One of my favorite things in movies is when they show why a piece of music matters to a character. While a great soundtrack can help us figure out who a character is, when we see characters actively engage with music onscreen, that is a special thing for me. There are plenty of great examples […]
**Author’s Note: The following essay includes scenes from “Touch of Evil” to illustrate my words. These scenes not only include spoilers to the film, but one involves implied sexual assault. Orson Welles never stopped pushing cinema form forward after “Citizen Kane”– the problem was his resources got more and more scant, and his freedom more […]
Every October since 2002, I’ve spent the month delving into horror films. Some years have leaned more into familiar choices that I have come to love over the years, often by virtue of what else I had going on that month. In its earlier incarnations, however, I leaned into films I was not familiar with […]
When I first scored “The Case” short films for my friend, Chris Dufresne, I had one keyboard synthesizer, and no recording software with which to truly sync picture and music. That meant figuring out the timings for each cue by figuring out where music should be, when it should change, and basically hoping it would […]
My desire to write music for film predates me even putting pencil to manuscript paper for the first time. Even though I had been listening to film soundtracks and scores for years, it’s hard to describe the impact of what James Horner’s score for “Braveheart” did to me. For the first time, I went from […]
There’s rock-n-roll excess, and then there’s Guns N’ Roses. My first experience with GN’R was the single for “Paradise City” in 1988-89. It had, as a B-side, “Move to the City” from “GN’R Lies,” and it was in rotation for me as I went through middle school, and started to form my identity in terms […]
Octobers had a special place in my musical career for a lot of years. Now, I bring that full-circle. The COVID-19 pandemic has been surprisingly robust for me, as I was able to focus a lot on Sonic Cinema even when movie theatres shuttered back in March, and film release schedules became barren. In May, […]
Sonic Cinema started out as an idea, primarily, for my musical works, and I would write movie reviews from time to time. Of course, over time, the balance has been reversed, and this site is very much a site for my discussion on film, with an area for the music I’ve written over the years. […]
I hope that everyone has been staying safe and healthy during this surreal moment in time during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’ve been following along with Sonic Cinema, you know that I have been furloughed from my full-time job, and devoting as much time as possible to watching and reviewing movies. I also wanted to […]
It has been quite a while since I posted in this section. Four years, in fact. It is representative of the significant change in focus in my life, and in Sonic Cinema, since I was coming off of taking online courses through the Berklee College of Music for Film & TV Music composition. I’ve already […]
Sonic Cinema Quick Thoughts
