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…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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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…
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[Fantastic Fest Interview]…Director Adesh Prasad and Composer Jesper Kyd on ‘Tumbbad’
In the rural village of Tumbbad, young Vinayak has heard the stories of an ancient fortune held by his family for years, but is warned against attempting to attain the treasure lest he fall victim to the demon who guards it. He instead cares for his great-grandmother, a decrepit crone who must remain sated or her appetites might just claim them all. When she dies and he inherits the treasures housed inside a decaying estate, Vinayak discovers that they are not exactly what he expected, but instead an endless bounty protected by a vengeful and ravenous fallen god. While at Fantastic Fest 2018, we sat down with writer-director Adesh Prasad…
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Hans Zimmer to Receive Max Steiner Award During Hollywood in Vienna Gala
Hans Zimmer’s illustrious career has spanned over 150 film and television projects and encompasses about every genre and popular film franchise one can think about, from “Driving Miss Daisy” to “The Dark Knight” and from “The Lion King” to “Dunkirk”. Hollywood in Vienna CEO and Founder Sandra Tomek is proud to announce that Academy Award, Tony Award, 2-time Golden Globe and 3-time Grammy Winner Hans Zimmer will be honored with the 2018 Max Steiner Award in Vienna during the Annual Hollywood in Vienna Concert Gala. It is such an honor to be celebrated and receive this award – it lauds the contributions the composer has made to the industry and cements…
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Director Matt Schrader and Team Launch SCORE: The Podcast
A few years ago, we got to speak with Matt Schrader while he was in the thick of amassing his one-of-a-kind feature film, SCORE: A Film Music Documentary. While things were a work in progress, Schrader offered up plenty – everything from his love of film scores, the impetus for the doc as well as the staggering number of high-profile artists he had already sat with. Check out that insightful piece here. When the film finally hit theaters (during a very successful run on the film festival circuit and beyond), the doc was ever so much more than discerning, demanding and devout film score fans expected. For all involved, calling…
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Interview…Carl Thiel Composes Big Themes for Small Town Heroes in ‘Lazer Team 2’
Austin-based composer/musician Carl Thiel is a great friend of the site, and we love chatting with him about his film scores. An accomplished musician in his own right, Carl has made a name for himself working with Robert Rodriguez and on many films under the Troublemaker Studios banner and the El Rey Network. In past interviews, Carl has talked to us about doing work outside that umbrella s flexing his other musical muscles. Now you can take the man out of genre films, but you can’t take the genre film out of the man. As such, Carl is getting to try some new things with his score to Lazer Team 2, the…
