Sabin wrote:Up is a gorgeous, gorgeous score and if it wins it will be the best winner in this category since The Fellowship of the Ring, maybe even further back.
I'd go further back. Howard Schore's score for the Rings films is lovely, but Up is one of the best film scores I've ever heard. It would be the best Oscar winner in this category since Beauty and the Beast.
Of course, the way Oscar usually disappoints, there will probably be an Avatar sweep and James Horner's forgettable score will win.
Sabin wrote:I enjoyed this grouping of nominees much more than last year's in which my favorite would be Benjamin Button (over Changeling, Defiance, Frost/Nixon, and Slumdog Millionaire). I also liked them more than the year before that where I would have opted for Into the Wild over Atonement, Eastern Promises, Grace is Gone, The Kite Runner
Like Wild Things this year, There Will Be Blood was robbed that year because of the Academy's wackadoodle rules.
Sigh...
"It's the least most of us can do, but less of us will do more."
Having now seen A Single Man, I can attest to the strength of Abel Korzeniowski's score. Either his or Giacchino's score for Up would be very deserving winners. But Carter Burwell & Karen-O's score for Where the Wild Things Are is intensely touching as well. I think Marvin Hamlisch's score for The Informant! is a bit too jokey at times but it helps aid in the enjoyably asinine mood this film sets for itself. My least favorite piece of music nominated is Avatar.
Avatar and Up are seemingly safe bets for nominations. I would hope that A Single Man would appear as well. I'm not as sure about The Informant! because it is such a ridiculously inappropriate score and because he hasn't been nominated for Best Original Score in over thirty years. But he seems to be as safe a bet as any. For the last spot, I am hoping against hope that Alexandre Desplat makes a showing for Fantastic Mr. Fox, the year's best score, but it could just as easily be Hans Zimmer's work on Sherlock Holmes.
I enjoyed this grouping of nominees much more than last year's in which my favorite would be Benjamin Button (over Changeling, Defiance, Frost/Nixon, and Slumdog Millionaire). I also liked them more than the year before that where I would have opted for Into the Wild over Atonement, Eastern Promises, Grace is Gone, The Kite Runner
I think you're right. The film definitely seems inspired by silent-era filmmaking (in my opinion moreso than the Wall-E, though the latter got more press about it, and admittedly bore strong resemblence to a script James Agee wrote for Chaplin.) Direct visual quotations from the 1925 The Lost World, and a character in the dashing Douglas Fairbanks mold, not to mention the early tear-jerking sequence.
Up is a gorgeous, gorgeous score and if it wins it will be the best winner in this category since The Fellowship of the Ring, maybe even further back. It's just beautiful. I would love to see Alexandre Desplat nominated for Fantastic Mr. Fox, Nathan Johnson for The Brothers Bloom, James Newton Howard for Duplicity, and Hans Zimmer for Sherlock Holmes.
The upside of the standard Pixar sweep of animation is Giachhino appears like he might be carried along. I like his work in The Incredibles, Lost and here, and would be happy to see him win an Oscar.
And, for me, I really preferred the scores to The Informant! (despite not loving the movie) and Where the Wild Things Are, but Up was a strong score and at least it wasn't a win for Avatar. Horner's score is one of the worst aspects of the film itself.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin