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In 1982, a wordless documentary by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music by Philip Glass, took the world by storm. Over 40 years later, it’s still not forgotten – certainly not by Ukrainian director Dmytro Hreshko, now behind “Divia.”

“When I first met Dmytro, what struck me was the sincerity and purity in his approach to documentary filmmaking: no pretentiousness, just raw observation and honest intent. I asked him: ‘Do you want to make this film Hollywood-style?’ He replied: ‘No, I’ll do it the ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ way,” says producer Glib Lukianets.

Hreshko adds: “It wasn’t just ‘Koyaanisqachi.’”

“It was ‘Baraka’ [by Ron Fricke], ‘Workingman’s Death’ by Michael Glawogger, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ‘Last and First Man.’ Their approach touched me, and then I saw ‘Berg’ by Joke Olthaar. At first, all you notice are these great mountain shots. They look great, but after a while, you start to think: ‘What does it mean?!’ It’s not fast-paced cinema,...

When it comes to iconic TV theme songs, one of the most instantly recognizable is that of The X-Files. In sad news today, it was announced that composer Mark Snow, who was behind the tune that accompanied the 90s show, has passed away at the age of 78.

Snow’s career spanned decades, from his early work on shows like Hart to Hart through to his recent work on Blue Bloods, the 15-times Emmy nominated composer leaves behind an incredible legacy, which is something that was reflected on by close friend, Sean Callery, who composed music for the Keifer Sutherland series 24, and considered Snow one of his greatest mentors. He told Variety:

“His limitless talent and boundless creativity was matched only by the generosity he bestowed upon other composers who sought his guidance. He would give the most inspiring and intelligent feedback when listening to the work of other young artists...

Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to this year’s Berlinale world premiere Monk In Pieces.

‘Monk In Pieces’ review

The film profiles the interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk, who rose up in New York’s male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and 70s.

Monk went on to establish herself as a leading light in the music, opera, dance, visual arts, and film, earning particular renown for her innovative vocal techniques. She received the National Medal of Arts Award from President Obama in 2015.

The feature includes interviews with Björk, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne,...

More than a mere account of an artist’s life, Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is keyed to the aesthetic and spiritual evolution of postwar Japanese author Mishima Yukio (Ogata Ken). The film opens on the day of the artist’s failed coup d’état and subsequent suicide, then traces his life to that point via flashbacks. Schrader juxtaposes the sight of the author in military regalia with younger images of a frail, sickly child, gradually charting how the young Mishima turned to both writing and exercise to overcome his sense of weakness. The flashbacks move in a linear fashion, tracing the artist’s radical evolution from stuttering, isolated young man to physically fit reactionary whose objections to American postwar occupation and cultural influence inspire a devout cult of militaristic men.

Complicating this relatively straightforward narrative are Schrader’s elaborately theatrical stagings of some of Mishima’s novels.

George Wendt, an American actor and comedian who earned six consecutive Emmy nominations for his performance as Norm Peterson on the beloved NBC comedy series “Cheers,” died Tuesday morning at his home. He was 76.

Wendt’s death was confirmed by his publicist Melissa Nathan with the following statement: “George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him. He will be missed forever. The family has requested privacy during this time.”

A student of the Chicago improv landscape, Wendt was a comedian at The Second City in the 1970s before becoming a television actor. After numerous guest spots, he landed the role that would come define him: the loyal barfly Norm Peterson, whose regular first line of “Afternoon everybody” became one of the fan-beloved motifs of the series.

A standout among the cast, Wendt earned six Emmy nods in...

Rejoice, Netflix and NFL fans! We now know which games our favorite streamer will be streaming on Christmas Day in 2025. For the first time last year, Netflix broadcast two live NFL games, and it will do so again this year.

Those games include the Dallas Cowboys traveling to play the Washington Commanders at 1 p.m. Et and the Detroit Lions going to Minnesota to play the Vikings at 4:30 p.m. Et. They should be fun to watch as each team is a long-time rival of the one it is set to face, and the games are late in the season and can be important.

However, Netflix viewers might want more than a football game. In 2024, the streamer brought some fabulous halftime shows as well. This should be a fixture in future years. But who should play in 2025? These are some dream scenarios.

4 ideal halftime shows for Netflix's NFL Christmas...

In case you had any doubts, André 3000 is living his — or anyone’s — best life. Instead of doing what people want or expect, he’s out here following his muse wherever it takes him. In 7 Piano Sketches, he goes for almost literally the last thing you’d predict from one of the greatest rappers ever: 16 minutes of improvised doodles, mostly recorded at home in 2013, with his iPhone sitting on the piano. “I’d rather go amateur interesting than master boring,” André told Rolling Stone last year, and he lives...

