American composer James Horner (born August 14, 1953) was killed in a plane crash earlier this Monday at the age of 61. Horner – who became one of the leading film score composers of his generation – developed an interest in composition early in life, with his studies taking him to the Royal Academy of Music in London and the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles to study. Subsequent work with the American Film Institute (AFI) propelled him to highly prominent jobs in Hollywood at a young age. Horner would be nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning twice for Titanic’s original score and for Best Original Song for “My Heart Will Go On”.
Nine of the many films he worked on follow. Excerpts from each film score can be heard if you click on the link (left-right, descending):
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – directed by Nicholas Meyer; starring William Shatner, Ricardo Montalbán, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and Kirstie Alley
An American Tail (1986) – directed and co-produced by Don Bluth; starring the voices of Cathianne Blore, Dom DeLuise, John Finnegan, Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Madeline Kahn, and Christopher Plummer
Willow (1988) – directed by Ron Howard; starring Val Kilmer, Joanna Whalley, and Warwick Davis
The Land Before Time (1988) – directed and co-produced by Don Bluth; starring the voices of Gabriel Damon, Candace Huston, Judith Barsi, and Will Ryan
Glory (1989) – directed by Edward Zwick; starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes, Cliff De Young, Andre Braugher, and Jihmi Kennedy
The Rocketeer (1991) – directed by Joe Johnston; starring Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, and Timothy Dalton
Legends of the Fall (1994) – directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick; starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond, and Henry Thomas
Apollo 13 (1995) – directed by Ron Howard; starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris
Titanic (1997) – directed, co-produced, and written by James Cameron; starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci, David Warner, Bill Paxton, and Gloria Stuart
A story for all you Jurassic Park loving peeps out there. I learned about
this in my Disaster Response and Emergency Preparedness course that I
just started. In 1992, Jurassic Park was finishing filming on the
island of Kaua’i in Hawai’i. The final day was scheduled for September
11. However, brewing out in the Pacific and headed straight for Hawai’i
was Category 4 Hurricane Iniki. The crew had been keeping an eye on it,
but it was expected that Iniki would turn its course slightly. The
afternoon of September 10, however they were informed that it was going
to make landfall in a few hours, impacting Kaua’i with the main brunt of
it. The crew of hundreds was ordered into the basement of the hotel
they were staying in, and they waited it out that night. (Rather
hilariously, Richard Attenborough slept through the whole ordeal where
others were awake, huddled together and fearing for their lives. When
Spielberg asked him about it, he answered, “My dear boy, I survived the
blitz!” I guess after that, a little hurricane is just pleasant white
noise.) The next day, after the storm had passed, the whole island
was in shambles. Infrastructure was totally destroyed, electricity was
entirely knocked out, and radio service was down. The crew had escaped
harm, luckily, though the sets were totally destroyed. That’s actually
why we don’t see any of Ray Arnold’s journey to the power shed, because
that set was ruined during the storm. Anyway, I digress. The crew
comes out of their basement shelter to find total devastation and a city
in disarray. Even though help would be arriving soon, since the
National Weather Service had been monitoring the storm and knew the
island was hit, there would be no way for the relief efforts to begin
with the infrastructure so heavily damaged. Airstrips and landing pads
had also been demolished in the storm, and hospitals were without power.
There was also no (rather, just severely limited) way to move the
debris that was keeping citizens from aid. EXCEPT a gigantic, highly
skilled and intelligent film crew with lots of industrial equipment and
literally nothing better to do. Within hours of the storm’s
passing, the film crew personnel had dug out their bulldozers and
cranes, jury rigged up whatever else they needed from the animatronics,
and began blazing a path through the wreckage to the air strip where
they cleared the whole landing site, then began working on major city
streets. They also used their set generators to help restore power to
critical city functions, and their satellite phones to call for extra
assistance from the mainland (after they had evacuated their cast, of
course). Even though the ships and helicopters arrived to take the
crew home that day, as planned, many (if not most) of the crew stayed on
Kaua’i to assist in cleanup and relief efforts. It’s estimated by
Emergency Management officials and experts that if the crew had not been
there, the recovery efforts would have been delayed by as much as 3
weeks, as little as 3 days, and several hundred people would have died
in the aftermath of Hurricane Iniki.
Hollywood gets a bad rep for being selfish, but they can save lives and I think that’s really cool.
