• Composer Series,  Interviews,  Movies/Entertainment

    Interview…Film and TV Composer John Swihart Discusses Scoring ‘How I Met Your Mother’

    CBS’ wildly popular sitcom How I Met Your Mother is nearing its end and kicks off its 9th and final season this evening. Prior to the premier of tonight’s episode we got to chat with the show’s composer John Swihart to talk about his work on the show. In addition to How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM for short) his other credits of more than 40 films include Youth in Revolt, Employee of the Month,  For A Good Time Call… and Napoleon Dynamite which was his breakout project. John has been playing music from a very young age and his early influences are across the board ranging from Miles Davis, Gershwin, Stravinsky and…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Reviews

    G-S-T Review…Pain & Gain

    What does Michael Bay unhinged look like on celluloid? That’s not a question most of us really need answered; eighteen years spent making glossy, lunkheaded action films, blockbusters based on toy lines, and useless horror remakes speak volumes on the subject of Bay’s auteurdom. But maybe the Transformers mastermind has been done an injustice. Maybe, beneath the frat boy wit and visual chaos of his cinema, Bay has kept his one Big Idea squirreled away for safekeeping, waiting for the right opportunity to unleash his unspoiled artistic vision on his audiences. Or maybe Pain & Gain is just an erroneous high water mark in bad taste filmmaking. Whatever the case may be,…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Off the Shelf

    Off the Shelf…'Galaxy Quest'

    This past weekend I was watching Star Trek on Blu-Ray (which is jaw-dropping btw). While I just love that movie I couldn’t help but think, more than a few times, of how spot on the Galaxy Quest spoof was to the entire Star Trek franchise. After the movie ended, and I swore that I was a confirmed ‘neo’Trekkie’ I put Galaxy Quest in for a spin and laughed my ass off. For starters, this was no spoof in the vein of Airplane! or even those abysmal “Scary”, “Date”, “Disaster” Movies that studios term as spoof either. Not this was almost an outright homage sprinkled with witty humor and fine acting. I have…