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Willie Nelson and Family, Spoon, and Ethel Cain lead the lineup for the 2023 Luck Reunion, the annual event at Nelson’s ranch in Spicewood, Texas.

The one-day show will take place Thursday, March 16 (tangentially to South by Southwest, which will be going on in nearby Austin). More than 35 artists will perform, including Sir Woman, Devon Gilfillian, Shane Smith and the Saints, Guster, Pearla, Peter One, Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band,...

Hoping to get to the root of his unfinished business with his nineties teenagehood, Tim Heidecker is heading back to high school. The comic actor will release his latest retrospective solo album fittingly titled High School on June 24. The first stop on his journey to the past comes on the record’s lead single “Buddy.”

The “Buddy” music video lands Heidecker in a nondescript shopping strip parking lot that could realistically be anywhere, but for him it’s a call back to the Allentown, Pennsylvania area he adventured as a teen.

A month after her play Hadestown took home the most awards at this year’s Tony Awards, singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell has announced her latest project Bonny Light Horseman, a folk supergroup of sorts with multi-instrumentalist/producer Josh Kaufman (The National, Hiss Golden Messenger) and Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats).

In advance of their forthcoming debut album, the trio released their lead single, a mercurial, down-tempo rendition of “Bonny Light Horseman,” an English-Irish broadside ballad that dates back to the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Mitchell sings lead on the song,...

The super sounds of the Seventies have long been a safe space for indie-rock types with fond distant memories of chilling in the backseat while mom and dad bumped the local Am radio station on long family car trips. Eric D. Johnson of the Fruit Bats has been uniquely skilled at this kind of slanted nostalgia, channeling Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin III and other beloved vintage influences via his own raggedly pretty, warmly disaffected songwriting style.

The latest Fruit Bats’ song...

It’s a common misconception that horror movies can only be scary on a physical level. Take the zombie subgenre, for example. While zombies showcase horrifying, flesh-torn appearances, there’s just as much “unseen” horror to be found in Armageddon scenarios and the total societal breakdowns that their presence causes. Those changing environmental dynamics that characters deal with internally versus the the shambling, undead monsters who represent a more tangible enemy. Fear comes by way of choices that must be made, and in a film like Rod Blackhurst’s Here Alone, actual creatures play second fiddle to isolated, apocalyptic dread. “Zombies” attack, but decisions haunt – if you can stomach a more slow-burn aesthetic.

To be fair, David Ebeltoft’s script is not a straight-forward Romero take on zombie lore. It’s more a 28 Days Later viral thriller that follows a lone woman, Ann (Lucy Walters), as she tries to survive alone in the wilderness.

Movies about friendships being tested by new romantic interests are nothing new, but Life Partners just about manages not to let that familiarity grate. Credit writer-director Susanna Fogel and her co-writer Joni Lefkowitz, who punch up a rather commonplace premise with honest scripting and a warm sense of humor. Their unidealized depiction of the relationship between long-time friends Sasha (Leighton Meester) and Paige (Gillian Jacobs), is interesting to watch, and that realism also helps Life Partners to navigate some trickier, though no less conventional, narrative territory in its latter half.

In terms of plot, what’s on offer is undeniably standard. Sasha and Paige are close friends of the nail-painting, bed-sharing variety, who have their relationship altered and in some ways threatened by Paige’s blossoming romance with Tim (Adam Brody), a badly dressed but incessantly charming guy who quickly wins Paige over. As much as they have in common,...

The Oscars are a little over two months away, and with so many fantastic films released throughout this year, the anticipation surrounding the announcement of the nominations next month is running on high.

So far, we’ve had the shortlists for the Best Animated Feature, the Best Visual Effects, and the Best Documentary categories.

Now the Academy has announced the list of 104 films that are eligible in the Best Original Score category, and it’s going to be very interesting to see what makes the final cut come nominations time next month.

I think Hans Zimmer’s score for The Dark Knight Rises is, hopefully, a lock, because it is amazing. I also loved James Horner’s score for The Amazing Spider-Man, but can’t decide whether or not I think it will earn a nomination.

Alexandre Desplat has three films in the running this year, with Argo, Rise of the Guardians,...

Indian composer A.R. Rahman is in the Oscar race once again for the original score at the 85thAcademy Awards. His composition for the film “”People Like Us” has found place in the long list of 104 composers vying for the nominations.

Rahman composed for the Alex Kurtzman directed “People Like Us” starring Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde, Jon Favreau and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Rahman won two Academy Awards for Best Original Music Score and Best Original Song at the 81st Academy Awards in 2009 for “Slumdog Millionaire”.

104 scores from eligible feature-length motion pictures released in 2012 are in contention for nominations in the Original Score category.

The 85th Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 10, 2013.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on February 24, 2013. The eligible scores along with their composers are listed below in alphabetical order by film title:

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” Henry Jackman, composer “After the Wizard,...

One hundred four scores from eligible feature-length motion pictures released in 2012 are in contention for nominations in the Original Score category for the 85th Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today. As noted by various online Oscar pundits, most noticeably missing is Moonrise Kingdom. A Reminder List of works submitted in the Original Score category will be made available with a nominations ballot to all members of the Music Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five achievements. The five achievements receiving the highest number of votes will become the nominations for final voting for the award. Click Here for the complete rules.