Crew guys are awesome.
the folks in a tv/movie crew are probably the most creative, innovative and resourceful people you’ll find – they can make miracles happen with a roll of duct tape, a bit of wire, and a 9-volt battery.
It’s about this dude Henry who’s an artist living in New York,
and he has to go back to his hometown in Montana to take care of his grandfather who just recently had a stroke and is wheelchair-bound.
Things are all fine and dandy until Henry finds out that his old best friend from high school, as well as object of his unrequited affections that he’s never really been able to let go of is also back in town. His name is Dean. He’s there with his two sons to recoup from a recent divorce from his wife.
Henry is extremely frazzled by seeing his long-time crush after so many years, but they spend a lot of time together over the passing weeks and seem to fall into their old friendship very easily. Perhaps a little too easily….??? hmmm???
And with everything with Dean happening, Henry can’t be blamed that he’s entirely oblivious to Pike, the man who runs the local general goods store.
It’s obvious to us (and the whole damn town) that Pike’s been head over heels for Henry since high school, but is painfully shy. He can barely talk to Henry at all and it’s the cuTEST GODDAMN THING oh lord help me from this movie.
Throughout the movie, Pike can’t seem to help himself from wanting nothing more than to make Henry happy from afar. He’s supposed to be delivering food cooked by one of the older ladies in town to Henry and his grandfather’s house to eat every night, but Pike cooks his own, exceptionally better meals, and delivers those instead and tells no one.
Now, Henry does notice Pike, and something about him catches his attention. Even if he doesn’t understand why yet. He tries to invite him to stay for dinner almost every night in an attempt to get him to open up, but Pike only becomes more closed off when he notices what’s going on between Henry and Dean.
I’ll stop there, as I don’t want to give the whole thing away, but I can’t leave this without talking about the town’s residents in this movie. This place is 100% one of those little towns where everyone knows each other as well as their business, you have nosy little old ladies, dudes who do nothing all day but sit on the porch of the corner store and smoke a pipe, and they all go to church on Sundays.
AND YET, not only is this movie void of any homophobia from any character, basically the whole freaking town is all up in this whole love triangle. They support Pike so much that there’s even scenes where they all play matchmaker with him and Henry. They root for them in the goofiest, most loveable way.
SO BASICALLY, this is a silly romantic comedy, except gay. It’s all super lighthearted comedy with tiny bits of drama thrown in. No one dies!!!! No one is killed or commits suicide and has a 100% happy ending!!! The three main guys are just normal guys!!! There’s not a stereotype to be found here!! anD ONE OF THEM IS NATIVE AMERICAN. No seriously guys it hurts me that not everybody knows about this movie. I discovered it when I was in middle school in our video store’s tiny little LGBTQ section, and must have rented it 20 times throughout the years before I finally bought it. I know this movie almost frame by frame I’ve watched it so many times because it’s just so disgustingly cute and always makes me happy. NOW, this movie isn’t perfect. It’s got some clunky acting, weird.. I guess artsy moments that don’t make sense, and crosses into the line of cheesy quite a few times, BUT, that’s really not important. This is treated exactly as if it were a het romantic comedy. Their being gay has nothing to do with the overall story, and is never brought up save for a small plotline where Henry is guilty with himself for never coming out to his grandfather. But overall, more LGBTQ movies need to be like this, it’s just way too rare.
GO WATCH IT YOU’LL BE GLAD YOU DID. Sadly, the only way I know to get ahold of it is to just buy the DVD. But it’s fairly cheap on Amazon! And even cheaper if you buy it used on there, but either way I promise it’s worth it to own. Like I said, I think I kept our video store in business from my renting it so many times.
Oh, and I hope you enjoy country music to some extent because this has the countriest soundtrack of all time.
Miss Judi and I are going to see Wonder Woman Saturday, and I know it had a few bad reviews in advance, but that’s because men are garbage and write garbage reviews whenever they feel left out. I’m excited to see a female super hero movie directed by a woman, and she is catching all kinds of pressure because the movie cost a lot to make, as if men aren’t handed enormous budgets all the time with no track record in that kind of scale. Basically even if I didn’t want to see it, I probably still would since I don’t want it to flop, because even if it’s bad (and it’s probably great!) women should have the same opportunity to flop as men and not have it be a reflection on their entire gender.
