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A new movie set in the Bronx, featuring rising young star Asante Blackk, turned heads at the SXSW festival this past week.
This year’s edition of the South By Southwest Festival (SXSW) held in Austin, Texas was a stage for a slew of new films to make their debut. One film, Story Ave, became a favorite of those who got to see the drama set in The Bronx. The film stars Asante Blackk, who recently captivated audiences with his role in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us dramatic series for Netflix on the exonerated Central Park Five.
Story Ave is the debut film from writer-director Aristotle Torres based on an award-winning short film of his and counts Jamie Foxx as one of its producers. The movie shows Kadir (Blackk), a young high-school student with a striking talent for art who’s part of a crew of taggers known as Outside The Lines along with his friend Moe (Alex Hibbert from Showtime’s The CHI). The crew is run by Skemes (Melvin Gregg from FX’s Snowfall) who puts Kadir in a position to rob an MTA conductor named Luis (Luís Guzmán). But Luis and Kadir wind up befriending each other, setting off a chain of events that pushes Kadir to fight to see if there is a life for him outside of the streets.
Blackk spoke about his experience in filming Story Ave in a recent interview. “I didn’t realize at the time that my life was changed after reading [the script for ‘Story Ave’],” Blackk said. “But once the [filming] process started and we really became a family, I understood exactly what those words on that page were making me feel. And it was connection, it was love, it was fear, guilt — it was all of these emotions that I wrestled with my whole life wrapped so beautifully into this portrayal of a young man.”
The film was co-written by Bonsu Thompson, a veteran journalist who has produced digital series for BET and the feature-length documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story in addition to serving as the Editor-In-Chief of The Source magazine and as Music Editor for XXL magazine [Ed. Note: he penned a Cassius cover story on Bel Air star Jabar Banks, too]. Chuck Inglish, one-half of The Cool Kids, serves as a composer on the film along with Pierre Charles.
After a pandemic period marked mostly by retrospective projects, U2 is moving forward once again.
On Friday (March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day, appropriately enough), the Irish quartet brought forth Songs of Surrender, its first new album in six years — a companion of sorts to frontman Bono’s 2022 memoir — that finds the band reimagining 40 songs from throughout its career. It is accompanied by Bono & The Edge: A Sort Of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman, a documentary that is now streaming on Disney+. U2 also unveiled a U2SOS40 video series that will eventually feature 60-second clips, by different creators, for each of the songs, while the band’s return to live performing will take place this fall as the inaugural concerts at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas.
And if that isn’t enough, bassist Adam Clayton has also partnered with Fender for a new amplifier, the ACB 50. “It feels like a bonus the whole way, just because this is at a time in your life where you don’t expect to be this busy,” Clayton, who turned 63 last week, tells Billboard via Zoom from Dublin. “I guess we’re very lucky that we get to do the thing that we’ve always loved doing and we’re still doing it, and somehow we’re still getting better at doing it. At some point I suppose the arc changes, but I don’t feel like we’re at that point yet. I think we’ve got a lot of extra knowledge along the way that we’ve picked up and we can make better and better records from here on out.”
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Songs of Surrender is certainly a project that came as a surprise. That album, according to Clayton, was spurred directly by Bono’s best-selling Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, in which the singer used 40 U2 songs as a narrative vehicle for his story. The album, according to Clayton, “was one of the more organic processes that U2 engaged in. We started to talk about what we could be doing while (Bono) was busy making this book. Edge said, ‘Let me have a look at those titles. Let me see if I can come up with a different space for those songs so we can present them in a way where the narrative of the song in some way is associated to the arc of the book.’” The Edge began creating drastically different arrangements, mostly stripped down and more intimate, sometimes changing lyrics and even vocalists; The Edge, in fact, stepped up to sing several of the tracks himself.
“We started to see that a lot of the early songs that had felt incomplete or unfinished or naive, when one looked at them now, those were songs with a lot of DNA and intuition on them,” Clayton explains. “From the position of being in our sixties, those lyrics and those songs meant something, and it meant Edge could slow them down. He could bring the key down. Bono could deliver the vocals in a different way. And suddenly there was a personality that had much more of the gravitas of a story that Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson might tell. It engaged with you in a different way. It stopped you thinking about that big ol’ 80s rock band that had this big, stadium-filling sound.”
