In Contention

Tag: Best Original Score

  • ‘Tinker, Tailor’ joins the December club

    American viewers already frustrated about waiting two months longer than the Brits to lay eyes on Tomas Alfredson’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” — welcome to our world, guys — won’t be pleased by Pete Hammond’s revelation in a recent column that the wait has been extended by three weeks.

    Yes, Focus Features has pushed the film back from its original November 18 release date to December 9, a move that some will interpret as indicative of bolshy awards-season hopes for the star-studded John Le Carré adaptation — though the pre-Thanksgiving berth wasn’t exactly Oscar-unfriendly either.

    That said, Focus might have picked a date with less intimidating high-end competition: originally set to precede “The Artist,” “The Descendants” and “Hugo” by only a few days, the film now need only stare down limited releases of Madonna’s “W.E.” and Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult.”

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  • In praise of the modern movie soundtrack

    I generally try to ignore film opinion pieces I think are fundamentally misguided — à chacun son goût and all that, plus the fact that fighting one mind is generally more trouble than it’s worth — but Ben Walsh’s idle article in The Independent today on the supposed demise of the movie soundtrack does such an absurd disservice to the current landscape of film music that it can’t pass without objection.

    Walsh’s standpoint is a dully nostalgic one: movie scores were so much more memorable in the old days, when greats like John Williams, Ennio Morricone and Danny Elfman (who are all dead, apparently) conjured whistle-ready themes by the dozen, while scores today “seem so completely unmemorable” by comparison.

    His pool of case studies for this assertion is a shallow one — he speaks mainly of the recent Oscar winners by Best Picture, Original Score and Original Song, oddly conflating the last two categories as if the two disciplines are somehow comparable — and even through that narrow prism, his preferences are hard to justify.

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  • Clint Mansell scoring ‘The Iron Lady’

    I’ll level with you, folks: there are a lot of prestige titles coming out in late 2011 that I’m itching to see, and “The Iron Lady” isn’t one of them. Putting to one side concerns about Phyllida Lloyd’s filmmaking prowess — I thought her ill at ease with the medium in “Mamma Mia!”, but she’s an accomplished theater director and everyone deserves a second chance — Margaret Thatcher’s story requires ambiguity and incisiveness in the telling (and playing) to avoid predictable rhetoric, and the margin for error is a fine one.

    That teaser trailer released a few weeks ago wasn’t terribly illuminating: the writing is jokey, while the flash of Meryl Streep’s performance hints at “Julie & Julia”-scale broadness, but it’s altogether too brief and context-free to offer a sense of the film’s overall tone.

    Indeed, the most intriguing thing about the trailer is the unexpected use of Clint Mansell’s brooding “Moon” score as accompaniment — and as it turns out, there was more to that particular choice than initially met the eye. A reliable first-hand source informs me that Mansell is on board to score the actual film, which adds some lustre to a respectable but slightly unsexy list of below-the-line contributors.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: ‘Inception’ dominates below the line

    So, the morning after a terrible prediction record at this year’s Oscars, I’ll try to make some sense of what the Academy told us, and what it means for the crafts artists we got to know along the circuit this year.

    As the evening went on, many people began to wonder if “The Social Network” would triumph in Best Picture. While Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall managed to take Best Film Editing (on their second nomination), the very deserved win for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in Best Original Score was somewhat surprising. The work trumped Alexandre Desplat for “The King’s Speech,” despite the latter film’s wins in the major categories. Desplat, with four nominations under his belt, could now be considered due, I think.  (Alas, Tom Hooper’s later win for Best Director removed doubts about the Best Picture winner.)

    The Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects categories unsurprisingly went to “Inception,” making Oscar winners of Nolan’s usual crew of Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick, Richard Kind, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, and company. I congratulate them and wish them the best for “The Dark Knight Rises.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part two

    Yesterday we began our final look at the 10 crafts categories.  Check out part one here.  Today, the conclusion.  Meanwhile, you can find my final predictions in all categories here.

    Best Music (Original Score)

    Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, despite their atypical approach to film music composition, are very much contenders in this race. Having won the BFCA award and Golden Globe for their work on “The Social Network,” they must be taken seriously. The fact remains, however, that this is not a typical Oscar-winning score.

    Alexandre Desplat has had an amazing run since he broke onto the American scene in 2003 with “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Four Oscar nominations later, it seems he is poised to win his first statuette for another Colin Firth film, “The King’s Speech.” Being behind the Best Picture frontrunner is a huge advantage. Moreover, its subtle elegance managed to win the BAFTA. Even so, a win is hardly assured as subtlety is actually not frequently awarded here.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Music (Original Score)

    Recently the International Film Music Critics Association were the last critics group to offer their (specialized) thoughts on the 2010 film year. The announcement made for an interesting counter to the year in score awardage. And the eventual nominees for Best Original Score reflected, if nothing else, a continued break with tradition.