Last December, the ever-elusive Richard D. James quietly uploaded a trove of previously vinyl-only music, sold exclusively at his live DJ sets, to streaming services. Given the unceremonious but accurate title of Music from the Merch Desk (2016–2023), this compilation—one in which no information has been provided about any of the tracks—isn’t a total anomaly in James’s sprawling discography. He’s known for adopting new aliases, dropping tossed-off EPs, and collaborating with other artists with little to no fanfare.

James’s third album as Aphex Twin, …I Care Because You Do was released in the spring of 1995, just a few months after his first greatest hits compilation—released by R&s Records without his involvement—and it’s similarly characterized by a capricious approach to curation. In a sense, the album serves as its own anthology—a time capsule that displays James’s broad musical interests at...

US composer Philip Glass will receive a lifetime achievement award at the upcoming 25th World Soundtrack Awards (Wsa), Film Fest Gent’s annual film music award ceremony.

Glass is known for his Academy Award-nominated scores for Kundun, The Hours, and Notes On A Scandal, as well as his work onThe Truman Show, Koyaanisqati, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.

He will be presented with his award on October 16 at the Wsa ceremony and concert in Ghent, in which a selection of Glass’s work will be performed by the Brussels Philharmonic conducted by Dirk Brossé.

Glass, aged 88, was raised in Baltimore,...

Brighton Festival, which takes place from 3-26 May, is the largest and most established annual curated multi-arts festival in England. Taking place over three weeks in May, the Festival is a celebration of music, theatre, dance, art, film, literature, debate, outdoor and community events in venues and locations across Brighton, Hove and Sussex.

Brighton Festival 2025 Guest Director Anoushka Shankar has worked with the Festival to shape a programme that imagines a hopeful future after a difficult time, celebrating our collective ability to recover, take action and come together to change the world for the better, inspired by the idea of a ‘New Dawn’.

This year’s classical programme at the Brighton Festival, is going to be incredible, and will showcase some outstanding music featuring collaborative classical performances that span eras, genres and generations.

Anoushka Shankar said: “I’m thrilled to be welcoming an incredible range of performers from across the...

Netflix's "The Electric State" isn't very good. By most metrics, it's a complete disaster — a movie so expensive and so devoid of purpose that it honestly defies logic. That's especially true if you've read the book it's based on by Swedish writer and artist Simon Stålenhag.

Stålenhag's books each center on different sci-fi ideas, but the format generally stays the same. They're big books filled with gorgeous digital art of worlds very like our own, but also different. These images are accompanied by one manner or another of prose, telling a linear story or at the very least adding context to the scenes being shown. Where "The Electric State" shows an American landscape devastated by drone warfare and VR addiction, "Tales from the Loop" and "Things from the Flood," Stålenhag's two prior books, follow a Swedish town and the mysterious scientific research facility it holds, as well as the...

Just four days after his surprise reunion with R.E.M. at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, Michael Stipe performed at the annual Tibet House benefit at New York’s Carnegie Hall on a packed bill that also included Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, Laurie Anderson, Gogol Bordello, Orville Peck, Allison Russell, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Angélique Kidjo, and Tenzin Choegyal.

Stipe delivered stunning renditions of David Bowie’s 1970 classic “The Man Who Sold the World” and “No Time for Love Like Now,” which he co-wrote with the National’s Aaron Dessner...

Stop us if you think you’ve heard this one before. In a new family-friendly animated film, a gang of cute animals must overcome obstacles to learn the true meaning of friendship. Sound familiar? On its watery surface, Flow seems to take the form of ghosts of animated past — and yet, there is really nothing quite like it. Made on a shoestring budget by a tiny team in Latvia, Belgium and France, led by multi-talented filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, this is a spectacular, singular slice of computer-generated cinema — doing things only animation can do.

In its scope and vision, Flow feels both maximalist (Zilbalodis conjures vast oceans and mysterious skyscraping temples) and minimalist: there is zero dialogue, beyond various animal grunts, baked inside a fiercely simple story. Our hero is a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed house cat, who seems to live a quiet, solitary life in the apparent home of a feline-loving human artist.

Explorer of the properties of film whose work was seen on Channel 4 and taken up by Tate Modern

In 1970 Malcolm Le Grice made the seven-minute film Berlin Horse. There is no narrative: original 8mm footage of a horse led around a yard in circles is looped and transformed by adding pure spectrum colour filters through the film step-printer in the London Film-makers’ Co-op (Lfmc) workshop. It is accompanied by a soundtrack that Brian Eno had made from guitar chords, with a delay pattern that parallels the visual loops, echoing the use of loops by the US minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

Shown at Lfmc screenings and film festivals, it went on to make a mark in popular culture through inspiring the look of, and being occasionally glimpsed in, the music video for Catch the Sun by the indie band Doves. Both can be found on YouTube.