Erik Davis is the managing editor of Fandango and he is also doing the Lord’s Work out here in these Internet Streets pointing out this ridiculous double standard. Team Erik Davis on today.
The Breadwinner: Parvana is a 12-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in
Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is arrested, Parvana dresses as a
boy in order to work and provide for her family. Together with her best
friend Shauzia, she risks discovery to try to find out if her father is
still alive.
okay, so if i were to write the academy award-winning and world peace-establishing screenplay where Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Vin Diesel slowly fall in love, this is what it would look like:
vin and dwayne would be bitter Rival Agents for an intelligence agency. both would be up for a Big Promotion. they would both be working together (but against each other) on something something black market mafia. the mafia would be involved. they would be VERY CLOSE to cracking this case.
whoever cracks the case gets the promotion! because things like this are always very clear-cut in movies. and whoever gets the promotion is the Better Agent, and it’s settled forever.
what they don’t expect is when they finally go in to make the Big Bust on The Family is that the Big Players will still be at large–and there will be a BABY.
the baby will fall into agency custody, and will require surveillance in a remote safehouse.
“i need YOU TWO to pretend and be this baby’s GAY DADS to protect the baby and keep The Family off our tail while we close in on them,” says Head Intelligence Captain Lupita Nyong’o.
dwayne and vin and baby are begrudgingly moved to a suburb of provincetown, massachusetts. cut to shot of a FOR SALE sign being pulled down, a ford fusion hybrid pulling up behind a moving van. dwayne and vin step out. they are both wearing muscle shirts and mirror-lensed aviators. dwayne grabs a baby bag, throws it over his shoulder. vin grabs the car seat out of the back, and both of them walk-slow motion up the side walk to their new 800k beach house.
here’s what they expect: passive aggressive co-existence for a couple of weeks, where they try to be the Better Dad in a bid for the promotion they both want. dwayne will go jogging with the baby every morning!! vin will wear her in a sling when he goes to the farmer’s market and smiles at the vendors while feeling up avocados and selecting fresh caught filets of fish!!
here’s what they don’t expect: their next door neighbors are going to be Channing Tatum and Idris Elba and their five beautiful, interracial babies. they are the perfect Gay Family, but “also,” dwayne says, pushing vin inside from where he’s been grilling steaks and drinking MILLER out of a CAN in broad daylight for the Real Gay Family to see and call over from their patio!!! “these guys are the REAL DEAL. they’re gonna know something’s up! i know we’ve had our beef, but we gotta step our game up and work together if we’re gonna make this operation work.”
“you’re right,” vin says. he’s nodding, looking at a ground, but then up and meeting dwayne’s gaze. “you’re RIGHT.” they’re gonna make this partnership work!!! they are going to be the BEST GAY DADS.
CUT TO: vin and dwayne staring at the king sized mattress in the master bedroom. “i can just–” vin says, but dwayne grabs him by the shoulder and shakes it playfully. “no man,” he says. “it’s all in or nothing.”
CUT TO: them jogging together with baby playfully squealing from her stroller early in the morning.
CUT TO: vin playfully feeding dwayne grapes at the farmer’s market. “it’s all or nothing,” he repeats, raising his eyebrows (???? eyebrow folds? idk man). dwayne rolls his eyes and TAKES THE BITE.
CUT TO: channing tatum in monogrammed shorts and pink polo and boat shoes on their front door step with one of his many perfect, precious toddlers on his shoulders, asking them to dinner. “uh yeah,” dwayne says, cool as a cucumber. he’s not freaking out (he’s totally freaking out!!). “we’ll bring the wine.”
“we’ll bring the wine?” vin repeats, in a hushed voice so the neighbors and baby don’t hear them fighting. “do you know anything about wine? they probably have a second house in france! i haven’t had anything that didn’t come from a box since–since ever! what were you thinking?” “i panicked! it seemed like the right thing to say!”
TIRES SCREECH as the ford focus hybrid drifts into the whole foods parking lot.
they show up out of breath, foreheads glistening, with baby in her favorite babybjorn, feet kicking from the day’s excitement of wine shopping. vin, wheezing, passes a bottle of red and a bottle of white.
“oh, a chateau coutet barsac,” idris says with a chuckle, showing the label to channing. “remember that time–?” and oh my GOD, they have inside jokes!!
