Éowyn’s Dream “Éowyn’s Dream” is a short cue from Howard Shore’s Return of the King score. The scene only appears in the extended edition, so it’s a bit of a deep cut. The scene is quiet and intimate. Late at night in the Golden Hall, […]

The Final Mission The main reason I love Jared Michael Fry’s Heart of the Beast soundtrack is that it’s thematic and sentimental. It’s OK, the composer can tell you how to feel, just like John Williams’s enduring film scores do. To me, modern soundtracks tend […]

Porch I love this piece at the end of Infinity War, as Thanos limps out to his porch. I only mildly get into the Avengers movies. I’ve seen most of them, and my favorites are probably the first Iron Man and Thor: Ragnarok. However, Infinity […]

Beautiful Lie If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the director’s cut of Batman v Superman on HBO Max. It adds a full 30 minutes to the film, and that extra time develops the characters and storyline so much better. It’s essentially the “Snyder […]

Dear Child Dear Child (Liebes Kind) is a six-part German psychological thriller that landed on Netflix in September 2023. It was a genuine phenomenon: 52.5 million views and 253 million hours in its first months, making it Netflix’s second most-watched title of late 2023. The […]

Bring Forth Fate No spoilers! Mainly because I haven’t seen HOPE yet — but I desperately want to. It has excellent reviews, not to mention the largest budget in Korean film history. I’ll see it in a few days and update this post when I […]

Day One The inception of Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score is very similar to Gustavo Santaolalla’s Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. With the latter, Ang Lee sent a script to Santaolalla, who wrote and recorded the entire score before a single frame was shot. Lee’s genius was deciding […]

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night I really love the new Lanterns series on HBO. It’s definitely geared toward a more adult audience — much like the Star Wars spinoff, Andor. It also gives a True Detective vibe, as both of the protagonists are investigating […]

Cornfield Chase I’ve always wanted to double back to the crux of the Interstellar theme, which is really the motif titled “Cornfield Chase.” This was a high-water mark for composer Hans Zimmer. His genius is in not being outsmarted by his own technical skill — […]

If This Be Victory I generally like House of the Dragon. I’ve watched every season, and season three started strong with the Battle of the Gullet, but midway through I found myself not caring about these characters as much as I did in Game of […]

Web Letter Days The new Spider-Man was a great time at the theater. In my day job, most of my guitar students are young people and I’m surprised at the sheer love they have for (Tom Holland’s) Spider-Man. It’s reflected at the Box Office. We […]

L’attente (The Waiting) L’attente (The Waiting) follows a traditional 1-4-5 blues structure, even though it’s a French-styled piece of music. “French-styled” might be presumptuous of me — music carries no geographic borders — but I can’t help envisioning a dimly lit café in Paris when […]