I had a chance to speak with composer Tyler Bates recently, about his work on 300, and the subject of Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot — for which Bates is also providing the music — came up. Bates has worked with Zombie before, and had some interesting things to say about their working style, his take on the script and tackling such an iconic score.

“Rob came to me when I believe the Weinsteins first tapped
him to see if he would be interested in making a Halloween movie,” says Bates. “Rob gave me his idea for the script and he asked
my opinion of it, which I appreciated, and then asked if I would mock up our
version of the theme for a presentation to the studio. So we had a dialogue
going, and through The Devil’s Rejects
we had definitely creatively bonded immediately. Rob pretty much leaves me to
my own devices, musically. He doesn’t really speak in musical terms to me about
anything. And that’s probably because as an artist and a musician himself he
knows it would be horrible to have your A&R guy saying, ‘Yeah, write
another one like “Living Dead Girl.”’ You know that’s not going to be so good.”

“Going into Halloween
I’ve had the opportunity to develop a palette of sounds that are going to be
applicable to the film, texturally,” Bates adds. “And being very familiar with Rob’s filming
style, and the script, and having taken a look at a couple of examples of
cinematography that reflect the attitude he wants to capture for the film, it’s
given me a lot of info. He’s in his third week of filming right now. I imagine
that I’ll start looking at an assembly of dailies next week. Rob lives pretty
close by, and so we’ll have a chance to get together and talk. Rob’s visual
style is so intense that the music really has to become part of the film
itself. It can’t accompany the film, it has to become part of the fiber of the film itself. That’s the challenge.”

“As far as the Halloween
aspect goes, first off I think he’s written a great script,” continues Bates. “He’s telling the
story, in my opinion, in a way that fans are really going to love. …And one of
the pleasures of getting a chance to do this movie is getting a chance to do
the John Carpenter theme, but kind of get back to the way that Carpenter did
it — at least that attitude. There’s not going to be a sweeping, orchestral
version of the theme happening. This is hopefully going to be the most
disturbing version ever created. That’s our objective, to really get into the
darkest corners of your mind, and I feel that Rob is definitely going to
accomplish that, in a really classic way. I think you’re going to see this
movie as something that really delivers on a psychological level and a dramatic
level. It’s probably going to be violent as hell, I’m sure, but that’s not his
main point.”

Hollywood prides itself on reinvention. After all, it has plenty of experience in
neatly packaging such tales of underdog uplift, personal transformation
and professional rebirth, selling them to the public in compact,
pre-formed celluloid patties 12 months a year.

The career trajectory of
Mark Wahlberg, though, has been a particularly unusual one, and a
lesson in the art of the makeover. From successful if unlikely Bahs-ton-born hip-hop musician to roughneck (and allegedly homophobic) Calvin Klein underwear model to hipster Entourage
producer and, now, Oscar nominee, Wahlberg’s acting career might best
be described as a blue-collar shooting star. It’s been characterized by
a solemn, hard-edged determination, commitment to professionalism and
incremental betterment. So it’s no surprise that
Shooter, his latest film, finds him playing an idealistic ex-military man who has to take matters into his own hands. Whether in Boogie Nights, Rock Star, Four Brothers or I Heart Huckabees, Wahlberg is at his best when he’s able to showcase his convictions, to convey the depth and strength of his beliefs. For the full interview feature, from FilmStew, click here.

300 — a stirring, violent and visually audacious tale of battlefield sacrifice — has focused on cinematographer Larry Fong’s rotoscoped, consistently evocative camerawork. And rightly so — the movie’s saturated frames and rich shadows look and feel like a comic panel come to life, and feed its brawny, heightened tone. Composer Tyler Bates‘ driving, aggressive music, though, reflects the characters’ physical vigor as well as their steadfast dedication to principle.

I had the chance recently to speak with Bates about his second collaboration with Dawn of the Dead director Snyder, his overall career path and the challenges of tackling iconic properties. For the full interview feature, from Rotten Tomatoes, click here. To visit Bates’ eponymous website, meanwhile, click here.

Hip-hop artist, actor, mini-mogul-in-training — Bow Wow doesn’t
need anyone to throw him a bone. In honor of his 20th birthday, then, here’s a slightly redacted reposting of an interview done from the fall of 2005, on occasion of the theatrical release of Roll Bounce. To wit:

There used to be a day when actors wanted only to be actors.
That day is no more. There used to be a day when singers wanted only to be
singers. That day is no more. There used to be a day when actor-singers wanted
merely to be actor-singers. That day is no more.

And there used to be a day when performers who formerly, and
formally, had the designation “Lil’” in front of their name would be happy to
escape adolescence with a trust fund intact. That day, too, is no more. Yes, in an interview in advance of his new
period skate movie Roll Bounce, Bow
Wow is telling me that he wants to put Will Smith out of business. And he’s not
entirely kidding.

In breathless fashion, multimedia army-of-one Bow Wow
relates anecdotes about his recently completed music tour, his upcoming film
projects, various endorsement deals, the self-starring reality show he’d like
to launch on his own terms (“I think if I had mine it’d be crazy, you’d never
see nothing like this”) and, yes, plans for
his own clothing line. Probably one of the most preternaturally confident —
cocky? — of the under-drinking age set in Hollywood
today, Bow Wow is a relentless talker and self-promoter, and unnervingly on
point. (If none of his entertainment ventures stick, he could in a decade segue
into politics, where his cult of personality would find welcome reception.)