(”we don’t have any inside jokes!!” dwayne whispers when they immediately excuse themselves halfway through a tour of the house. “that’s because you are the least funny person i know!” vin replies. “god, i hate you!!!” they both probably hiss at each other.)
the worst and best part of the night is when they’re serving the roast veg salad, and channing says with the best intentions, “so, how did you two meet?”
“uh,” vin says.
“the gym,” dwayne says. which, actually turns out to be true. they look at each other, smile soft and genuine for once at each other, REMEMBERING. before they were BITTER RIVALS, they met at the academy gym and were GYM BUDDIES. they used to have FUN trying to beat each other’s PR on the treadmill, they used to LOVE shit talking each other when they spotted each other bench pressing, they used to snap towels at each other’s asses in the locker room and totally not check each other out or anything!!! and then they were both accepted to the same position at work and they stopped being friendly for whatever reason. they stop smiling, they look away from each other. “anyway.”
“we met building houses for habitat for humanity,” idris offers, because of COURSE THEY DID.
the second worst part of the night is when channing mentions during the dessert course that two weeks from now is the annual May Day Homeowner’s Neighborhood Block Party Crab Cookoff, and maybe dwayne and vin would like to host to get to know everyone else in the neighborhood!
vin has had like, three more glasses of wine than everyone else, and with aid of liquid confidence, shrugs his shoulders and leans back in his chair and says, “yeah, man, we’d love to.”
“’yeah, man, we’d love to?’” dwayne repeats when they’re walking home, baby asleep in her bjorn.
“sorry, did you want me to give ourselves away? what happened to being the best? we’re trying to be believable!”
“yeah,” dwayne says, watching vin strip off his shirt and pants and toss them over his shoulder into their spare hamper before crawling into their bed. it’s routine. they both have their sides of the bed. “believable.”
the bedroom is quiet as they face away from each other at the edges of the mattress. eventually dwayne asks, “do you remember why we stopped being friends?”
for a second he thinks maybe vin’s gone to sleep. but he turns over. “no,” he says. “or yeah, maybe. as soon as i realized we would both be seeing action, it became too much of a risk. friendship. it was easier to lose you as a friend on my terms than lose you as a friend because you got your dumbass killed.”
they decide to be friends again. you know, for the baby. for work. whatever.
they get so caught up in planning the May Day Homeowner’s Neighborhood Block Party Crab Cookoff, making inside jokes and ignoring the increasing casual physical intimacy between them that they don’t realize they are BEING WATCHED.
the mafia is HERE and they want their BABY and they want dwayne and vin DEAD.
the M.D.H.N.B.P.C.C happens and everything is going according to plan, and they are about to have dwayne judge the bisque portion of the competition, but no one has seen dwayne anywhere!!!!
are there warehouses in provincetown??? is there a bad part of provincetown??? anyways, that’s probably where the mafia took dwayne. vin is FREAKING OUT, how does he save dwayne??? how does he protect the baby, who they are using dwayne as ransom for??? who will judge the bisque portion of the crab cookoff???
idris puts a hand on his shoulder. he’s been watching the entire time. “i’ll take the baby into our panic room–” OF COURSE THEY HAVE A PANIC ROOM, “and channing will judge the bisque portion of the crab cookofff. you go save your man.”
CUT TO: vin getting geared up to go out and kick some mafia ass, entering their walk-in closet and grabbing GUNS and a BULLET PROOF VEST and lacing up his L.L BEAN MEN’S GORETEX LEATHER BOOTS.
vin takes out the entire warehouse-or-whatever of mafia lackeys and comes across dwayne tied up and blindfolded.
“who’s there!” dwayne demands, like he’s ready to fight despite himself. vin takes three strong steps forward and grabs him by the back of the head and pulls him in for a kiss. “guess who,” he replies. dwayne smiles.
just then the Final Boss shows up as dwayne is being untied and like, something dramatic happens or whatever, but it’s okay. they die or go to jail or something, it doesn’t really matter, because dwayne and vin are in LOVE and they’re gonna adopt the hell out of that baby.
CUT TO: a month later. Head Intelligence Captain Lupita Nyong’o is disappointed when vin won’t accept his promotion.
