*batteries not included is a 1987 family-science fiction film directed by Matthew Robbins about small extraterrestrial living machines that save an apartment block under threat from property development. The story was originally intended to be featured in the TV series Amazing Stories, but Steven Spielberg liked the idea so much that he decided to make it a theatrical release.

Many of the film's foreign releases (including at least Swedish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Latin American Spanish) used the title Miracle on 8th Street in reference to the filming location.

Plot[link]

The film is set in contemporary New York City. Frank and Faye Riley (respectively Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy), an elderly couple who run an apartment building and café in the run-down East Village neighborhood, come under threat by a nearby property development. The development manager, Mr. Lacey, under pressure from his corporate bosses to evict the tenants and start construction, sends a hoodlum named Carlos and his gang of thugs to bribe the couple and their tenants to move out. When the tenants resist, they punch through artist Mason Baylor's (Dennis Boutsikaris) door, intimidate pregnant single mother Marisa Esteval (Elizabeth Peña) and break retired boxer Harry Knoble's (Frank McRae) jar of tiles. After Frank Riley refuses to move, Carlos vandalizes the café, breaking a sentimental photo frame in the process. With this assault and Faye's dementia growing (her now believing Carlos to be their long-dead son "Bobby"), Frank contemplates giving in.

Things look bleak until the appearance of a pair of flying, living machines (later nicknamed "The Fix-Its" by Faye), descend into the Rileys' apartment that evening, repairing many of the items that were broken and restoring the café. The two extraterrestrials take up residence in the shed at the top of the apartment building, where Faye (and soon the other tenants) supplies them with metal objects to eat. The boarders debate the creatures origins, but Frank puts an end to the discussion by stating "the quickest way to end a miracle is to ask it why it is". Carlos comes back to threaten the tenants once again, the Fix-Its then lure him to the top of the building and into the shed where they scare him away by giving him an electric shock.

Faye and Marisa learn that the "female" Fix-It is actually pregnant. After consuming plenty of metal and electrical objects, it gives birth to three baby Fix-Its, although one of them is stillborn. Faye buries the stillborn in a flowerpot the next day, but then Harry digs it back up takes it back to his apartment and succeeds in reviving it. Frank and Faye see a boost of business in the café from the demolition crew, while the Fix-Its help in the kitchen. Harry succeeds in resurrecting the dead machine, which returns to its family just as the other children are taught to fly.

With Carlos is unable to prove the existence of the Fix-Its that had been foiling their plans, Lacey is furious with the delays in evicting the tenants and moves to replace him. Desperate to see the job done and growing more unstable, Carlos breaks into the building's basement under cover of darkness to sabotage the building's pipework and electricity, and badly damages the "father" machine with a fire axe in the process. After Harry throws him out, the tenants discover the children are missing and go searching for them in the city while Faye stays behind with the "mother" machine as it fixes the "father". At first they don't have any luck but then Harry manages to summon the children with a dog whistle and megaphone, after which he laughs and comments "don't leave home without it". When the father machine is repaired, the now-wary Fix-It parents leave to seek out their offspring, and after finding them with Harry, the machine family departs from the planet.

Tired of the delays, Lacey sends a professional arsonist to burn down the building in an staged "accidental fire". Carlos discovers the plan and in a rage sabotages the arson to make the entire building explode, only to then discover that Faye is still in the building. While the arsonist flees, Carlos unsuccessfully attempts to pose as her late son Bobby to get her to leave, but ends up rescuing her as the fire spreads. The tenants then return to find the blazing apartment block collapsing, and Faye being loaded into an ambulance.

By the next morning, the apartment block has been reduced to a smouldering wreck. To Lacey's fury, construction is still unable to continue as Harry, sitting dejected on the steps, refuses to leave. Harry is then greeted by the mechanical family later that night, who have recruited countless other Fix-Its for repairs. By the next morning the entire building has been seamlessly restored to brand new condition, forever ending Lacey's demolition plans and resulting in his termination by his employers. Mason and Marisa settle into a relationship, while Carlos has ironically started a friendship with the Rileys, with Faye finally having come to accept her real son's passing. The movie then ends with a view of the restored and saved building in an unspecified future, flanked by towering post-modern skyscrapers.

