In Contention

Tag: Danny Elfman

  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than six months since I wrote this year’s introductory Tech Support column ( a dissection of the art direction race). Much has changed since then, naturally, as we are less than a week away from the big day when we find out the nominees for the Oscars this year. Today, I take a final look at the music categories, sound categories and the two categories that have been narrowed down to seven finalists – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.

    BEST MAKEUP

    In this utterly bizarre category, virtually any combination of the seven finalists would fail to surprise me as the final three. That said, I’ve had the same top two predicted all year and see no reason to change now: “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wolfman.” The former had massive box office and very noticeable makeup, whereas the latter is exactly the sort of movie that tends to score here and nowhere else.

    Logic may put “True Grit” or “The Fighter” next in line due to their Best Picture contender status. But as much as these films are loved, they don’t have as showy makeup as the other finalists, and this is a category that often doesn’t care how films are received overall.

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  • Celebrating 25 years of Burton/Elfman collaborations

    In the “sign me up now, please” category today is a recently announced boxed set of Danny Elfman’s music collaborations with filmmaker Tim Burton.  I first heard about the limited edition set via the New York Times in a piece that went up on the Arts Beat blog yesterday.  It featured a video with Burton and Elfman discussing the monumental “Batman” score — talk about grabbing my attention.

    Anyone who knows me knows what role that 1989 superhero extravaganza played in my film-going youth.  But the idea that there might be some extra, never-before-heard material waiting in a vault somewhere?  Giddiness.  Pure giddiness.

    But it’s not just “Batman” stuff.  The set celebrates “the 25th anniversary of the ingenious collaboration” between the two singular artists, reads a press release that went out today.   “[The] numbered box set of 1000…collects expansions of the 13 original scores that Elfman has composed for Burton’s iconic films” and is “a newly produced library of 16 CDs each packaged with artwork by Burton, adding up to more than 19 hours of music.”  Wow.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Score — Volume I

    I am marveled by the accomplishments of all the crafts artists who elevate our films, but this is particularly the case with respect to music composers. Composing equals genius as far as I am concerned.These musicians  join the film at the end, when usually only the director, editor and perhaps the sound mixers are still working.  But capturing the mood and feel of a film that has been created in your absence must be extraordinarily difficult.And  I do not need to count the ways in which a brilliant score can make a good film truly unforgettable.

    The category of Best Original Score is one of the hardest to predict in my opinion, even shortly before the nominations are announced. So what sort of music is rewarded by this branch? Certainly being noticeable in the film helps. Loud music and/or music which plays for lengthy parts of the film with minimal dialogue can do well, too. Being an animated film or a Best Picture contender hardly hurts either.

    For years, we could count on John Williams to take a spot among the nominees. But given that Williams is only composing for Steven Spielberg these days, his name has been absent from the nominees for five straight years now. (I suspect we’ll see him finally move past Alfred Newman on the all-time list next year.)

    Nevertheless, while the branch is not quite as insular as it was in the earlier part of last decade, it remains a fairly exclusive club. Seldom do composers get first trips to the Kodak – usually only one a year. In fact, of the past 11 years, only three have seen two new nominees, and only one has seen three.

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  • Comic-Con 2010 on the way

    Well, the inbox is getting stuffed with this and that regarding breakfasts and panels and viral marketing and yada, yada, yada.  That can mean only one thing: Comic-Con is around the corner.  And as I poured over the recently released schedule over the weekend, I found myself excited for…very little.

    DreamWorks Animation will make its first appearance with the Will Ferrell-starrer “Megamind.” Disney will pretty much take over the place as “TRON Legacy” makes its third trip in as many years to San Diego.  Sony will be in Hall H two days, first offering up action fare with “Salt” (which opens the Friday of the convention) and “Battle: Los Angeles,” then coming back with comedies “The Other Guys” and “The Green Hornet.”

    Warner Bros. will tease “Green Lantern,” “Sucker Punch” and the new “Harry Potter” while Overture will have “Let Me In.”  Lionsgate will break out “The Expendables” and Universal is planning some hijinks for “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” to go along with Hall H presentations for the new Greg Mottola film “Paul” and the more appropriately positioned “Cowboys & Aliens.”

    Oh, and fresh off of giving Edward Norton the heave-ho for, I imagine, deigning to try and make “The Avengers” a better movie than it’s likely to be, Marvel Studios will strut its stuff with “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger.”

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  • 2/4 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper in All About Steve• China censors Oscar nominations announcement due to documentary short nominee. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz run the numbers on the Best Picture and Best Actress categories. [Oscar Watch]

    • Jeffrey Wells ponders the possibility of the home video release of “All About Steve,” starring Razzie-nominated actress Sandra Bullock, hurting her Oscar chances. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

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  • Danny Elfman meets Ennio Morricone

    Hans ZimmerThat’s what I’ve decided the Hans Zimmer score for “Sherlock Holmes” is.  I’ve been listening to it all weekend.  The themes present in that brief snippet we led off yesterday’s Oscar Talk are felt throughout in different ways, but mostly I keep getting a spaghetti western homage.  Specifically, the mandolin picking of Morricone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” score gets a bold tip of the hat, mixed with a jaunty rhythm that just puts a smile on your face.

