Harry Gregson Williams

It's the life of a film composer: One week you're in a fairy-tale world populated by green ogres and talking donkeys, the next week you're dashing around 6th century Persia with a spunky princess and a magical dagger. "Had the tasks been similar, it would be a very dull life," says Harry Gregson-Williams, composer of both "Shrek Forever After" and "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," two big summer movies opening within a week of each other this month. "' Prince of Persia' has lighter moments, but it's dramatic and intense, an adventure," adds the composer.

It's the life of a film composer: One week you're in a fairy-tale world populated by green ogres and talking donkeys, the next week you're dashing around 6th century Persia with a spunky princess and a magical dagger. "Had the tasks been similar, it would be a very dull life," says Harry Gregson-Williams, composer of both "Shrek Forever After" and "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," two big summer movies opening within a week of each other this month. "' Prince of Persia' has lighter moments, but it's dramatic and intense, an adventure," adds the composer.

Video game music, once composed with cheesy electronic bleeps, now rivals anything Hollywood produces. In fact, game music increasingly comes from Hollywood as developers try to achieve the same dramatic depth as movies. The soundtrack for "Metal Gear Solid 2," for example, was written by Harry Gregson-Williams, who scored dozens of films, including "Shrek," "Armageddon," "The Replacement Killers" and "Spy Game." It's not that game developers have suddenly acquired an appreciation for music.

Video game music, once composed with cheesy electronic bleeps, now rivals anything Hollywood produces. In fact, game music increasingly comes from Hollywood as developers try to achieve the same dramatic depth as movies. The soundtrack for "Metal Gear Solid 2," for example, was written by Harry Gregson-Williams, who scored dozens of films, including "Shrek," "Armageddon," "The Replacement Killers" and "Spy Game." It's not that game developers have suddenly acquired an appreciation for music.

For years, local audiences have watched excerpts from John Castagna's evolving ballet adaptation of Strauss' comic opera "Die Fledermaus" on various mixed bills. However, performances over the weekend at the Gallery Theatre in Barnsdall Art Park offered the first chance to see how the sections fit together. Unfortunately, they didn't.

There's something terribly demoralizing about "Veronica Guerin," and it's not just that its subject, a crusading Irish journalist played by the protean Cate Blanchett, was murdered in Dublin in 1996 by criminals she was in the process of exposing. And it's not that what's on screen is more schlocky than satisfying. "Veronica Guerin" is far from the worst film you'll see this year, and it's far from the worst film its director, Joel Schumacher, has ever made. ("8MM" anyone? I thought not.

Music composer Garry Schyman sits in his Culver City studio, at a desk topped with Gustav Mahler biographies and Krzysztof Penderecki recordings, and ponders the hero's predicament. He pivots to his keyboard and plays a handful of chords conveying utter loss, the draining of hope. If you happen to play the video game Resistance: Retribution after it's released next spring, you'll take on the role of a British soldier working to subvert an alien invasion in post-apocalyptic Europe.

When Sofia Milos first appears in "Passionada," a charming love story for adults, she has the impact of a goddess. Extraordinarily beautiful, with an aquiline nose, a full mouth and long black hair, Milos is ideally cast as Celia Amonte, a widow in her mid-30s who lives in the Portuguese American community of New Bedford, Mass.

From the moment you see stressed-out, short-tempered NYPD patrolman Dante Jackson (Forest Whitaker) roughing up scruffy, gentle Ziggy Malone (Robert Ri'chard) for drawing pictures on a crowded high school stairwell, you suspect that a long day is in store for the borough of Queens. And before you can say "Blackboard Jungle," the following ensues in "Light It Up": A popular teacher (Judd Nelson) is suspended for taking his class off school grounds because there was no available space in the under-heated, overcrowded building for him to do his job. Several students, including the class president (Rosario Dawson)

Things are missing in the Lender residence. Small things, like hat pins, tape measures, double-A batteries, spools of thread, refrigerator leftovers. Just enough to be an annoyance to the family, especially Pete, an innovative 10-year-old who has begun setting nasty little traps for the thieves. But the missing items aren't stolen, they're merely borrowed.

With films such as"Unstoppable"and "Man on Fire," Tony Scott told adrenaline-filled stories about fearless men - spies and cops, race car drivers and fighter pilots - who live by a code and face death on their own terms. He filled his cinematic landscape with intrigue and action, avoiding computer effects in favor of real-life stunts with speeding trains and screaming jets, even once shutting down the Mississippi River to blow up a ferryboat. In life, the British director-producer shared many characteristics with his alpha-male action heroes.