One of the most interesting movie-music assignments of the year fell to composer Daniel Pemberton (Steve Jobs, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), who was recruited by director Danny Boyle to supervise all of the music, on-screen and off, in the romantic comedy Yesterday. There are 25 Beatles songs, heard in part or in their entirety, many of them sung by actor Himesh Patel (who, amusingly, plays a budding singer-songwriter who, in a twist of fate, seems to be the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles and turns his memory of their songs into a smashing new career). Pemberton explains how he went about it in this Variety story.
Monthly Archives: June 2019
No Isaac Hayes music in the new “Shaft” movie?
An unexpected controversy arose over music in the new Shaft movie, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Richard Roundtree and Jessie T. Usher as three generations of the Shaft family. Isaac Hayes III, son of the Oscar- and Grammy-winning soul-music icon, hoped to produce the new film’s soundtrack; but that didn’t happen, and the New Line film contains newly recorded versions of the classic theme but no actual tracks by the composer (who died in 2008). I interviewed both the heir, composer Christopher Lennertz (who scored the new film) and sources close to the studio for this Variety story.
Lesley Barber’s music for the film “Late Night”
Canadian composer Lesley Barber (Manchester by the Sea) started work on the new Emma Thompson-Mindy Kaling comedy Late Night before shooting. Director Nisha Ganatra needed a theme for Thompson’s failing evening talk show! In this Variety story, Barber explains how she “pretended I was Paul Shaffer” to come up with a winning tune, and then spun that into the basis for much of the underscore.
The Emmy music campaigns begin
This year there are seven music categories at the Emmys, the most for any craft discipline except for editing, which has eight. For many years there were five (original music for a series; music for a TV-movie or miniseries; music direction; song; main title theme) but in the past two years the TV Academy has added two more (music supervision; original music for documentaries). So covering this vast field has become infinitely more complicated; there were an estimated 700 entries from the 2018-19 season. My stories for Variety included an early overview (including The Orville, Succession, Leaving Neverland, The Umbrella Academy); music for drama (Yellowstone, Orville, Twilight Zone); music for movies and miniseries (Good Omens, Catch-22, The Bad Seed); music for comedies (Veep, Pen15, Russian Doll, Arrested Development); and music for documentaries (Love Gilda, RBG, Our Planet, Hostile Planet).