RON HOWARD

Par David Shankbone (Travail personnel) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Ron Howard (born in Duncan, Oklahoma, USA, on March 1, 1954) is a renowned American film director and producer. In 1977, he directed his first film Grand Theft Auto (he starred and also wrote the script). The film was successful and it was a good start for his directorial career. He went on to direct many successful films in later years, including Cocoon, Willow, Backdraft, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code and Frost/Nixon. He received his first Best Director of the Year award from the DGA for Apollo 13 in 1995, and in 2002 he received an Academy award (Best Director category) for the film A Beautiful Mind. The film also won an Oscar for best film. He frequently collaborates with composer James Horner for most of his films, and in an interview about his view on him, said: "What continues to impress me about James is that he’s a terrific storyteller, he thinks dramatically, and he leads with his soul, I really appreciate that".

Source: Wikipédia, Interview originally published in Soundtrack Magazine Vol.20/No.80/2001

WILLOW EXPANDED EDITION: OUR EXCLUSIVE REVIEW

Thirty-four years after the release of Virgin Records’ original soundtrack album, Intrada treats us to an expanded version of Willow. This marks the end of a notedly long wait for all of us whose only access to the music omitted from that release was via the film, or by turning to The Story of Willow, a narration of the story (including sound effects, dialogue and music) released in 1988 by Buena Vista on vinyl, audio cassette and CD. Now at long last, this new edition allows fans to discover the wealth of previously unreleased cues in stellar sound quality. While there

APOLLO 13 EXPANDED EDITION: OUR EXCLUSIVE REVIEW

Time and again, Horner showed himself to be a master storyteller. His trick was always to latch onto the protagonist and follow him or her through the requisite and tumultuous transformation process. When he was asked to score Apollo 13 in 1995, all that had to go out the window, because Ron Howard’s well-regarded account of the troubled moon mission was, first and foremost, a documentary. The focus of the piece is on events (such as the daunting problems the astronauts faced in getting back home) and concepts (such as NASA, space, defeat and success), and those were the elements

THE DEFINITIVE EDITION OF APOLLO 13 AVAILABLE AT INTRADA

It's still Christmas! Almost a quarter of a century after the film's release, Intrada announces their double CD for the music of Apollo 13 (1995) When copies of the Apollo 13 soundtrack hit shelves in the summer of 1995, listeners who came looking for the original score discovered that the music of James Horner was poorly represented, with only 7 pieces totaling about forty minutes, diluted among eight songs and many excerpts of dialogue. The producers chose a commemorative album, not a presentation of the original composition (a follow-up album, released a little later with a second CD only featured

STANDOUT SET PIECES #7: COCOON’S THIRD ACT

0. Bringing you up to speed and architecture of the score This seventh episode in the Standout Set Piece series is a bit different, as it will not concern itself exclusively with one standout cue. Even though this article will go into the score’s final five cues in greater detail, the emphasis will mainly be on the general architecture of the score, given James Horner’s remarkable talent as a storyteller and the faithful adherence of Cocoon’s script to the three-act structure as it pertains to the “beat sheet” Blake Snyder outlines in his influential book Save The Cat. If we are

JAMES HORNER: A LIFE IN MUSIC PROMO VIDEO

The Royal Albert Hall has released a new promotional video for their upcoming concert. James Horner: A Life in Music will be performed on October 24th in London, and will feature selections from Avatar, Braveheart, Legends of the Fall, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and many others. There will be exclusive video commentary from frequent Horner collaborators: directors James Cameron, Ron Howard, Mel Gibson and Sir Richard Eyre, and producer Jon Landau. There will be “very special guests” in attendance. The promotional video features brief excerpts of commentary from Howard, Cameron, and Gibson. “He loved textures and sounds and beautiful things…. I

STANDOUT SET PIECES #2: ELORA DANAN FROM WILLOW

“It is a time of dread... Seers have foretold the birth of a child who will bring about the downfall of the powerful queen Bavmorda. Seizing all pregnant women in the realm, the evil queen vows to destroy the child when it is born...” 1 Bringing you up to speed For his second collaboration with Ron Howard (after Cocoon), James Horner was tasked with composing the then-longest score of his career. The fantasy film, produced by George Lucas, is about a diminutive Elwyn who rises from his humble peasant origins to become the sorcerer-hero who defeats the evil queen Bavmorda and her