The bassist has some favorites amongst the 40, including “Stories For Boys,” which Clayton calls “a beautiful insight into Edge as an artist and a singer,” and “All I Want Is You,” which allowed him to do some acoustic bass playing where “I can really hear the air moving and I can hear my fingers on the strings, and I just like that intimacy.”
While each grouping of 10 songs is consigned to one member of the band, that’s more of a packaging element than anything symbolic, he says. “It was after everything was recorded,” he says, “so it wasn’t that I curated the tracks that were gonna be on my (side of) the record. I’m not gonna say it’s random, but it’s not premeditated as such. It’s open to whatever interpretation the listener might want to make. But I think I made out pretty well because I have a lot of good, melodic material but I also have some of the heavy-hitting rock tunes. And I get ‘Electrical Storm,’ which is one of my favorites, I have to say. And I think the version of ‘The Fly’ that makes it onto my record is interesting as well; it shows that we weren’t averse to using a little bit of electronica whenever the color demanded it.”
The big surprise in his batch, Clayton adds, is spectral “Desire” from 1988’s Rattle and Hum, sung by The Edge in falsetto. “It’s quite odd and challenging, and I accept that, because it’s got a very, very heavy keyboard bass, which is nice. It’s not really the way I would’ve expected to hear ‘Desire,’ but I’ll certainly take that bass keyboard part. I loved that.”
Songs of Surrender and the Disney+ documentary were generated by U2’s prominent frontline, Bono and The Edge, In fact, a note during the end credits of A Sort of Homecoming finds them thanking Clayton and Mullen for “letting us go rogue” with that project. Clayton says he has no objections to them taking the reins. “How can you be pissed off with people that you’ve done really well by for such a long time,” he explains. “I’m a big fan of Bono and Edge, and of Larry. I love to see Bono and Edge do interesting things.” He proclaims “big respect” for Bono’s book and for the series of solo concerts he’s been performing around it, and for The Edge taking the reins with Songs of Surrender. “I’m grateful to be in a band with those two extraordinary talents and hard-working people. They’re great songwriters, great artists but they’re great humanitarians and they’re really great people. I need to be inspired and I need to be led by that kind of thinking. I believe in music as a higher art, a higher form, and you don’t have to be dumbed down by it. You can change the world with a guitar — that’s what I signed up for.”
U2 will be looking to do just that later this year in Las Vegas. Dates have not yet been announced but rehearsals will be starting soon, and while the shows will feature 1991’s Achtung Baby album in its entirety, Clayton says “that’s only gonna be about an hour of the show, so we’re gonna have to find a way of going other places as well.” The shows will also be the first U2 has performed without Mullen, who’s taking the year off to treat and recuperate from various injuries he’s accumulated over the years; Bram van den Berg from the Dutch band Krezip will be filling the void.
“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Clayton says. “I haven’t played with anyone else before. I know playing with Larry Mullen, he always made me sound good, and that was half the job done. So it might just keep us on our toes. I’m sure we’ll find our groove. I think Bram is a great player. He’s got a great reputation. He’s a lovely man. If the musician’s heart is in the right place, the music follows without too much difficulty.”
There’s plenty on the U2’s agenda as well. The band members have recently spoken about new music, and that they’ve put a planned Songs of Ascent on the back burner in favor of something louder and more aggressive. “That’s the intention,” Clayton acknowledges. “I think we’re feeling that music has kind of got stuck a little bit. We’re feeling that probably with modern processing and modern production techniques and the use of digital that it’s lost some of its spontaneity and some of its rawness, and I think we’re hoping that we can kind of connect back to that rawness that we were excited by as teenagers.” That said, Clayton adds that only “some very, very minimal” recording has been done so far.
“Edge is always working on stuff,” Clayton notes, “but until we get the Sphere shows out of the way and we know what’s going to be happening with Larry, it’ll be very hard to organize what we’ve got and figure out what the plan will be.”
