Spinning Platters – Page 159 – Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds

Show Review: The Music of John Williams—from Star Wars to Harry Potter!

As you can see from the image above, this wasn’t your average night at the symphony. On Thursday, the San Francisco Symphony honored legendary film composer John Williams with a program full of his iconic, award-winning scores. From fantasy epics like Star Wars and Harry Potter, to memorable dramas like Schindler’s List and Lincoln, John Williams has put a musical stamp on well over 100 films, and is still writing amazing scores to this day, at age 84.

Continue reading “Show Review: The Music of John Williams—from Star Wars to Harry Potter!”

Film Review: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Winning cast brings solid laughs to predictable picture

Mike (Adam Devine, l.) and Dave (Zac Efron, r.) are aghast after being chastised by their parents for their boorish behavior at family events.

Back in the pre-Internet days, an old creative writing teaching technique used to be to have students read the classifieds and generate a short story based on gems they found there. Screenwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien obviously understand the imaginative gold of such an assignment, since, for their post-Neighbors 1 and 2 screenplay, they’ve turned an actual Craigslist ad into the decently funny picture Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Directed by TV comedy director Jake Szymanski in his first feature film foray, Mike and Dave is neither no more nor no less than what you’d expect from a raunchy-but-sweet summer comedy.
Continue reading “Film Review: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates“

Film Review: The Secret Life of Pets

Animals run amok in wild, messy, manic children’s film.

I don’t really know what the point of The Secret Life of Pets was, but I know that children will love the film. The simple Toy Story-esque premise of ‘what do x do while people are gone’ (in this case where x are pets) is amusing for the first five to ten minutes of the film, but it quickly spins out of control. The story devolves into an adventure featuring an assortment of animal varieties, of few of which are very rarely legally allowed as pets. The aforementioned adventure is wonderfully animated and truly manic, but the gimmicky premise fades fast and the rest is a hyperactive mess with lots of humorous bits and not a lot of heart. Not like any children will care, though, since they’ll be fully satiated by the maniacally laughing psycho bunny, voiced by Kevin Hart.

Continue reading “Film Review: The Secret Life of Pets”

Show Review: Flight Of The Conchords at the Masonic, 6/27/2016

Never before has spontaneous comedy seemed so effortless — and brilliant — in a musical performance

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie of Flight Of The Conchords

Comedy and music have always seemed to be slightly at odds with one another; there’s always this slightly underlying sense of novelty in humor-driven bands, a thought that without certain “gimmicks”, their work wouldn’t be nearly as funny, or that their jokes only appeal to a certain subset of popular culture. Artists like Reggie Watts manage to defy this expectation with deft aptitude; he is both a hilarious improvisational comedian and a brilliant musician in his own right, and the minimal nature of his performance adds emphasis to the stories he tells. The ability to shoot off jokes with rapid-fire delivery is, therefore, crucial in a concert setting; it reminds the audience of the brilliant wit and skill of the performers, rather than their ability to practice rehearsed jokes night after night. Nearly seven years after the release of their last album I Told You I Was Freaky, Flight Of The Conchords are still able to demonstrate these skills with flawless, side-splitting ease, and their live show is marvelous to watch — for both casual fans and hardcore ones alike.

Continue reading “Show Review: Flight Of The Conchords at the Masonic, 6/27/2016”

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 2016-07-04 – 2016-07-10

Carl Brutananadilewski of Aqua Teen Hunger Force demonstrating the abilities of The Foreigner Belt. (Got burned a bit by his tanning bed earlier.)

July Fourth, 2016! Wooooo! Yeah! Our country is still here! Let’s celebrate!

If you’d like to add to your celebrations this week in The Bay Area with a concert, I’ll tell you what we’ve got coming up: caricatures, drugs, dogs, and culture that you don’t have to pay for.

So, let’s preview. Time to preview. It’s time to preview now and now here are the previews.

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 2016-07-04 – 2016-07-10”

Film Review: The BFG

BFG delivers the magic, the humor, and the 3D.

Sophie and The BFG soak up the 3D rendered beauty. — Sophie and The BFG soak up the computer generated beauty.

