Oscar Scores
How doth Oscar act strangely in its Best Score category? Let Variety count the ways:
Variety.com - Award Central 2007 - Oscar choices sometimes an anomaly
Just as Babel seems poised to win Best Picture, so too does its composer, Gustavo Santaolalla who won it last year for Brokeback Mountain. While I will agree that Brokeback was a very distinctive score that said a lot (just playing that guitar theme instantly evokes the forbidden romance), Babel’s score was not quite of the same level. The oud playing is nice, but it did not feel essential to the storytelling.
You certainly can’t say that about Pan’s Labyrinth, where Javier Navarrete’s lullaby theme is an emotional focal point in the story. And naturally when a film is as magical in subject matter, the music has to adopt a certain invasiveness to emphasize the illusion. This movie was very emotional, and the music was an inseparable part of that. I would feel comfortable with the Academy giving Navarrette an Oscar for this haunting music.
Pan’s Labyrinth - Javier Navarrete BUY
In fact, I liked the other three scores as well…Thomas Newman’s witty attempt at noirish melodramatics, Alexandre Desplat’s finely tuned elegance, and Philip Glass’ signature intensity. These are veterans who should be awarded eventually for their craft. They’ve proven themselves versatile, prolific, and consistent in quality.
And on top of that, these three have produced in 2006 two scores each of lasting value. Desplat’s The Queen and The Painted Veil. Glass’ The Illusionist and Notes on a Scandal. Newman’s Little Children and The Good German. So really you could say that each one of them deserve the award twice as much.
I mean, Thomas Newman will win his award some day. After having redefined how Hollywood movies sound and been nominated now a total of 8 times, his day will come. And surely when it does, it will be for a work entirely inconsequential when faced with his landmark scores like American Beauty, Shawshank Redemption, The Player, etc.
Santaolalla has done a handful of scores, most of them for Innaritu. As good as his work may have been in Babel, this is not the guy to give the award to 2 years in a row. I mean, Bernard Herrmann and John Williams at their peak never got two in a row. Let’s give it to someone who a) hasn’t won it before and b) who really deserves it.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Thomas Newman has never won? He is by far one of my top two or three faves. I loved his score for the (semi-) underrated film version of Lemony’s Snicket a Series of Unfortunate Events. (I think Shawshank didn’t win a single Oscar despite being nominated for seven or eight? Remember back in the day when this used to happen a lot? Now nominations are all over the place.) Philip Glass’s score for Notes was fantastic, but he should have won for The Hours. Why was Desplat not nominated for the hugely ignored The Painted Veil? I agree Gustavo’s Babel score was not as striking as his Brokeback score. In Babel, his score is just that — a score, background music. In Brokeback, it stands on its own, defining a repressed, isolated romance…but I came here because I just realized that Lang Lang performed the solo piano stuff in Painted Veil, and I was wondering what you thought of that film’s score…oh, and howdy to ya Howard, how’s it going?