The Fredösphere

Howard Shore has turned his film score from Lord of the Rings into a symphony.  The choir will be singing in Elvish and Dwarvish.  Shore admits to some influence from Wagner.  Of all people.  Debussy seems a better fit to me.

A new flick called Les Choristes is making boychoirs popular in France again.  Judging from the trailer, the plot involves a cranky old teacher who assembles a crew of misfits and losers and gradually transforms them into disciplined fighting unit, no, sports team, no, vocal ensemble.  In any event, I believe the plot has been used once or maybe twice before in cinematic history but I'll probably watch the thing if it makes it to this side of the Atlantic.

Cinema Choral Classics is the first in a series of CDs and is a lot of fun.  It's got the spooky Omen music, which to my tender ears to was a breakthrough in using choirs in film scores.

I first saw The Omen with a friend in high school, and in the scene where they opened the tomb of Damien's mother, it was hard for me to see on the small TV exactly what was going on.  My friend explained, "his mother was, um, of the canine persuasion."  He did have a way with words.