STANDOUT SET PIECES #1: THE LAUNCH FROM APOLLO 13

Scoring the moment refers to the practice of just trying to make the most out of individual scenes. Far too many film composers do it and incompetent directors love it (mostly because many of them wouldn’t know how else to score a movie), but you’ve guessed by now that the phrase has quite a negative ring to it. That’s mainly because the short-sighted focus on one individual scene after another makes storytellers forget what they’re actually doing: telling a story. And a story, as you will most certainly understand, is much more than a sequence of moments. Ever since the ancient

JAMES HORNER'S 62ND BIRTHDAY: ALL IS THERE

Photo credit: © Sylvia Wells James Horner left this world, leaving us stunned and inconsolable. It was the day after Father's Day, the second day of summer. After this tragic and absurd June 22, we ran as our headline, "All is Lost,” a track title from the beautiful The New World. Since the departure of the composer, we must learn to live in this new world. A world without James Horner. So many notes will not be written. In an interview about The New World (and for now only available in French), James Horner said: "Timelessness is not what we are but what we

AUSTRALIA, 1991: JAMES HORNER SEMINARS

Having published interviews given in the early 80's to the CinemaScore magazine (see our article), we continue our exploration of the archives of the past with the publication of the two seminars which James Horner participated in, December 1991 in Australia. That year, the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) was celebrating film music with a series of courses and activities to recognize and celebrate the contribution that music makes to the screen experience. James Horner had made the trip to take part in a variety of national activities intended to stimulate an atmosphere of appreciation for the work of

INTERVIEW WITH JIM HENRIKSON

There are names you will often run into on James Horner’s album covers: Ian Underwood, Tony Hinnigan, Simon Rhodes ... For 25 years one of them has been present almost every time, proof of a collaborator who has become indispensable. James Horner speaks of him thus in the liner notes to the soundtrack album for Troy: "my wonderful friend without whose guidance and wise counsel I would be lost." This close and faithful staff member is the legendary music editor, Jim Henrikson. Prior to working with James Horner, he participated in projects for television (Star Trek: The Original Series) and classic

VIBES RE-RELEASED

In 1988, after Red Heat by Walter Hill and before the magnificent The Land Before Time by Don Bluth, James Horner composed the music for the film, Vibes, produced by Ron Howard and starring Cindy Lauper and Jeff Goldblum. An artistic and financial failure, this feature film set in the Andes afforded an opportunity, in its first half, for exotic music with a vast collection of instruments (flutes, banjos, crystal sounds, woods, percussion...). In this score, James Horner demonstrates his ability to adapt to all styles of music. In the second part of the film however, the score becomes much

COCOON (OR EMOTION) BY JAMES HORNER

In 2013 we have definitely been spoiled by Intrada, with three James Horner albums: after the vibrant and unpublished In Country, the valiant and percussive Clear and Present Danger, here is the emotional and sensitive Cocoon. This is the perfect opportunity to revisit this outstanding music composed at the beginning of the Maestro's career, and look at the new elements of this edition. [divider]An emotional score[/divider] "There is a before and an after Cocoon because Steven Spielberg loved this film and my music. My career really took off with Cocoon and An American Tail. I walked into the Hollywood tradition at that

COCOON EXPANDED RELEASE BY INTRADA

In our interview, Roger Feigelson said that the next Horner project would be a score from the eighties, in his own terms: "a great, great score". We did not have any idea of when this would occur and we had to guess between the greatest scores that James Horner did in the eighties: An American Tail? Cocoon? Willow? The Land Before Time? We did not have to wait too long as the news broke: Cocoon, which is probably one of the most famous of all James Horner's eighties scores and the beginning of his collaboration with director Ron Howard, now has

WILLOW: BETWEEN QUOTES

Willow was released 25 years ago and comes this year with a completely restored Blu-ray version. One of the main advantages of this rejuvenation is the quality of the sound mixing in DTS HD, which gives even more size, energy and accuracy to the music. It literally fills the sound space and helps create an epic dimension for the adventures of Willow Ufgood, Elora Danan and Madmartigan. "I am a musicologist, a doctor of music. Therefore I listened to, studied and analysed a lot of music. I also enjoy metaphors, the art of quoting and of cycles. The harmonic draft of