Jon Burlingame Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Jon Burlingame editor“Star Trek” has always been known for its progressive casting on screen. But over seven live-action series and 13 movies dating back more than half a century, the science-fiction franchise has never had a woman composer – until now.Nami Melumad, who has been scoring the animated “Star Trek: Prodigy,” has stepped up a notch and is scoring weekly episodes of “Strange New Worlds,” the new Paramount Plus series that chronicles the voyages of the pre-Captain Kirk Enterprise.“It’s been a very busy few months,” says the Israeli-born composer, who has been writing an average of 45 minutes of music per episode of “Strange New Worlds” and is now on her 14th episode of “Prodigy” for Nickelodeon.

Jon Burlingame editorBrian Tyler, composer of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” was named a BMI Icon at Wednesday night’s 38th annual Broadcast Music Inc. Film, TV and Visual Media Awards in Beverly Hills.Tyler (above, right) is among the top 10 highest-grossing film composers of all time.

Jon Burlingame Film composers are always looking for novel ways to express ideas and convey character in music. Two of this year’s original-score nominees were especially innovative in finding musical solutions for storytelling challenges.“Dune” demanded a sonic landscape unlike anything composer Hans Zimmer had ever tackled (including such sci-fi projects as “Inception” and “Interstellar,” which brought him two of his previous 11 Oscar nominations).

Jon Burlingame editor“Turning Red,” Pixar’s latest animated adventure, posed some pretty big musical challenges: it’s about a 13-year-old girl, obsessed with a boy band, whose Chinese ancestry literally looms large as she turns into a giant panda when her emotions spin out of control.It demanded a trio of world-class talents: Grammy winners Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for the songs and Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner Ludwig Göransson to compose the score.That such high-profile talents were available and eager to contribute to “Turning Red” says a lot about the music-friendly reputation of Pixar, which has won five music Oscars (including last year’s “Soul”) and 11 more nominations for either song or score since the original “Toy Story” in 1995. Tom MacDougall, president of Walt Disney Music, conferred with director Domee Shi — whose personal coming-of-age, mother-daughter conflict story inspired “Turning Red” — and reached out to all of them in 2019, before production on the film began.MacDougall had been a fan since Eilish’s early hit “Ocean Eyes” and was impressed, he says, “by the breadth of the territory that their songwriting and performing covered” ever since.

Jon Burlingame “Misty watercolor memories of the way we were…”“Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind…”“I could sell my soul for just a little light in the heat of the night…”Those lyrics, just three of the hundreds written by Marilyn Bergman, along with her husband, Alan, resonate with millions of moviegoers and record-buyers. Marilyn, who died on Jan.

Jon Burlingame editor“Parallel Mothers” is Spanish composer Alberto Iglesias’ 13th film for director Pedro Almodóvar and, says Iglesias, “the best experience working for him” to date.The Madrid-based composer is a three-time Oscar nominee, but none of those films (“The Constant Gardener,” “The Kite Runner,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”) were by Almodóvar, his filmmaking partner since 1995.He has six Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscar, for Almodóvar films, including art-house hits “All

Jon Burlingame editor“This might have been the most challenging score I’ve ever had to write,” says composer Nicholas Britell of “Don’t Look Up,” the sci-fi social satire starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, now in theaters.Britell, a two-time Oscar nominee (“Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk”) and Emmy winner (“Succession”), pondered – “every day for over a year” – how to find the right musical approach for Adam McKay’s “unbelievable blend of reality with comedy, absurdity

Jon Burlingame Ginny Mancini, former big-band singer, widow of composer Henry Mancini and one of Hollywood’s leading philanthropists, died Monday night at her Malibu home.

Jon Burlingame editorEvery Wes Anderson film is filled with musical delights, from offbeat songs to unexpected score cues, and “The French Dispatch” is no exception.Composer Alexandre Desplat and music supervisor Randall Poster are among the first to read any new Anderson script.

Jon Burlingame Leslie Bricusse, Oscar- and Grammy-winning songwriter whose songs for Broadway and Hollywood include “What Kind of Fool Am I?” and “Pure Imagination,” died Tuesday in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

Chris Willman Music WriterVariety film music writer Jon Burlingame has been named among the winners of the 2021 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards, awarded by a jury of experts for outstanding coverage of music in the forms of print, broadcast, liner notes or new media.Burlingame won the ASCAP Foundation Paul Williams “Loved the Liner Notes” Award for writing that was included on a recent expanded reissue of the “Midnight Cowboy” film soundtrack on Quartet Records.

Jon Burlingame editor“We have all the time in the world.”When James Bond (Daniel Craig) says that line to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) nine minutes into “No Time to Die,” it may not mean much to the average moviegoer.

Jon Burlingame editor“Black Panther” was an international cultural phenomenon and the Marvel movie’s Oscar-winning score, by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, was equally as thrilling for its unique blend of African influences, traditional orchestra and modern production techniques.On Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Sept.