Cast[link]

• Hume Cronyn as Frank Riley: The owner of Riley's Café, as well as the apparent landlord of the attached apartment building. In contrast with his wife, he is a down-to-earth man who seems to be crumbling under the pressure of upholding both his businesses and the delusions of his wife when the story opens. He did not get along well with his deceased son Bobby, contrary to his wife. As the story progresses, he becomes increasingly optimistic, and is the first to call the arrival of the "Fix-Its" a miracle.

• Jessica Tandy as Faye Riley: Frank's wife, who appears to be somewhat senile and living in her own world, in which the car accident that killed her beloved son Bobby never occurred (even going so far as to mistake Carlos for Bobby). However, she lets on in several places that she is not as helpless as her loved ones would believe, as she is the first one to realize the unique ability of the "Fix-Its" and demonstrating for everyone (by breaking her husband's pocket watch, which is immediately repaired by the "Fix-Its"). She seems to serve as a matchmaker for Mason and Marisa.

• Frank McRae as Harry Noble: A handyman, one of the boarders in the building. Formerly known as "The Human Locomotive", Harry was once a professional boxer with a wonderful right hook. When the story opens, he is retired and appears to have suffered brain damage. Since retiring from boxing, Harry appears to accepted a nonviolent philosophy, choosing to hide behind his shower curtain when thugs are after him rather than fight them. The few lines of dialogue he speaks in the movie are jingles from various commercials (because of which, he is notable for phrasing the title of the movie; 'batteries not included'). He appears to have a love of machinery, which comes in handy late in the film as he uses his talent for tinkering to revive a stillborn "Fix-It". Another example of Harry's quips comes when the "Fix-Its" briefly depart the tenement to explore the city, but Harry manages to summon their return.

• Elizabeth Peña as Marisa Esteval: A pregnant woman who patiently waits for the return of her boyfriend Hector, the father of her child. As the story progresses, she falls in love with artist and fellow boarder Mason (eventually choosing him over the negligent Hector), and appears to identify with both Faye and the female "Fix-It" on a mother-to-mother basis. She is a native Spanish speaker; when Frank fails to communicate with the "Fix-Its" in English, he suggests to Marisa why not see if they understand Spanish.

• Dennis Boutsikaris as Mason Baylor: A model of the starving artist. Mason at the beginning of the film is left by his girlfriend, who has grown tired of his appreciation of the decaying apartment. As the story progresses, he falls in love with Marisa, who appreciates his art, and he eventually gets the building noticed by a restoration society after a previous attempt failed (ironically, after the entire tenement had burned to the ground and was rebuilt by the "Fix-Its"). Mason appears to be a problem drinker, and is prone to mood swings.

• Michael Carmine as Carlos: The leader of Lacey's thugs. Carlos is an ambitious young man who believes he will move on to bigger and better things if he succeeds in getting Frank and his boarders to move out. When he attempts to attack the "Fix-Its", he gets shown they have a self-defense system by using his aluminum bat as a conductor, resulting in him being fried and retreating from the tenement with an electrically shocked hairdo. Though a thug, Carlos has serious compunctions against arson and murder, and shows his nobler side by rescuing Faye as the apartment building burns near the end of the movie. Ironically, Carlos' attempt to get Faye out of the burning building by feeding into Faye's delusions that he is her son and wants to take her and "good old Dad" to dinner, snaps Faye out of her delusion and she realizes he is not Bobby. He is no longer working for Lacey by the end of the film, and makes an effort to send a bouquet of flowers and a box of doghnuts to Faye.

The Fix-Its[link]

The "Fix-Its" were created by the visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic.

