Danny Elfman let his muse run free for Serenada Schizophrana, a symphony commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra in New York. Following the world premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2005, Sony Classical has released the work as a CD/SACD (Super Audio CD). Scored for three flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, six F... 
Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy has always been about scale: epic grandeur in cinemas, extended editions appearing in theatres and on DVD and, of late, the Complete Recordings editions of Howard Shore's Oscar-winning soundtracks. Though The Two Towers score suffered from the Academy's brief embargo on nominating scores... Since 1999, SF Indiefest has provided a venue for quirky and "homeless" films. Though some of those films end up with distributors or even a wide release, the fest prides itself on championing little films from the heart and the guts (Sundance's shadow, the Slamdance Film Festival, provided some inspiration in this regard). In fact, SF Indie hosts... 
Bates furthers his postmodern push to enhance conventional orchestral scoring with the electric energy of rock music. 
The Year's Best Films 1. Away from Her 2. Brand Upon the Brain! 3. 3:10 to Yuma 4. Forever 5. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 6. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 7. No Country for Old Men 8. Ratatouille 9. Persepolis 10. Syndromes and a Century
Runners-up: Into the Wild, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I'm Not There, The Savage... 
For the complete skinny on countless hours of "fanboy" programming, head on over to www.comic-con.org.
This year's Wonder-Con—to be held at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center Feb. 22-24, 2008—brings Hollywood back to SF once more. Among the many Special Guests are Steve Carell & Anne Hathaway (Get Smart); James McAvoy (Wante... On this page, you'll find my picks for the "Top 10 Best Films" of each year at the movies. For my eligibility guideline, I use the American Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences criteria of films which had premiere U.S. theatrical runs (of at least one week) between January 1 and December 31 of each year, including, of course, foreign films w... The 46th San Francisco International Film Festival played at the AMC Kabuki and Castro Theatres in SF, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and--for the first time--at Palo Alto's CineArts Theatre.
Of the festival's films, I screened John Malkovich's accomplished The Dancer Upstairs (Click for review.), the dazzling Winged Migration (Click fo... THIS YEAR'S PROGRAM:
The 2003 festival (lucky 13) runs from Thursday, Feb. 27-Sunday, Mar. 9.
The festival will screen over 60 feature films in 11 days. The complete
program guide is available online at the Cinequest web site. The
Maverick tributees this year are actors James Woods (Mar. 1), Lupe
Ontiveros (Mar. 5), William H. Macy (Mar. 7),... As in recent years, the "home" of the festival is the AMC Kabuki 8, though other venues include the glorious Castro Theatre and, stretching into other corners of the Bay Area, the
invaluable Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and Landmark's Park Theatre in
Menlo Park.
With the 45th fest looming, naysayers whispered about the festival's new... The 2002 festival (the twelfth one) ran from Feb. 21-Mar. 3. The festival screened over 60 feature films in 12 days. Of those, I saw 35 films in 11 days. Excepting Dirty Harry, the film presentations were fine, though the festival occasionally had trouble sticking to its schedule. The crop of films was a solid one, and the tribute events impressive... 