Category Archives: Cinema Scope

For the love of movies, and not just the musicals

So, Apparently the Corpse of Harry Potter Washed Up on a Beach

Posted on June 25, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

SPOILER AND ODOR ALERT: The following contains details of the movie Swiss Army Man, starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, as well as of the Harry Potter series which many will consider spoilers.  As well as ghastly many references to … Continue reading →

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NfaC Repost: Forbidden Movies, Forbidden Music

Posted on May 26, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

*Originally posted May 14, 2015: I walked out of the Film Forum mind abuzz and guts churning.   I was chewing on a whole lot of food for thought as well as the ice cream melt I bought to soothe my … Continue reading →

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MERYL STREEP SINGS AGAIN – REALLY BADLY THIS TIME! YEAH!

Posted on April 21, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

Last August I posted a (lavishly video annotated) piece about Meryl Streep’s musical performances over the years (which you can reread below).  I concluded the article with the following: Streep’s movie musical career continues with Florence Foster Jenkins, a movie … Continue reading →

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NfaC Double Repost: BREAKING INTO SONG IN MUSICALS

Posted on March 21, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

Time for another Notes from a Composer rerun, or repost, this time a double feature from last April on the convention of breaking into song in musicals, and how cleverly the movie version of Cabaret subverted that convention.  This post … Continue reading →

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FASCINATING VIDEO OF JULIAN ELTINGE IN DRAG (with bonus clip of Gene Malin in drag too!)

Posted on January 27, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

One of the musical Speakeasy‘s lead characters, Julian Carnation, is based in part on the real life female impersonator Julian Eltinge (as well as the red Queen and the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll’s Alice books). I want to share … Continue reading →

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OSCAR NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED – so, what happened with those hoped for bragging rights, Danny?

Posted on January 14, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

So the Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, and as every year I had the TV on, munching my breakfast, and followed along as they were read out (see the full list of nominees at the bottom of this … Continue reading →

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BEST SONG OSCAR SURPRISE? – The movie song I predict will be this year’s stealth surprise Oscar Best Original Song nominee

Posted on December 14, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

A few days ago the Academy, aka the people who hand out the Oscars, revealed the list of songs from this year’s movies that are eligible to be nominated as best original song in a motion picture.  There are 74 … Continue reading →

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“CAROL” & THERESE – “SPEAKEASY” & JANE – stories from the time when lesbian love dared not say its name

Posted on December 11, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

      I love the movie “Carol”.  It is one of the best movies of the year, masterful on all levels.  While I was watching it, I kept on thinking: “How exquisitely swoony”.  Refined and restrained on the one … Continue reading →

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BLONDIE vs. SHEENA – Grudge Match of the Bond Themes

Posted on November 14, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

With the release of the latest Bond, “Spectre”, a whole bunch of internet articles listed rankings of the Bond theme songs.  Sultry “Nobody Does it Better” generally wound up the #1 choice of most of these polls, followed by the … Continue reading →

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Catching HALLOWEEN around HALLOWEEN 1978 in a seedy New York theater

Posted on October 30, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

My father insists that the movie theater or rather many of the patrons in the theater were scarier than anything that was happening on the screen.  Possibly.  I was eleven and not world-weary enough to be wary of the pot-smoking … Continue reading →

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BERLIN WALL MEMORIES #1 – Growing up 5 miles from the BRIDGE OF SPIES

Posted on October 16, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The moment I read the announcement that Steven Spielberg was preparing his next movie called “Bridge of Spies”, I knew, without having any additional morsel of information, that Die Glienicker Brücke – the Glienicke Bridge of Berlin, also known as … Continue reading →

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THE NEARLY INVISIBLE BISEXUAL MALE

Posted on September 17, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The director of “Speakeasy”, Lissa Moira, and I were conducting another one of our weekly meetings pouring over the script and discussing staging and production issues, when I mused aloud that in many ways “Speakeasy” is an expression of my … Continue reading →

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Speak Low, Phoenix, Speak Low…

Posted on August 16, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I attended a matinee screening of the German movie “Phoenix”.  As the movie began and the screen was still black, I heard a lone upright bass picking out two notes a major sixth apart, followed by four more notes bounding … Continue reading →

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MERYL STREEP SINGS! and sings again! and again!

Posted on August 5, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

That Meryl Streep is one of the great actors of our time is common knowledge.  But what should now be considered obvious is how she is also the great movie musical performer of the modern age.  That statement may be … Continue reading →

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An appreciation of E. L. DOCTOROW and RAGTIME, the book and the musical

Posted on July 22, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

E. L. Doctorow, one of the giants of contemporary literature has passed.  I have read nine of his twelve books, a ratio and record I have equaled in passion and loyalty with only two other contemporary authors, John Irving and … Continue reading →

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Rest in Peace, James Horner

Posted on June 22, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

May you soar in the heavens with your melodies. (Hymn to the Sea – James Horner (from Titanic)

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