Sam Juliano, Allan Fish and WitD Receive Two Kreativ Awards…

by Dee Dee

Wonders in the Dark readers, Sam Juliano, Allan Fish…were awarded two Kreativ awards.

I know you may be wondering what is a kreativ award? From reading and listening to other bloggers explanation of the kreativ award, I noticed that their description was too vague so I decided to do a little research and this is what I discovered…

…It is an award giving to fellow bloggers, because their fellow bloggers, think that their blogs are “unique”  and that the blogger is “creative.” Now here goes a few unanswered questions about the Kreativ awards…

First, Where did this award originate?…Go here…Careann  In addition, what do the name mean or what is the meaning of the name?…

…Well; here is an explanation of the name that I overheard (from a fellow blogger) while out there in the blogosphere. …Univarn said,”As I was told Kreativ is German for the word Creative so there is that. As for who made, or was the origin of it, I’m not sure anyone knows, mostly myths.

(See Careann blogsite for the origin of  the Kreativ award)

Nice to see these passed along though, I do not think you can ever pass up the opportunity to congratulate, and show your appreciation, for fellow bloggers…”

[Note; Kreativ is an adjective in the German vocabulary…Hence, the missing “e.”]

Moreover, along with this award goes rules you must follow The Rules Which Must Be Followed is (Well, Sam Juliano, being the nicest man in the blogosphere and very diplomatic man that he is…created a couple of new wonderful rules.) Here goes the rules…

 1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award. That would be Greg from over there at Cinema Styles and Troy Olsen from over there at Elusive As Robert Denby.

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link to the person (people) who nominated you for this award.

cinemastyles

Elusive As Robert Denby

4. Name 7 things about yourself (Sam Juliano) that people might find interesting…

1.My favorite game is chess.

2.My favorite rock group is The Beatles

3.My favorite composers are Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Beethoven.

4.I’am married and my wife’s name is Lucille, and we have five children, the oldest is 13, the youngest is 6. (Melanie, Sammy, Danny, Jillian and Jeremy).

5. My favorite novel is Les Miserables.

6. I am a trustee on my town’s (Fairview, N.J.) local library board.

7. I served four year’s on Fairview’s Board of Education, while in my early 20’s before taking a teaching position in the borough.
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5. Nominate seven Kreativ Bloggers. [Note; See Question No# 7…]

6. Post links to the seven blogs you nominate… Ha! What a Herculean task that would be to link to every blogger on WitD blog roll. [Note; See Question No# 7…methinks that this would take all day and night.]

 7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated for a kreativ award. [Note; See Question No# 6…]

Sam Juliano, had a very difficult time just selecting seven creative blogger from his blog roll…Therefore, Sam, nominated each blogger on his blog roll… No worries, all of you, do not have to follow the seven steps that are required after you receive the Kreativ award.

Since each of you are so Kreativ (creative) maybe you can name seven films that you think are unique and tell “the” Sam Juliano, Allan Fish, the WitD readers and your fellow bloggers why you think your seven choices are creative.

 In other words, what makes these seven films memorable? On the other hand, you can tell Sam Juliano and Allan Fish, seven reasons why you like to visit Wonders in the Dark.  (If you prefer not to list seven films)

(Oh no, you are not obligated to participate only if you want to participate.) Well, I hope that all the readers, here at Wonders in the Dark  have a nice weekend.

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What are the Greatest Motion Picture Scores of All-Time?

by Sam Juliano  

Miklos Rozsa’s Pagentry-laden score for 1959’s ‘Ben-Hur’ may be most moving in history

Bernard Herrmann’s gorgeous music for Ray’s ‘On Dangerous Ground’ ranks among the best ever

Chaplin wrote his own score for Modern Times and it is one of the best ever written.

Classical genius Sergei Prokofiev’s symphonic masterpiece for ‘Alexander Nevsky’ is one of the greatest of scores

 

Ennio Morricone’s elegiac score for ‘Once Upon A Time in America’ sets new marks for screen lyricism

Alfred Newman’s lushly romantic and emotional score for 1939’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ is one of the best of its kind

Anton Karas’ zither score for ‘The Third Man’ is one of the most justly famous in history

Maurice Leroux’s exhilarating music for Lamorisee’s enchanting ‘The Red Balloon’ (1956) is one of the most joyful collaborations in the cinema.

 

Ravi Shanker’s rich music for Ray’s staggering masterpiece, ‘Pather Panchali’ is the perfect fusion of image and music.