Quincy Jones is dead at 91. There has simply never been an American artist better in touch with the pulse of popular culture than this producer, arranger, and composer whose work spanned nearly 70 years, every genre imaginable, and crossed all media as well. Jones is best known for his work producing Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, or his lifelong friendship with Ray Charles, but his film scores, bouncing with energy and groove, helped inspire a rethink of what was possible with movie music. (Associated Press first reported his death.)

Multiracial but the very definition of a 20th-century Black artist, Jones was born on the South Side of Chicago on March 14, 1933. His paternal grandmother was an ex-slave; his paternal grandfather, from Wales. His maternal grandmother was born a slave on a Kentucky plantation, as well — through the institutionalized rape of slavery, she was a distant relation of Tennessee Williams and the poet Sidney Lanier,...

Once an outsider to the system, now as influential a doc maker as the industry has, Errol Morris has dedicated his career to drawing our attention to subjects — be they individuals or issues — we might otherwise overlook. Sometimes they are frivolous and fringy, like a Florida pet cemetery (“Gates of Heaven”) or a drug-induced defenestration (“Wormwood”). But the ones that really matter force us to confront truths we may be actively trying to avoid, such as euthanasia (“Mr. Death”) or the use of torture at Abu Ghraib prison (“Standard Operating Procedure”).

“Separated” finds Morris back in “The Fog of War” mode: angry, engaged and determined to expose an injustice too monumental to be ignored — despite so many Americans’ efforts to do just that. Adapted from NBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book of the same name, the blood-boiling doc offers a damning analysis of how the Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy...

New York is a city constantly in survival mode — it’s a harried concrete haven for people who need a measure of desperation (financial or otherwise) just to get out of bed in the morning. There are so many things to hate about this place, but you have to love it because leaving is the only option less viable than sticking around. And to do that, you have to love the fact that everyone around you is in the same boat (which is why so many of us have adopted complaining as a love language unto its own). Solitude is hard to come by in the center of the world, but it can be all too easy to feel like you’re alone. The trick is to appreciate that you’re not.

The frayed and frequently despicable hero of Simon Hacker’s (frayed but frequently likable) “Notice to Quit” will...

While digging through their musical archives, Talking Heads unearthed hours of material that will appear on the upcoming reissue Talking Heads: 77 (Super Deluxe Edition). Out Nov. 8, the extensive release will include four LPs worth of music, including a newly-released acoustic version of “Psycho Killer” recorded with the late musician Arthur Russell nearly five decades ago.

“We knew cellist and singer/songwriter Arthur Russell from the downtown world. He died early from AIDS, and during his life, he released very disparate records,” Talking Heads’ David Byrne shared in a statement, recalling...

Talking Heads have announced an extensive 4xLP box set celebrating their 1977 landmark debut, Talking Heads: 77.

Arriving on November 8th, the super deluxe edition of Talking Heads: 77 features one LP of the remastered original album, one LP comprised of rare and previously-unreleased demos and outtakes, and two LPs with the complete live album Live at Cbgb’s, New York, NY, Oct. 10, 1977, which is only available in this box set.

The box set also contains four 7-inch singles, including the newly-released acoustic version of “Psycho Killer” featuring Arthur Russell. The singles are set in a gatefold with a black and white image of the band; the box set also features an 80-page hardcover book featuring unearthed photos, fliers, artwork, and liner notes handwritten by band members David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison, as well as original recording engineer Ed Stasium. Pre-orders for the vinyl box set are now ongoing.

When composer Paul Leonard-Morgan began working on the Showtime limited series “Fellow Travelers,” he associated the two main characters– Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey)– with individual instruments. “One of them is a piano, one of them is a cello,” he explains in a recent chat with Gold Derby (watch the video above). With those two instruments as the foundation, Leonard-Morgan began crafting the music of their love story, adding layers of instruments but always keeping the cello and piano front and center. “A big, glossy, massive orchestra is actually going to detract rather than help,” he says. “As a composer you’re trying to help the emotions.”

SEEJonathan Bailey interview: ‘Fellow Travelers’

Unlike many projects that Leonard-Morgan has worked on, the composer says that he felt like he nailed the sound of the show almost immediately. “It never happens, like ever,” he says. “It was after...

