Saturday Cinema

Saturday Cinema begins with Flicks in Five and the 1990 holiday classic, Home Alone. The hour continues with the scores from holiday films. We've also included a DVD review from MPR's Cube Critics.

Brian Reitzell talks about the complicated process of composing scores for the NBC series Hannibal — and how he takes inspiration from sources ranging from John Cage to industrial rock bands.

Movie scores provide a huge portion of the story telling. John Barry wrote a choral score for The Lion in Winter that sets the stage for intrigue and the appropriate Plantagenet style backstabbing.

Our celebration of Pixar films continues this week as we look at Monsters, Inc., another Randy Newman-composed score.

So many Hollywood romances, so little time. But for sheer passion and a tale of (nearly) unrequited love, at least by movie's end, you can't beat Rick and Ilse in "Casablanca." Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman sizzled as the two star-crossed lovers trying to survive in war-torn North Africa. Sam plays again on Flicks in Five.

While Casablanca made Humphrey Bogart a star before he met Lauren Bacall, it was their famous off-screen love affair that fired their on-screen chemistry.

As we think about movies with a back-to-school theme, there's a beautiful and rather somber one that comes to mind. It was even filmed at a real private school in Vermont.

This week's spotlight Pixar film is the 2003 release, Finding Nemo, which was scored by Thomas Newman in collaboration with Andrew Stanton.

American composer Jerome Moross celebrates his 100th birthday on August 1st. In this week's Flicks in Five we learn about Moross' early years and how Aaron Copland was indirectly responsible for Moross' time at Warner Brothers.

A film composer by trade, Alan Silvestri has been composing music for movies since the 1970s, but it's his frequent collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis that landed him an Oscar nomination for the 'Forrest Gump' score.