Though their origins remain a mystery, they share some features of von Neumann probes; they are apparently independent of external control, and they have the ability to assimilate scrap metal from various sources to replicate and repair themselves. Early in the movie, Frank insists they are spaceships "from a very small planet." The machines sometimes appear to display emotional reactions. When Mason examines a "Fix-It" with a magnifying glass, he sees what appear to be micromachines flying through or scuttling across it, implying that there are living beings inside. In contrast, two different scenes show the babies thrown in soup and water respectively, without any apparent harm; either the "micromachines" inside have no problem being immersed in liquid, or the baby "Fix-Its" don't contain any.

The baby "Fix-Its" are called Wheems, Jetsam and Flotsam. The two adults, although they are never named onscreen, are called Kilowatt and Carmen.

Production[link]

Principal photography started in New York in August 1986, but location scouting began almost a year before. "Since the story called for a solitary building amidst rubble," explained producer Ronald Schwary, "we had to find a vacant lot with burned-out buildings all around it. We finally settled on an actual building on 8th Street between Avenues C and D on New York's Lower East Side (the building no longer stands, and was probably located on the site of the current Housing Bureau substation, or the building to the east, approx 40°43′27.33″N 73°58′40.49″W / 40.7242583°N 73.9779139°W / 40.7242583; -73.9779139).^[3] Production designer Ted Haworth designed a three-sided, four-story tenement facade and oversaw its construction on a location that covered most of a city block. In the name of authenticity, he brought 50 to 60 truckloads of rubble to cover the once vacant lot. It was so remarkably realistic that the Sanitation Department came by and took away prop garbage one morning, potential customers stopped by to eat in the diner, and the business agent for the Plumber's Local of New York visited, demanding to know why there wasn't a permit down at City Hall for the construction." [info from DVD Production Notes]

The final scene before the end credits has an understanding of construction progress that happens around Riley's Café, without it being affected as tall skyscrapers appear, one at a time, around the tiny building. The new buildings used in the shot near the café are from the World Trade Center even though they had already existed for some time by 1987. Street traffic is seen moving as well as people walking on a foot bridge, indicating a filmed shot at the Trade Center area but the pointed black skyscrapers appear to be duplicated optically to contrast with the tiny café. What looks to be the U.S. Steel Building at 1 Liberty Plaza, seems to be the first to appear in the final shot. The scene itself is a non-existent location but the shot appears to be on Trinity Place, facing North with Zuccotti Park, {formerly Liberty Plaza Park} and the U.S. Steel Building both on the lower right.

A gazebo was donated to the Green Oasis and Gilbert's Garden community garden after production was completed.

Reception[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

• Honored with the Winsor McCay Award [for career achievement]

The movie gained a mostly positive reception.^[4][5][6][7]

Box Office[link]

The movie debuted at #4 at the box office.^[8][9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Site at Universal Studios Home Entertainment
• *batteries not included at the Internet Movie Database
• *batteries not included at AllRovi
• *batteries not included at Box Office Mojo
• *batteries not included at Rotten Tomatoes
• Location of the building (no longer standing) where the film takes place on East 8th Street

James Roy Horner (born August 14, 1953)^[1] is an American composer, orchestrator, and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements. His score to the 1997 film Titanic remains the best selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time.^[2][3]

In addition, Horner has scored over 100 films, frequently collaborating with acclaimed directors such as James Cameron and Ron Howard. Some of his most noteworthy works include Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Cocoon (1985), An American Tail (1986), Aliens (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), Willow (1988), Glory (1989), Field of Dreams (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Legends of the Fall (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), Braveheart (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Troy (2004), and Avatar (2009).

Horner has won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, three Saturn Awards, and has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards. His body of work is also notable for including the scores to the two highest-grossing films of all time; Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), both of which were directed by James Cameron.