    I know when I brought this up last week a number of people thumbed their nose at Zimmer, and that’s fine.  I get the animosity to an extent.  But even with the homages, this is a pretty substantial, creative piece of work, in my book.  And I can’t be pegged as being in the tank for bombast because my favorite score of the year is probably still Mark Bradshaw’s subtle work on “Bright Star.”

    I thought I’d offer up the first track on the “Holmes” score, a bit called “Discombobulate.”  Have a listen and tell us what you think:

    [audio:http://www.incontention.com/audio/discombobulate.mp3]

  • COMIC-CON: Acker, Bekmambetov and Burton showcase ‘9’

    9Focus Features rolled out an extended clip of Shane Acker’s “9” a few moments ago to adulating fans who seemed more eager to ask producer Tim Burton a slew of peripheral questions and offer the usual “you’re an inspiration” sentiments to the macabre-obsessed director.  So it goes at Comic-Con.

    But on the issue at hand, Burton offered that he connected to Acker’s original short film (which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005) immediately.

    “You see a lot of personal films, but you don’t see a lot of personal films that are animated,” he said in the post-screening panel discussion.  “I’ve been through it before, endless conversations with studios, ‘Why can’t Jack Skellington have eyes?’  I thought I could at least help fight those battles so he could concentrate on the film.  You’ve got enough to worry about making the film to have those kind of stupid conversations.”

    Acker, who chimed in there to mention how supportive Focus, which he calls a “director-driven” studio, has been on the project, said he didn’t originally conceive the story as a feature film.  It was more of a director’s reel piece meant to secure other work for him as a filmmaker.  But when Burton (and co-producer Timur Bekmambetov) took an interest and the project began to unfold as as a feature, he fell in love with the story all over again.

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  • Is ‘Slumdog’ score too pop?

    Thanks to Nat Rogers at The Film Experience for pointing out a really worthwhile article in the Wall Street Journal, in which music critic Jim Fusilli takes a close look at this year’s nominees for Best Original Score. It’s not a category which tends to inspire much intelligent coverage in mainstream outlets, so it’s great to see someone giving the race the attention it deserves.

    Fusilli starts by commending the Academy for dodging the iffy qualification issues that have plagued previous races — principally the weirdly flexible criteria that allowed “Babel” in, but not “There Will Be Blood” — though I would still venture that “The Dark Knight”‘s initial disqualification scuppered its chances in the category. In any case, this year’s five nominated scores are all clearly original works, and Fusilli is generally impressed by the calibre of the competition. He is, however, not entirely convinced by frontrunner A.R. Rahman’s work on “Slumdog Millionaire”:

    This year, voters will have to decide whether to recognize music that’s most memorable as catchy pop or symphonic music that illuminates story and character. Mr. Rahman’s ebullient work for “Slumdog Millionaire,” a film about a poor boy who may win a fortune on a game show, is likely the early favorite — last week, I stopped in a theater in Boston to see it again and members of the audience cheered when his name appeared in the end credits. That may not be what a film-score composer is looking for. As Mr. Elfman told me last week, “If I’m going for any reaction, the best I could possibly hope for is that they see my name and go, ‘Oh really?’ Writing a score that gets people to jump out of the chairs is a whole other ballgame.”

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  • 1/10 Oscarweb Round-up

    Nicole Kidman in Australia• “Milk” composer Danny Elfman has signed on to score “Terminator Salvation.”  Eh. [MTV]

    • Jeffrey Wells keeps the quoted-out-of-context game running with that Nicole Kidman “squirm” story. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Regarding said story, Michael Cieply reports it properly, indicating the “perils of candor.” [The Carpetbagger]

    • Alicia Lozano writes up the resurrection of the Golden Globes. [The Envelope]

    • Tom O’Neil has some backstage interviews from Thursday’s Critics’ Choice Awards. [Gold Derby]

    • Anne Thompson reports on Oscar hopes from the AFI Awards. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • T.L. Stanley stakes a claim for her Golden Globe bets. [Gold Derby]

    • Guy Adams has a preview of the upcoming Globes, with a bit about that Anne Hathaway win slip-up. [The Independent]

    • Exciting times for indieWIRE: a new design and, apparently, a newly imagined site is on the horizon. [indieWIRE]

  • THR’s film music composer roundtable

    Alexandre DesplatI’m a few weeks late getting to this.  The Hollywood Reporter just isn’t one of my frequent visits anymore (sadly).  But the trade’s annual Oscar Roundtable series is in full swing and the recent composers session makes for a fascinating read.

    The composers who participated were Alexandre Desplat (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), Danny Elfman (“Hellboy II,” “Milk,” “Standard Operating Procedure,” “Wanted”), Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (“The Visitor”), A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and Howard Shore (“Doubt”).  Here’s an excerpt that stood out to me:

    Kaczmarek: Well there is this great era of composers that we always site, like Herrmann and (Erich) Korngold. But as much as I like bold strokes and the great scope of that era, it is, in a sense, useless today because we can’t write that way. As much as I admire that craft, we are living in different times. There is a much more subtle language being used now.