After making his inordinately stylish and often hilarious slasher film Stagefright, Dario Argento protégé Michele Soavi teamed up with the maestro for 1987’s The Church, a hallucinatory gothic concoction that was originally intended as the third entry in the Demons series before Lamberto Bava passed the directorial torch to Soavi. Although vastly different in tone and atmosphere than the Bava films, The Church still bears distinct traces of their core idea: Ravening demons are inadvertently let loose to run gruesomely amok within a confined space, in this instance a gothic cathedral located somewhere in Germany.

Where the Demons films take visual media as their primary mode of representation, Soavi and co-writers Argento and Franco Ferrini imbue The Church with a literary bent, which is apt for a story that centers around the interpretation of medieval texts. What’s more, the film overtly references works as disparate as M.R. James’s...

When she’s not earning laughs as the flighty but metamorphosing Summer Dutkowsky, the self-proclaimed “hot one” of Girls5eva, the real Busy Philipps — beloved actor, internet personality, and podcaster — has spent the past seven years building a reputation as the brutally honest one.

Around 2017, Philipps started chronicling her daily life on the then-nascent Instagram Stories, speaking directly into the camera with a confessional “Ok … You guys …,” followed by whatever might pop into her brain at any given moment. One story, for example, is an admission of keeping running shoes...

Universal Pictures birthed post-silent horror with iconic monsters like Dracula & Frankenstein, paving the way for today's horror franchises. A Limited Edition Collection showcases original Universal Classic Monsters films in stunning 4K restoration with bonus features. Renowned artist Tristan Eaton created exclusive art for this collector's set, inspired by the classic Universal Monster characters.

After the silent era, horror films as we know them were essentially birthed by Universal Pictures. They had a monopoly on the great monsters and villains that still attract audiences to this day — Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man. With 'The Universal Monsters,' they began horror franchises half a century before the myriad Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street series. And now, a new Limited Edition Collection will contain this horror history and reveal it like you've never seen before, in a stunning new 4K restoration.

From Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal...

Ice Cube said he never expected to be onstage accepting a gilded gramophone with his fellow N.W.A members, but that’s what happened Saturday when he, Mc-Ren, DJ Yella and the mother and son of late rapper Eazy-e received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy at the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Awards.

“My man, Dr. Dre, is not here. He wanted to make sure I let you know he’s not hating. He a billionaire. He got shit to do,” Cube said to laughter and applause. He thanked Dre for his “brilliance,...

Around halfway through the fifth episode of Marvel’s Echo, viewers are dropped into the experience of a Choctaw Nation powwow. It’s a first-of-its-kind moment for the MCU, featuring dancers in regalia singing to the drum-driven music. In a poorly lit nearby barn stands Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez, in a face-off alongside the women of her family against a notorious New York crime kingpin, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).

Director Sydney Freeland pitched the moment to Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige by recalling how she grew up reading Marvel Comics and attending powwows.

“I’ve read comic books at powwows, for sure — I’ve probably fallen asleep reading comic books at powwows — but those two things never overlapped,” Freeland tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So to have those things come together, to have Kingpin at a powwow, it is a very surreal experience.”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has wooed Oscar-winning...

Avant-garde composer-performer Laurie Anderson, R&b icon Gladys Knight, groundbreaking rap group N.W.A, disco queen Donna Summer and country legend Tammy Wynette are among this year’s Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award honorees, the academy announced today.

Also included on the list: gospel vocal group The Clark Sisters and, in the non-performing categories, Peter Asher, the longtime, prolific producer of such artists as Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor; hip hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc; and entertainment attorney Joel Katz. Those three will receive Trustee Awards.

Technical Grammy Award honorees are Tom Kobayashi and Tom Scott, while “Refugee,” written by K’naan, Steve McEwan, and Gerald Eaton (a.k.a. Jarvis Church), is being honored with the Best Song For Social Change Award.

“The Academy is honored to pay tribute to this year’s Special Merit Award recipients — a remarkable group of creators and industry professionals whose impact resonates with generations worldwide,...

There’s an old, old joke about the prestigious New York City concert venue Carnegie Hall, which opened in 1891.

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

“Practice, practice, practice.”

Over the past 130 years, such renowned composers as Antonin Dvorak, Richard Strauss, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Milton Babbitt debuted their works at the Carnegie.

The new Netflix documentary “American Symphony,” which has been Oscar shortlisted for best documentary, best original score and song, follows Academy and multiple Grammy Award-winning composer/musicians/singer Jon Batiste as he prepares to debut his first symphony at Carnegie Hall while his wife Suleika Jaouad battles a recurrence of leukemia. The heart-on-your-sleeve documentary ends with the triumphant premiere Sept. 22, 2022, that even a power outage on stage couldn’t top. Variety noted in its review: “It wasn’t just the story of America, and its collage-like charms and vices. This was also Batiste’s story,...