    The music branch has been slowly initiating new blood as of late, though it hasn’t completely relinquished its trademark consistency. A big step was made in the recognition of one of the year’s more atypical scores, though a big opportunity was lost with Daft Punk’s failure to register what could have been a truly exciting tip of the Academy’s hat.

    The nominees are:

    “How to Train Your Dragon” (John Powell)
    “Inception” (Hans Zimmer)
    “The King’s Speech” (Alexandre Desplat)
    “127 Hours” (A.R. Rahman)
    “The Social Network” (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)

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  • The Bagger in-studio with Reznor/Ross

    A little difficult not to be totally envious of Melena Ryzik’s recent trip to Trent Reznor’s crib/studio to talk “The Social Network” with the Nine Inch Nails front man and his composing partner, Atticus Ross:

  • TECH SUPPORT: Analyzing the nominees

    So the 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were finally announced this week, and I did fairly well in handicapping the nominees. Outside of Best Sound Mixing, I never missed more than one nominee in a category. Unfortunately, there were no categories where I scored 100% (apart from Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Oh well.

    The massive overall tally for “The King’s Speech” resulted from a plethora of nominations in the crafts fields. “True Grit” and “Inception” got all but one plausible tech nomination (with one very notable exception for each, discussed below). “TRON Legacy”’s tally, on the other hand, has got to be considered a disappointment as must, to a lesser extent, those of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.” The complete shut-out for “Shutter Island” was also somewhat of a surprise, but other branches saw fit to make Oscar nominees of some unlikely titles.

    Regardless, it was nice to see many deserving crafts artists get their due. With the throat-clearing out of the way, I’ll now give short reactions to – and previews of – each below-the-line field.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than six months since I wrote this year’s introductory Tech Support column ( a dissection of the art direction race). Much has changed since then, naturally, as we are less than a week away from the big day when we find out the nominees for the Oscars this year. Today, I take a final look at the music categories, sound categories and the two categories that have been narrowed down to seven finalists – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.

    BEST MAKEUP

    In this utterly bizarre category, virtually any combination of the seven finalists would fail to surprise me as the final three. That said, I’ve had the same top two predicted all year and see no reason to change now: “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wolfman.” The former had massive box office and very noticeable makeup, whereas the latter is exactly the sort of movie that tends to score here and nowhere else.

    Logic may put “True Grit” or “The Fighter” next in line due to their Best Picture contender status. But as much as these films are loved, they don’t have as showy makeup as the other finalists, and this is a category that often doesn’t care how films are received overall.

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  • In praise of Reznor/Ross

    This year’s Best Original Score race really has me at a loss.  I freely admit that I have no idea what will happen there.  Some days I think we’ll get a small surprise like Alexandre Desplat sliding in for his best work this year in “The Ghost Writer,” others I think we could just get a massive, happy surprise like Daft Punk slipping in for their brilliant work on “TRON Legacy.”

    Other times, I kind of just bank on it being a boring assemblage of what we’ve been expecting.  Probably option “C” is the wisest expectation.

    One thing has begun to materialize lately for me, though.  And that is the fact that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who I once upon a time thought might not even get a nomination for their wonderfully woven ambient work in “The Social Network,” could be the frontrunners to win in a category that might be filled with less-singular achievements.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Below-the-line standouts

    For the penultimate installment in our reflection on the most Oscar-worthy achievements from the largely forgotten first half of 2010’s release calendar, I’m backtracking away from the major categories to the place I should perhaps have started: the technical sphere.

    Had I thought to start this column 20-odd weeks in advance of nomination day, I could have given each craft category the attention it deserves — though if I’m being honest, picking five outstanding Best Sound Editing contenders from the year’s first six months wouldn’t be the easiest of tasks.

    As it stands, I’ve arrived at an admittedly drastic compromise: singling out five individual technical contributions, across the range of categories, that made a particularly strong impression. With such a doubly curtailed brief, the list of painfully excised honorable mentions inevitably runs very long indeed, so I’ll jump straight in with a few of them.

    As much as “Shutter Island” didn’t work for me as a whole, it delivered considerable rewards as a craft showcase: I was particularly tempted to include Dante Ferretti’s art direction, which will likely find its way to Oscar recognition without my help.

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  • 77 scores competing for Oscar, ‘Toy Story 3’ not among them

    They may have enjoyed a three-year run of nominations in the category, finally taking the gold with “Up” earlier this year, but Pixar’s hot streak in Best Original Score will not continue at the 2010 Oscars. Although Randy Newman’s “Toy Story 3” score wasn’t ruled ineligible by the Academy — unlike his work on last year’s “The Princess and the Frog,” which faced a late disqualification — Newman himself has opted not to enter it in the race.

    Pixar’s latest therefore joins a number of high-profile titles on the bench in this category, including the previously disqualified likes of “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “Tangled” and the Carter Burwell double-shot of “True Grit” and “The Kids Are All Right.”

