Here’s a glimpse of the hero of Sky1 HD’s epic fantasy drama Sinbad, Elliot Knight.

The 20-year-old newcomer will be starring in the iconic role of the reckless, charming and cursed sailor, but the 8th century myth is being given a distinctly 21st century makeover.

Appearing alongside Knight will be a host of well-known faces, including Lost’s Naveen Andrews, who plays Sinbad’s nemesis Lord Akbari, Sophie Okonedo as Razia, Queen of the Water-Thieves and Timothy Spall as Anicetus, The Old Man of the Sea.

Sinbad has just finished filming in Malta for transmission in 2012. Christian has just completed scoring the first six x 1 hour episodes.

The 12-part series follows Sinbad’s sea-bound journey after he is forced to flee from his home town of Basra, under a curse. On board The Providence an intriguing band of travellers is thrown together, including taciturn Norwegian sailor Gunnar (Elliot Cowan – Marchlands), the lithe and agile jewel-thief Rina (Marama Corlett – The Devil’s Double), and haughty and aristocratic Nala (Estella Daniels – Thorne). Completing the ship’s complement is the Cook (Junix Inocian – The 51st State), an odd-ball and eccentric character and the ship’s cerebral doctor Anwar (Dimitri Leonidas – Grange Hill).

Surviving a violent and magical storm, both Sinbad and his fellow ship-mates are forced to band together to face their inner demons, hopes, loves and fears. Our flawed hero embarks on an epic and emotional quest to rid himself of the curse and embrace his destiny. When mystical meets muscle anything can happen….

Christian has been working on the score for this for some 5 months now and says it is an extraordinary challenge not only as a composer but as an HOD to wrangle such a huge body of work into shape especially when handed such an extraordinary brief. “It’s a traditional family epic and thematic score full of large orchestral set-pieces but also featuring very modern elements that wouldn’t be out of place on a Tony Scott film (Christian provided a lot of material for Scott’s 2001 film “Spy Game” with composer Harry Gregson-Williams). The central characters are played in a very modern and realistic style, they’re a bunch of hustlers, so we thought we’d pepper the score with modern elements. This is pure family entertainment so the producers and I agreed that it should never be a music history or geography lesson, so we’ve thrown a lot of the established approaches to this kind of material out of the window!”.

Sinbad is an Impossible Pictures production for Sky and BBC Worldwide, produced with the assistance of Nine Network Australia.

Zam Salim’s Up There, about a young man stuck into a dead-end job welcoming the newly deceased into the afterlife, received the Paranavision Spirit Award for Independent Cinema at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which concluded Sunday. The prize includes a Panavision camera package worth $60,000.

The film features a colourful score where “muzak” not angels permeate the airwaves on the “other-side”. Look out also for break-through performances by Burn Gorman and Kulvinder Ghir, in this unexpectedly warm take on the buddy-movie.

Christian’s score for Devil’s Double has been nominated as one of the top film scores of 2011 in Film Music Magazine, along side the likes of John Williams, Alexandre Desplat, Cliff Martinez, Thomas Newman and Patrick Doyle.

It was accompanied by these kind words:

“African and Middle Eastern movie music was hardly rocking in that trip-hop sort of way before Hans Zimmer turned a catastrophic Mogadishu military failure into a jam session with “Black Hawk Down,” setting the same furious ethnic beat for just about every similarly-themed score that followed. But leave it to Christian Henson to give it a new, darkly invigorating spin for “The Devil’s Double” as he takes desert rhythms out for a sex and drug dance in the westernized hell club of Uday Hussein. It’s a vibe at once fearsome and invigorating, tantalizing Uday’s hapless look-a-like with the sinister, sensual grooves of a dictator’s sociopathic son. Yet the serpentine sounds of Arabic winds and drums are always there with the percussive force of conscience, reminding the film’s hero of the cost of a despicable good life in the midst of his country’s agony. Henson’s mesmerizing mix of trance grooves, harsh beats and ironic strings capture this moral quandary in the heart of darkness to powerful, captivating effect for one of history’s most unusual hostages.”

To see the full article go HERE.

TRIVIA NOTE:  On the original demo version of Two Pints of Lager… Christian sings the theme in a drunken cockney accent. Program makers mixed up the master (Resung in a Runcorn accent by Steve Lee) and original demo versions of the titles track for series 2, which was aired and released to DVD with Christian’s rather ropey vocal rendition.

Christian was commissioned by Dexter to write a very minimal modern score for this show and is massively honoured to be involved in such a seminal debut and looks forward to working with this truly scintillating UK director in the future.

Recorded at Air-Edel by Nick Taylor with a band fixed by Hilary Skewes, “Up There” features the talents of John Paricelli and Leo Abrahams on guitars, mixed by Goetz Botzenhardt at Soho Sound Kitchen.

For more information about the film go to the official website: www.uptherethemovie.com

“A romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy. Set in Victorian London, the film tells the (more or less) true story of Dr Mortimer Granville and his tireless quest to bring relief to women suffering from “Hysteria”. Directed by Tanya Wexler and produced by Sarah Curtis (“Mrs Brown”), “Hysteria” is showing at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival (http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/hysteria)

Recorded at Air Studios by Nick Taylor with a seminal chamber band fixed by Hilary Skewes, conducted by Nick Ingman and mixed at Soho Sound Kitchen by Goetz Botzenhardt with James Bellamy as general wrangler of everything as chief music editor, this was a real team Rupert Street effort.

Christian is pleased to announce that he has joined up with Darrell Alexander and his team at Cool (Chamber Orchestra Of London) Music Ltd to represent him as sole agent.

The Cool music team are young vibrant firm of experienced, friendly, efficient and approachable professionals who can be contacted thus:

Cool Music Ltd,
1A Fishers Lane, Chiswick, London W4 1RX United Kingdom

T: +44 (0)20 8995 7766
F: +44 (0)20 8987 8996
E: enquiries@coolmusicltd.com

Christian would like to take this opportunity to thank Maggie and everyone at Air-Edel for 12 successful years under their stewardship and wishes them all the best for the future.

Lionsgate is understood to have agreed to a substantial seven-figure MG and p&a commitment and is planning a significant theatrical release and awards campaign centred on British talent Dominic Cooper’s breakout role as Uday Hussein and his body double Latif Yahia. Ludivine Sagnier also stars.

Paradigm Motion Picture Group and CAA jointly handled North American rights and Corsan international sales head Pascal Borno closed a deal with Icon for Australia and New Zealand at the festival.

Lionsgate beat several rival bids and entered exclusive negotiations with the representatives in the small hours of Wednesday [26]. As first reported on Screendaily, Relativity and Summit both circled the project but did not pursue it aggressively. Several other buyers are believed to have come in with bids.

Corsan head Paul Breuls produced The Devil’s Double with Catherine Vandeleene, Michael John Fedun and Emjay Rechsteiner.