Early life[link]

Horner was born in Los Angeles, the son of Austrian immigrants Joan (née Frankel) and Harry Horner, who was a production designer, set designer and occasional film director.^[4]

Horner started playing piano at the age of five. His early years were spent in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music. He subsequently attended Verde Valley High School in Sedona, Arizona. He received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California, and eventually earned a master's and started working on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished his teaching of music theory at UCLA and turned to film scoring.^[5]

Film and television scoring[link]

Horner's first major film score was for the 1979 film, The Lady in Red. He began his film scoring career by working for B film director and producer Roger Corman, with his first composer credit for Corman's big-budget Battle Beyond the Stars. His works steadily gained notice in Hollywood, which led him to take on larger projects. Horner made a breakthrough in 1982, when he had the chance to score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, establishing himself as a mainstream composer.

Horner continued composing music for high-profile releases during the 1980s, including 48 Hrs. (1982), Krull (1983), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Commando (1985), Cocoon (1985), Aliens (1986), *batteries not included, Willow (1988), Glory and Field of Dreams (both 1989).

Aliens earned Horner his first Academy Award nomination. He has been nominated an additional nine times since. Horner's scores have been sampled in film trailers for other films. The climax of the track Bishop's Countdown from his score for Aliens ranks fifth in the most commonly-used soundtrack cues for film trailers.^[6] Also, an unused fragment from Aliens was featured in a scene from Die Hard. Several films whose scores were composed by Michael Kamen have had trailers featuring Horner's music; most notably, the music from Willow is substituted for the theme Kamen wrote for the 1993 remake of The Three Musketeers. Horner also added his nominated Braveheart "For the Love of a Princess" single for Robert Zemeckis's Theatrical Trailer of Cast Away.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Horner also wrote orchestral scores for children's films (particularly those produced by Amblin Entertainment), with credits for An American Tail (1986), The Land Before Time (1988), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), and Casper, Jumanji, and Balto (all from 1995).

1995 saw Horner produce no fewer than six scores, including his commercially successful and critically acclaimed works for Braveheart and Apollo 13, both of which earned him Academy Award nominations. Horner's greatest financial and critical success would come in 1997, with the score to the motion picture, Titanic. The album became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack in history, selling over 27 million copies worldwide.^[7]

At the 70th Academy Awards, Horner won Oscars for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song for "My Heart Will Go On" (which he co-wrote with Will Jennings). In addition, Horner and Jennings won three Grammy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the soundtrack and My Heart Will Go On.^[8][9] Titanic also marked the first time in ten years that Horner worked with director James Cameron (following the highly stressful scoring sessions for Aliens, Horner declared that he would never work with Cameron again and described the experience of scoring the film Aliens as "a nightmare").^{[citation needed]}

Since Titanic, Horner has continued to score for major productions (including The Perfect Storm, A Beautiful Mind, Enemy At The Gates, The Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro, House of Sand and Fog and Bicentennial Man).^[1]

Aside from scoring major productions, Horner periodically works on smaller projects such as Iris, Radio and Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius. He received his eighth and ninth Academy Award nominations for A Beautiful Mind (2001) and House of Sand and Fog (2003), but lost on both occasions to Howard Shore. He frequently collaborates with film director Ron Howard, a partnership that began with Cocoon in 1985. Coincidentally, Horner's end title music from Glory can be heard in the trailer for Howard's Backdraft.

Horner composed the 2006-2011 theme music for the CBS Evening News. The theme was introduced as part of the debut of Katie Couric as anchor on September 5, 2006. It has since been adopted by most other CBS News programs as well.^{[citation needed]}

Horner recollaborated with James Cameron on the 2009 film Avatar, which was released in December 2009 and has since become the highest grossing film of all time, surpassing Titanic (also directed by Cameron and scored by Horner).

