Baz Luhrmann couldn’t help but make his take on the king of rock and roll, simply titled Elvis, as outlandish, style-obsessed, and paranoia-stricken as possible, perhaps to outrun the easy comparisons to Walk Hard through sheer speed of gyration. That’s…
Moulin Rouge! Turns 20: Ranking the Iconic Musical Numbers
Twenty years ago, Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! brought life back to movie musicals. While they had been a staple of the 1950s and ’60s, they lost popularity over the decades. Then in 2001, Luhrmann wowed the world with this original…
5 Great Movies With Anachronistic Soundtracks
Anachronistic: belonging-to-a-period-other-than-in-which-it-exists. Anachronistic soundtrack: the sexiest kind of film score. Almost every movie uses its soundtrack to create emotion, feeling, tone, and texture. Historical films usually involve music the same way they do costumes: to help transport us to another…
The Five Best Scenes in Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Let’s be real: Baz Luhrmann is one of the best things to happen Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio just moments before his role in Titanic and Claire Danes fresh from her time as Angela…
Interview: Elliott Wheeler (Composer/Executive Music Producer of “The Get Down”)
Somewhere amidst the rubble fields, graffiti-marked trainyards, and disco clubs, was once the flyest, best kept secret of the entire Bronx during that late 70s era of bell-bottoms and punk. The Get Down, at least how it’s fictionally-depicted in Netflix’s latest…
TV Review: The Get Down 1×5-6 “You Have Wings, Learn to Fly” & “Raise Your Words, Not Your Voice”
In the last two episodes of The Get Down‘s first season, “You Have Wings, Learn to Fly” and “Raise Your Words, Not Your Voice,” the Fantastic Four + 1 prepare for an epic battle in music with a DJ group…
TV Review: The Get Down 1×03 “Darkness is Your Candle”
In the latest episode of The Get Down, the “Fantastic Four + One” find themselves at a loss when Shaolin Fantastic (Shameik Moore) parts ways with the group, in frustration. Not knowing any other way to replace their recently destroyed…