Also on U2’s plate is some archival documentary work. “We’re amazed by the amount of out there on the Beatles or whatever, and there’s some real value to that material,” Clayton says. “During this whole lockdown period we kinda started to go back through our archive and develop some stuff…and put together some sort of a narrative on the history of the band. It will tell a different story of U2. I think everybody thinks they probably know the U2 story reasonably well at this point…and of course it’s only one version of the story. There are other things to our story that we’re excited to be bringing to people.”
As for his new amplifier, Clayton considers it “another one of those once in a lifetime experiences.” He was inspired to pursue it when Fender did a signature guitar amp with The Edge — “I got a little jealous, I guess. I thought, ‘Well, if Edge can have an amp, I’m gonna have an amp!’” — and took the idea to the company, which has not routinely done signature bass amps. He worked with technicians to develop an all-in-one combo amplifier he describes as “the loudest 50 watts you’re ever gonna need,” noting it also has more mid-range than Fender bass amps had previously produced. “You can fit it in a smart car and carry it up the stairs on your shoulder as well,” he notes. “It’s the kind of amp you can take anywhere. You can do anything with it, and it just keeps on giving.” Clayton plans to use several of the ACB 50s during U2’s live dates, positioned under the stage. Details about the amp can be found via fender.com.
Rihanna slayed at the 2023 Oscars on Sunday with a classy performance of her soulful ballad “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She didn’t win the Oscar for best original song – the award went to “Naatu Naatu” from RRR – but RiRi will likely have more chances to win for the song at next year’s Grammy Awards.
“Lift Me Up,” which Rihanna co-wrote with Tems, Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Göransson, is a front-runner for a nomination for best song written for visual media.
“Lift Me Up” could also wind up with record and/or song of the year nominations. Rihanna has been nominated for record of the year three times, for “Umbrella” (featuring Jay-Z), “Work” (featuring Drake) and as featured artist on Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie.”
If “Lift Me Up” is nominated for song of the year, it would mark Rihanna’s first nod in that category. Her only songwriting nods to date are for “Run This Town,” which won best rap song, and “Kiss It Better,” which was nominated for best R&B song.
“Lift Me Up” will also probably be nominated in a performance category – either best R&B performance or best traditional R&B performance. (The final decision on where to slot performances that seem to be on the border between two categories is made by a large screening committee. They base their decision on the sound of the performance, as they perceive it, not chart position or the artist’s image.)
Rihanna has been nominated in R&B performance categories twice, for “Needed Me” and “Hate That I Love You,” a 2007 collab with Ne-Yo. She has yet to be nominated for best traditional R&B performance.
“All the Stars,” from the first Black Panther, was nominated for Grammys in four categories (though it didn’t win in any of them). The smash by Kendrick Lamar featuring SZA was nominated for record and song of the year, best rap/sung performance and best song written for visual media.
The Recording Academy announced earlier this month that the eligibility year for the 66th annual Grammy Awards will end on Aug. 31, one month earlier than usual. So the eligibility “year” will consist of just 11 months.
Rihanna may or may not release her long-awaited ninth studio album by Aug. 31 – she has another “project” in the works just now – which would change the Grammy conversation around her. Rihanna’s best year at the Grammys in terms of nominations was 2016, when she amassed eight nods. (Alas, she lost them all.)
The early front-runners for record of the year nominations, in addition to “Lift Me Up,” include Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” SZA’s “Kill Bill” and Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers.”
This wouldn’t be the first time “Anti-Hero” and “Lift Me Up” have tangled. By holding at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a second week last November, Swift’s smash kept Rihanna’s ballad from debuting in the top spot and becoming her 15th No. 1 single. Instead, “Lift Me Up” debuted and peaked at No. 2. “Anti-Hero” went on to log eight total weeks at No. 1 – the record for a Swift single.
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On a standout night for the Academy Awards, Ruth E. Carter became the first Black woman to win two Oscars for her work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
At the 95th Academy Awards held on Sunday night (March 12th), the iconic costume designer won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for her work on the smash Black Panther sequel film. After accepting the award from presenters Paul Dano and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Carter began her speech by dedicating the award to her late mother, who she revealed passed away at the age of 101.
