonnie McKee, Katy Perry and Henry Walter (Katy Perry)

"Royals...

1973's The Sting took it global, but there's more to ragtime music than that film's Keystone Kops crazy-chase soundtrack

Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to The Maple Leaf Rag played by Scott Joplin

One album was all it took to herald a revival. In 1970, the year of Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water and The Beatles' Let It Be, a record of arcane late 19th-century American piano music, released on a label that was otherwise building its reputation as a chronicler of the hardcore American avant-garde, began to sell in implausible quantities. Audiences ordinarily enamoured of piano miniatures by Chopin, Brahms and Liszt were suddenly taking pleasure in the compositions of Scott Joplin, the Texas-born "King of Ragtime" whose über-catchy 1899 Maple Leaf Rag brought him immediate popularity, but who died in 1917 with two typically embarrassing composerly problems hanging over him: syphilis and a terminally unproduced opera, Treemonisha,...

Angelina Jolie takes on Sleeping Beauty while Terry Gilliam tackles Berlioz as the stars come out to confound our expectations in the coming year

Film

Angelina Jolie in Maleficent

Hollywood's most formidable leading lady is back after a relatively quiet spell, in a role playing on her scariness and seniority. This reinvented fairytale is a twist on The Sleeping Beauty, and Jolie is not playing the insipid dormant heroine with her crybaby attitude to finger-pricking but the evilly magnificent Maleficent, the sorceress who casts a spell on the demure young Princess Aurora. How did she get that way? Everything will depend on the script – but Jolie is always a great turn. Peter Bradshaw 30 May.

Natalie Portman in Jane Got a Gun

Natalie Portman is a Hollywood A-lister who first came to prominence in George Lucas's Star Wars prequel trilogy. She was compellingly vulnerable in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan,...

Viennese operetta and film star of the 30s who fled to America after the Anschluss

Between the two world wars, during the so-called "silver age" of Viennese operetta, the coloratura soprano Marta Eggerth, who has died aged 101, reigned supreme on stage and, above all, on screen. In the films of the 1930s, the blonde, wide-eyed beauty's bright bell-like tones and charming personality provided a welcome relief from ruinous inflation, world depression and the approaching sound of Nazi jackboots.

The leading operetta composers of the day, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Robert Stolz and Paul Abraham, all wrote songs for her films. However, by 1938, after the Anschluss, with the exception of Lehár, all of them, being Jewish, had fled Vienna for the Us. Eggerth and her husband, Jan Kiepura, the celebrated Polish tenor, who both had Jewish mothers, also left Austria for America, where they continued their singing careers.

Hitler loved Viennese operetta,...