Jon Burlingame Composer James Newton Howard is no stranger to action films. He’s done dozens of them, from “The Fugitive” and “King Kong” to “The Hunger Games” and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”But it’s probably safe to say he’d never faced a challenge quite like Disney’s “Jungle Cruise,” opening July 30.

Jon Burlingame editor“In the Heights,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tale of the immigrant community of New York’s Washington Heights, will be released on Friday. Its four Tony Awards for the original Broadway show included best musical, best original score, and best orchestrations for Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman — who oversaw the musical transition from stage to screen.

Jon Burlingame When Carlos Rafael Rivera got the call that he would be writing the music for “The Queen’s Gambit,” he immediately did two things: He read the Walter Tevis novel, and he took up chess.More than three years later, the composer’s classically styled music for the Netflix series has become his most widely praised work.

Jon Burlingame From the period-specific tunes of “The Crown” to the surprising instrumental reworkings of modern pop hits in “Bridgerton,” this season’s Emmy contenders in music supervision showcase the growing field’s continued influence.Alexandra Patsavas“Bridgerton” may give veteran music supervisor Patsavas her best shot yet at an Emmy thanks to her clever use of chamber music-style covers of modern pop songs, which help trace the emotional journey of Daphne and Simon (Phoebe Dynevor and

Jon Burlingame Nature documentaries, true crime, even controversial stories of child-sexual abuse — they all need music, and this television season offered composers of varied backgrounds supplying outstanding scores.“Really, you’re writing a concerto for dialogue,” says Michael Abels (“Get Out”), whose firstever doc assignment was the HBO series “Allen v.

Jon Burlingame When Warner Bros.

Jon Burlingame Jongnic Bontemps might just qualify as the unofficial composer of the Black Lives Matter movement.No fewer than four major documentaries on African American subjects — airing now, or soon, on CNN, Netflix, National Geographic and Amazon Prime — feature scores written by the Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based composer.“I asked the universe for this,” Bontemps admits.

Jon Burlingame When Lolita Ritmanis was growing up in Portland, Oregon, she didn’t even speak English.

Jon Burlingame Composer Henry Jackman is known for fun Disney fare like “Wreck-It-Ralph” and “Big Hero 6” and dark Marvel epics like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Captain America: Civil War.” But he had never scored a film like “Cherry.”Starring Tom Holland as an Iraq War veteran whose life spirals downward when he becomes addicted to opioids, “Cherry” was directed by Jackman’s old Marvel colleagues Joe and Anthony Russo.

Jon Burlingame When’s the last time you heard a TV theme that you could hum, sing along with… and remember? If you don’t have Disney Plus, it was probably decades ago.

Jon Burlingame Composer Alexandre Desplat has made seven films with George Clooney, either as producer or director — including the Oscar-winning “Argo” and the Oscar-nominated “Syriana” — but creating music for “The Midnight Sky” may have been the their biggest challenge to date.“Music is a character in this film because a good portion of it is silent,” Clooney tells Variety. “My intent was for the film to be a meditation.

Jon Burlingame Most composers spend a few weeks, sometimes even a few months, on a film score.

Jon Burlingame “Soul” is in, but “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is out: That’s the message the Academy’s music branch is sending to members who began voting today for the shortlists for both song and score.Disney-Pixar’s “Soul” has been declared eligible for the original-score Oscar, but the song from Netflix’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was missing from the song list, indicating that the music-branch executive committee disqualified it from consideration.Voters from the Academy’s approximately

Jon Burlingame When composer Emile Mosseri and director Lee Isaac Chung began talking about the music for “Minari,” Chung’s reminiscence about his Korean family’s struggle to succeed at farming in Arkansas, they decided what the score shouldn’t be: overtly Korean or American in style.“No twangy guitars or harmonicas,” says Mosseri of the A24 film, which had an Oscar-qualifying run last month and will get a wider rollout starting Feb. 12.

Jon Burlingame In August 2020, Bradley Rainey was named head of WME’s music for visual media department, succeeding veteran agent Amos Newman and taking on a roster of Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winners including Hans Zimmer, Randy Newman, Ludwig Göransson, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, among others. The 35-year-old Rainey, a graduate of USC’s film school, was well positioned for the promotion.

Jon Burlingame The pandemic may have cancelled live performances and moviegoing for most of 2020, but for film-music buffs, that just meant more time at home listening to their favorite music, including many releases of music never before heard outside their original cinematic contexts.“There is still an unquenchable thirst for classic scores, both previously unreleased and reissues of scores that are expanded, re-mastered, or both,” says Matt Verboys, co-owner of L.A.

Jon Burlingame “When I get a call saying, ‘Do you want to do a Western?,’ my answer is always yes,” says “News of the World” composer James Newton Howard. “I love Westerns.”Previous horse dramas for the eight-time Oscar nominee have included “Wyatt Earp” and “Hidalgo.” His collaboration with director Paul Greengrass was his first, and he visited the New Mexico location during shooting more than a year ago.“The New Mexico desert is always inspiring,” Howard says.