Fortress Talent Management, a leading agency for composers and music supervisors, has promoted Jake Kozarec to partner.

Kozarec has been with Fortress since 2016, and has overseen the careers of Lorne Balfe, Matthew Margeson, Jeff Cardoni (White House Plumbers), Keegan DeWitt, Jay Wadley, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Candyman), David Fleming and Alex Belcher.

Kozarec has played a key role in growing Fortress’ formidable roster, which includes Oscar-winners Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings), Gustavo Santaolalla (Brokeback Mountain), Mychael Danna (Life of Pi) and Rachel Portman (Chocolat) and Oscar nominees Nicholas Britell (Moonlight), Daniel Pemberton (Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse), Philip Glass (The Hours), Alberto Iglesias (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Clint Mansell (The Fountain) and Owen Pallett (Her).

The company’s clients...

The 2024 Cinema Eye Honors has officially announced its full list of nominees, with D. Smith’s debut feature “Kokomo City” topping the awards contenders.

The Sundance breakout film about Black trans sex workers has six nominations for the 17th annual awards ceremony which spotlights achievements in nonfiction and documentary films and series. The 2024 Cinema Eye Honors will take place January 12 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem, New York.

Following “Kokomo City” are Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” Sam Green’s “32 Sounds,” and Maite Alberdi’s “The Eternal Memory,” each with five nominations. All four films are nominated for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature with the respective directors all nominated for Outstanding Direction.

This year’s Cinema Eye Honors also marks a history-making first with directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson being the first filmmakers to be nominated for Nonfiction Feature and Nonfiction Short in the same year,...

“Kokomo City,” D. Smith’s documentary about four trans Black women in New York and Georgia, led all films in nominations for the 17th annual Cinema Eye Honors, the New York-based awards designed to spotlight all facets of nonfiction filmmaking.

The film received six nominations, including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature and Outstanding Direction. Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” Maite Alberdi’s “The Eternal Memory” and Sam Green’s “32 Sounds” followed with five nominations each.

In the Outstanding Nonfiction Feature category, “Kokomo City,” “The Eternal Memory,” “20 Days in Mariupol” and “32 Sounds” were joined by “Four Daughters,” “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.”

Matthew Heineman’s “American Symphony” received nominations for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Score, making Heineman the third-most-nominated filmmaker in Cinema Eye history. With 12 nominations overall, he now trails Steve James and Laura Poitras by one.

While many...

Fellow Travelers is a show that depicts a forbidden love story across several decades, focusing on the Lavender Scare of the 1950s. BAFTA-winning composer Paul Leonard-Morgan created a unified score for the show, incorporating a distinct and rich sound to evoke emotion and key moments from past decades. The collaboration between the show's creator, Ron Nyswaner, and Leonard-Morgan led to a close-knit and supportive team that resulted in a remarkable and deeply fulfilling experience.

Fellow Travelers is a Showtime show that tells a story of forbidden love across the course of decades. The show was based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon but was adapted for the screen under the leadership of Ron Nyswaner, who created, co-wrote, and produced the series. Fellow Travelers stars Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey as political staffers Hawkins Fuller and Timothy Laughlin (respectively) who begin and maintain a secret relationship.

To...

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie was the top winner at the 2023 Critics Choice Documentary Awards, which were handed out Sunday night.

Among the other prizes the film collected was the best narration award for Michael J. Fox. It also won best biographical documentary, best direction for Davis Guggenheim and best editing for Michael Harte for a total of five awards overall.

Elsewhere, Jon Batiste won best score for American Symphony on the heels of his five Grammy noms, including album of the year. American Symphony also was named best music doc.

20 Days in Mariupol won two awards, for best first documentary feature and best political doc.

The eighth annual edition of the awards show, hosted by Wyatt Cenac, took place at New York’s Edison Ballroom.

Winners were announced in 18 categories spanning theatrical film, TV and digital platforms. Also this year, the Critics Choice Association honored Ross McElwee with its Pennebaker Award,...

One of the first big nights of the 2023 award season took place tonight at Manhattan’s Edison Ballroom when the best nonfiction filmmakers competed for the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. The show, which is hosted by Wyatt Cenac, honors the most acclaimed documentaries of the year in one of the biggest early contests before the Academy Awards.

Netflix’s Jon Batiste documentary “American Symphony” led the pack with six nominations, while “20 Days in Mariupol,” “Kokomo City,” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” were each honored with five nominations a piece. Other contenders for Best Documentary Feature include “Beyond Utopia,” “The Deepest Breath,” “The Mission,” “The Eternal Memory,” “Judy Blume Forever,” and “Stamped from the Beginning.”

