Patch Live Chat: Oscars 2013 featuring Cinema Siren

Who will hit the red carpet in style? Is Ben Affleck still being punished for Gigli? Who's going to take the Best Picture award home?

Join area Patch columnists, editors, and Cinema Siren as we chat about the Oscars starting at 7 p.m. Sunday.

[Find more details about Sunday night's award show, including what channel it airs on locally by clicking here.]

Expect a bit of snark, a few jokes, some questioning of the Academy's choices, and more.

Put on your finest — or just your pajamas — and accompany us virtually to the red carpet at 7 p.m. and the awards at 8:30 p.m. for some Oscars live chat fun.

Go to the Herndon Patch website and enter your email in the Cover It Live Box here  to get a reminder for the live chat and not miss a minute.

For a look at all of this year's nominees, check out Cinema Siren's recent article, Cinema Siren's Observations of the 2013 Oscar Nominations.

Cinema Siren: Scoring Romance

From Cinema Siren on Patch.com

The Best Soundtrack Scores for Love and Romance 

Cinema Siren is a big fan of love. There’s nothing more wonderful than being around those in love. It brings everyone around them up, even if the experience can be a bit of a sap-fest.

Anytime I can play Cupid with a well recommended rom-com movie or charming little cafe for a Paris visit, I’m right there for it. I’m back from London just in time to help the romantically inclined or challenged. Sadly, Valentine’s Day is only once a year. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared to do the aural equivalent of tossing rose petals at our significant others, or put ourselves in a loving and romantic mood.

I’ve put together a collection of scores very specifically chosen for romantic interludes. For that time you’ve spirited away to a bed and breakfast or have unplugged your phones and turned in early together…

I didn’t include scores you couldn’t get in their entirety, nor those that you’d find distracting. Some scores have very famous or particularly gorgeous pieces sprinkled within bombast and cacophony. Some, no matter how great they might be, are still too recognizable not to feel cliched or create an inappropriate tape loop in your head.

That kicked Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill A Mockingbird, Last of The Mohicans, A Beautiful Mind and Siesta, all of which are amazing but too aurally diverse as a whole. Titanic, Somewhere in Time, The Way We Were and Love Story are all too memorable, but those of you who don’t mind being able to sing along with every note or imagining a sinking ship are welcome to consider them included.

One could certainly throw together a wonderful romantic collection from parts of the North by Northwest, Vertigo and even Psycho soundtracks. I could have suggested dozens of those I whittled down from the 50-plus scores on my first list.

I found a way to reduce the list to my choices of the very best. Here, therefore, are complete scores with only the occasional departure, if any, from the gorgeous or meditative. Numbering them 10 to 1 is a matter of personal taste as they are all exceptional. Your agreement or disagreement will depend on how much you prefer ambient over the orchestral or melodic. Have fun, whoever you are….You can thank me later.

#10 Whale Rider (Lisa Gerrard) Written by one of the founding members of Dead Can Dance, Gerrard allows undulating synths and guitars to construct the score’s moody, atmospheric soundscape. Her gorgeous voice can be heard just enough to add her trademark ethereal quality.

#9 The Last Emperor (Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne) This Oscar-winning score is a great example of Western and Asian musical influences blended seamlessly by two pop critic darlings. A beautiful heartbreaking theme gives way to Chinese folk music injecting a sparse instrumentation, which makes for a fascinating and mesmerizing balance.

#8 The Hours (composed by Phillip Glass) Famed 20th-century classical composer Glass utilizes his minimalism, using orchestra, string quartet and piano to build sonic layers with repetitive themes that build and deconstruct over and over. Very powerful.

#7 Pride and Prejudice (Dario Marianelli and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet) Though not as strong a score as his “The Brothers Grimm,” this one is far more calm and quite lovely on the whole, making a lovely accompaniment for a shared sunset or snowy evening. Pianist Thibaudet adds his expert and emotional piano-playing to the collection of new pieces all meant to evoke the composers of Beethoven’s era. Those of you who are screaming about ‘How can she place this lower than Philip Glass?’ remember this is based on romance. An entire high school gym could be filled with the sheet music purchased of the score’s song, “Dawn.”

#6 Revolutionary Road (Thomas Newman) It was very difficult to pick on Newman piece to include, but this one is arguably the most emotional of his works, and has his trademark signature sounds of lushness from unusual instrumentation. There are a few discordant moments, but none of it is bombastic. Also, several romantic ’50s songs are included. The theme that repeats is beautiful.

#5 The Fountain (Cliff Mansel) Anytime you get a composer (Cliff Mansel), the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai together, it’s bound to get interesting. Many of the fans of this soundtrack will tell you it numbers among the best ever. It swings from ambient synths and bleeps to swelling strings and everywhere in between, while maintaining consistent and haunting, melancholy intensity.

