DoctorZhivago Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Composer Maurice Jarre Passes Away
Filed under: Music & Musicals », DIY/Filmmaking », Newsstand », Obits »
The week starts with some unhappy news, as the AFP reports that Academy Award composor Maurice Jarre has passed away at the age of 84. He wrote music for over 150 films, and many of them for the great directors: John Frankenheimer, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Luchino Visconti, David Lean, and Peter Weir.
In his long career, he was nominated for an Oscar nine times, and took home three. His three Oscar wins were for what are probably his most recognizable scores: Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and Passage to India. Doctor Zhivago will alwaos be one of my favorites, and despite that Lara's Theme has been much abused over the years (Roger Ebert calls it one of his least favorite pieces, and Jarre himself was annoyed at the overuse of it in the film), it's a score is just pure sweeping, tragic romance.
Here's a collection someone on YouTube put together of his "greatest hits", below the jump are two of my favorites. One is naturally Doctor Zhivago, but my favorite part is at 1:38.
Please feel free to link to some of your favorites in the comments, it'd be great to hear them.
* ETA As an astute commenter pointed out, he was not the composer for Danny Boyle's Sunshine, but the 1999 István Szabó film. I read his filmography too fast. My apologies.
* ETA Apparently, the quote was a hoax. Thanks for cheapening one man's death for a social media experiment, sir.
Discuss: Movies That Are Better Than the Books
Filed under: Fandom »
When a studio in Hollywood snatches up your favorite book, I think you die a little inside. How many fantastic novels have been rewritten, gutted, misrepresented, and utterly destroyed in their big screen adaptations? Too many to count, right? You could probably devote a film blog to documenting them all. But every once and awhile, a movie comes along that is actually better than the book. It's rare, but it does happen. As we have a fair number of film and book fans browsing our fair site, I'd like to know which adaptations you think make this elusive category.
I'll give you two of my own to start -- and I'll probably cause a flame war just for my opinions on T.H. White. I'm a medievalist at heart, and a junkie for the fantasy genre, who eagerly picked up a copy of The Once and Future King one summer as a break from studying Old and Middle English. I thought it was a crime I hadn't read it, since I do own multiple copies of the Morte d'Arthur and promised my professor I would read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the North Midlands dialect someday.
I expected to be blown away, to sneer at Disney's milquetoast adaptation, and put it there alongside my umpteen copies of Chaucer. Instead, I could barely get past the cat boiling, the threats against Questing Beasts and hedgehogs, and the blatant misogyny. (Guinevere is a basket case because she can't have kids!) Disney's The Sword and the Stone may not be my favorite film, it may not even rank among the greats of animation, but it's better than The Once and Future King -- if only because it lacks cat torture and misogyny. (It does, however, lack Robin Hood, which is the highest point of White's novel for me.)
I'll give you two of my own to start -- and I'll probably cause a flame war just for my opinions on T.H. White. I'm a medievalist at heart, and a junkie for the fantasy genre, who eagerly picked up a copy of The Once and Future King one summer as a break from studying Old and Middle English. I thought it was a crime I hadn't read it, since I do own multiple copies of the Morte d'Arthur and promised my professor I would read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the North Midlands dialect someday.
I expected to be blown away, to sneer at Disney's milquetoast adaptation, and put it there alongside my umpteen copies of Chaucer. Instead, I could barely get past the cat boiling, the threats against Questing Beasts and hedgehogs, and the blatant misogyny. (Guinevere is a basket case because she can't have kids!) Disney's The Sword and the Stone may not be my favorite film, it may not even rank among the greats of animation, but it's better than The Once and Future King -- if only because it lacks cat torture and misogyny. (It does, however, lack Robin Hood, which is the highest point of White's novel for me.)
RIP: Producer Carlo Ponti (1912-2007)
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », Obits », Cinematical Indie »
Oscar season is upon us and with it comes the discussion of film legends who never won an Academy Award. While on this topic, it is important to acknowledge how many great producers are ignored by Oscar due to the fact that foreign films are rarely nominated for Best Picture. Carlo Ponti was such a great producer, and with his death today, he misses the opportunity of ever receiving an Academy Award, even a lifetime achievement honor.Ponti is not well known, but he should be. Aside from the fact that he discovered Sophia Loren, whose film career he jump-started and who he married (twice -- kind of), he also produced films for many of the masters of cinema, including Antonioni (Blow Up; Zabriskie Point; The Passenger), Fellini (La Strada), de Sica (basically any of his starring Loren), Demy (Lola), Godard (A Woman is a Woman; The Riflemen; Contempt), Polanski (What?), Melville (Le Doulos; The Forgiven Sinner), Forman (The Fireman's Ball), Varda (Cléo from 5 to 7) and Lean (Doctor Zhivago). Some of his films were nominated for the foreign language Oscar, and a couple won the award, but Ponti was only nominated once, for Zhivago, in the Best Picture category (which is oftentimes considered the Best Producer category). Of course, he did get to help his wife win an Oscar, at least -- for de Sica's Two Women.
Sundance Announces the 2010 US and World Competition Lineups!
3D Sequels for 'Zombieland' and 'Jackass' Confirmed_thumbnail.jpg)
Everything You Need to Know About Peter Berg's 'Battleship'_thumbnail.jpg)
Celebs Return to Their Most Iconic Roles for Photo Shoot
Check Out Concept Art From Marvel's Futuristic Theme Park
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
