Sonic Cinema

It’s that time of year again when the winners of the Georgia Film Critics Association awards are announced. I’ve seen more of our nominees (and winners) than I have in previous years, and there’s a lot going on with these selections. Here are the nominees, what won, and my thoughts as a voting member. I hope you enjoy! 2024 Georgia Film Critics Association Awards Best Picture “Anora” – WINNER “The […]

It feels like every year since 2020 has been, “How is the box-office recovering post-COVID?” I think a big part of that is with how many massive films have seemed to underperform over the past few years. In 2023, it was a blood-letting, where surefire hits faltered, and some of the biggest hits over-performed relative to their probability of success. 2024 had a continuing of that uncertainty of what audiences […]

It’s that time again. Amanda Spears returns to discuss the Oscars and help predict the winners. I also share my 10 Best list for 2024. I hope you enjoy! Episode 163 – Oscar Thoughts with Amanda Spears & Brian’s Top 10 of 2024 Read Brian’s Retrospective on 2024 here. Read Brian’s Thoughts of the 2024 Atlanta Film Critics Circle Winners here. Read Brian’s Thoughts of the 2024 Georgia Film Critics […]

The American experiment with Democracy is in a perilous place with the re-election of Donald Trump. Art, and cinema, is inherently political by virtue of the time it was made, as well as the time in which we watch it. In the first episode of what will be a miniseries for the Sonic Cinema Podcast, we begin looking at the ways in which films have portrayed fascism and authoritarianism over […]

Sometimes, the best laid plans can go awry. Even when it’s continuing a project you’ve been working on for years. When I choose a “bookend” filmmaker for the year, the expectation I hold for myself is that I will watch one of their films every year after their initial inclusion as a bookend, thereby making their filmography an imperative one for me to go through. This year, if you looked […]

To paraphrase one of the film’s I reviewed in this space in 2020, I picked a Hell of a year to stop reviewing older films once a week. It makes all the sense in the world that, in a year where I resolved to review fewer older movies a month than I had under the “A Movie a Week” banner, we would be thrown into a global pandemic that 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 appreciating the impact of a great soundtrack to thinking, “What if I was responsible for […]

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 of the music I liked. Until I became a soundtrack junkie in 1993, I never […]