Tag: orchestra

Ennio: The Maestro
(Ennio)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 April 2022
No Comments on Ennio: The Maestro
(Ennio)

Director – Giuseppe Tornatore – 2021 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 156m

****

Documentary Ennio: The Maestro looks at the career of Italian film composer Ennio Morricone – out in cinemas on Friday, April 22nd

It’s difficult to know where to start with Ennio Morricone, whose career in film music covers some 70 years. Tornatore adopts the chronological approach, starting with his early life. The composer’s father was a trumpeter who pushed young Ennio to learn that same instrument, leading to entry into Rome’s Santa Cecilia Conservatory where he studied both trumpet and composition. His father had raised him with a strong work ethic – using the trumpet to feed your family – and much of his early work was as a trumpeter on movie soundtrack sessions, including Othello (Orson Welles, 1951).

His wife secured him a brief stint at TV channel RAI where she was working, but on being told that he wouldn’t be able to perform anything recorded there anywhere else, Morricone quit almost immediately. Inspired by seeing experimental composer John Cage perform live, he formed the Nuovo Consonanza Improvisation Group to experiment with what he called “traumatic sounds”. This approach would inform a number of his later soundtracks.… Read the rest

Tags ¡Queimada!, A Fistful Of Dollars, A Quiet Place In The Country, arpeggio, Brian De Palma, Bruce Springsteen, Burn!, chronology, Cinema Paradiso, Clint Eastwood, composition, conservatory, counterpoint, Dario Argento, documentarian, documentary filmmaker, Edda Dell’Orso, Elio Petri, Ennio Morricone, experimental music, fathers and sons, feed your family, For a Few Dollars More, Four Flies On Grey Velvet, gangster movie, Gillo Pontecorvo, Giuliano Montaldo, Giuseppe Tornatore, Glenn Phillips, Gunfight In The Red Sands, Hollywood, I Cannibali, Il Barattolo, improvisation, Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion, Italy, Joan Baez, John Cage, La Scorta, Legend Of 1900, Liliana Cavali, maestro, Metallica, movies, Nuovo Consonanza, Nuovo Consonanza Improvisation Group, Once Upon A Time In America, Once Upon A Time In The West, orchestra, Orson Welles, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Quentin Tarantino, RAI, RCA, recording session, Ricki Tognazzi, Roland Joffé, Rome, Sacco & Vanzetti, Salvatore Argento, Santa Cecilia Conservatory, school, Sergio Leone, soundtrack, Terrence Malick, The Bad And The Ugly, The Battle Of Algiers, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, The Cat O’ Nine Tails, The Good, The Hateful Eight, The Hawks And The Sparrows, The Mission, The Untouchables, The Year Of The Cannibals, traumatic sounds, trumpet, tumpeter, TV, US, Western, work ethic, Yojimbo

Features Live Action Movies

Babyteeth

Director – Shannon Murphy – 2019 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

In cinemas from Friday, August 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, December 7th

Uniformed schoolgirl Milla (Eliza Scanlen) stands on a platform ill at ease with her classmates. The train comes in. Before she can move to get on it, someone has knocked into her rushing past to stand close to the passing train. It’s Moses (Toby Wallace), unkempt in shorts and tee shirt. He asks her for money. He points out she has a nosebleed, cradles her on the ground, puts his tee over her mouth and jaw… to catch the blood.

Milla’s psychiatrist father Henry (Ben Mendelson) has a home session with a patient that turns into sex on a desk. This is his wife Anna (Essie Davis) who is on medication and has mental problems. They have another problem as a family: their daughter has cancer.

When Milla brings Moses into her parents’ comfortable suburban family home, they take an immediate dislike to him. This reaction is compounded by his habit of stealing medications from their home to sell later on the street. Nevertheless, he will be around the home more and more and by the end will be to all intents and purposes living there with Henry and Anna’s consent.… Read the rest

Tags assisted suicide, Australia, cancer, drugs, family, medication, meds, musician, orchestra, parents and children, pianist, psychiatrist, relationships, school, sex, suburban, trust, wig

Features Live Action Movies

Departures
(Okuribito,
おくりびと)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 4 December 2009
No Comments on Departures
(Okuribito,
おくりびと)

Director – Yojiro Takita – 2008 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 130m

*****

An unemployed cellist finds himself working on the encoffination of corpses prior to their cremation – in cinemas Friday, December 4th 2009

Winner of 2009’s Best Foreign Film Oscar (and numerous other awards besides), this Japanese entry is a rarity in that it deals head on with death not in its horrific or violent aspects (as in numerous horror and action movies) but in a life ritual as significant as birth. Death being the last great contemporary Western taboo, we in the West ought to pay attention.

Daigo (Masahiro Motokii – Gemini, Shinya Tsukamoto, 1999) loses his new job as a cellist when the Tokyo orchestra employing him is dissolved, leaving him with a young wife to support and repayments on an expensive cello to find. Selling the instrument, the couple move back to his small home town where Daigo’s late mother has left him a house in her will.

Seeking work, he answers an ad dealing with ‘departures’, believing it a travel agency. The ad should however have read ‘the departed’, because he’s required to deal with the encoffination of corpses prior to their cremation, preparing the bodies for entry into the next life.… Read the rest