Elmer Bernstein’s greatest score came late in his career for Todd Haynes’ Sirksian drama ‘Far From Heaven’

 

Clint Mansell’s New Age score to ‘The Fountain’ is exceedingly beautiful and is it’s films most stupendous component.

Patrick Doyle’s score to Branagh’s ‘Henry V’ combines patriotism and valour with sublimity and heartbreak

Bernard Herrmann’s score for Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ is one of the cinema’s irrefutable masterpieces

Alfred Newman’s sentimental score for John Ford’s ‘How Green Was My Valley’ shoots an arrow through the heart

 

Paul Giovanni’s score to ‘The Wicker Man’ (1973) is a masterpiece of sound

Franz Waxman’s score to Hitchcock’s ‘rebecca’ is the great composer’s finest, a perfect wedding of lyricism and atmosphere

Phillip Glass’ minimalist score for Geoffrey Regio’s ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ is a singular achievement

Leonard Rosenman’s score for Kazan’s ‘East of Eden’ reaches the emotional essence of the material

Nino Rota’s score to Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (1968) is lush and melodic, helping to bring forth the vision of youth by Zeffirelli

Vic Mitzy’s New Age score for Tarr’s ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’ defines a mood all its own

Georges Delerue’s score for Truffaut’s ‘Jules et Jim’ is alternately playful and deeply-moving

Morricone’s score for Giuseppe Tornatore’s ‘Cinema Paradiso’ in unabashedly sentimental, but it’s tear-inducing and gorgeously-written

 

'Gattaca' features a New Age score by Michael Nyman that's piercingly-beautiful

 

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s rollicking, swashbuckling score to Michael Curtiz’ ‘The Adentures of Robin Hood’ is the best of it’s kind

One of the greatest of all composers, Max Steiner, had a diverse career, yet hi smost exceedingly beautiful score was for a war drama from David O. Selznick, ‘Since You Went Away’

Wojech Kilar’s stunning atmospheric score to ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ signalled the emergence of a major talent

Z. Preisner’s brilliant score for Kieslowski’s ‘Blue’ set the bar in more ways than one

George Auric’s magical score for Jean Cocteau’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was a ravishing underpinning

Dari Marianelli’s beautiful score to Joe Wright’s ‘Atonement’ set the anchor for the film’s emotional essence

Michael Giacchino’s score for Pixar’s ‘Up’ was a crowning achievement in a career of some great motion picture scores

 

 

So many other scores might be considered for any kind of a definitive list, but I went with the above 25, knowing that on any day of the week, one would b etempted to add the likes of Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia, Aaaron Copland’s The Red Pony, Goblin’s Suspiria, Max Steiner’s Gone With the Wind, The Searchers and The Informer, John Williams’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Dimitri Tiomkin’s High Noon, Rozsa’s King of Kings, Leonard Bernstein’s On the Waterfront, Elmer Bernstein’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho, Jason and the Argonauts, The Devil and Daniel Webster, Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver and Three Worlds of Gulliver, Alfred Newman’s The Prisoner of Zenda, Morricone’s Malena, Legend of 1900 and Once Upon A Time in the West, John Corigliano’s The Red Violin, John Barry’s Walkabout, Waxman’s Sunset Boulevard, Schifrin’s 1138, Korngold’s King’s Row, Chaplin’s City Lights, Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible I and II, and a bevy of others.

    Music often serves as far more than the aural underpinning of a motion picture and in the best possible scenario is the component that fuels and inspires the emotional reaction.

    Readers are asked to submit their own ‘Top 25’ scores of all time right on this thread.  Musicals do not count, only films where the music is mainly symphonic.  I chose 30 here, and the order isn’t particularly important.

 

 

                     

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One a.m. (no 59)

by Allan Fish

(USA 1916 28m) DVD1/2

Early bath, or rather a late one

p  Charles Chaplin  d/w  Charles Chaplin  ph  William C.Morris, Rollie Totheroh

Charles Chaplin (the drunk), Albert Austin (taxi driver),

“Is there a more typical or revealing piece of classic Chaplin than One a.m., in which he exists in virtuoso isolation for fifteen minutes, executing every variation on the drunk-coming-home theme? It’s a like a dancer at the bar confronting himself in the mirror…”  David Thomson may not have been a Chaplin fan to much degree, but he rarely wrote a more telling observation.  It has been documented that it was upon seeing him do a comedy drunk act in the Fred Karno theatre while on a trip to London that Mack Sennett sent a telegram to Chaplin offering him a contract with him in California.  By the time he made this ultimate preservation of this act for posterity, he’d left Sennett for Mutual, but one can still imagine old Mack laughing his head off, just as millions of others did.

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