The 2023 Alliance Française French Film Festival is a showcase of French stars – and zombies.

What’s in a word? Interpreting the secret scribbles of musicians, maestros and some of the great composers. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Packed with laughs, toe-tapping songs and performances as sparkly as the costumes, Wayne Blair’s musical is a sure-fire hit.

The extraordinary directorial debut of US director Benh Zeitlin is one of those special US independent films that come along too rarely. Not another lazy comedy full of slackers making cynical wisecracks, this is a genuinely original film with a mythic dimension that makes it sit even bigger in the imagination than it does on the screen. The story is seen from the viewpoint of a feverishly imaginative six-year-old African American girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), who lives with her father in a ramshackle community on the wrong side of a Mississippi levee and obsesses about her absent mother. Her world is one where mythical, boar-like creatures mix with stories of the melting of the polar ice caps and a real-life flood of Biblical proportions. Though this catastrophic event is obviously inspired by Hurricane Katrina, the real-life event is never mentioned; the film aims for something timeless and achieves it. Zeitlin captures a miraculous performance from Wallis, and despite his regrettable weakness for the overuse of shakycam, creates a powerful sense of place in his mixture of the fantastical with the everyday. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Bernard Herrmann’s reputation as a composer rests with his movie scores for Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, but he also wrote several concert works. The dramatic cantata Moby Dick for two soloists, male chorus and large orchestra was composed between 1936 and 1938, before Herrmann’s film work began in earnest. Melville’s existential novel had long been the composer’s obsession, but today it is difficult to buy into the tale of Captain Ahab’s struggle with the great white whale. I confess my own opinion of whaling, namely that it is a barbaric and disgusting practice, colours my appreciation of the piece. (The novel is famously impenetrable.) Herrmann’s score is dramatic and skilfully orchestrated, befitting a born film composer, with tension deftly maintained throughout the work’s 46 minutes. On the downside there is a dearth of memorable thematic material, and the occasional use of Sprechstimme gives the work a dated radio-play quality.  Michael Schønwandt and his Danish forces could not make a better case for Moby Dick. The orchestra and chorus are distinguished by tightness of ensemble and commitment to the drama. The soloists show a similar level of involvement – Wilson-Johnson’s shout of “Death to Moby Dick!” is throat-rippingly exciting –…

Ludovic Bource's acclaimed score for The Artist draws as much from Brahms as from Hitchcock.