One of the noteworthy shorts playing Tribeca Film Festival this year is Drew Denny’s film, Momster. This female-led action-packed drama was created by the talented Writer/Director and her crew, led by all female department heads. The short itself was done as a proof of concept for something Drew wants to make into a feature. Essentially, it’s a kick-ass prequel and you’ll definitely want to see where this goes. While only 10-minutes and change (including credits), what’s impressive about Momster is that just a few seconds after hitting play, you feel like you’re dropped right in the middle of a Quentin Tarantino narrative. It’s that engrossing. Whether working for a major network,…
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The Matrix Revisited: Composer Don Davis Reveals Secrets from His Score to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of ‘The Matrix’
Editor’s Note: This post contains the introduction to an article I wrote specifically for The Hollywood Reporter. It was a great honor to work on a post about a film, and film score so dear to my heart. In this retrospective, composer Don Davis plugs back in to recall the lengths he took to satisfy the Wachowskis’ exacting vision. Click here to read the full article. Twenty years ago, The Matrix blew audiences away with its ground-breaking, generation-defining style. That was in tandem with substantive themes that were esoteric yet accessible. For every Hong Kong-styled wire fight, there was an equally engaging reference to Plato. One integral component to the success of…
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Interview…Joe Kraemer on the Score to ‘The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot’
Over the last 23 years, composer Joe Kraemer has seen his fair share of stories. His resume is full of everything from short films to Hallmark Channel flicks to the biggest Summer blockbusters. But his latest might be the most complex project to date. The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot really is a unique film. In a way, it’s literally the title and, yet nothing like; it sounds like a Troma film, or a Roger Corman movie, when it has more in common with what you’d get from Frank Darabont, or Robert Zemeckis, without it feeling like a throwback. We’re fans of the music Kraemer wrote for…
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Interview…Composer Roger Suen on the Varied Musical Palette of ‘Ms. Purple’
Composer extraordinaire, Roger Suen, has lent his expertise to numerous feature films, television series and documentaries. A Southern California native, Suen studied music composition as an undergraduate then graduate student at UCLA and CSUN. Suen’s diverse music portfolio includes scoring additional music for Guillermo Del Toro’s four-time Oscar winning film The Shape of Water, Netflix’s five-time Emmy-nominated series Daredevil, and Marvel’s Emmy-nominated series, The Defenders. Through his mastery of orchestral composition and modern electronica, he has created heart-pounding additional music for blockbuster films such as Oscar-nominated X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, and The Nice Guys. This year, Suen provides the score the modern Asian-American drama film, Ms. Purple, which…
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Interview…Composer Federico Jusid on the New Sound of Netflix’s ‘Watership Down’
Award-winning composer, Federico Jusid, is a multifaceted artist with many titles including concert pianist, conductor, and film and theater producer. He is best known for scoring the Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Language film, The Secret in Their Eyes, which Federico composed with Emilio Kauderer. Earlier this year, Federico completed the score for “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman’s drama, Life Itself, starring Olivia Wilde and Oscar Isaac. His other recent work includes scoring Spanish dramas such as, Loving Pablo, starring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, A Twelve-Year Night and Ola de crímenes. Federico recently scored Netflix and BBC‘s re-imagining of the childhood classic, Watership Down. Federico’s orchestral score is accented by electronic sounds and metal instruments which reflect the…
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Interview…Famke Janssen on the Emotional Connection to Character in ‘Asher’
Famke Janssen is an actor we’ve followed for years after making her mark on the Bond and X-Men franchises. We were fortunate enough to speak with her some years back at the 2012 Dallas International Film Festival where she screened her directorial debut, Bringing Up Bobby (click these links to check out our written and video interviews). Janssen’s original passion has and continues to be writing, but she’s kept very busy with acting. These days, there’s no sign of things slowing down. This year, she stars alongside Ron Perlman in the Michael Caton-Jones-directed crime drama, Asher. The film tells the story of an aging hitman whose last job goes sideways, forcing him…
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Interview…Ludwig Göransson Goes the Distance with ‘Creed II’
2018 has been a tremendous year for Swedish-born Ludwig Göransson. He’s composed music to five films released this year alone to say nothing of his TV and songwriting credits. A phenomenal musician, and, seemingly, the hardest working man in the business, he’s quick to shrug off the praise, but his output is as varied as it is prolific. Humbly, Göransson says that he’s focused in the studio, and puts in long hours, but doesn’t work all night long. However he gets it done, Göransson‘s work speaks for itself, and his projects truly run the gamut. Ryan Coogler’s Creed didn’t just surprise us, it knocked us out cold. In short, the Creed films…
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Video Interview…Ella Hunt on the Music and Jolly Good Fun in ‘Anna and the Apocalypse’
Anna and the Apocalypse may be the only “Zombie Christmas Musical” you’ll ever see, but it will also be the best one. As such, we were thrilled that the lead, one Ella Hunt, was in Texas to promote the festival darling. We had an absolute blast interviewing the actor/singer/zombie slayer about the jolly good, sing-songy ride. John McPhail‘s indie favorite is a love-letter to, obviously, many different genre films. But it’s also a charming endeavor that really offers up something endearing, energetic and substantive in addition to the ingenious zombie kills, witty jokes, and memorable musical numbers. And they certainly cast Anna right. Ella Hunt has a natural, fun-loving charisma that translates…
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Video Interview…Rich Moore and Phil Johnston on ‘RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET’
Of all the Disney movies, princess or otherwise, Wreck-It Ralph is easily my favorite. And why wouldn’t it be? It is entertaining, highly inventive, hilarious, and infinitely quotable. Further, it was cast to perfection, has a fantastic score by Henry Jackman, and then, of course, there’s a great message for everyone – something Rich Moore and Phil Johnston seem to pull off effortlessly. We couldn’t wait for a follow up, but the above-pictured duo took a little detour from Litwak’s Arcade – to the lushly detailed animal kingdom of Zootopia – before outdoing themselves with Ralph and Vanellope’s second adventure on the big screen. But it was worth the wait, and it…
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Interview…Film Music Composer Andrew Morgan Smith on the Score of ‘You Might Be the Killer’
Andrew Morgan Smith is a veteran film music composer who has scored over twenty feature film and television projects. In the last five years, he has scored more than forty-five projects across all media. He has also worked with and provided additional music for Nathan Furst, the composer of Act of Valor and Need for Speed. Smith studied film composition under composer David Newman (Tarzan, Ice Age, Galaxy Quest, The Sandlot), and orchestrator Jack Smalley (Last of the Mohicans, The Mothman Prophecies, The Limey) at the 2010 Aspen Music Festival. As a multi-instrumentalist, he was classically trained in both composition and music media at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Smith…
