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 […]

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 […]

Widow’s Bay [no spoilers] I am easily bored. It’s a curse. If something doesn’t grab me within the first few minutes, I’m already reaching for my phone. The only reason I sit through anything at all is because my wife — blessed with an almost […]

Together Again The BBC/Hulu limited series Normal People has been recommended to me for years. I’ve always loved the music, and I was deeply familiar with the minimalist piano soundtrack by Irish composer Stephen Rennicks long before I actually watched the show. Having just finished […]

Can’t Help falling in Love Elvis Presley’s performance of “Unchained Melody” — recorded just weeks before he passed — is one of the greatest moments in American Rock & Roll history. I eventually arranged that piece myself. Not quite as dramatic as Elvis, but his […]

Your Choices, Your Actions This sentimental, acoustic-driven song accompanies a scene in the latest Superman movie where Clark expresses fear that he was sent to Earth to “hurt people,” based on a message from his biological parents. Pa Kent counters this with a quietly powerful […]

Amores Perros The 2000 Mexican film Amores Perros, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, is a powerful and gritty triptych of interconnected stories set against the backdrop of Mexico City. Its emotional intensity is significantly heightened by the masterful score by Argentine composer, Gustavo Santaolalla. Santaolalla’s […]

“One Battle After Another” is an action-comedy-thriller film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, loosely adapted from the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland. Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood composed the film score, marking his sixth collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson. I love all things Radiohead, and Jonny […]

The Glinting of Waking Fields I wrote the “The Glinting of Waking Fields” to evoke a morning’s gentle beginning. The song represents a landscape in the first light of dawn, with dew or sunlight creating a shimmering, sparkling effect across fields as they come to […]

Kids “Kids”, by synth composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, is a central theme from the Stranger Things soundtrack. It perfectly captures the show’s sense of wonder and 1980’s retro vibe. Of all of the musical motifs from the Netflix show, I think Kids (called […]