He quickly rises to fame writing the distinctive musical scores of films like A fistful of Dollars and The Good the Bad and the Ugly, using harmonicas, whistling, electric guitars, and sound effects in place of the more common symphony orchestras. But when he recognizes a director’s name from his elementary school, he becomes a close friend and life-long collaborator with Sergio Leone. From there he goes on to compose the soundtracks - always anonymously - for the new film genre known as Spaghetti Westerns. He writes the tunes for a number of pop songs, and eventually gets a job working for RCA. (He spends most of his life yearning to be taken seriously by Petrassi and the rest of the traditional music establishment.) At an early age, he’s already composing and arranging pieces which include both melodic themes and counterpoint, an oft repeated characteristic of his music. He enters a music conservatory at the age of 12 and studies under Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi.
I enjoyed Minions, but the five-and-under set that filled the theatre absolutely loved it.Įnnio Morricone is born in Rome in 1928 to a professional trumpet player. Henson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jill Lawless, Danny Trejo, Dolph Lundgrin as the six villains. It stars the voices of Steve Carell as Gru, Pierre Coffin as all of the minions, and Alan Arkin, Taraji P. The catchy soundtrack, groovy 1970s characters, the San Francisco setting, the fast-moving plot and the very colourful graphics make it a fun watch. The voice actors are mainly American or British, but the animated film is actually from France. It’s a prequel to the surprise hit from 2010, Despicable Me. Minions: The Rise of Gru is a funny, easy-to-watch kids’ movie, where the villains are the good guys, even though they’re evil. Can the minions find the amulet, bring it to San Francisco, and save their best friend, Gru?
(The minions aren’t always the brightest bulb in the chandelier.) Gru is kidnapped by the villains’ former leader, and threatened with torture and death. He gives it to a minion to keep it safe, who soon loses it in exchange for a pet rock. To prove them wrong, he steals their prize possession, a Chinese jade-green amulet. But when he shows up for an interview at their secret hideaway they dismiss him as just a kid. Gru idolizes a gang of six supervillains, who are now one villain short of a pack (since they did away with their leader) and are looking for a replacement. Dressed in matching denim overalls, they speak their own incomprehensible dialect, a mishmash of all the world’s languages. The minions are bright-yellow, lozenge-shaped creatures with googly eyes. They were built with the help of his minions. And he has a basement filled with strange mechanical devices to prove it. While his classmates say they want to be a fireman or a ballet dancer when they grow up, Gru wants to be a super villain. It’s the late 1970s, and Gru is a little kid in elementary school. There’s a spinster in Victorian England who wants revenge on the man who has scorned her a spaghetti western composer in 1960s Italy who wants to be taken seriously and a little boy in San Francisco in the ’70s who wants to become a super villain.ĭir: Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson, Jonathan del Val This week I’m talking about three of them: - a rom-com, a cartoon and a documentary - about people with ambitions. Summer is definitely here, and this long holiday weekend is the perfect time to take in some new movies. Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for and CIUT 89.5 FM.