For one event at its American Composers Festival, Pacific Symphony Orchestra teams with the Newport Beach Film Festival to present “Behind the Score,” a free special screening of the James Newton Howard-scored and Academy Award-nominated 2006 movie Blood Diamond, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, at the Regency Lido in Newport Beach.
Appearing at an in-person Q&A will be Howard (pictured) and the film's producer-director, Edward Zwick, also known for Glory and The Last Samurai. Blood Diamond, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou–tells the story of a gem dealer, journalist and mine worker embroiled in the mining of diamonds in Africa's war zones. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won the Soundtrack of the Year Classical BRIT Award.
While this is a free deal, but advance reservations are required here. Call the PSO box office at (714) 755-5799 if you need further details.

OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.