(detailed information about this entry from Wikipedia)
August Rush is a 2007 Academy Award-nominated drama directed by Kirsten Sheridan and written by Nick Castle, James V. Hart, Kirsten Sheridan and Paul Castro, and produced by Richard Barton Lewis.
August Rush is a movie about how musicians communicate through music. Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) lives in an orphanage, all the while believing that his parents are alive. He believes the music that he hears all around him is his parents communicating with him. Evan meets a counselor, Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard), who gives a card with his number to him, introducing himself as a New York child service department member. Evan tells him he does not want to be adopted because he believes his parents are still alive.
Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that his parents were a famous concert cellist named Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), and Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irish guitarist and lead singer from a rock band. They met, fell in love and spent the night in each others arms. Late in her pregnancy, Lyla was hit by a car crossing the street. Once she had delivered the baby and was told by her father (William Sadler) that her child didn't survive. Lyla and Louis both had trouble concentrating on playing music and were miserable without each other.
During one night, Evan hears what he considers "the ultimate call." He follows the sound until he falls asleep by the side of the road. Evan is picked up by a trucker, is taken to New York, and the trucker calls the number on the card that Evan had with him. Evan is told to stay in a certain spot but after the wind blows the card into a vent. While chasing the card he gets caught up with the "music of the city". He wanders around the city and finds a boy named Arthur (Leon G. Thomas III) playing the guitar. Attracted to the music, he follows Arthur and falls in with a group of street kids, all musicians of some kind, who are being cared for by "Wizard" (Robin Williams). Wizard is a busker who sees the children as "investments". Evan gets access to a guitar and begins to play music for the first time. He turns out to be a child prodigy, and Wizard gives him the name August Rush, both as an alias and a stage name, from a slogan on a random truck driving by.
Lyla's father confesses to her on his deathbed that her son lived after all and that he forged her signature on the papers giving the child up to the state. Lyla goes to New York City in search of her son. Meanwhile, Evan's father Louis has also begun to play again, and while trying to trace Lyla, has also ended up back in New York City, where they had originally met.
Meanwhile, Jeffries is looking for Evan. He becomes suspicious of Wizard and has the police follow him. They raid the condemned theater in which Wizard and the kids live. Having run away, Evan hears a choir singing in a church and meets a little girl named Hope (Jamia Simone Nash) who sings in the choir. She teaches him briefly how to read music and he begins to compose music while she is away at school. Hope returns home to discover music compositions covering her wall. She runs to Reverend James, the pastor of her church, and tells him a prodigy was sleeping under her bed. They run into the chapel and discover August at the organ, playing, like Mozart, with consumate skill. Reverend James (Mykelti Williamson) enrolls August into Juilliard School of Music, where he does brilliantly, eventually writing a magnificent piece called "August's Rhapsody", which is performed in the open on the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond of New York City's Central Park with the New York Philharmonic. By coincidence, Lyla Novacek, who has been repeatedly nudged by her friend to play with the philharmonic, agrees to do so.
But Wizard wants to make money from Evan, and having found him again through the concert advertisements, he forces Evan to leave Juilliard and the organizers of the concert by implying that he will tell everyone Evan's real name if he doesn't, in which case Evan will be sent back to the orphanage. Evan reluctantly goes with him. While busking under Wizard's supervision, Evan meets a fellow guitarist, who is, unbeknownst to both of them, his father. Evan, who uses his name August Rush, says that he has a big concert coming up, but that he can't go. Louis tells him that if he had a big concert, he wouldn't miss it for anything. Evan decides that he must go to the concert. But first, he has to get away from Wizard. Aided by Arthur, Evan escapes from Wizard to perform his concert in Central Park. As Evan is conducting the orchestra, Louis, notices a sign promoting the concert with the names Lyla Novacek and August Rush. After seeing it he makes his way to Central Park, reuniting with Lyla, who has returned hearing the beautiful music, in time to hear the conclusion of Evan's rhapsody with her. As the piece ends, Evan turns to see Lyla and Louis standing hand in hand. A final moment is shared as Lyla recognizes her son, Louis recognizes the child prodigy he guided in the park, and Evan recognizes them both as his parents.
Written by Van Morrison, performed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Written by Chris Trapper, Performed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Written by John Legend
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song
The final number with Lyla and Louis begins with Lyla playing the Adagio-Moderato from Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor.
Composer Mark Mancina spent over a year and a half composing the score of August Rush. "The heart of the story is how we respond and connect through music. It's about this young boy who believes that he's going to find his parents through his music. That's what drives him."[cite this quote] The final theme of the movie was composed first. "That way I could take bits and pieces of the ending piece and relate it to the things that are happening in (August's) life. All of the themes are pieces of the puzzle, so at the end it means something because you've been subliminally hearing it throughout the film."[cite this quote] The score was recorded at the Todd-AO Scoring Stage and the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers.[1]
[edit] Reception
In a review by USA Today, Claudia Puig commented that "August Rush will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry."[2] The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the film positively, writing "the story is about musicians and how music connects people, so the movie's score and songs, created by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, give poetic whimsy to an implausible tale."[3]
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 38% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 105 reviews.[4] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 38 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.[5]
Pam Grady of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "an inane musical melodrama." Grady said "the entire story is ridiculous" and "Coincidences pile on, behavior and motivations defy logic, and the characters are so thinly drawn that most of the cast is at a loss."[6] Edward Douglas of comingsoon.net said it "doesn't take long for the movie to reveal itself as an extremely contrived and predictable movie that tries too hard to tug on the heartstrings."[cite this quote]
Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, calling it "a movie drenched in sentimentality, but it's supposed to be".[7]
The film was compared to Dickens' Oliver Twist.[8][9]
[edit] Awards
The soundtrack has songs from new and established acts. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, though it lost to "Falling Slowly," a score from Once.
[edit] References
- ^ Dan Goldwasser. "Scoring Session Photo Gallery from August Rush", ScoringSessions.com. Retrieved on 2008-02-29.
- ^ Puig, Claudia. Lilting 'August Rush' is poetry in emotion. USA Today. Retrieved on 2008-02-29.
- ^ Honeycutt, Kirk (November 08, 2007). August Rush. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 2008-02-29.
- ^ August Rush - Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2007-11-27.
- ^ August Rush (2007): Reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2007-11-27.
- ^ Pam Grady (2007-11-21). Review: Orphan has a song in his heart in 'August Rush'. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-11-27.
- ^ Roger Ebert. "August Rush", Chicago Sun-Times, 2007-11-21. Retrieved on 2007-11-26.
- ^ Smith, Sid (2007-11-21). August Rush (Oliver Twist reset in N.Y.) — 2 stars. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 2007-12-15. “Turn to the master, Charles Dickens, or better yet, update and recycle him. Such must have been the thinking behind August Rush, a thinly disguised retelling of Oliver Twist, transplanted to contemporary New York and sweetened by a theme of the healing magic of music.”
- ^ Covert, Colin (2007-11-20). Movie review: Romanticism trumps reason in Rush. Star Tribune. Retrieved on 2007-12-15. “If Charles Dickens were alive today, he might be writing projects like August Rush, the unabashedly sentimental tale of a plucky orphan lad who falls in with streetwise urchins as he seeks the family he ought to have. Come to think of it, Dickens did write that one, and called it Oliver Twist.”
[edit] External links
Slovenski | 
English | 
Deutsche | 
Hrvatski | 
Srpski
August Rush (2007) 
August Rush (2007)
(8.5/10) (2 votes)
Allowed extensions: .jpg .png