In February, Ludovic Bource won the Oscar for Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) for The Artist at the 84th Academy Awards.

The eligible scores along with their composers are listed below...

As far as I'm concerned, the two most memorable scores of the year belong to Cloud Atlas and Beasts of the Southern Wild. That said, I made an egregious and unforgivable mistake when filling out my Critics' Choice nominations and forgot to include not one of them, but Both of them! Shame. I feel it. Now I have to hope my fellow Bfca members came through where I failed. However, we will discuss Critics' Choice nominations more on the upcoming episodes of the RopeofSilicon podcast, for now we're talking Oscar as the Academy has released a complete list of all 104 original scores competing for Best Original Score at the 2013 Oscars. I have not yet posted my predictions for Best Original Score and while I am making a fuss above concerning Cloud Atlas and Beasts of the Southern Wild, I think both of those stand a very strong chance at a nomination this year.

When one thinks of a party mix songs by artists like Bart Davenport, Cass McCombs, and Sonny & The Sunsets are not usually what come to mind, but then again, Smashed is not a film that simply shows you how much fun you can have while under the influence – it is an honest (and sometimes honestly hard to watch) look at what it means to live your life in a haze and what happens after you make the decision to come out of it. As I said in my review of the film, Smashed focuses on the life of Kate, played with brutal honesty by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Kate is not a Ke$ha style party girl, but she is a girl who likes to have a good time and can be spotted indulging in some “hair of the dog” before heading off to work (as a school teacher, mind you.) This...

Every couple of years, a musician will either want to stretch his or her wings creatively and or realize that there's good money in composing soundtracks that beats slugging it out on the road. Recent converts that come to mind are Nick Urrata of DeVotchKa (soundtracks include "Little Miss Sunshine" and the terrifically underrated "Ruby Sparks," both as a movie and score) and Nebraskan producer/engineer, multi-instrumentalist and Bright Eyes member Mike Mogis, who's recorded and performed with The Faint, Rilo Kiley, Cursive, The Good Life, Jenny Lewis, and many more ("Lovely, Still," and "Writers" are two recent soundtracks he's scored with fellow Bright Eyes member Nate Walcott). The latest indie rockers jumping into the arena of scoring soundtracks is Fruit Bats founder Eric D. Johnson. He scored the winning indie picture "Ceremony" and "Our Idiot Brother," and along with...

No matter how idiotic your brother might be, he's always good for one thing: New music. Sure, his taste may be a little out of whack, but you can always count on your brother to have some interesting, offbeat or catchy new tune on his iPod, ripe for you to rip when he's not paying attention.

Yes, it's good to have a brother to get music from. But it's even better when that idiot brother is Paul Rudd, which is why we're so excited to offer you our brand new giveaway, which includes a copy of both the "Our Idiot Brother" DVD as well as the film's hot soundtrack.

And music is a central ingredient in the success of "Our Idiot Brother," which has been earning raves from fans and critics alike since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year. Not that the film necessarily needs the help; after all,...

Our Idiot Brother

Directed by: Jesse Peretz

Cast: Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer

Running Time: 1 hr 30 mins

Rating: R

Release Date: August 26, 2011

Plot: After being released from jail, hippie brother Ned (Rudd) moves back to the city to live with his sisters (Banks, Deschanel, Mortimer).

Who’S It For?: While Our Idiot Brother might have Rudd at the center, the weight is of the movie is just as much on his supporting sisters. Our Idiot Brother has that Hollywood malleability that people (like Harvey Weinstein, probably) dream about – it can either be about a single brother or three sisters equally. It’s for guys and gals.

Expectations: A Sundance favorite featuring Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, and Elizabeth Banks should always be appealing. Just how charming could Rudd be as a shaggy haired “idiot”?

Scorecard (0-10)

Actors:

Paul Rudd as Ned: Ned might be dropped into our...

Three new movies are opening in wide release this weekend:

Opening in most theaters is the horror thriller Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark directed by Troy Nixey, produced by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce and Bailee Madison. The film’s music is composed by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders. A soundtrack album featuring the score has been released digitally earlier this week and will be coming out on CD on September 27 on Lakeshore Records. For audio clips and more details, visit our previous article.

Also opening wide is the indie comedy Our Idiot Brother directed by Jesse Peretz and starring Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Steve Coogan, Hugh Dancy, Rashida Jones and Shirley Knight. Nathan Larson and Eric D. Johnson composed the movie’s score. Abkco Records has released a soundtrack album including selections of the score, as well as several songs from the movie.

Eric D. Johnson’s debut album under the Fruit Bats moniker, Echolocution, was released at a fortuitous time—at least in terms of the fickle inclinations of the quote-unquote indie rock community. In the early 2000s, many people listening to and critically analyzing independent music took warmly to various modern interpretations of folk music, and as a result, many artists that fit into this rather nebulous spectrum—Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart, The Shins, Joanna Newsom, et al—found themselves selling goodly amounts of records and concert tickets. We bandied about terms such as “freak folk” as if they were going to...