Yet Bow Wow has a unique
combination of experience and basic insight that could serve him well, and
together give him just as much of a puncher’s chance as anyone else looking to
rapaciously climb the Hollywood ladder. Ask him why rappers today feel the need
to brand themselves with such a wide variety of lifestyle accoutrements, and
he’ll launch into a soliloquy about the genre’s high relatability amongst
today’s kids and how fans therefore want to also feel like they own a piece of
their favorite hip-hop stars — or even athletes — outside of music or off the
court. It’s a bit broad strokes but nonetheless perceptive. Bow Wow is no dum
dum, in other words.

Bow Wow first came to fame as the preteen protégé of
rapper-producer Jermaine Dupri, who continues to serve as his musical mentor. His
debut album, Beware of Dog, sold over
three million copies and spawned the hit “Bounce With Me,” which touched number
one on both the rap and R&B charts. He then made his feature film debut in Like Mike, and was most recently seen
opposite Cedric the Entertainer in Johnson
Family Vacation.

Setting one’s sights on Will Smith, though, requires a bit
broader palette, and so Bow Wow began looking for something with a bit more
heft to it. It was then that he heard of Roll
Bounce, a script by television writer Norman Vance (Beauty Shop) that Malcolm Lee (Undercover
Brother, The Best Man) had
expressed an interest in directing. “What attracted me to the film was the
storyline,” says Bow Wow, “and especially that is was something completely
different than anything I’ve done before. I really wanted to broaden my career
as an actor, and this role was a great way to take it further.”

The film’s story, set in a music-cued 1970s, centers around
Xavier “X” Smith (Bow Wow). At a time when rollerskating was a way of life, X
and his pals ruled supreme. When their local rink closes, however, it sends
these decidedly downtown kids into terra
unfamilia — an uptown rink known as Sweetwater — where they face off
against a collection of flamboyant over-the-top skaters. Along the way, there’s
a budding romance with the sweet Naomi (Meagan Good) and a therapeutic healing
in X’s relationship with his father Curtis (Chi McBride).

“I’ve been skating for years so this wasn’t really anything
new to me,” says Bow Wow. “I’ve been skating since I was around six years old.
I used to waste my mother’s money all the time, just playing games at the
arcade. And then she was like, ‘Nah, get on out there.’ So it was cool, it
brought back some memories.”

“The routines and the choreography were really the only
thing that I had to learn,” Bow Wow continues. “That took a few weeks. A lot of
us, we’re not dancers, a lot of us don’t have rhythm, so it was cool to get
everybody together and just try to do it. People were falling, some folks
couldn’t get it, some could. But we had to wait, and work together, because we
were a team and we had to move as a unit.”

While the nostalgic underpinnings and familial drama of Roll Bounce make it almost as much of a
“glance-back” movie for adults as a funky comedy of choreographed good times, the
assortment of supporting player cameos (Nick Cannon, Charlie Murphy, Mike Epps,
DMX, Wayne Brady) adds further color and flair. Bow Wow also asserts that young
and old can appreciate the artistic showmanship of rollerskating. He acknowledges
the ascendancy of rollerblades, but points out the existence of Los Angeles’ World
on Wheels and other local skating rinks, saying there’s still a healthy
underground appetite for the type of “jam skating” on display in Roll Bounce. “Rollerblades are
definitely used for exercise and things like that,” says Bow Wow. “But when
it’s time for you to skate and really show off what you’ve got, then it’s four
wheels.”

Bow Wow will soon get a chance to get to know other types of
four-wheel modes of transportation as well, as he and Lucas Black (Sling Blade, Friday Night Lights) are set to co-star in the third installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise,
set in Tokyo. Shooting commences on
location in October — “I’ve never been [to Japan], so that’ll be all new,
different,” he says — and though Bow Wow is as of yet uncertain as to what, if
any, sort of driving school training he’ll have, don’t be too surprised if you soon
see his endorsement of an auto body professional. Or a tire company, or a rim
specialist…

Jim Carrey is nothing if not dogged in his pursuit of well-roundedness.
While plenty of actors have been only too happy to trade on the
well-fed contentedness of their big screen personalities, and merely
flip their careers into cruise control (a certain Dreamgirls Oscar nominee comes to mind), Carrey has for more than a decade shown a penchant for
dancing on the razor’s edge. Broad comedies are his forte, but he
clearly yearns for embrace — commercially as much as critically — in
dramatic fare as well, as The Truman Show, The Majestic, Man on the Moon and now his choice to headline the recent The Number 23 all illustrate.

“I really have always thought of myself as somebody who lives in the
middle of the wheel, and is able to go to the extreme, to the outside
of the wheel, in any direction,” says Carrey. “The best case scenario for me is to
be able to be centered and then go out. You can be zany
and funny or you can do something that really has some depth to it and
is serious …I would
hate to get trapped in one little thing. I always feel like funny is an
appendage, but it is not my whole body.” For the full feature interview, from FilmStew, click here.

The Host, I knew going in that these sorts of [attitudes] were what I would be facing.”

For the full feature interview, from IGN, click here.