“Thank you for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman. She endures. She loves. She overcomes. She is every woman in this film. She is my mother. This past week Mable Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment,” she said.
Carter mentioned the late Chadwick Boseman next, asking him to “please take care” of her mother. She continued, thanking director Ryan Coogler and executive producer Nate Moore: “Thank you both for your vision. Together, we are reshaping how culture is represented.” She would close by thanking those at Marvel Studios and the “many dedicated artists whose hands and hearts helped manifest the costumes of Wakanda and Talokan.”
The win made Carter the first Black woman to win multiple Oscar awards – she previously won for her work on the first Black Panther in 2019. She also became part of a premium category of multiple Academy Award winners in competitive categories who are Black, joining actors Denzel Washington and Mahershala Ali and sound mixers Willie D. Burton and Russell Williams II. The 62-year-old has enjoyed an illustrious career, having been previously nominated for her work on Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and Steven Spielberg’s Amistad.
She reflected on her win and her career to reporters backstage after receiving the award. ” I wanted to be a costume designer,” she began.”I studied. I scraped. I dealt with adversity in the industry that sometimes didn’t look like me and I endured. I feel that this win opens the door for other young costume designers that may not think that this industry is for them and hopefully they’ll see me, and they’ll see my story and they’ll think they can win an Oscar, too.”
The official trailer for Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey, has arrived. It was introduced by Bailey and co-star Melissa McCarthy during the 2023 Oscars on Sunday night (March 12).
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Bailey stars as Ariel in the reimagining of the Disney animated classic, with an ensemble including McCarthy as Ursula, Javier Bardem as King Triton and Jonah Hauer-King as Eric.
Following a recent 30-second teaser and a clip focused on Bailey’s beautiful rendition of “Part of Your World” from D23, this extended preview — with a runtime of two minutes and twenty seconds — gives viewers a cinematic look at Ariel’s world and the characters that surround her, from life under the sea to life newly on land.
The Little Mermaid hits theaters on May 26.
Watch the trailer for the The Little Mermaid below.
If “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever wins the Oscar for best original song on Sunday March 12, Ryan Coogler will become just the second person in Oscar history, and the first in 45 years, to win an Oscar for writing or co-writing a song from a film he directed. The first was Joe Brooks, who wrote “You Light Up My Life,” the 1977 winner.
Just by being nominated in this category, Coogler has joined an exclusive (and rather eclectic) club. Fourteen people have received Oscar nominations for writing or co-writing songs for films that they directed. Coogler is the first person of color to achieve the feat. Other club members include Barbra Streisand, Mel Brooks, Spike Jonze, Seth MacFarlane and Trey Parker.
Most of these people wrote the lyrics, not the melody. This suggests that the directors know what their film is trying to say, and can help put that message across in a song. Only four of the 14 – Coogler, Parker, Streisand and Brooks – contributed both music and lyrics. None solely wrote the music.
“Lift Me Up” is viewed as one of three front-runners in this year’s Oscar race for best original song, along with “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick (music and lyric by Lady Gaga and BloodPop) and “Naatu Naatu” from RRR (music by M.M. Keeravaani; lyric by Chandrabose). The other nominees are “Applause” from Tell It like a Woman (music and lyric by Diane Warren) and “This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once (music by Ryan Lott, David Byrne and Mitski; lyric by Ryan Lott and David Byrne).
Here’s a complete list of everyone who has been nominated for best original song for writing or co-writing a song from a film they directed. The list is in reverse chronological order.
Ryan Coogler
Film: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Nominated Song: “Lift Me Up”
Notes: Coogler directed and co-wrote the film, which stars Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o and Oscar nominee Angela Bassett, among others. He co-wrote the melody with Rihanna, Tems and Ludwig Göransson; he co-wrote the lyrics with Tems. Rihanna’s single debuted and peaked at No. 2. The superstar, fresh off her halftime performance at the Super Bowl, is set to perform the song on the Oscar telecast.