The Our Idiot Brother soundtrack. Some might say that marketing/advertising is a profoundly dishonourable profession. That it’s all a three-ring circus operated by slick-talking snake oil salesman, peddling premium-priced versions of the emperor’s new underpants to gullible schmoes, with this in turn further fuelling the excrement-spewing media pipeline that pumps crap directly into the poor unsuspecting public’s collective cranium.

And when you find that a movie which was called My Idiot Brother just six months ago, when it played to a largely positive reception at Sundance, has now been rechristened Our Idiot Brother ahead of a Us release at the end of next month, it’s hard not to wonder just how many marketing monkeys it took to change that particular re-branding light bulb, and how much green they scored for their (lack of) efforts.

But if the name-change smacks of tinkering for the sake of charging an oversized fee,...

Abkco Records will be releasing the official soundtrack album for the indie comedy Our Idiot Brother. The soundtrack features selections from the film’s score by Nathan Larson and Eric D. Johnson, as well as songs by such artists as Willie Nelson, Generationals, Fruit Bats, Daniel Tashian & Mindy Smith, El May and Carol King. The album will be released on August 23, 2011 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Our Idiot Brother is directed by Jesse Peretz (First Love, Last Rites, The Ex) and stars Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer, Steve Coogan, Hugh Dancy, Rashida Jones and Shirley Knight. The movie premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has been picked up by the Weinstein Company for a theatrical release on August 26. For more information on the comedy, visit the official film webpage.

Here’s the album track list:

1. Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The...

Ceremony, the new comedy from director Max Winkler (son of Henry), sounds like a complicated story. Sam Davis (Michael Angarano) gets his former best friend to accompany him to a beachfront getaway owned by a famous documentary maker (Lee Pace). The plan is for the two to rekindle their friendship, but along the way, it is discovered that Sam is infatuated with the filmmaker’s fiancée, Zoe (Uma Thurman). His ultimate goal is to stop their wedding and win Zoe. Lakeshore Records is releasing the soundtrack, and if the description above didn’t sell you, neither will the album.

I was left really unimpressed with the soundtrack as a whole. The majority of the album is a score by Eric D. Johnson (not the Eric Johnson I would have hoped for), front man for the indie rock band Fruit Bats. His score is unoriginal and frankly, unimaginative. While not entirely without merit,...

Reviewed by Amy R. Handler

(April 2011)

Directed/Written by: Max Winkler

Starring: Michael Angarano, Uma Thurman, Reece Thompson, Lee Pace and Jake Johnson

Max Winkler’s first feature, “Ceremony,” puts a new spin on the old coming-of-age tale with edgy sensitivity, cryptic characters and a script replete with subtle ambiguity.

The plot is familiar: Twenty-three-year-old Sam (Michael Angarano) is a budding author of children’s books, but much like Sam himself, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy, or for that matter lovable, about his fairy-tale characters. One day, Sam invites his long-neglected friend Marshall (Reece Thompson) for a weekend holiday on Long Island so they can reestablish their friendship. Unlike Sam, Marshall is sweet and vulnerable, with an unusual dark side that we soon learn stems from a horrible experience. When Sam accidentally bumps into an older woman named Zoe (Uma Thurman) — his soon-to-married former lover — Marshall discovers that Sam’s...

Reviewed by Amy R. Handler

(April 2011)

Directed/Written by: Max Winkler

Starring: Michael Angarano, Uma Thurman, Reece Thompson, Lee Pace and Jake Johnson

Max Winkler’s first feature, “Ceremony,” puts a new spin on the old coming-of-age tale with edgy sensitivity, cryptic characters and a script replete with subtle ambiguity.

The plot is familiar: Twenty-three-year-old Sam (Michael Angarano) is a budding author of children’s books, but much like Sam himself, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy, or for that matter lovable, about his fairy-tale characters. One day, Sam invites his long-neglected friend Marshall (Reece Thompson) for a weekend holiday on Long Island so they can reestablish their friendship. Unlike Sam, Marshall is sweet and vulnerable, with an unusual dark side that we soon learn stems from a horrible experience. When Sam accidentally bumps into an older woman named Zoe (Uma Thurman) — his soon-to-married former lover — Marshall discovers that Sam’s...

This latest installment of Soundtrack Round Up kicks off with the soundtrack to the upcoming Scream 4. Wes Craven’s revisit of his infamous post-modern slasher franchise is accompanied by a bevy of loud and in-your-face electro rock tracks as well as a couple of cuts (pun intended) from veteran Scream composer Marco Beltrami’s score. Whilst subtlety is not on the menu, excitement and energy most certainly are, and this clutch of up-tempo, lyrically tongue in cheek hip-shakers provide a fun and noisy listen. Acts include Stereo Black, 6 Day Riot and Ida Maria, though the highlight of the album is probably its opening track, ‘Something to Die For’ by The Sounds.

Next up is David James Nielsen’s score for Tall Ships: The Privateer Lynx, the first episode of a new documentary series about ‘America’s greatest sailing ships’ which is airing on The Sailing Channel. I had previously...