#4 Crash (Mark Isham) Lots of gorgeous ethnic vocalizations add to a deeply intense and richly emotional work by one of the best contemporary composers for film. Gorgeous from beginning to end.

#3 Out of Africa (John Barry) One of the two most traditionally romantic scores on the list, this orchestral score is very melodic and sweeping. I remember when I went to the premiere of this movie many years ago, more than half the audience left the film red-eyed and weepy. This music is so beautiful it could certainly bring on some tears.

#2 Solaris (Cliff Martinez) So atmospheric it feels like you are being drawn into another world. It has the unique quality of mixing a delicacy with an intensity that gets under your skin and stays there. Very meditative, this score is definitely either for active listening or to be completely in the background. One reviewer said of it, “this music will fill a need you didn’t know you had.”

#1 Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ (Peter Gabriel) This Grammy winner was quite ahead of its time when released in 1989, although it is yet another example of Martin Scorsese’s love of music of all sorts and his belief of it as essential in his films. Based in the rhythms and sounds from a wide variety of countries as diverse as Turkey, India, Morocco and Senegal, it fully lives up to its title. Gabriel shows just how much intensity and emotion can be conveyed through rhythm, and brings together the best musical influences from around the world to do so.

Honorable mention goes to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, because no list of the best scores is complete without one by the incomparable Bernard Herrmann. This is his most romantic, and draws upon his influences of Debussy and Rachmaninoff, with a wonderful recurring theme that is as romantic as you’ll ever hear. Highly recommended.

In some not too distant future I’ll be making other lists of soundtrack scores for you to consider adding to your playlists. It is essentially the classical music of the 20th and 21st century, and an opportunity for composers to express the depth and diversity of musical expression to a wide audience of film lovers.

Those of you who don’t already listen to scores will be amazed at how well they stand alone and how much they can be enjoyed in any music collection. As a first list, though, these 10 scores perfectly show just how much our lives can be enhanced by the power of music.

Cinema Siren: Celebrate Shakespeare on Film: Top Five of All Time

From Cinema Siren at Patch.com

LONDON — Cinema Siren is writing from London this week, and preparing to see James McAvoy in Macbeth at Trafalgar Transformed. A fan of his work for years, I jumped at the chance to see a new and exciting version of the play put together by the famous British stage director Jamie Lloyd with production design by Soutra Gilmour, who won the 2012 Evening Standard award for Best Design.

It got me thinking about the many cinematic versions of Shakespeare’s work in film history. Shakespeare never goes out of style, as witnessed by the recent release directed by Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus in 2012. Joss Whedon is about to release a home movie version of Much Ado About Nothing (no kidding, it was filmed at his house) on June 7, starring his usual suspects including Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Fran Kranz and Amy Acker.

If the director of The Avengers is doing it, it must be cool… I thought now, in honor of my Shakespearean pilgrimage to jolly ole England, I would offer a little list of suggested viewing for those of you who might want to see some of the best versions of his plays immortalized on celluloid. Here are Cinema Siren’s top five of all time:

#5 The Taming of the Shrew (1967) Directed by Franco Zeffirelli: This play can be seen as quite misogynistic, but depending on your perspective, can also be quite empowering for women. What makes this version so compelling is notoriously manipulative train wreck couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton play the leads. It has an earthy, very late ’60s vibe, and includes Michael York, as well as famed Brit Shakespearean actor Cyril Cusack (whose daughter Sinead Cusack has also become a great actress on the Shakespearean stage, winning a Tony for Much Ado About Nothing in 1985…she is also married to actor Jeremy Irons). It may seem like everyone is having too much fun, but these actors, some of the best in film, make it look easy.

#4 King Lear (1983) Directed for TV by Michael Elliott: Cinema Siren is extremely biased about the best King Lear, because I saw a version of this one, starring Laurence Olivier and Diana Rigg, onstage. It’s maybe impossible to do better than a play featuring those two actors together, although adding John Hurt might do it. This recording has every dark, intense quality you could ask for, with all the actors going from subtlety to physical extravagance and back again, like a great symphony played by the best musicians in the world. Olivier won an Emmy for his performance. He was 75 at the time, making him one of the oldest to perform this extremely demanding role in Shakespeare’s longest play. We are lucky to have it to refer to as a study of his great talent. Honorary mention to both the 1997 version with Ian Holm, which is extremely impressive, and the adaptation by great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa in Ran.