Spike Jonze
Film: Her (2013)
Nominated Song: “The Moon Song”
Notes: Jonze directed, wrote and co-produced the film, which starred Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Scarlett Johansson. In addition to best original song, Jonze was nominated for best picture (as a producer of the film) and won for writing. He co-wrote the lyric with Karen O, who also composed the melody. She and Ezra Koenig performed the song on the telecast.
Seth MacFarlane
Image Credit: Mark Davis/WireImage
Film: Ted (2012)
Nominated Song: “Everybody Needs a Best Friend”
Notes: MacFarlane directed and co-wrote the comedy, in which he starred alongside Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis. He wrote the “Best Friend” lyric, while Walter Murphy composed the melody. Murphy topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976 as an artist with the disco instrumental “A Fifth of Beethoven.” Norah Jones performed “Best Friend” on the telecast, which MacFarlane hosted.
Christophe Barratier
Film: The Chorus (2004)
Nominated song: “Look to Your Path” (“Vois Sur Ton Chemin”)
Notes: The Frenchman directed the musical drama, known as Les Choristes in French. He wrote the lyric. The composer was Bruno Coulais. Beyoncé performed the song on the telecast, in tandem with American Boychoir. Beyoncé performed three of the five nominated songs that year. She also did the honors on “Learn to Be Lonely” from The Phantom of the Opera and “Believe” from The Polar Express – the latter in tandem with Josh Groban.
Sylvain Chomet
Film: The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Nominated Song: “Belleville Rendez-vous”
Notes: The multi-platform French artist wrote and produced the animated comedy film. In addition to best original song, he was nominated for animated feature film. He wrote the lyric. Benoît Charest composed the melody. Charest also performed the song on the telecast, in tandem with Béatrice Bonifassi.
Julie Taymor
Film: Frida (2002)
Nominated Song: “Burn It Blue”
Notes: Taymor directed the film, which starred Salma Hayak. Taymor wrote the lyric. Elliot Goldenthal composed the melody. Lila Downs and Caetano Veloso performed the song on the telecast.
Lars von Trier
Film: Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Nominated Song: “I’ve Seen It All”
Notes: The Danish multi-hyphenate directed and wrote the film, which starred Björk, Catherine Deneuve and Joel Grey, among others. He co-wrote the lyric with Sjon Sigurdsson. Björk composed the melody and performed the song on the telecast.
Trey Parker
Film: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Nominated Song: “Blame Canada”
Notes: Parker directed, co-wrote and co-produced this film and was one of the voice actors. He co-wrote the music and lyric with Marc Shaiman. Robin Williams, who had won an Oscar two years previously for his role in Good Will Hunting, performed the song the telecast.
Barbra Streisand
Image Credit: TriStar/courtesy Everett Collection
Film: The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)
Nominated Song: “I Finally Found Someone”
Notes: Streisand directed, co-produced and starred in the film alongside Jeff Bridges and Oscar nominee Lauren Bacall. She co-wrote the music and lyrics to this song with Bryan Adams, Marvin Hamlisch and Robert John “Mutt” Lange. She was the first female director to receive an Oscar nomination for a song she wrote or co-wrote for her film. The single by Streisand and Adams reached No. 8 on the Hot 100, but Streisand declined to perform the song on the telecast. Her future duet partner Celine Dion filled in for her, joined by Arturo Sandoval.
Arne Glimcher
Film: The Mambo Kings (1992)
Nominated Song: “Beautiful Maria of My Soul”
Notes: Glimcher directed and co-produced the film, which starred Armand Assante, Antonio Banderas and Cathy Moriaty. Glimcher wrote the lyrics. Robert Kraft was the composer. Plácido Domingo and Sheila E performed the song on the telecast.
