With Oscar-nominated A Beautiful Mind immediately following Iris (2002), James Horner has captured the tiny market in true-life stories of exceptionally talented individuals with mental health problems. As such, the two scores cannot help but be closely compared, with some of the lyrical English folk-flavoured melodic material from Iris being reworked here. This is, though, a ...
James Horner was faced with an unusual challenge when he composed the score for Iris, a film about author Iris Murdoch's descent into Alzheimer's disease. In the movie, two actresses play the role of Murdoch and scenes constantly shift between those showing the novelist as a young woman, played by Kate Winslet, and as an old, dying woman, played by Judi Dench. Horner solves the musical ...
These sunny, lucid performances are the best Aaron Copland has ever given us of his own music. In truth, he was not a great conductor, and much of the credit for the success of this disc must go to the Boston Symphony--the orchestra that, along with the New York Philharmonic, has been most closely associated with Copland's music. In addition to the lovely Appalachian Spring ballet, ...
Jim Carrey is up to all his old tricks (and some nifty new ones) in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, a live-action film of Dr Seuss's holiday classic. Under a thick carpet of green-dyed yak fur and wonderfully expressive Rick Baker makeup, he commands the title role with equal parts madness, mayhem, pathos and improvisational genius, channelling Grinchness through his own screen persona so ...