#3 Julius Caesar (1953) Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz: This is the famous version with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius, who had played Antony at the Old Vic Theatre in 1930. James Mason as Brutus, Greer Garson as Calpurnia and Deborah Kerr as Portia is enough to make any classic film fan drool with anticipation. The post-Streetcar announcement that Brando was going to tackle this Shakespearean role was met with skepticism, but he wound up with a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Gielgud was so impressed with Brando’s work, he offered to direct him in a stage production of Hamlet, but it never came to pass. Big egos and big drama on set didn’t keep this film from being mesmerizing to watch from start to finish.

#2 Romeo and Juliet (1968) also directed by auteur Franco Zeffirelli: To my mind, this is not only the best version of the play onscreen, but also represents the best of his cinematic work. Unlike previous versions, the actors hired to play the leads, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, who at 17 and 15 respectively, were close to the ages the characters would be. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design. It was also nominated for Best Director and Best Picture.

#1 Richard III (1955) Directed by Laurence Olivier: Well, I have to save the best for last. Imagine the best Shakespearean actors ever filmed all together in one movie. This is it. Arguably the darkest of his plays, (I’d say King Lear is the saddest, Macbeth is the angriest and Richard III is the darkest…start your fussing here.) We have direction by a master thespian who is also playing the lead. John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, finishing out the trifecta of brilliance, also star. One of the two best Shakespearean actresses ever, Claire Bloom, plays Lady Anne. Brilliant and excruciating from start to finish. This is why movies were invented, to capture a moment in acting history. See it now.

Since most of you won’t be sitting in the tiny theatre dedicated to this new version of Macbeth in London with me, you can play along at home in the “I <3 Shakespeare" game and see these classic versions with these great actors. I'll report back after seeing Macbeth, and you write your thoughts and favorites below as well. I'm off… for Cinema Siren today "the play's the thing."

Cinema Siren: 'Warm Bodies': an Awesome Zombie Valentine

From Cinema Siren for Patch.com

'Zom-com' film rated PG-13 for zombie violence and language.

No, it’s not an ode to necrophilia. It is a charming and whimsical movie that goes deeper than anyone would expect about connectedness, trust and a willingness to change.

I never thought I’d say “this zombie flick is a great date movie,” but now I have. As a matter of warning, it should be rated “Z” for brain-eating zombies. Still, a large cross-section of movie lovers will enjoy it, making it a far better choice February 14th than that new Diehard (coming out that day! Wah?), for everyone from girlfriends hanging out and Twihards, to couples who don’t mind a bit of edge in their flicks.

To all those who have heard or bought into the press about it being a wannabe Twilight clone, I say yes, the Twihards will appreciate it. But it will be even more appreciated by all of us who grew tired of Twilight’s whining and negativity (however much it was dressed in sparkle), and those of us who wanted to scream at that mopey sad-sack Edward to suck it up and get an afterlife.

Warm Bodies plays fast and loose with zombie rules
Here, in this movie, the undead are anything but resigned to their plight. Warm Bodies has an optimism, unabashed romanticism and earnestness that is perfect for a holiday about love. It might be too much for the most cynical filmgoers, even with the dried blood and rotting body bits with which it’s smeared.

Stay far away if you only like your zombies terrifying and the stuff of nightmares. Stay away as well if you are a stickler for the rules of zombie-ism, as you will find Warm Bodies plays a little too fast and loose with those rules. As yet another mash-up, this time of zombies and coming-of-age romcoms (a “zomcom,” if you will) Cinema Siren does believe it adds something worthwhile to both genres.

The story is about R, a zombie who lets us into his conflicted, less-dead-than-we-think brain, as he trudges with the rest of the rotting pack. He takes a Cupid’s bullet to the heart when he sees gun-toting Julie, out with her med-foraging friends, about to become the next zombie Happy Meal. He rescues her and whisks her away to the nick-nack-filled jet airplane this nostalgic zombie packrat calls home, where they share a few sweetly awkward days and nights getting to know each other.

Actor Nicholas Hoult, as ‘R,’ is the star
Love spreads like a scarlet pillow… The rest of the movie is them against the world, which includes Julie’s protective dad (the underused John Malkovitch), a post-apocalyptic general with a quick trigger finger for all things undead.

Aussie ingenue Teresa Palmer, who forever strains against the label of the “blonde Kristen Stewart,” does well enough as Julie, the love interest for an undead 20-something who finds he feels more and more alive when she is near.

R is the star. Actor Nicholas Hoult (About A Boy, X-Men: First Class) is the one who must carry the film on his slumped and shambling frame. He plays a character who feels isolated, misunderstood and trapped inside a shell that belies his inner sweetness.

Director enhances novel on the big screen
It’s probably hard to make friends and make time when you smell like death, speak in grunts and eat human flesh to survive. He works his way through a wide range of emotions, in scenes that require him to play both broadly and with subtlety in quick succession. With natural talent, expanding skill and now adult and undeniable good looks, Hoult will catapult himself into position as an “A” actor with his pick of constantly revolving projects.

