The Hollywood Music in Media Awards (HMMA) will honor composer and songwriter Marc Shaiman with the Outstanding Career Achievement Award at the 14th annual awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday, November 15, at The Avalon in Hollywood. Submissions for all categories are open now until October 15.
The HMMA honors composers, songwriters, and music supervisors for their contributions in music for film, television, and video games. The HMMA is the bellwether of nominees and winners at the Golden Globes, Oscars, Grammys, and Emmys that occur months later. The HMMA event features music performances, celebrity presenters, tributes to music industry icons, and awards for composers, songwriters, and artists.
Tony, Grammy, Emmy winner, and five-time Oscar-nominated songwriter/composer Marc Shaiman (ASCAP) has written music for film, television, stage, and concerts. Shaiman most recently composed the score and co-wrote the songs for the 13-time Tony nominated musical, Some Like It Hot. As a film composer, his credits include Mary Poppins Returns, for which he received two Oscar nominations (song and score), Sleepless In Seattle, Patch Adams, The First Wives Club, The American President, South Park-Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Beaches, When Harry Met Sally, City Slicker, The Addams Family, A Few Good Men and Sister Act. As a songwriter, he and co-lyricist Scott Wittman also wrote all new songs for Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns, their on-tour musical Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and Hairspray. Shaiman’s television credits include Only Murders in the Building, SNL’s The Sweeney Sisters, Smash, appearances with Billy Crystal, Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Lane, Jenifer Lewis, Jennifer Hudson, Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Bette Midler on Johnny Carson’s penultimate Tonight Show, and many featured Oscar performances. Other performers Shaiman has collaborated with include Kristen Chenoweth, Eric Clapton, Christine Ebersole, Diane Keaton, Patti LuPone, Steve Martin, Barbra Streisand, and Robin Williams. Additionally, Shaiman has co-produced/arranged recordings and was the musical director for Bette Midler (“The Wind Beneath My Wings” and “From A Distance”). He has also collaborated with Harry Connick Jr. (“It Had to Be You”), and Mariah Carey (title song for the animated film The Star, for which he and Carey received a Golden Globe nomination).
Past HMMA Career Achievement Award recipients include Kenny Loggins, Smokey Robinson, Diane Warren, Earth Wind & Fire, Glen Campbell, Dave Mason, John Debney, and Christopher Young. Past HMMA winners who went on to win Oscars include Billie Eilish and FINNEAS for No Time To Die, Hans Zimmer for Dune, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste for Soul, Hildur Guðnadóttir for Joker, Ludwig Goransson for Black Panther, Alexandre Desplat for The Shape of Water, songs from Judas & The Black Messiah, Justin Hurwitz for La La Land, A Star Is Born and more. The HMMA voting academy consists of select journalists and Oscar, Grammy, Golden Globe, and Emmy voters.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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