Joe Brooks
Image Credit: Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Hulton Archive/GI
Film: You Light Up My Life (1977)
Nominated Song: “You Light Up My Life”
Notes: Brooks single-handedly wrote, directed and produced You Light Up My Life, which starred Didi Conn. He also wrote both music and lyrics for its title song, which Debby Boone turned into a megahit. Her recording was the first to log 10 weeks at No. 1 in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 (which dates to 1958). Kacey Cisyk, who sang the song on the soundtrack, reached No. 80 with her original version. Boone was chosen to sing the song on the telecast — a rare instance of the Oscars booking an artist who performed a cover version over the artist who performed the film version. The song won a Grammy for song of the year. In 1997, LeAnn Rimes cracked the top 40 with her interpretation. While Brooks’ song has brought hope and inspiration to millions, his own life was troubled. He took his own life in 2011.
Mel Brooks
Film: Blazing Saddles (1974)
Nominated Song: “Blazing Saddles”
Notes: The EGOT recipient directed, co-wrote and appeared in the film, which also starred Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, Alex Karras, Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn. In addition to best original song, Brooks was nominated for best adapted screenplay that year – but for another picture, Young Frankenstein, on which he collaborated with Gene Wilder. Brooks wrote the lyrics to “Blazing Saddles.” John Morris was the composer. To sing the song, Brooks advertised in the trade papers for a “Frankie Laine–type” singer; to his surprise, Laine himself offered his services. Laine, who had a series of hits in the 1940s and ’50s including “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me” and “I Believe,” got the job — and also sang the song on the Oscar telecast.
Jacques Demy
Film: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1965)
Nominated Song: “I Will Wait for You”
Notes: The Frenchman directed and wrote the film, which starred Catherine Deneuve. In addition to best original song, Demy was nominated for best original screenplay and best music score – substantially original, for collaborating with Legrand. Demy wrote the original French lyrics. Norman Gimbel wrote the English lyrics. Legrand composed the song, which also received a Grammy nod for song of the year. Steve Lawrence’s version “bubbled under” the Hot 100 in 1965. Legrand and Jane Morgan (the wife of Jerry Weintraub, a top manager and producer) performed the song on the Oscar telecast.
Leo McCarey
Film: An Affair to Remember (1957)
Nominated song: “An Affair to Remember”
Notes: McCarey directed, co-wrote and co-produced the film, which starred Cary Grantand Deborah Kerr. (The film is referenced in 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle.) McCarey teamed with Harold Adamson to write the lyrics. Harry Warren composed the melody. Vic Damone had a big hit with the song in 1957, the year before the introduction of the Hot 100. The crooner also sang the song on the Oscar telecast. McCarey won three Oscars over the course of his career – for directing The Awful Truth (1937) and writing and directing Going My Way (1944).
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Ben Stiller publicly defended his Tropic Thunder movie recently, which garnered controversy over Robert Downey Jr. appearing in blackface in the film among other issues.
The actor and writer was mentioned in a tweet about the film last Tuesday by a Trump supporter who goes by “Benny Sings.” The individual wrote: “Please stop apologizing for doing this movie. It was and still is funny AF… Even funnier now with cancel culture the way it is. It’s a MOVIE. Ya’ll can just get over it. I was DYING laughing when I first saw it back in the day and so was everyone else.”
In an included text statement, the user noted that the Wayans Bros didn’t apologize for White Chicks in which they appeared as two white women. Stiller would respond afterward, writing: “I make no apologies for ‘Tropic Thunder.’ Don’t know who told you that. It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it.”
The 2008 comedy movie, which features Stiller and Downey Jr. along with Jack Black, drew a swarm of backlash on its release mainly for Stiller’s role as Tugg Speedman, who played a character in the fictional film-within-the-film Simple Jack that disability advocates felt mocked them. They pointed to the usage of the R-slur in particular in their criticisms.
Downey Jr. would also face some backlash for his role as Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, who opts to darken his skin to play a Black soldier. The Iron Man actor did express his reservations about taking the role while appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2019, which would wind up earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor the following year. “Sometimes, you just have to go, ‘Yeah I effed up,’” he said.
Stiller appeared to apologize for that or claimed to in another tweet in 2018 prompted by Olympic medalist Shaun White appearing as Simple Jack for a Halloween costume. “Actually Tropic Thunder was boycotted 10 years ago when it came out, and I apologized then. It was always meant to make fun of actors trying to do anything to win awards. I stand by my apology, the movie, Shaun White, And the great people and work of the @SpecialOlympics,” he wrote.