    Rahman: I am so much in love with scores that have great melodies, but nowadays if you have a great melody they say, “Oh, it’s distracting from my film.”

    Shore: Film music is changing all the time. From year to year, the styles are changing, and frankly, they are all of interest. I find it an interesting, fascinating process seeing this art form evolve over a hundred years. I think this year is the 100th anniversary of film music. If you look at the history of it, and where we are in it, it’s such a young art form steeped in music tradition. It started with classical music and then opera and then evolved into the great scores of the ’30s, the experimentation of the ’50s and ’60s. It has just been an interesting process. Film music is a fascinating art form and there is still great work to be done. We have the benefit of all these great works of the past to build on, and there is a future ahead.

    Desplat: The field is so wide open in front of us. That’s why I like to create music for movies, because you can try anything.

    Check out the rest here.

    Meanwhile, over at Variety’s Award Central (in full swing as well this season), various writers get some face time with the year’s music branch hopefuls.  The section is kicked off by this Jon Burlingame feature on the music of “Australia.”

  • Hollywood Awards get the craft races rolling

    I’ve never quite got a handle on what purpose the Hollywood Awards serve, since they frequently seem to honour achievements in still-unseen films. Their picks can be quite prescient (last year’s honorees included Marion Cotillard and Dante Ferretti), but they can frequently baffle too. (Based on “Charlie Wilson’s War,” did anyone really think that Stephen Goldblatt was the cinematographer of 2007?)

    However, following the announcement of this year’s craft honorees, I am pretty confident that we will see a couple of these names in the awards derby.

    A couple of months ago, I discussed the awards prospects of “Australia” DP Mandy Walker, so it’s nice to see she’s been named Cinematographer of the Year. The one thing that’s not in doubt about “Australia” is that it’s going to be a visual feast, so things are looking good for Walker to become the first female Best Cinematography nominee in Oscar history.

    Also on this site, Kris recently mused on the surprisingly poor Oscar record of Danny Elfman, one of the most distinctive composers in the business. He in turn has been named Composer of the Year. Elfman’s had a busy 2008, scoring “Wanted,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” and Errol Morris doc “Standard Operating Procedure,” but it’s the heavily-buzzed “Milk” that could reverse his Academy fortunes.

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  • POLL: What’s your favorite Danny Elfman score?

    Another slow news week yields another fun-ish poll rather than something a little more interesting.  Oh well.

    In any case, with yesterday’s item about Danny Elfman taking up scoring duties on Joe Johnston’s “The Wolf Man” and some light Oscar discussion around the composer, I thought I’d ask for your favorites.  It’s difficult to put the right list together, and inevitably, some of the Tim Burton stuff has to go to make room for things like “Dick Tracy” that really deserve to be on a list of 10 (well, nine plus an “other” option).

    So have at it in the poll.  What’s your favorite Danny Elfman score?  Feel free to discuss his work below.

  • Perennial Oscar snubee Danny Elfman gets another shot at missing the list with ‘Wolf Man’

    Danny ElfmanIt really is a shame that Danny Elfman hasn’t received the proper amount of recognition for the consistently screwed-up music branch of the Academy.  Well over two decades of quality work and three measly nods…neither of them for his top tier efforts.

    This is a guy who put together probably the greatest film score of all time (and kudos to Andy Trudeau for agreeing with me).  At the very least he’s carved a spot as one of the most prolific (if at times derivative) composers in the industry, instantly recognizable and always working the thematic context of the films he scores.

    Anyway, I just stumbled across the news that Elfman will be scoring Joe Johnston’s “The Wolf Man” (via /Film).  Personally I think it’s an awesome choice and a natural fit for Elfman.  I don’t know what sort of quality we can expect from the film, though.  Johnston took up the reins on the flick after Mark Romanek walked and makeup artist Rick Baker has already done his share of bitching about the on-set experience.  But I thnk we can all agree Elfman will elevate the atmosphere with his generally epic and creative work.

    Before “The Wolf Man,” by the way, will be  Gus Van Sant’s “Milk.”  Elfman was nominated in 1997 for Van Sant’s “Good Will Hunting,” so maybe lighting will strike again.  Maybe.

  • SHORT TAKE: “Corpse Bride” (***1/2)

    Tim Burton's Corpse BrideI saw Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride” in Westwood tonight, and it’s one of the most enjoyable films of the year. Recalling strands of “Beetlejuice” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” the film’s witty screenplay combines with a bombastic Danny Elfman score and a heightened level of production value to make for Burton’s best endeavor of any sort since 1999’s Sleepy Hollow, and perhaps since 1994’s Ed Wood.

    The film tells the story of Victor and Victoria (voiced by Johnny Depp and Emily Watson respectfully) and the deceased bride-to-be (Tim Burton’s own bride, Helena Bonham Carter) that comes between them and their arranged marriage.

    Burton draws upon his cast of collaborators for a who’s who of voice talent. Amongst the contributors are Albert Finney, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, and Elfman, with Tracy Ullman and Joann Lumley to boot.

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