Soundtracking With Edith Bowman

Our gift to you this Christmas morning is Taika Waititi talking about his new film, Next Goal Wins.Based on a true story, Next Goal Wins stars Michael Fassbender as a coach charged with turning around the fortunes of the American Samoan national football team, widely regarded as one of the weakest in the world. 

Our latest Christmas present of a guest for you here on Soundtracking is the legendary Michael Mann, who joins Edith to discuss his biopic Ferrari, which follows the personal and professional struggles of Ferrari founder Enzo during the summer of 1957. Starring Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, it has all the visceral thrills and visual thrust that you'd expect of a Michael Mann film about very fast cars, but also real emotional punch, particularly in the performances of Adam and Penelope as Enzo and his wife, Laura. Ferrari is scored by friend of the show Daniel Pemberton - who provided the music in around about a week!

Without wishing to sound unduly self-congratulatory, it is slightly mind-boggling to us that one week Edith gets to introduce Sam Esmail and Julia Roberts to you on the podcast, and the next Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan. Bradley and Carey joined us to discuss Maestro, which Bradley co-wrote and directed and focuses on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre. 

It's a Wonka special for you today, as writer director Paul King, songwriter Neil Hannon and composer Joby Talbot join Edith to discuss their origin story of the eccentric chocolate maker, who is brilliantly played by Timothée Chalamet. It's a beautiful, all-singing, all-dancing spectacular, with all the characteristic charm of Paul's work, and with fine contributions from Neil and Joby.

We can't quite believe I'm saying this, but our latest guests on this bonus episode of Soundtracking are Sam Esmail and ... Julia Roberts! We had a lovely wee chat about the music in their new movie, Leave The World Behind, which you can watch right now on Netflix. A deeply unsettling psychological thriller, it tells the story of a family whose holiday on Long Island is interrupted by two mysterious strangers bringing news of an imminent blackout.

Last week we had Mark Ronson, and this week it's the turn of another great producer, musician, and crate digger to join Edith on Soundtracking. David Holmes is back with new music in the shape of his album that sees him collaborate with Raven Violet. As as well as talking about that, we discuss his score and music supervision work for film and TV for the likes of Steven Soderbegh, and also his experience of producing Sinead O'Connor's final work, which has yet to be released. As you can see, we also got to meet his dog, Maisie ...

We're bringing you another of our Soundtracking Everyman Film Clubs today, recorded live following a screening of American Symphony in London. Edith was joined by married couple Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad and documentary maker Matthew Heineman to discuss their film, which chronicles a year in Jon and Suleika's life as he goes about creating the symphony of the title in the face of her potentially terminal leukemia diagnosis.

400! 400! We have reached 400 episodes. Holy cow. How did we do that? And what better way to celebrate it than with Mark Ronson - one of the greatest music producers in the world and now a composer of score. Mark joined me after I messaged him out of the blue to discuss his music for Barbie. What a legend. With no compulsion from a PR company, Mark gave Edith, and by proxy you, half an hour of his time to talk about Greta Gerwigs's brilliant film.

It's another bonus episode of Soundtracking during this particularly busy time, as Todd Haynes returns to the podcast for a fourth time to discuss his film, May December. A deliciously dark and unsettling drama, with lashings of beautifully observed comedy, May December tells the story of an actress who travels to meet and study the life of the controversial woman she is set to play in a film, with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore exquisite in the leading roles. Interestingly, Marcelo Zarvos's music is a reworking of Michel Legrand's score for the 1971 film, The Go-Between. 

We are very excited to be bringing you the first of a series which we hope will be a  long-running addition to the podcast - namely the Soundtracking Everyman Film Club. This new project will see Edith get together with people who bring you a film ... their film ... and have a wee natter about it before or after a screening, and then share conversation with everyone who couldn't be in the room on that day in pod form. On this occasion, it's Emerald Fennell talking about the music of Saltburn, which is incredibly important to the movie's narrative drive, and an element, as you'll discover, she thinks an enormous amount about. As a bonus, Edith also caught up with her composer Anthony Willis, in an interview you'll get to hear after the conversation with Emerald.