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Volker Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet on the Western Front and Carter Burwell’s score for The Banshees of Inisherin are among the nominees for 2023 ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards.
They are also among the Oscar nominees for best original score, and were among the BAFTA nominees in that category (which Bertelmann won on Feb. 19).
Established as a first-of-its-kind program among U.S. performing rights organizations, the ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards enable composers to recognize the artistic accomplishments of their peers. The nominations committee includes composers and film, television and video game industry leaders. Voting is open to eligible ASCAP writer members through March 10 at www.ascap.com/composerschoice. Winners will be announced as part of the 2023 ASCAP Screen Music Awards the week of May 15.
Amanda Jones, Bear McCreary, Siddhartha Khosla, Dan Romer and Cristobal Tapia de Veer were each nominated in two categories.
More information about the 2023 ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards, including excerpts of the nominated music, is available at www.ascap.com/composerschoice.
Categories with six or more nominees reflect ties.
**Indicates a work co-written by non-ASCAP composer(s).
Film score of the year
All Quiet on the Western Front – Volker Bertelmann
Avatar: The Way of Water – Simon Franglen
The Banshees of Inisherin – Carter Burwell
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – Nathan Johnson
The Menu – Colin Stetson
Nope – Michael Abels
Documentary score of the year
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power – Sharon Farber
Conversion – Paul Leonard-Morgan
Prehistoric Planet – Hans Zimmer & Anže Rozman**
Super/Natural – Amanda Jones
Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off – Jeff Cardoni
Television score of the year
Cobra Kai – Leo Birenberg & Zach Robinson
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Bear McCreary
Only Murders in the Building – Siddhartha Khosla
Slow Horses – Daniel Pemberton
Station Eleven – Dan Romer
The White Lotus – Cristobal Tapia de Veer & Kim Neundorf
Television theme of the year
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities – Holly Amber Church
Only Murders in the Building – Siddhartha Khosla
Somebody Somewhere – Amanda Jones
Station Eleven – Dan Romer
The White Lotus – Cristobal Tapia de Veer
Video game score of the year
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen – Skye Lewin, Michael Salvatori, Michael Sechrist**
God of War Ragnarök – Bear McCreary
Immortality – Nainita Desai
Minecraft: The Wild Update – Lena Raine**
MultiVersus – Gordy Haab
Composing the score for a war film can be, apologies for the metaphor, a minefield. Go too heavy on the orchestral oomph — all soaring strings and booming base — and you can quickly swing into schmaltz. Go too small and minimalist, and the onscreen explosions can overpower your music. Plus, there’s the danger of familiarity, of echoing the grand and epic scores of war films past.
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So, when director Edward Berger asked his regular composer, Volker Bertelmann, to write a score for his antiwar drama All Quiet on the Western Front, he told him to break all the rules.
“I said, ‘I want something different, something we’ve never heard before,’ ” says Berger, “then, and this is almost the most important thing: I said, ‘I want you to destroy the images onscreen. Don’t beautify or sentimentalize.’ [I wanted] a sound that feels like it’s coming from inside [lead character] Paul Bäumer’s stomach. I want the sound of fear, of hatred, of rage, of what a soldier feels when he has to kill in order to survive.”
“Something different” is pretty much Bertelmann’s M.O. The German pianist, who records and performs under the name Hauschka, is part of a cadre of experimental musicians who came up in the Berlin indie electronics scene and have quietly started to change the sound of Hollywood movies. Others from that milieu include Oscar-winning composer Hildur Gudnadóttir (Joker, Tár) and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson (Arrival, Sicario, The Theory of Everything), a two-time Oscar nominee.
Bertelmann is best known for his Oscar-nominated work on Garth Davis’ Lion and his score for Francis Lee’s Ammonite, which received an ASCAP nom for score of the year (both were co-written with Dustin O’Halloran). In Lion, the composers stripped out horns and strings to deliver a piano-driven sound that managed to be emotional while never being predictable. For Ammonite, a small, sparingly used chamber orchestra forms the film’s emotional core.