There was a moment while watching The BFG that I snapped ever-so-briefly out of my trance and realized that I had been fully swept up in the magical atmosphere that Steven Spielberg had created in his cinematic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s story. It’s not often that I become immersed in a movie. Or rather, it’s not often that a movie can effectively invite me to get immersed in it. The BFG is one of the few. It’s not a perfect movie — it falls just shy from delivering a rewarding emotional peak and contains some moments of directionless storytelling. However, from an entertainment standpoint, The BFG is like a wondrous and inventive bedtime story. It’s a truly magical family-friendly film from start to finish.

Continue reading “Film Review: The BFG“

Film Review: The Legend of Tarzan

Tarzan comes out swinging, but just barely misses.

Tarzan of the Apes, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine in 1912. Since then, Tarzan has been the title character of numerous novels, TV series, film adaptations, and more. It’s an old and valuable property, hence the ® symbol noticeably visible on the opening title credit. Now there’s a new Tarzan feature film, not surprisingly called The Legend of Tarzan since at this juncture there’s enough in the Tarzan mythos to argue a “legend” has been well-established. Unfortunately, the new film can’t avoid the blatant traditional racial tropes that were overwhelmingly present in Burroughs’ creation — after all, Tarzan, the hero who frees slaves and shifts the political and cultural course of central Africa towards the greater good, is a white man. Racial issues aside, there are still some emotional and visual pitfalls that the exciting action and stunning vistas can’t make up for. What does work about The Legend of Tarzan, in addition to a better-than-expected script, is a testament to the solid direction of David Yates (who directed the final four Harry Potter films).

Continue reading “Film Review: The Legend of Tarzan“

Spinning Platters Interview: Justin Freer, Founder and President of CineConcerts

On July 14-15, the San Francisco Symphony will celebrate 50 years of Star Trek with Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, featuring iconic film and TV footage beamed on to a huge screen while the symphony performs the musical scores, live! CineConcerts, the producer of this live music experience, was founded by composer/conductor Justin Freer. Freer will be conducting the SF Symphony’s two performances.

Freer graciously took a short break from a studio session to speak to us about his musical career, CineConcerts, and of course, Star Trek…

Justin Freer: Let’s do this. What do you want to talk about?

Spinning Platters: Let’s talk about film music!

Justin Freer: <<laughs>>

SP: How did you first get into film music? I read that you grew up learning trumpet and later music composition, but when did film music start to interest you?

Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Justin Freer, Founder and President of CineConcerts”

Film Review: Neon Demon

What an amazing movie. Parts of it may repulse you. Go see it anyway.

Elle Fanning in Nicolas Winding Refn's Neon Demon

Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t care what you think about his movies. He makes films without traditional plots, and with a fair measure of gruesome violence. He believes himself so important that he uses a little NRW monogram under the title card of his features. He doesn’t feel the need to explain anything to the audience; instead, he deals with metaphor and buried meaning. Regardless of whether or not his movies fall under any old fashioned idea of what’s “good,” he’s awesome at making them.

Continue reading “Film Review: Neon Demon”

Show Review: John Carpenter: Live Retrospective at the Fox Oakland, 6/17/2016

Music in film is an often-celebrated phenomenon, but it seems to exist primarily in the medium it’s made for. Occasionally, composers and songwriters will offer up their works for public or private performance, though they themselves may not be in attendance, and in general the world of film music feels very separate from that of “traditional rock music”, i.e. the bands that release albums and promote them with live tours. The phenomenon of a live tour by acclaimed horror director John Carpenter, therefore, is even more impressive; his musical works not only require an actual band to perform (with synthesizers and guitars driving the melodies, rather than orchestras and choirs), but the tunes are steady, driving, and in small enough bits that they are easy to digest — this isn’t a random night at the symphony, folks! In addition, Carpenter himself wrote the scores to a good chunk of his films, so the live performance of compositions and overtures from his classic works could now be experienced with an ever more present vitality.

Continue reading “Show Review: John Carpenter: Live Retrospective at the Fox Oakland, 6/17/2016”