Wendy Carlos Movies
Composer Wendy Carlos spurred electronic music to new commercial heights during the late '60s, popularizing the synthesizer with the enormously successful Switched-On Bach album. Born in Pawtucket, RI, on November 14, 1939, Carlos pursued her M.A. in composition under Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening at Columbia University's famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Following her graduation, she moved to Manhattan, where she found work as a recording engineer. In Manhattan, she met Dr. Robert Moog and, not long afterward, she began playing the Moog synthesizer. Carlos released her first recording, Switched-On Bach, in 1968. A showcase for the Moog synthesizer, Switched-On Bach interpreted the legendary composer's most renowned fugues and movements via state of the art synth technology; purists were appalled, but the record captured the public's imagination and in time the album became the first classical record to be certified platinum by the RIAA. It also earned three Grammy Awards. A similar effort, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, followed in 1969. In 1971 Carlos introduced the vocoder -- an electronic device designed to synthesize the human voice. After 1976's Brandenburg Concertos 3-5, Carlos wrote the score for Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. Two years later, she wrote music for Tron, Disney's action movie about video games. Subsequent efforts included a spoof of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" recorded with "Weird" Al Yankovic and Switched-On Bach 2000. ~ Rovi
- 2001
- Add Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures to QueueAdd Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures to top of Queue
Stanley Kubrick was one of the most acclaimed and controversial filmmakers of his generation, but he was also an intensely private man who rarely gave interviews and produced most of his films under a shroud of secrecy, which tended to foster a great deal of rumor and speculation about his working methods. Jan Harlan, who worked as Kubrick's assistant and executive producer on several projects (and was also his brother-in-law), directed this documentary, which offers a rare in-depth look into Kubrick's career as a filmmaker, structured around interviews with a number of actors, writers, technicians, composers, friends, and family who speak on the record about his relentless perfectionism, his creative vision, his life both on and off the set, his relationships with actors, his unrealized projects, and his importance and influence as an artist. Among those who share their thoughts in Stanley Kubrick -- A Life In Pictures are actors Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Malcolm McDowell, Peter Ustinov, and Keir Dullea; writers Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Herr; special effects artist Douglas Trumbull; composers Wendy Carlos and Gyorgy Ligeti; filmmakers Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Mazursky, and Sydney Pollack; and Kubrick's spouse Christiane Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick -- A Life In Pictures was originally produced as a television project, to be aired in three parts, though the project was shown in its entirety at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, (more)
- 1998
Roberta Hanley made her feature directorial debut with this British drama based on the play by Jeff Noon about a civil war in the near future. The war zone is on a barren island where farmers toil in a manner recalling the days of the Industrial Revolution. Young single women are recruited and sent off to distant outposts, where sniper fire and explosions indicate the presence of the unseen enemy. This was filmed on the Isle of Man, with documentary-style camerawork plus input from military advisor Chris Byrne. Shown in competition at the 1998 AFI Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
One of the earliest feature films to reflect the video-game craze of the 1980s, Disney's Tron stars Jeff Bridges as computer programmer Kevin Flynn, who becomes part of the very game that he's programming. Flynn's principal antagonist is his glory-grabbing boss, Ed Dillinger (David Warner), who likewise metamorphoses into a video-game character. The title character, a computer-generated superhero, is played by Bruce Boxleitner. Though antiquated by 1990s standards, Tron represented the last word in special effects back in 1982. Surprisingly, despite its long-range influence on the movie industry, the film was a box-office disappointment when first released. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, (more)
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the opulently ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he can write in peace. Before the Overlook is vacated for the Torrances, the manager (Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker went crazy and slaughtered his family; Jack thinks it's no problem, but Danny's "shining" hints otherwise. Settling into their routine, Danny cruises through the empty corridors on his Big Wheel and plays in the topiary maze with Wendy, while Jack sets up shop in a cavernous lounge with strict orders not to be disturbed. Danny's alter ego, "Tony," however, starts warning of "redrum" as Danny is plagued by more blood-soaked visions of the past, and a blocked Jack starts visiting the hotel bar for a few visions of his own. Frightened by her husband's behavior and Danny's visit to the forbidding Room 237, Wendy soon discovers what Jack has really been doing in his study all day, and what the hotel has done to Jack. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, (more)