    As Steve Pond points out, the official list of 77 films competing for Best Original Score makes for easily the narrowest field of the general categories. The good news, however, is that most of the names we most want to see recognized are still on it, including Daft Punk for “TRON Legacy,” Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for “The Social Network,” Sylvain Chomet for “The Illusionist” and arguable frontrunner Hans Zimmer for “Inception.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘True Grit’ composer Carter Burwell

    Nearing the end of our week-long series of interviews with the below-the-line talent of Joel and Ethan Coen’s “True Grit,” we’re talking today with the film’s composer Carter Burwell.

    Of the entire Coen crafts family, Burwell is one of the true veterans.  He goes way back with the brothers — all the way back, in fact, to their directorial debut, “Blood Simple,” in 1984.  Save for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” which featured an assemblage of pre-existing musical selections, Burwell has contributed an original score to each of their films.

    With “True Grit,” the task was unique despite music having always been quite integral to the genre.  Rather than whip up a completely original score from beginning to end, Burwell and the Coens decided to base a lot of the music on hymns of the period (though there is still a good deal of original music in the film — music unceremoniously ruled ineligible for Oscar consideration by the music branch of the Academy this year).

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  • Academy DQs scores for ‘Fighter,’ ‘Grit,’ ‘Kids’ and ‘Swan’

    I had a bad feeling Carter Burwell’s work in “True Grit” was going to get the axe from a consistently dubious music branch, and so it has. Along with three other hopefuls.

    Variety is reporting that Burwell’s score and Clint Mansell’s for “Black Swan” were nixed due to being overwhelmed by pre-existing music (19th century hymns with the former, Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” with the latter). Additionally, the scores from Burwell on “The Kids Are All Right” and Michael Brook “The Fighter” got the boot because of an abundance of songs.

    We’ve been expecting some kind of ruling on this year’s crop of contenders. It’s a shame, as always, that well-regarded original material has to be penalized due to rules like this, but it’s their game and they’ll play it how they want.  Thursday we’ll feature an interview with Burwell and you can hear the thought process that went into the score for “True Grit.” Until then, chew on this.

    [Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures]

  • Well put

    Misconceptions about Daft Punk’s musical score: Fans became excited when it was announced that Grammy winning electronica duo Daft Punk would be scoring the film. They received their first taste of the music when the track “End of Line” was played in the hidden room that displayed the new lightcycle at the Flynn’s arcade set-up for San Diego Comic-Con 2009. Immediately fan produced mixes of the track were created and music released by other electronica artists was falsely labeled as new tracks from the Tron Legacy score. A few weeks back another up tempo track Derezzed was released in anticipation of the score’s December 6 release. Yet many fans fail to realize that most of the music Daft Punk has composed for the film is not dance music, but an actual score. It works fine on it’s own, but it’s meant to support and enhance the theatrical film. Daft Punk even incorporated a 90 piece orchestra making for some exciting and truly emotional music cues. If you expect to be dancing along to the Tron Legacy soundtrack you’re gonna be sorely disappointed.

    From Ron Henrique’s Latino Review piece entitled “10 things surrounding ‘TRON Legacy’ that bug me.”

  • Eligibility of Burwell’s ‘Grit’ score still up in the air

    Anne Thompson is reporting in her “True Grit” review that Carter Burwell’s score from the film is ineligible for Academy consideration due to elements being based on hymns of the period.  However, this is not official, first and foremost because the score hasn’t even been submitted to the Academy’s music branch yet.

    I’m told there are 22 minutes of original score in the film and that the score submitted to AMPAS will have 29 tracks on it.  There are six hymns on the commercial soundtrack release, but those obviously won’t be included in the submission.

    Also worth pointing out is there are no rules regarding length of original material.  In 2006 “Babel” had about 20 minutes of original score from composer Gustavo Santaolalla and it won the Oscar.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Fighter’ bows, Jackman bows out, Best Picture questions

    • David O. Russell’s “The Fighter” unspooled at the AFI Fest. Kris was impressed and later reported from a Q&A with the film’s stars.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column pondered the presence of money-spinners in this year’s Best Picture race.

    • The Long Shot, meanwhile, wondered if that very race is currently looking a little flimsy.

    • News of Hugh Jackman turning down the gig prompted the annual speculation over who should host the Oscar ceremony.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Score — Volume II

    A great score can take a film from memorable to unforgettable.  Whether it be Vangelis’s synthesizer on the beach in “Chariots of Fire,” Nino Rota’s haunting waltz from “The Godfather” or John Williams’s blaring, adventurous march from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” scores can elevate amazing images to bring the director’s vision to even greater fruition.

    The last time I discussed this category, I noted how it is very hard to predict in advance without having heard the scores.  Synopses and stills give clues in other categories to an extent frequently not seen here.  That said, most contenders have screened, if not opened, now, so we can make safe assumptions.

    But I still think this can be one of the most difficult categories to predict. But in the way of patterns, films that feature noticeable, loud, memorable and often exotic music are usually contenders.  And being in a Best Picture frontrunner never hurts matters, as always.

    This branch certainly has its favorites, and I expect to see past nominees and winners prominent in the race this year.  The composers don’t frequently embrace new nominees.  Usually only one newcomer is welcomed per year.

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