How you can pitch a movie to Columbia Pictures in Rosemont
Do you have an idea for a movie? If you plan on attending Wizard World Chicago at the end of the month in Rosemont, then some Columbia Pictures executives would like to hear that idea.
A contest dubbed The Wizard World Chicago Pitchfest is taking submissions until 5 p.m. Aug. 15 via an online form at wizardworld.com/2018-chicago-pitchfest. There you'll have a chance to detail a synopsis of your movie idea, give it a title and a log line, and tell the judges about yourself. Representatives from Columbia Pictures will choose which pitches to hear from those submissions - pitches that have to be made in person at the annual pop culture convention, which runs Aug. 23 to 26 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Submitters must be 18 or older and legal U.S. residents, and can be attending the convention as a paying customer, a featured artist or an exhibitor.
I'll be telling you more about Wizard World Chicago in the coming weeks. Until then, check out the list of featured guests at wizardworld.com. (David Krumholtz? I love that guy!)
70 mm showcase
Tickets are on sale now for the Music Box 70 mm Film Festival 2018, the annual celebration of movies presented on the rarely used, high-resolution film format usually reserved for the grandest of presentations. This year's outstanding lineup features 12 films, and almost all of them are bona fide classics. To wit:
• "2001: A Space Odyssey"
• "The Dark Crystal"
• "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"
• "Lawrence of Arabia"
• "Patton"
• "The Remains of the Day"
• "Silverado"
• "The Sound of Music"
• "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"
• "The Thing" (1982 John Carpenter version)
• "West Side Story"
• "Year of the Dragon"
The festival runs from Friday, Sept. 14, to Thursday, Sept. 27, at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago. See the full list of showtimes and buy tickets ($14 general admission, $70 for the entire festival) at musicboxtheatre.com.
'Mission' music
Sure, Tom Cruise's HALO jump and helicopter acrobatics are impressive feats, but the most impossible thing achieved by "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"? I walked out of the theater humming a tune that wasn't Lalo Schifrin's iconic theme song from the '60s TV show.
Scottish composer and franchise newcomer Lorne Balfe, whose music you've heard in "The Lego Batman Movie" and "The Florida Project," plucks three descending notes from Schifrin's tense theme and turns them into an ominous brassy motif that crops up throughout writer/director Christopher McQuarrie's action masterpiece. The percussive, bass-heavy score lends a more somber tone than previous efforts by Michael Giacchino ("Ghost Protocol") and Joe Kraemer ("Rogue Nation"), and at times sounds a bit like "Mission: Impossible - Inception."
And that's fitting, considering Balfe's first big splash: He produced the 2009 "Sherlock Holmes" score by "Inception's" maestro, Hans Zimmer.
• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.