Sound Effects

James Macdonald, for 40 years the Disney organization's one-man band of sound effects who also became the voice of Mickey Mouse when Walt Disney no longer had time to breathe life into his creation, has died. Macdonald blew through gas lamp chambers to emulate the roaring of bears, made galloping hoofbeats with coconut half-shells and fashioned a note on a mouth harp that sounded like an arrow hitting a target. He was 84 and died Friday at his home in Glendale of heart failure.

"Life of Pi" won two awards Sunday evening at the 60th Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards. The adventure fable, which is nominated for 11 Academy Awards, won for sound editing: music in a feature film and sound editing: dialogue and ADR in a feature film. Academy Award-winning Ang Lee, who is nominated again for directing  "Life of Pi,"  was also the recipient of the 2013 MPSE Filmmaker Award. COMPLETE LIST: MPSE winners and nominees Oscar nominee "Les Miserables" won the Golden Reel for sound editing: music in a musical feature film and "Skyfall" earned the honor for sound editing: sound effects and Foley in a feature film.

Ready for something different? A Canadian company, Distribution Madacy, has released a dozen sound-effects albums in compact disc that prove surprisingly entertaining--especially if you make a game out of them. Simply play one of the records with a friend--without looking at the liner notes--and see who can first correctly identify each of the 80 or so sounds per disc. "Fun With Sound Effects, Vol.

"Argo," "Life of Pi," "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"; "Skyfall" and "Lincoln" earned multiple nominations Friday morning for the Motion Picture Sound Editors 60th annual MPSE Golden Reel Awards. Nominations were announced for 22 categories in feature film, TV, animation, computer entertainment and student work. Nominees for best sound editing: sound effects and foley in a feature film are "Argo"; "Django Unchained"; "Life of Pi"; "The Avengers"; "Prometheus"; "Skyfall"; "The Dark Knight Rises"; and "The Hobbit.

Fred J. Brown, 68, Emmy-winning sound effects editor for the television presentation "The Red Pony," died Nov. 9 in Northridge of unspecified causes. In addition to his Emmy, Brown earned a career achievement award from the Motion Picture Sound Editors in 2002. He worked for several studios during his career, beginning at Technicolor and then apprenticing at Columbia.

Times staff writer Robert W. Welkos described nicely the different movie theater sound systems, even managing to mention the volume being too loud ("Creating the Roar for the Crowd," Calendar, June 1). What Welkos did not mention is an even bigger problem than overbearing volume: how obnoxiously bad many of the final sound mixes are in today's films.

When he was 16, Ray Erlenborn earned $20 a week playing one of the page boys in the original West Coast production of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's 1927 classic spoof of the Hollywood movie studios, "Once in a Lifetime."

Inside a dubbing stage on the Columbia Pictures lot, silhouetted against a monolithic video screen the size of a freeway billboard, Clyde Phillips stares up at the 10-foot-high, fish-eye image of a sexy high school principal in a fire-engine red business suit. The principal (Melanie Chartoff) has just fired her "special obedience helper" (Taj Johnson), a student who finds pleasure in his classmates' pain. "We need a whimper here," one of three engineers seated behind a sound board calls out.

Radio dramas, an entertainment mainstay of the 1930s and 1940s, have been co-opted and even modernized by several companies. These are full cast recordings, replete with sound effects and music. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," adapted and produced by Yuri Rasovsky, is a throwback to the golden age of radio, though the story was inspired by the silent German Expressionist film of 1919. (Tangled Web Audio; original audio material; one cassette; 70 minutes; $9.95.

Andy Whitfield Title actor in cable's 'Spartacus' series Andy Whitfield, 39, star of the cable series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," died Sunday of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Sydney, Australia, according to his manager, Sam Maydew. Whitfield, who was born in Wales and lived in Australia, was a virtual unknown when he was cast as the title hero in "Spartacus," a hit original series for the Starz network that made headlines with its graphic violence and sexuality.

Comedian Tig Notaro's downtown Los Angeles loft is oddly intact considering she is moving across the country in the morning. She's about to start a new job with Comedy Central, she has a new book deal with Ecco, her debut comedy album, "Good One," is now No. 2 in its category on iTunes, and reporters from Vanity Fair and the New Yorker are calling later about a new comedy recording of hers on Louis C.K.'s website. Still, as she relaxes on the taupe couch that divides her industrial-modern kitchen and airy, sun-lit living room, Notaro seems utterly unflustered.