Horner spent over two years working on the score for Avatar, and did not take on any other projects during that time. Horner's work on Avatar earned him numerous award nominations, including his tenth Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe nomination, a BAFTA nomination, and a Grammy Award nomination, all of which he lost to Michael Giacchino for Up.^[10]

Regarding the experience of scoring Avatar, Horner said, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken... I work from four in the morning to about ten at night and that’s been my way of life since March. That's the world I'm in now and it makes you feel estranged from everything. I'll have to recover from that and get my head out of Avatar."^[11] It is currently unknown whether or not Horner will return as composer for the sequel(s) to Avatar.

Horner recently composed the score for the film The Karate Kid replacing Atli Örvarsson. This is the first film Horner has worked on since Avatar.^[12] The film was released in 2010.

Horner has recently scored The Song of Names (2011)^[13], as well as The Amazing Spider-Man, which stars Andrew Garfield and is set for release in July 2012.

Critical debate[link]

Horner has been criticised for transposing hooks, orchestral motifs, or larger passages from other scores of his own or of other composers.^[14][15] These contentions are points of fierce debates between supporters of Horner and his detractors.^[16]

List of scores[link]

Film[link]

1970s[link]

• 1978 The Drought (for the American Film Institute)
• 1978 Fantasies (for the American Film Institute)
• 1978 Gist and Evans (for the American Film Institute)
• 1978 Landscapes (for the American Film Institute)
• 1978 Just for a Laugh (for the American Film Institute)
• 1978 The Watcher (for the American Film Institute)
• 1979 The Lady in Red
• 1979 Up from the Depths

1980s[link]

1990s[link]

2000s[link]

2010s[link]

• 2010 The Karate Kid
• 2011 Black Gold^[17]
• 2012 Cristiada (aka For Greater Glory)
• 2012 The Amazing Spider-Man
• 2013 The Song of Names^[13]

Television[link]

• 1981 A Few Days in Weasel Creek
• 1982 A Piano for Mrs. Cimino
• 1983 Between Friends
• 1985 Amazing Stories (Episode: "Alamo Jobe")
• 1985 Faerie Tale Theatre (Episode: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin")
• 1985 Surviving
• 1990 Tales from the Crypt (Episode: "Cutting Cards")
• 1990 Extreme Close-Up
• 1992 Crossroads (theme)
• 1992 Fish Police (theme and pilot episode)
• 2000 Freedom Song
• 2006 CBS Evening News

Short films[link]

• 1985 Let's Go
• 1986 Captain EO (shown at Walt Disney theme parks worldwide)
• 1989 Tummy Trouble
• 1991 Norman and the Killer

Concert works[link]

• 1976: "Conversations"
• 1977: "Spectral Shimmers"
• 1998: "Titanic Suite"
• 2000: "A Forest Passage"

Miscellaneous works[link]

• Logo music for Universal Pictures (1990–1997), Lionsgate, Icon Productions and CBS Films.
• THX trailer "Cimarron"
• Music for the P-51 aerobatic flight team "The Horsemen"^[18][19]

Awards and nominations[link]

Horner has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score (Titanic) and Best Original Song ("My Heart Will Go On") in 1998, and has been nominated for Oscars an additional eight times. He has also won two Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, three Saturn Awards, and has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards.

AFI[link]

In 2005, the American Film Institute unveiled their list of America's top twenty-five film scores. Five of Horner's scores were among 250 nominees, making him the most nominated composer to not make the top twenty-five:^[20]

• Apollo 13 (1995)
• Braveheart (1995)
• Field of Dreams (1989)
• Glory (1989)
• Titanic (1997)

List of accolades[link]

Grammy

• 1988: An American Tail
• 1988: "Somewhere Out There" (from: An American Tail, Winner)
• 1990: Field of Dreams
• 1991: Glory (Winner)
• 1996: "Whatever You Imagine" (from: The Pagemaster)
• 1999: "My Heart Will Go On" (from: Titanic, Winner)
• 2003: A Beautiful Mind

References[link]

External links[link]

• James Horner at the Internet Movie Database
• James Horner interview (1983) from CinemaScore magazine