“i would,” he says, heavily decorated for saving dwayne in the field and taking down the mafia family. “but the code of conduct says that it would be a conflict of interest if i was my husband’s supervisor.” BAM! THE END. THEY’RE MARRIED. WORLD PEACE UNLOCKED. DONALD TRUMP IMPEACHED. EVERYONE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
Went and saw Beauty and the Beast, and I just had to share my experience because it was so pure?
So, like, I get into the theater, find myself a nice spot smack dab midscreen, which is WAY EASIER without thirty people traipsing in behind you in a group, lemme tell you, and I’m just sitting there, by my lonesome, scrolling tumblr and watching whatever weird stuff they’ve got on screen, and a family comes to sit in my row, which was the only empty one not right in front of the screen. Sat down what I thought was a seat away from me until I saw a little girl in an adorable ass red dress climbing over mom and dad to sit next to me.
Totally fine. I was just off of center and they got to sit right in the middle of the screen, and when she finally gets settled this little girl looks up at me, with a soda half her size in one hand, and somehow both popcorn and candy in her tiny little lap, and she stage whispers to her mom:
“She’s by herself!”
Mom looks embarrassed, but I smile and wave off the apology.
I go back to my phone, only to realize someone is tugging at my sleeve. Little girl looks up at me, all wide eyes and curiosity, and holds out a napkin filled with popcorn and chocolate. Like, I remember being a kid, and I remember how important candy and popcorn at the theater are, and I think she thought she was saving my life by offering this sustenance.
I almost fucking cried guys, kids are the best.
So I take it and thank her and let her talk my ear off for a few minutes until she needs a drink because she has been talking SO MUCH her mouth is dry. This kid is going places, guys, I’m telling you right now, because she picked up that cup the size of her torso like a champ and angled the straw just right and continued to try to talk to me around her gulps.
While this is happening, on the other side of me another mom and daughter sat down, and, turns out, the girls know each other. I’m guessing, based on the gumption of Red Dress, that they probably met in the lobby before they went into the theater.
Girl number 2, I’ll call her Princess Dress, because it was a fantastic dress and when I told her so she proceeded to point to every princess along the neck and name them and give me their Stats, proceeds to have a conversation across me with Red Dress.
Both sets of parents were looking like they wanted to bury their heads in their hands, but I was having a blast.
Anyway, eventually lights go down, we get into the movie, and for the most part Red and Princess were content, although every so often Red made sure to pass me a handful of sticky half-melted chocolate.
Watching a live action version of a movie that I watched for the first time when I was their age was a fuckin’ trip, man. Like. I got super emotional over things I didn’t expect to, and during the wolf scenes I was actually mildly distressed, because Princess was gripping the hand rest so hard on my right I thought she was gonna break it. Any scene I laughed or snorted at got a peal of laughter from my two new best friends, so hopefully no one has to go home and explain why I nearly snorted out my drink during “Be Our Guest” when they went for a visual gag for “After all miss, this is France!”.
During the ballroom scene, Red turned to her mom and whispered “The Beast is handsome!” and it took so much for me not to lean over and whisper back “Girl same.”
But my favorite, MY VERY FAVORITE part of this whole experience was when Gaston shot the Beast – FOR THE THIRD TIME HOLY HELL I KNEW IT WAS DARK BUT GODDAMN THIS IS A KIDS MOVIE ISN’T IT – Red patted my arm because yeah, okay, I was maybe crying a little, look, I know what happens but the movie made me feel things okay. Anyway, she like, pushes herself up in her seat and leans in close and she goes “It’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.”
The point is, children are so pure, and everyone should always watch movies with strangers.
I am all for poc being cast in roles that highlight their cultural history and struggles
But can we also campaign for giving poc roles that are about an average person with average problems????? Roles that are given to white people by default…….
A black girl in a romance movie where the greatest obstacle isn’t her race and the greatest reward isn’t that she ends up with the white dude…….
A romantic comedy where all the poc characters aren’t stereotyped by what Hollywood classifies as their culture…..
A coming of age story starring a diverse group of children instead of a token (stereotyped) minority character…..
Can we make movies that don’t make the family dynamics in black or latinx culture dramatic or toxic?????
Can we have more Muslim representation in general????????
Can we show non-christian religions as more than oppressive?????
Can we give poc more roles than the ones that were “written for them”?????
Can we make movies showing the true diversity of society rather than trying to convince ppl that poc are just sprinkles in a white world ????????
Steel Phoenix Studios 