“Still: A Michael J. Fox Story” had the strongest story of the night. In addition to taking home Best Documentary Feature, the film won Best Biographical Documentary, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Narration for Fox himself.

Philip Glass has announced his new album, simply titled Philip Glass Solo, out January 26th via Orange Mountain Music.

The retrospective project sees Glass revisiting some of his most acclaimed piano compositions, which he re-recorded at his home studio during the Covid-19 pandemic. It features “Opening,” which originally appeared on the 1982 album Glassworks; his “Metamorphosis” series; and a reworked version of “Truman Sleeps” from the soundtrack to The Truman Show.

“This record revisits my works for piano. From 2020-2021, I had time at home to practice the works I have played for many years,” Glass said in a statement about the album. “This record is both a time capsule of 2021, and a reflection on decades of composition and practice. In other words, a document on my current thinking about the music.”

He continued, “There is also the question of place. This is my piano, the instrument on which most of the music was written.

The Hollywood Music in Media Awards (Hmma) today announced the 2023 nominees for scores and songs in film and other visual media categories. The awards will be presented Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. (Pst) at The Avalon, 1735 Vine Street, in Hollywood, CA.

Song nominees include Oscar-winners Billie Eilish and Finneas for “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie, Olivia Rodrigo and Dan Nigro for “Can’t Catch Me Now” from Hunger Games: The Ballard of Songbirds & Snakes. Justin Timberlake, Alan Menken, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lenny Kravitz, Diane Warren, Metro Boomin, and A$AP Rocky also received nods for their original songs in films.

Composers nominated include Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Ludwig Göransson, Laura Karpman, Branford Marsalis, Thomas Newman, James Newton Howard, Daniel Pemberton, John Powell, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Robbie Robertson, Mark Ronson & Andrew Wyatt, Hans Zimmer (The Creator), among many others.

Films nominated in score, song, onscreen performance, and in...

The Critics Choice Association just unveiled the nominees for its 8th annual documentary awards. Topping the list is “American Symphony” with six bids, including Best Documentary, Best Director for Matthew Heineman, and notices in Cinematography, Editing, and Music Documentary. Heineman is the Oscar nominated director of “Cartel Land” from 2015. The sixth nomination for “American Symphony” is for Best Score thanks to 2022’s Grammy Award recipient for Album of the Year, Jon Batiste. You may recognize another Aoty winner in the Ccda’s lineup — Taylor Swift‘s record breaking concert movie “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is also nominated for Music Documentary.

Just behind “American Symphony” are three films that received five nominations each: “20 Days in Mariupol” from Mstyslav Chernov, “Kokomo City” from D. Smith, and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” from Davis Guggenheim, who is also nominated for Director. The other directors that were heralded for their films...

There’s a great irony at the heart of Errol Morris’ “The Pigeon Tunnel,” a biographical documentary as compellingly elusive as you might expect of a film about the late spy novelist John le Carré: Shot in the fall of 2019 and conceived as a definitive exit interview for its 88-year-old subject (who would die the following December), “The Pigeon Tunnel” is surprisingly candid and confessional for a portrait of a world famous author who will only be remembered by his pen name, but it’s also a lucid crystallization of the same impenetrability and self-deception that defined so many of his books.

That irony isn’t a byproduct of the film, but rather its primary subject, and le Carré — born David John Moore Cornwall — merely the conduit through which it’s expressed.

“There’s no center to a human being,” le Carré declares in the midst of a career-spanning...

Philip Glass has been composing soundscapes of ambient intrigue for documentary filmmaker Errol Morris for decades, from the groundbreaking true-crime doc “The Thin Blue Line” to the Robert McNamara portrait “The Fog of War.” Now, the three-time Oscar-nominated modernist composer and co-writer Paul Leonard-Morgan have crafted the original score for Morris’ John le Carré documentary “The Pigeon Tunnel,” the Apple TV+ documentary that opens Friday, October 20. Also premiering that day will be the film’s original soundtrack from Platoon, and IndieWire shares an exclusive track off the album below.

“It is our pleasure to share ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’ soundtrack,” said Philip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan, adding that “the orchestral journey this score took us on, combing the cimbalom of ’60s espionage soundtracks with symphonic orchestral work, led to 80 minutes of score, almost the entirety of the film.”

The film centers on four days of interviews with le Carré in 2019 that...

