Category Archives: Entertainment

Following the theatrical release of all three films, Howard Shore reworked the film scores of the trilogy into The Lord of the Rings Symphony, a more structured six-movement work for orchestra and choir. This has been performed in various concert halls around the world, accompanied by a light and visual art show by Alan Lee and John Howe. A DVD titled “Howard Shore: Creating the Lord of the Rings Symphony – a composer’s journey through Middle Earth” has been released. The 50-minute long DVD features extensive excerpts of the concert given by Shore and the Montreal Orchestra and Grand Choir at the “Montreal en Lumiere” Festival, interspersed with spoken commentary by Shore, who recounts his approach in composing the music for the three films and then reworking it into the LOTR symphony.

This week George thought he had the easy tasking of defending Maureen O’Hara. Philip Molloy had other ideas.

George was baffled to have resident Right Hook Movie critic Philip Molloy in studio with him today when he took George to task about his fondness for legendary actress Maureen O’Hara in this week’s ‘Hook’s Heroes’.

George fondly remembers seeing Maureen O’Hara in films in Cork as a boy and was struck by her flame-haired beauty. According to George, O’Hara lit up a grey and depressing Ireland and gave Irish people hope.

O’Hara, who was born in Ranelagh in Dublin, was famously discovered while a student at the Abbey by actor Charles Laughton. This led to her fairytale introduction to Hollywood playing opposite Laughton in ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’.

This lead on to her starring in some of the biggest films in 1940’s and 1950’s,working often with director John Ford and acting opposite John Wayne in movies such as ‘Rio Grande’

For most Irish people though it’s her role opposite Wayne in ‘The Quiet Man’ that solidified her place in their memories.

But Philip wasn’t having any of it. ‘Sure she had poise and she looked gorgeous. But she had a limited range of expressions. A lot of the movies she starred in are what you would now consider ‘b-movies’.

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Listen to the discussion here at original source.

“Star Wars” maker Lucasfilm was bought last year for $4.05 billion by The Walt Disney Co., which has announced plans for a new trilogy of films.

The next “Star Wars” movie will be shot in a galaxy far, far away from Hollywood–Britain.

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy says the company has reached a deal with British Treasury chief George Osborne to make “Star Wars: Episode VII” in the U.K.

She said Friday that the production company was “revisiting the origins of `Star Wars’” for the new movie. Parts of all six previous movies were made in Britain.

Osborne said the announcement was “great news for fans and our creative industries.”

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One sign of how important these international early releases have become is the promotional travel schedules of the stars. They’re sent out to tout their films around the world, often for months at a time, appearing at red-carpet premieres in multiple countries. By the time it opens here, “Star Trek Into Darkness” will have staged seven such premieres.

If you saw “Iron Man 3″ in a North American theater this weekend and didn’t have its major plot twist spoiled for you, consider yourself lucky. After all, people in nearly every movie market around the world got to see the movie a week before you did.

It’s become increasingly common for Hollywood’s would-be blockbusters to open all over the globe before they finally make it to our own shores. “Iron Man 3″ opened in territories throughout the world on the weekend of April 26 before opening here on May 3. It follows in the footsteps of Tom Cruise’s sci-fi epic “Oblivion,” which also opened overseas a week before it opened here on April 19. “Star Trek Into Darkness” has already opened in some countries, a full two weeks before it opens in North America.

Not long ago, homegrown Hollywood “event movies” like these would have opened in America first, then abroad. Or they would have opened everywhere in the world on the same day, a measure that not only created worldwide hype for the films but also thwarted pirates who might have taken advantage of the release-date gap to flood a country’s streets with bootleg DVDs from another country where the movie had already opened. So what changed? Why does Hollywood now make America wait to see its own movies until after they’ve premiered throughout the rest of the world?

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