Sound of Cinema

With a career spanning 60 years and over 200 films, the late Donald Sutherland was a true acting legend. His son, actor Kiefer Sutherland - best known for his starring roles in 1987's The Lost Boys plus Designated Survivor and 24 - joins Matthew Sweet to look back at his father's life through the soundtracks of his major films. It includes music from The Hunger Games (by composer James Newton Howard), Don't Look Now (composer Pino Donaggio), Six Degrees of Separation (composer Jerry Goldsmith) and Pride and Prejudice (by composer Dario Marianelli), this episode also contains insights into what it's like learning about your father through film...

With the release of Fly Me To The Moon - in which Scarlett Johansson wants to fake the moon landing - Matthew Sweet uncovers the films in which fakery is the name of the game. From characters stuck in artificial worlds - The Truman Show and The Matrix - to films that lead the audience to question what's real and what's not, like The Game, Total Recall and Synecdoche New York, this episode of Sound of Cinema looks at how deception comes across in the music of these fraud-based films...

Matthew Sweet in conversation with Abel Korzeniowski, the composer of Ishana Night Shyamalan's supernatural horror film The Watched. We'll hear about writing music for 'Emily', the 2022 biopic about Emily Brontë, and the film that won Colin Firth the Best Actor award at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, A Single Man. Abel also talks about why Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather means so much to him.

Matthew Sweet showcases film scores about female firsts and cinematic examples of outstanding achievements by women, and he chats to composer Amelia Warner about her score for the new film Young Woman and the Sea recalling the story of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. The programme also includes music from Pope Joan, Cleopatra, Captain Marvel, Hidden Figures, Suffragette, Radioactive, Amelia, Mary Shelley, and the Classic Score of the Week - Toshiro Mayazumi's music for the 1966 movie The Bible: In The Beginning...

Cannes is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world. In this week’s Sound of Cinema, Matthew Sweet catches up with journalist and film critic Agnes Poirier who is in Cannes to put us at the heart of the festival. She tells of encounters with Jack Nicholson on his way home from a party at 7am and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a shoe shop. She also talks about the growing recognition of female directors and the global nature of film.

With the release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Matthew Sweet hails cinema's greatest apes. From King Kong to Gorillas In The Mist, apes have proven a constant lure throughout the history of film and in today's programme we'll hear the soundtracks for the very best of them. And Matthew takes us on a sonic journey through the music of all nine Planet of the Apes films.

From the new Zendaya film "Challengers", to "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind", every breakup brings its own challenges. Matthew Sweet brings the ice cream and a shoulder to cry on for the films that tackle the subject of exes head on.

With the release of the biopic about Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, Matthew Sweet explores the stories of lives that have been told on the silver screen.

The Sci-fi sequel Dune 2 is one of the most hotly awaited films of the decade. As part of the build-up to tomorrow's Sound of Cinema Day, which anticipates the Academy Awards celebrations, Matthew Sweet talks music with Dune's extraordinary and brilliant French-Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve.

Matthew Sweet in conversation with the Oscar-winning composer of Shakespeare in Love, Stephen Warbeck.

The American composer of TV's Bridgerton, The Green Book, Chevalier and King Richard, Kris Bowers, joins Matthew Sweet to talk about his music for the remake of The Color Purple and Origin in a look back on his screen career to date.

Matthew Sweet musters all his resourcefulness to bring us the music of the best modern survival films as Jodie Comer tackles rising water and raising a child in The End We Start From. Matthew is joined by the composer of the film's score, Anna Meredith, who talks about her experiences of working in film. Also in the programme, music from Life of Pi, The Poseidon Adventure, Gravity, The Martian, 127 Hours, 1917, The Day After Tomorrow, and the Classic Score of the Week - Miklos Rosza's The World The Flesh And The Devil.

Matthew Sweet celebrates 50 years of one of cinema's greatest collaborations - that of director Steven Spielberg and his composer of choice, John Williams. With music from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Schindler's List and Jurassic Park. Matthew gives us a close encounter with the music for Close Encounters Of The Third Kind as he analyses the scene of humanity's first contact with the alien mothership.

Laura Karpman is best known for her work composing the soundtracks for The Marvels, and the Disney+ series Ms Marvel and What If… She joins Matthew Sweet from her studio in LA overlooking the Pacific and talks about studying under Milton Babbitt and Nadia Boulanger, scoring for documentaries, attending the Last Night of the Proms and the influence of Benjamin Britten on her score for The Marvels.

This weekend sees the relaunch of Hammer Studios and the release of a new telling of the Dr Jekyllstory, starring Eddie Izzard. Matthew looks back on Hammer’s contribution to cinema and to some of the often inventive and even experimental composers who have created music for the studios since its inception in 1934. Hammer Horror - the vibrantly colourful and distinctive engagements with terror that starred the likes of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Films that brought us recurring tales of The Mummy, Dracula and Frankenstein; and music from the likes of James Bernard. But there was so much more to Hammer. The programme includes cues from Doreen Carwithen for Robin Hood, Tristan Carey’s early electronic experiments for Quatermass, Franz Reizenstein’s parody score for The Mummy, Harry Robinson’s musical evocation of Carmilla, and Mario Nascimbene’s pioneering work for One Million Years BC. Plus, of course, classic Hammer moments from James Bernard. And Matthew also talks to composer Blair Mowatt about his score for the new Dr Jekyll film.

What was your experience of a first date at the cinema? Presumably you arrived together - but did you leave separately? Matthew Sweet listens to listeners' experiences of their movie first-dates and - rather appropriately - plays great, thrilling and tragic music from the films.

Matthew Sweet's guest this week is the composer George Fenton. His breakthrough came with Richard Attenborough's biopic Gandhi, since then he's scored over 100 films including Cry Freedom, Shadowlands, The Madness of King George, Groundhog Day and The Wind that Shakes The Barley. He speaks to Matthew about his rich and varied career as well as his assocations with directors such as Richard Attenborough, Stephen Frears, Nora Ephron - and Ken Loach, whose latest film, The Old Oak, is released his week.

Of all the genre titles the 'family film' is perhaps the trickiest to define. Its intention, clearly, is to entertain and appeal to the whole family - togetherness. But what are the specific ingredients that make it so? Nevertheless, cinema goers seem to have a good sense of what an advertised family film might have to offer. Matthew Sweet looks back at this category of film, which seemed to spring into existence in America around the 1930s, and he foregrounds the music of some of the best and most defining examples. The programme includes music from Home Alone, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Gulliver's Travels, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, ET - The Extra Terrestrial, Kiki's Delivery Service, Paddington 2 and the Classical Score of the Week - the Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell score for Shrek.

From the Life of Pi to The Jungle Book; His Dark Materials to Wolverine, Matthew Sweet features film music shaped by the fantastical idea of humans as animals. We'll hear of spirit animals, cursed princes, what happens when your parents are turned into pigs (Spirited Away) or your mum becomes a bear (Brave). And we adopt the mantle of The Batman to root out the animal powers of superheroes. The programme also features music from the new release 'Blue Beetle' composed by Bobby Krlic.

Following the release of Greta Gerwig's Barbie, Matthew Sweet considers cinema's fascination with the colour pink. Many films adopt a colour code to establish the mood and tone of the movie. The colour pink in particular has associations with love, innocence, femininity, charm and fun. In this edition of Sound of Cinema, Matthew focuses on music for films which exploit these ideas of pinkness - for films such as Grease, Batman Returns, Steel Magnolias, Legally Blonde, The Devil Wears Prada, Paddington... and Harry Potter.