Godfrey Reggio––New Mexico’s irascible, irrepressible, eternally eccentric monk-turned-academic-turned-filmmaker whose wordless Philip Glass-scored 1982 masterpiece Koyaanisqatsi transformed American avant-garde cinema––has finally debuted his new 50-minute film, Once Within a Time. As always without conventional plot or dialogue, Once is an eclectic, nearly indescribable feast of visual and aural ideas, at once an expansion on and radical departure from Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy, which combines the aesthetics of early-20th-century cinema with modern digital techniques for a thundering parable about the society of the smartphone and its uncertain future. Ridiculous and provocative, garish and sublime, didactic and obscure, the headtrip of a film Reggio dubs his “Kittyqatsi” is a theatrical fairytale “for children of all ages” as liable as any movie in recent memory to trigger a wildly different response in each person who sees it.

On the eve of its release, we sat with Reggio for an unfiltered,...

Steve McQueen earns directing nod for A24’s Occupied City.

Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony exploring a year in the life of musician Jon Batiste led the Critics Choice Documentary Awards with six nominations on Monday (October 16).

Heineman also gets a nod for best director, Tony Hardmon, Heineman, and Thorsten Thielow for best cinematography, Sammy Dane, Jim Hession, Heineman, and Fernando Villegas for best editing, Jon Batiste for best score, and best music documentary.

Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days In Mariupol, D. Smth’s Kokomo City, and Davis Guggenheim’s Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie each received five nominations...

Jon Batiste in ‘American Symphony’

American Symphony earned six nominations, topping the list of 2023 Critics Choice Documentary Awards (Ccda) nominees. American Symphony, which focuses on Jon Batiste and his wife, Suleika Jaouad, picked up nominations in categories including Best Documentary Feature, Best Director (Matthew Heineman), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score (Jon Batiste), and Best Music Documentary.

Three documentaries – 20 Days in Mariupol, Kokomo City, and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie – followed with five nominations each. Documentarian Ross McElwee has been chosen to receive The Pennebaker Award (the Ccda’s lifetime achievement honor).

Winners will be announced during the Eighth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards to be held at The Edison Ballroom in Manhattan on Sunday, November 12, 2023. Actor and standup comedian Wyatt Cenac (Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas) will host the awards for the second consecutive year.

The Ccda will live-stream on Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter...

Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony, a portrait of musician Jon Batiste as he experiences professional success amid the personal challenge of his wife Suleika Jaouad’s cancer battle, leads the nominations for the 2023 Critics Choice Documentary Awards.

American Symphony is up for six awards including best documentary feature. The film is also nominated for best director (Heineman), cinematography (Heineman, Tony Hardmon and Thorsten Thielow), editing (Heineman, Sammy Dane, Jim Hession and Fernando Villegas), score (Batiste) and best music doc.

20 Days in Mariupol, Kokomo City and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie each scored five nods, with all three titles up for best doc feature and best editing.

20 Days in Mariupol is additionally nominated for best first doc, narration (Mstyslav Chernov) and political doc. Kokomo City is also up for best first doc, cinematography and score (D. Smith). Still is up for best director (Davis Guggenheim), narration (Fox) and biographical doc.

The eighth annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards nominations are often an early bellwether for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar race, mainly because they signal to Oscar voters many of the key films they should not miss. Last year’s winner, “Good Night Oppy,” did not make it to the documentary Oscar shortlist, but the year before, “Summer of Soul” went on to win the Oscar.

This year’s nominations were led by fall festival favorite “American Symphony,” Matthew Heineman’s moving portrait of musician Jon Batiste as he juggles work demands and his wife’s recurring leukemia, with six nods. It was followed by Mstyslav Chernov’s Ukraine international Oscar submission “20 Days in Mariupol,” D. Smith’s black-and-white portrait of Black trans sex workers “Kokomo City,” and Davis Guggenheim’s editing feat “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” with five each.

The gala to honor the winners, hosted by comedian Wyatt Cenac,...

Two experimental films executive produced by Steven Soderbergh — Eddie Alcazar’s Divinity and Godfrey Reggio’s Once Within a Time – join Neon’s anticipated Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall in theaters today, a bit of counterprogramming on a weekend dominated by Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.

Divinity, about a dark and creepy future populated by bodybuilders hooked on an elixir for eternal life, “was always made for the theater,” said Alcazar. “But it’s kind of a roll of the dice of what a distributor wants to do with it.” Utopia, which acquired the black-and-white romp — set mostly in a mansion on a desert that looks like the moon — after its Sundance premiere (see Deadline review), opens Divinity at Regal Union Square in NYC, expanding to Los Angeles next week, with a national rollout on 11/3.

There will be opening-weekend Q&As with Alcazar, Soderbergh, star Stephen Dorff and DJ Muggs.