“Coming from the independent scene, I have a different approach to composing,” says Bertelmann. “It’s very intuition-driven, just trying something out and seeing what happens. Like, if I want a bass drum sound, instead of getting an orchestra to record it, or going through all the recorded bass drum loops to find just the right one, I’ll put contact mics on the wall and bang on them to see if that works.”
Bertelmann created the signature three-tone motif that echoes through All Quiet — a thundering dom-dom-DOM! sounding like a trumpet of doom — by picking up his grandmother’s old harmonium.
“When I played it, pressing the paddles and using these old panels on the side with my knees, it created this weird wooden sound,” he recalls. “You could hear all the technical bits from the materials of the machine creating the music. Normally, in a classical recording, you’d work to take those out. I amplified them. I stuck microphones inside the harmonium, underneath it, on the wood, everywhere, to capture that sound.”
The result is both old and modern, like a wooden turn-of-the-last-century synthesizer, and — as it plays over post-battle scenes, as boots and uniforms are stripped off corpses, thrown in piles and then trucked off to be washed, repaired and handed out to a new crop of cannon-fodder recruits — perfectly evokes the horrifying machinery of war.
But when intimate emotion is called for, as in a late wrenching scene when Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) lies next to a French soldier he has brutally stabbed, listening to him slowly die, Bertelmann’s score can go quiet.
“For that scene, I used this really fragile string motif, recording them in a clear pure way,” he says. “When Edward heard it, he said it was too emotional and overpowering the scene. But I thought we needed that feel, so I put a filter on the whole instrumentation, just cut off the high end. It made it sound a bit like the music is coming from underneath a blanket. It’s muffled, but the emotion still comes through.”
For the battle scenes, Bertelmann worked closely with the film’s sound designer, Frank Kruse, to harmonize his score with the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns and the monstrous thumps of the exploding shells.
“With fights and battle scenes, the music can very easily get swamped by all the war sounds,” he says, “so we tried to find the frequencies for each other’s instruments and complement, not compete. Say there were explosions. That could be the bass drums. So I wouldn’t use bass on that section, or I’d go even lower, deeper in tone, below the explosions. Or for an ambush scene, in place of the main rhythm portion, I use the specific metal sounds of the gunfire.”
Bertelmann’s favorite piece of music in the All Quiet score, he says, comes in the final scene, as Bäumer, mortally wounded, climbs out from underground to see the sky one last time. For the piece, called “Making Sense of War,” the composer returns to his three-tone motif, but this time classically orchestrated.
“It sounds a little bit like an opera,” he says. “It gives this moment of clarity and pause, where we question everything that we’ve seen, and what the whole point [of war is].”
This story first appeared in a Feb. stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Volker Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet on the Western Front won a BAFTA Award for best original score on Sunday (Feb. 19). The awards were presented at Royal Festival Hall in London. The score is also nominated for an Academy Award in that category.
This was Bertelmann’s second BAFTA nomination, but his first on his own and his first under his own name. He was nominated six years ago for Lion, on which he teamed with Dustin O’Halloran. Bertelmann went by the name Hauschka at the time. He and O’Halloran were also nominated for an Oscar for that film, but lost both awards to Justin Hurwitz for La La Land.
The other scores nominated for a BAFTA Award this year were Babylon (Hurwitz), The Banshees of Inisherin (Carter Burwell), Everything Everywhere All at Once (Son Lux) and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Alexandre Desplat).
All of those scores except Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio are also nominated for Oscars. John Williams’ score for The Fabelmans is nominated instead at the Oscars. Oscar voting will conducted from March 2-7. The awards will be presented on March 12.
Unlike the Oscars, the BAFTAs don’t present an award for best original song.
All Quiet on the Western Front won in six other categories at the BAFTAs – best picture, best director (Edward Berger), best adapted screenplay, best film not in the English language, best cinematography and best sound.
Austin Butler won best actor in a leading role for his portrayal of Elvis Presley in Elvis. Cate Blanchett won best actress in a leading role for Tár. The awards for best actor and actress in a supporting role went to Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon, both for The Banshees Inisherin.