We recently had Charlotte Regan on the podcast to discuss her brilliant debut feature, Scrapper, and we're following up on that episode with her composer Patrick Jonsson. Scrapper tells the story of 12-year-old Georgie and her estranged father Jason, who comes into her life for the first time after her mother dies. Told very much from Georgie's perspective, the music had to communicate her innocence and wonder - and also the childlike way in which she is dealing with her grief.

We have a double-header on our latest episode of Soundtracking - so busy are we at the moment. First up are writer/director Molly Manning Walker and songwriter, producer, DJ and composer James Jacob - who goes by the professional soubriquet of Jakwob. They join Edith to discuss Molly's powerful and important debut feature, How To Have Sex, which has already scooped a major award at Cannes. How To Have Sex deals with that very particular rite of passage for girls of a certain age, as three young female friends travel to Crete in search of sun, sand and, possibly, you know what ... We also have writer / director Kitty Green to talk about her psychological thriller, The Royal Hotel, which sees two backpackers land jobs in a remote Australian bar, with events uncoiling thereafter in a truly gripping and suspenseful fashion.

We are taking a deep dive into the music of Top Gun: Maverick in this bonus episode of Soundtracking, as editor Eddie Hamilton and music editor Cecile Tournesac join Edith to discuss their work on the film. Needless to say, this conversation features plenty of spoilers, but it's not one you'll want to listen to unless you've seen the film, so wonderfully granular is the detail they go into. They give us the stories behind the original songs, the needle-drops, the score and the sound design - and also serve up a rather lovely easter egg for you to look out for next time you watch the movie. Trust us when we say it is a BRILLIANT chat.

We can't quite believe our luck to have David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads to discuss the remastered re-release of their seminal concert film, Stop Making Sense. These guys are so lovely and humble and, of course, groundbreaking and brilliant, it really is a pleasure to bring you the interview - with a little taster of the live recordings from Jonathan Demme's film thrown in for good measure.

Our latest guest on Soundtracking is Garth Davis, who makes a welcome return to discuss his psychological sci-fi thriller, Foe. Based on the book by Iain Reid, it stars Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal as a couple whose life is turned upside down when a stranger arrives at their farm to tell them one of them will be sent to a space station, while the other will be left in the company of a robot. Unusually, Foe is scored by 3 composers, so find out right here what Garth had in mind with that decision ...

It's three for the price of one this week, as Edith is joined by writer / director Philip Barantini and composers Aaron May & David Ridley to discuss their collaboration of Phil's BBC television spinoff of his film, Boiling Point. Featuring many of the original cast, the episodic format allows Philip and his co-writers to flesh out the characters, as you can see by checking out the whole season on the BBC iPlayer right now.

Our latest guest on Soundtracking has scored one of films that has most profoundly affected Edith in recent years, such is the gravity of the subject matter. 20 Days in Mariupol is genuinely harrowing, but also genuinely necessary and important documentary, charting in quite heart-wronching fashion the besieging of the Ukrainian city during the Russian invasion. Jordan Dykstra composed the music for the film, and we're thrilled he took the time to talk to us.

As Edith has noted before, our latest guest on Soundtracking has effectively created his own genre of naturalistic musical cinema, in which the songs featured feel organically rooted in the landscape of the narrative. John Carney is the man who brought us Once and Sing Street - and now blesses us with Flora And Son, which you can watch on Apple TV and in selected cinemas. It tells the story of a mum struggling to deal with her rebellious son, whose fortunes start to change after she rescues a beat-up guitar from a skip. John enlisted the help of Gary Clark of Danny Wilson fame for the original songs and the score, and you'll hear examples of his music throughout the conversation.

Our latest guest on Soundtracking was also one of our very earliest, when he joined me to discuss his brilliant contribution to the Star Wars franchise, Rogue One. And Gareth is back with The Creator - which he wrote and directed, and is a quite simply extraordinary addition to the sci-fci canon. It's hard to tell you too much about it, aside from the fact that it puts a hugely compassionate twist on the classic battle between humans and machines and artificial intelligence. Oh yes, and it's scored by our old friend Hans Zimmer ...

We continue to celebrate independent film on Soundtracking this week in the company of Prasanna Puwanarajah and Niall Lawlor - respectively director and composer of Ballywalter, a bittersweet comedy set in the Northern Irish village, which counts among its stars Seána Kerslake and Patrick Kielty