Topic: Michel Legrand
Jasper Rees meets the soundtrack composer Michel Legrand, who abandoned Hollywood for a more interesting life and at 75 is about to put on his first stage musical. Legrand's previous musicals have been for the screen. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was an unexpected success in 1964. Initially working as an orchestrator, his earliest triumph was I Love Paris, a set of jazz standards which sold seven million copies in two years. Columbia paid Legrand $200 up front. MORE
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Topic: Dimitri Tiomkin
Born May 10, 1899, near Poltava, Ukraine - died Nov. 11, 1979, London, England... For a composer who hailed from the Ukraine, Dimitri Tiomkin sure loved the old west. Like the great concert hall composers who blazed a new musical path in the untamed wilderness of Hollywood, Tiomkin had been fed on the operatic strains of Wagner’s demigods and dragons - a melodically muscular sound that he capably transferred to such purely American heroes as the brave sheriff, daring cowboy, and stand-by-your-man farmwife. It was an epic sound that filled such memorable westerns as DUEL IN THE SUN, RED RIVER, RIO BRAVO, THE UNFORGIVEN and GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K CORRAL. But perhaps none of Tiomkin’s western scores has had the epic cache of HIGH NOON. Gary Cooper was the lawman left alone by a cowardly town to face off against a villainous posse - a huge metaphor at the 1952 time for leftie film intellectuals abandoned to the anti-Commie witch hunts. But never mind all that, as Tiomkin’s score for HIGH NOON is concerned with the western here-and-now of a stalwart sheriff faced with impossible odds, a tremendously suspenseful sound that’s now heard in its original glory on this Screen Archives release.
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Topic: TIME-LIFE
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Oscar Winning Composer dies...LEONARD ROSENMAN
Topic: Leonard Rosenman
Leonard Rosenman, a two-time Oscar-winning composer who was credited with helping to modernize film music in the 1950s and '60s, died Tuesday [4 MAR 08] of a heart attack at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 83. Rosenman composed the scores for about four dozen films including the James Dean classics "East of Eden" and "Rebel Without a Cause," as well as such science-fiction films as "Fantastic Voyage" and "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" and period pieces including "A Man Called Horse." He won back-to-back Oscars in 1975 and 1976 for adapting the classical music of "Barry Lyndon" and the Woody Guthrie songs of "Bound for Glory." He also received Oscar nominations for the original music of the mid-1980s films "Cross Creek" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and a Golden Globe nomination for his music for the 1978 animated version of "The Lord of the Rings."

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Topic: Chris Young
Lakeshore Records will release the original motion picture soundtrack for UNTRACEABLE. The album contains original music by Christopher Young. Consumer Information Golden Globe-nominated composer Christopher Young has scored almost 100 successful features ranging across virtually every genre, all with strikingly original music. Never repeating himself, Young's works extend from the spine-tingling HELLRAISER showcasing his seminal upbringing in horror; to the new-techno sound of SWORDFISH and the resonant, genuine Celtic sounds of THE SHIPPING NEWS. With each successive Christopher Young crafted score, the composer continually stretches the bounds of his versatility. In 2007, Young reunited with director Curtis Hanson for LUCKY YOU and two films based on Marvel Comic characters; Sony Pictures, GHOSTRIDER and the summer blockbuster, SPIDERMAN 3. In addition to his busy film-composing schedule, Young is imparting his experience and knowledge to a new generation of film composers, teaching at USC since the early Nineties. Within the FBI there exists a division dedicated to investigating and prosecuting criminals on the internet. Welcome to the front lines of the war on cybercrime, where Special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) has seen it all . until now. A tech-savvy internet predator is displaying his graphic murders on his own website - and the fate of each of his tormented captives is left in the hands of the public: the more hits the site gets, the faster his victims die. When this game of cat and mouse becomes personal, Marsh and her team must race against the clock to track down the technical mastermind who is virtually untraceable.

Topic: Alan Menken
If it truly is a pleasure just to be nominated for an Oscar, Alan Menken must be Hollywood's happiest man. The co-composer of songs from Walt Disney's musical hit "Enchanted" has three of the five nominations in the original-song category at Sunday's Academy Awards.
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Topic: BARNES & NOBLE

Topic: John Powell
Lakeshore Records will release the original motion picture soundtrack for JUMPER on iTunes February 12th and in stores on February 19th. The album features original music by John Powell (UNITED 93, SHREK). SHOP for it at amazon.com Composer John Powell has written music for animated films (HAPPY FEET, SHREK, ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN) and comedies (PLUTO NASH, ALFIE, MR. 3000) but is probably best known for his work in the action film genre on such films as MR. AND MRS. SMITH, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, FACE/OFF, THE ITALIAN JOB, and the BOURNE series of films (THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM). Powell's work on these action scores seamlessly blends orchestral and electronic elements. The British born Powell began originally trained as a violinist. In 1995 he founded a London based commercial music house before moving to the United States 2 years later. He is one of the best known former members of the Remote Control (formerly Media Ventures) team of composers, where he first teamed with Harry Gregson-Williams, his collaborator on several scores (ANTZ, CHICKEN RUN, SHREK). From the director of MR. & MRS. SMITH and THE BOURNE IDENTITY, Doug Liman, comes JUMPER. A genetic anomaly allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. He discovers this gift has existed for centuries, and finds himself in a war that has been raging for thousands of years between "jumpers" and those who have sworn to kill them. The film stars Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, and Diane Lane, based on the novels by Steven Gould.

Topic: Carter Burwell
Lakeshore Records album features original music by Carter Burwell (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, GODS AND MONSTERS). IN BRUGES was the film that opened the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.... BUY it at Amazon.com Composer Carter Burwell began composing for film in the mid-1980s for the Coen Brothers first feature film, BLOOD SIMPLE. This has lead to a twenty year collaboration on such films as FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?, and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Burwell's credits also include BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, VELVET GOLDMINE, THE SPANISH PRISONER, and THREE KINGS. IN BRUGES was filmed on location; Bruges (pronounced "broozh"), the most well-preserved medieval city in the whole of Belgium, is a welcoming destination for travelers from all over the world. But for hit men Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), it could be their final destination; a difficult job has resulted in the pair being ordered right before Christmas by their London boss Harry (two-time Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes) to go and cool their heels in the storybook Flemish city for a couple of weeks. But the longer they stay waiting for Harry's call, the more surreal their experience becomes, as they find themselves in weird encounters with locals, tourists, violent medieval art, a dwarf American actor (Jordan Prentice) shooting a European art film, Dutch prostitutes, and a potential romance for Ray in the form of Chloë (Clémence Poésy), who may have some dark secrets of her own. And when the call from Harry does finally come, Ken and Ray's vacation becomes a life-and-death struggle of darkly comic proportions and surprisingly emotional consequences.