When the score to "The Dark Knight Rises"  was released last week, it was missing something: a significant portion of the music created for the film.  "I wanted to make an exciting CD, but what's on the CD is not even half the music," said composer Hans Zimmer. The 52-minute score, released by Warner Bros. imprint WaterTower Music, follows the chronological order of the film, a direct audio companion to what's on the screen. Yet for listeners to hear four of the film's original suites (musical compositions recorded by Zimmer in the early stages of the filmmaking process)

OKLAHOMA CITY -- On a volume scale of 1 to 10, this might go to 11. Some of the noisiest fans in the NBA could unleash their inner Nigel Tufnel, the guitarist from Spinal Tap, and crank up the decibels to another level for Game 6 of the Western Conference finals. "I can't imagine it being much louder than it has been," Oklahoma City Coach Scott Brooks said Tuesday, "but if it is, that would be great. " The Thunder has given its supporters ample reason to roar. Three consecutive victories over the San Antonio Spurs have given Oklahoma City a 3-2 lead in a wildly vacillating best-of-seven series, which resumes Wednesday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena.

Tom Keith, who created an astounding array of captivating, hilarious, bawdy sounds and voices as longtime master of radio sound effects for Garrison Keillor's nationally syndicated "A Prairie Home Companion," has died. He was 64. Keith, who also co-hosted a weekday morning program on Minnesota Public Radio, died Sunday after having a heart attack at his home in Woodbury, Minn., a St. Paul suburb. Keith last performed Oct. 22 at St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater with the cast of "A Prairie Home Companion" and guest John Lithgow, playing "a zombie and a beery Elizabethan bartender, [doing]

Andy Whitfield Title actor in cable's 'Spartacus' series Andy Whitfield, 39, star of the cable series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," died Sunday of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Sydney, Australia, according to his manager, Sam Maydew. Whitfield, who was born in Wales and lived in Australia, was a virtual unknown when he was cast as the title hero in "Spartacus," a hit original series for the Starz network that made headlines with its graphic violence and sexuality.

In Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller "Black Swan," an increasingly imbalanced ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), struggles to break free of her inhibitions. Cast as the lead in a production of "Swan Lake," Nina perfectly embodies the purity and reserve of the white swan but falls well short of finding the aggressive sexuality and passion of its counterpart, the black swan. She is pushed ever harder by the company director to let loose, to go beyond the technical aspects of the dance and find the emotional resonance of the darker character.

On a ladder, Batman is dangling precariously from a helicopter piloted by Robin. A shark with big teeth has attached itself to Batman's foot, but the caped super-hero manages to get rid of the creature. "How'd you kill the shark?" Robin inquires. "It was easy," Batman says. "It was made of rubber." The scene is from "Batman," the 1966 camp film classic based on the original Batman TV series. The movie that will appear on the screen at L.A.

Imagine a version of the film "The Blob" where the amorphous alien comes to Earth not as a hostile invader, but as a Henny Youngman-type comedian looking for a gig on "The Tonight Show." Or, how about a movie featuring Cyrano de Bergerac as a hard-luck fellow whose limited job skills reduce him to punching out the holes in doughnuts with his oversized schnoz. No, these aren't old Mel Brooks screenplays that never reached fruition. Rather, they are multimedia presentations by the L.A.

Charlie Callas, the veteran comedian who punctuated his zany, character-oriented comedy routines with a bizarre array of facial expressions and sound effects, has died. He was 83. Callas, a resident of Las Vegas, died Thursday evening of natural causes in a hospice, said his son Mark. A former drummer for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and other big bands who switched to comedy in the mid-1960s, Callas once described himself as being "like a little kid running loose in the living room.

It's a book! It's a cartoon! It's ... digital comics! Technology, which has already upended the music, television and movie businesses, is now gripping the comic book world. Publishers are unleashing a torrent of digital comic books across smart phones, tablet devices, game consoles and digital book readers, portending major changes in how comics are made and marketed. These new comics — many of which are being showcased this week at Comic-Con International in San Diego — in some cases come with choreographed presentations that zoom or pan across panels, full-color animated characters, audio from professional voice actors, heart-thumping soundtracks and even the ability for readers to leave comments on the pages.