Rob Coddry’s “M,” R’s “BZF,” allows the actor to bring his great character acting and perfect timing to the proceedings, and gets big laughs that mean his memorable role might quickly become a fan favorite. He makes impressive use of scant screen time, further perking up the auds with his every arrival.

Director and screenplay writer Jonathan Levine (who made the surprisingly successful cancer dramedy 50/50) makes the depth of the original novel, written by Isaac Marion, translate very well to the screen, keeping and sometimes even enhancing the metaphoric lessons both great and small, which range from tackling racism and bigotry, to youth alienation, to cocooning and isolation in the computer age.

There is also a literary reference you might already have heard about or figured out that is far more meaningful if you know well the original from which it takes inspiration.

Soundtracks builds emotional atmosphere
The soundtrack proves to be a mix of clever and poignant. Levine allows the music, some of which is made up of cheesy ’80s hits you’ll never hear the same way again, to be an integral part of the scene. It builds an emotional atmosphere and adds a component that connects with the audience during the extended times where voiceover narration and slowly shuffling zombies might call a screeching halt to the movie’s forward movement. The best soundtracks do that.

To be sure, the end of the movie arrives in a swell of sweet that might as well have us all singing Todd Rundgren’s “Love Is The Answer,” but that’s what romcoms do. The difference is this is a zomcom. Either you can abide this funky freaky little film, with its conceits and exposed beating heart or you can’t.

I can, and I absolutely loved it. You might find you do, too. One thing’s for sure, your significant other is probably not going to be willing to sit through The Walking Dead on Valentine’s Day. With Warm Bodies, you get zombies and love, all tied up in a big bloody-caked bow. Make it a Valentine’s Day present to yourself.

Cinema Siren: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

From Cinema Siren for Patch.com

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Chic

Sometimes a movie is just…bad. We can all watch it and see what they had in mind, how the pitch went, how the director and producers signed on, and talked some pretty big stars into taking part.

And we can see the whole thing derail through to post production, delayed release, and as we watch the finished product with an ever-dwindling vestige of hope. Such is the case for Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Why Cinema Siren is reviewing this movie at all is a fair question. I go on record as saying there is always a chance a good movie will find its way to the multiplex in January. Not the ones that were in limited released in LA and New York in December to qualify for the Oscars….Those are the movies everyone is busying themselves with so as to clear the otherwise pristine cinematic palate for the chemically enhanced, artificially flavored junk food Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters represents.

Brother and sister ass-kicking team, Hansel and Gretel, are fighting and killing witches 15 years after kicking one into her own fire pit. They are impervious to their spells. A really bad witch (played in extreme over-the-top fashion by Famke Janssen) is capturing kids, and the sass-spouting siblings are hired to gun her down and get them back. They use clever medieval inventions like rigged wind-up tasers, semi-automatic crossbows and sawed off shotguns with hand-carved scroll inlay. Their killing equipment is almost as pretty as they are.

This movie was meant for release almost a year ago and got pushed back from March 2, 2012. The former date suggested more optimism on the part of the studio, and the move to the January movie-ghetto was almost all we needed to know. To add a critic’s preview at 8 p.m. on the Thursday before a Friday release is like unto building its coffin, nailing it shut, and burying this film deep in the cold and wintery earth.

I’m sure its stars, Oscar-nominated Jeremy Renner (of Hurt Locker), and Gemma Arterton (Prince of Persia and Quantum of Solace) wish it would stay buried. The two actors are so very pretty to look at, so visually impressive and piping hot in their skin-tight leathers, one could almost just watch them run around looking like Jean Paul Gaultier’s next fashion collection: “Haute Medieval Vigilante Chic.”

They are also very good actors, and especially Renner shows here he is able to deliver any line, however ridiculous, believably. It is as if he is challenging himself to make it work, even with the worst action and dialogue, and both he and Arterton come out of this movie with their integrity. That is more magical than any of the evil witches’ doings.

Suffice to say, where’s there’s sulfur, there’s movie hell. Gratefully, unlike some flicks, Hansel and Gretel won’t be a career-killing move for either star. It is bombastically ridiculous, over the top, and innocuous enough to be vaguely entertaining, and possibly various designers’ inspiration to hire them for their next ad campaign. That’s all.

I’m getting to the point as a critic, where I can’t wait for this month to be over. As hot as the actors are, this movie won’t keep you warm these frozen January nights. As much as I want my readers to go to the movies, let me suggest you stay in, and watch Downton Abbey or Dr. Who. No matter how hard they try, the folks who brought you Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters will not be casting a spell over the box office.