“Art should be painful. It’s like if you have a boil, you want to lance it to get the pus out. Art should be like an art-opsy. It releases the tension. Art’s not a happy thing.” That's a Variety interview with director Godfrey Reggio, the legendary director behind the Qatsi trilogy who hasn't released a film in a decade, since Visitors. But boy, is he back, and with the help of Naqoyqatsi editor Jon Kane as editor and co-director. Their creation, Once Within a Time, is a perfect "art-opsy" and a truly unique experience.

People may not be familiar with the 20-year-long Qatsi trilogy, but they were produced by a few of the greatest American directors and had some of the best film scores of all time, thanks to Philip Glass. Their formal experimentation, absence of dialogue, and stunning technological processes depicted a world out of balance, drifting...

Godfrey Reggio helped shape the syntax for contemporary commercial advertising, not to mention the music video, with his trilogy of experimental non-narrative films that began with 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi. Reggio’s autodidactic films require users to create their own meaning through the collision of hyperkinetically edited imagery with composer Philip Glass’s evocative music. At 83, Reggio isn’t resting on his laurels—or courting them at all.

After slowing down his rhythm to focus on extended shots trained on human faces in 2013’s Visitors, Reggio’s newest film, Once Within a Time, finds him once again working with more involved edits and compositions. Don’t call it a return to form, though, because he crafted something that looks and sounds quite different. The 52-minute short, co-directed with Jon Kane (who edited 2002’s Naqoyqatsi), conjures the look of Georges Méliès-era, hand-tinted frames while utilizing modern effects to overwhelm the dense frames with information.

Godfrey Reggio, creator of the Qatsi trilogy, has been down this road before. The obsessions are familiar — nature’s innocence corrupted by industry, technology and the atomic age — but the audience is presumably different. This time, it’s younger. Now in his 80s, the avant-garde filmmaker who, in collaboration with composer Philip Glass, found a new cinematic language to caution people of their impact on the environment, has now turned his attention to kids.

With “Once Within a Time,” Reggio communicates his fears about the pitfalls of progress to the generation he’s counting on to fix the messes grown-ups have made of this hand-me-down planet, using circus-trained acrobats, a next-dimension soundtrack and Mike Tyson (of all things) to get his message across. At well under an hour (just 43 minutes before credits), the project presumes a different attention span than the ex-monk’s groundbreaking 1982 essay film, “Koyaanisqatsi,” which used slow-motion,...

Godfrey Reggio and Jon Kane’s Once Within a Time pulses with contradiction. Both technical feat and techno-pessimist fable, this strange brew brims with apocalyptic unease and naïve exuberance in equal measure, marking a departure from the strict documentary mode of Reggio’s Qatsi Trilogy without sacrificing his unmistakable style.

Another wordless film for Reggio (though it contains many indecipherable words), and with a runtime of only 52 minutes, Once Within a Time is more of a gesture than a chain of events, though it arguably lands a little closer to the narrative pole than his previous work. As its starting point, it takes the biblical story of Genesis, with a visual pun connecting the “apple” to digital technology—maybe not knowledge per se, but the incessant barrage of visual information that, for Reggio, obliterates our innocence even as it infantilizes us.

Fenced in by screens, a group of children watch a bewildering array of images.

While the sheer power of Taylor Swift scared off a number of October releases to flee further into the year, this month still offers no shortage of heavy hitters. From one of the most-anticipated films of the last many years to acclaimed documentaries to the final feature from a legendary director, there’s plenty to seek out.

13. Beyond Utopia (Madeleine Gavin; Oct. 23)

One of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year, Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance audience award winner Beyond Utopia tracks the intense, harrowing journey of a handful of individuals who attempt to flee North Korea. Considering how few dispatches we see from inside the country, this promises to be a rare, vital look at the costs of freedom.

12. Once Within a Time (Godfrey Reggio & Jon Kane; Oct. 13 in theaters)

Godfrey Reggio, the legendary director of the Qatsi trilogy, is back with Once Within a Time, co-directed by Jon Kane.

A couple months ago, it was announced that eight of the classic Universal Monsters movies – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, and Creature from the Black Lagoon – would be receiving a limited edition 4K box set release. That box set was supposed to reach store shelves today, October 3rd… but you may have noticed that it’s not available, and Amazon stopped taking orders. That’s because the release of the box set has been delayed until February of 2024.

Our friends at Bloody Disgusting shared the following message from Universal: “Due to an unexpected packaging issue, the originally planned October 3, 2023 release of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment’s upcoming 4K collectible box set of the “Universal Classic Monsters Limited Edition Collection” is moving to February 13, 2024. We appreciate your patience and are very sorry for the inconvenience.”

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