Tag: music

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Today in The Force Awakens: By the (box office) numbers, John Williams on the score

Rey and BB-8 (Rolling Stone)The Force Awakens is heading for a $200 million opening weekend, according to the early estimates. That puts it in sight of Jurassic World’s $208.4M record, something many doubted would be possible due to the usual holiday box office trends.

Disney says that it brought in $57M from the Thursday night previews, with Friday showings likely bringing the total to $100M.

→ John Williams talks about the score with the Los Angeles Times, including what seems to have become the score’s standout, ‘Rey’s Theme’. Meanwhile, you can listen to the full score on several streaming services, including Spotify.

→ Daniel Craig made a cameo after all, according to Entertainment Weekly, though I’m also seeing a lot of skeptical fans due to… Accent reasons.

→ Is there a backlash yet? I guess?

→ Badass Digest looks at the Resistance, the First Order and the Republic. Y’all may want to pick up Pablo Hidalgo’s Visual Guide to the movie.

→ Speaking of today’s book releases, io9 has a look at some pieces from The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

→ And speaking of books in general, author Chuck Wendig on the movie – and which Aftermath character we saw on screen.

→ Also: Easter egg sightings from EW and Comicbook, Adam Driver on Kylo Ren’s mask, and TFA rules Twitter

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Today in The Force Awakens: Making the AFI list, everybody sings

SS-tfa-trailer3-handsupThe Force Awakens is one of the American Film Institute’s Movies of the Year. Inside Out, Mad Max: Fury Road and The Martian were also honored.

→ For GQ, Oscar Isaac covers Bill Murray’s classic lounge-singer version of the Star Wars theme. With new words! Also singing: Everyone.

→ Alyssa Rosenberg at The Washington Post looks at how The Force Awakens plays into the ‘great cultural debates’ of our time.

→ Gizmodo takes a look at Star Wars merchandising in Hungary, which gets pretty damn weird. (Creamed corn? Chicken nuggets? Foie Gras?)

→ Rolling Stone posted their full interview with Harrison Ford; Greg Grunberg on getting his own action figure.

→ Quentin Tarantino has accused Disney of trying to strong-arm his latest movie, The Hateful Eight, out of ArcLight theaters with The Force Awakens.

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Tonight in The Force Awakens: Red carpet shenanigans

mark-redcarpetI was only able to see about half the world premiere red carpet livestream, but I did catch the most magical part: Carrie Fisher interviewing Oscar Isaac. Or attempting to interview. Whatever it was, it was wonderful, and you can watch it on Youtube.

I wasn’t able to collect tweets, but here are some from The Hollywood Reporter, Jedi News and @bahnree. There are also pictures at Variety and The Wrap. (The best. Or maybe…)

UPDATE: Kathleen Kennedy’s speech inside the theater and some of the first reactions.

→ Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams talked to /Film on how they collaborated with Episode VIII writer/director Rian Johnson, and how IX director Colin Trevorrow will likely work in.

→ Wired takes a look at Sphero, and how exactly BB-8 was a boon for them.

→ Some great The Force Awakens fashions by designer Catherine Elhoffer. You may have seen them on the red carpet tonight!

→ Andy Serkis ‘confirms’ evil Jar Jar on Conan.

→ Korean boy band EXO has an (authorized) song called ‘Lightsaber’. We truly live in an age of wonders.

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Today in The Force Awakens: Score and Snoke hints, new character posters

Four new Chinese character posters.
Four new Chinese character posters.
In Variety, John Williams reveals that the motif for a new character in The Force Awakens is based on a Kipling poem translated into Sanskrit (which could give us something reminiscent of The Phantom Menace’s ‘Duel of the Fates’).

→ People sheds just a tiny it of light on Andy Serkis’ Supreme Leader Snoke – or at least, his height.

→ In Mexico City, Kathleen Kennedy revealed that exteriors for Episode VIII and Rogue One will shoot on location in Mexico, according to Excelsior (English) It’s a bit unclear, but she also may have confirmed Benicio del Toro?

→ Rolling Stone has posted their complete Carrie Fisher interview (only some of which made it into their cover story). She discusses her upcoming book, The Princess Diarist, the nature of fame, and not being surprised by Episode VII. Her dog Gary, meanwhile, now has his own Instagram.

→ “I couldn’t be more delighted to see the amazing fan response to Captain Phasma,” Gwendoline Christie tells ComicBook, where she also talks about the physicality of the character.

→ On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Adam Driver talked about his San Diego Comic-Con experience; From IGN, Oscar Isaac on Poe Dameron’s inspirations.

→ And in the most shocking news of the day, Star Wars fans are big spenders.

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The Force Awakens’ will feature music from J.J. Abrams and Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda

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The big news out of J.J. Abrams’ appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon was that he collaborated with Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda on the music for The Force Awakens’ Cantina equivalent. (Maz Kanata’s place, no doubt.)


Hamilton probably needs no introduction (but here’s one from PBS,) since it’s the rare Broadway show that the internet can’t shut up about. You can listen to the original cast recording on Spotify.

Miranda confirmed, in case anyone doubts Abrams:

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The Force Awakens soundtrack track names revealed

tfa-soundtrackThe track listing for The Force Awakens soundtrack was up on French Amazon last night. It’s no longer there this morning, but I did see it there… It had some weird capitalization choices, so I am a bit wary of it, but there are no real red flags of fakeness in it, and we’re close enough to release that chances are Amazon was actually accurate.

I’ve black-barred the Making Star Wars version (they fixed the capitalization issues – ComicBook has the original) below. There are possible spoilers here, though nothing on the level of ‘Qui-Gon’s Noble End.’

Continue reading “The Force Awakens soundtrack track names revealed”

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Roundup: The broadsaber is venting, and other things we learned about The Force Awakens this week

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Between Wired’s J.J. Abrams interview, Entertainment Weekly and all those TV spots, we seem to have officially entered the “faster, more intense” phrase of The Force Awakens marketing. (No, you haven’t seen too much, calm down.) Here’s some stuff that got sidelined:

dland-broadsaber→ Settle your bets: The crossguard blades on Kylo Ren’s lightsaber “are raw power vented from the primary central blade,” per the description on display at Disneyland’s Star Wars Launch Bay. (IGN has a tour.) We already knew he built it himself, but the design is “ancient.” (via Reddit)

→ Speaking of Kylo, we haven’t seen much of Adam Driver lately, but he did tell Vulture that he found SDCC to be “intense” and “surprisingly moving.”

→ The Force Awakens is skipping some early award shows, says The Wrap, but the only one here you may have heard of is the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It will be out in time for consideration for the Academy Awards.

→ Variety says there was indeed new music from The Force Awakens in the Shondaland spot.

→ The cover for The Force Awakens novelization has been spotted on the Random House catalog (by Roqoo Depot first, I believe) and it’s… The poster. ‘Kay.

And in other movies…

→ Could Episode VIII return to Ireland? We know they’ve already shot on Skellig Michael, RTE thinks they’re looking at another location in County Kerry as well.

→ Jedi News claims to have the codename for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Han Solo spinoff.

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The Force Awakens trailer music wasn’t arranged by John Williams after all (but it’s still pretty great)

SS-tfa-trailer3-creys

While the music in the latest trailer for The Force Awakens obviously uses John Williams’ original work from the previous Star Wars installments, it’s not a newly composed track from the composer, as many of us originally assumed. /Film digs in a little and comes up with a few names.

Below, a version of the trailer music with the distracting volume fluctuations for dialouge normalized. (via)