Awards Season
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have announced the nominees for the 2011 Academy Awards today, and in the all important music categories the nominees are:
- LUDOVIC BOURCE for The Artist
- ALBERTO IGLESIAS for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- HOWARD SHORE for Hugo
- JOHN WILLIAMS for The Adventures of Tintin
- JOHN WILLIAMS for War Horse
It looks like Bource’s award to lose. Having already won this year’s Golden Globe for the same score, and with John Williams’ double-nomination for his two Steven Spielberg scores looking almost certain to cancel each other out, the young French composer is almost guaranteed to take home the gong for his excellent work on director Michel Hazanavicius’s excellent film about the end of the Hollywood silent film era. Howard Shore, for Martin Scorsese’s HUGO, and Alberto Iglesias, for the spy thriller TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY look to be the rank outsiders – in fact, Iglesias wasn’t on many people’s radar at all this year, despite having been nominated several times before.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s work on THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is the most unexpected omission - with them having picked up nominations for the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, they looked certain to pick up a second nomination. Similarly, Alexandre Desplat couldn’t pick up any love for any of his eight scores from 2011 – I expected his score for EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE to be nominated, and his score for HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 was very good too.
Other scores notable for their omission include Abel Korzeniowski’s W.E., which was nominated for a Golden Globe, Cliff Martinez’s DRIVE, which was nominated for a Critics Choice Award, and two of the Best Picture nominees, which often pick up score nominations purely for being a good film: Thomas Newman’s THE HELP and Mychael Danna’s MONEYBALL.
In the Best Song category, the Academy decided to honor just two songs with nominations:
- “Man or Muppet” from THE MUPPETS by Bret McKenzie; and
- “Real In Rio” from RIO by Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett
The omission of several excellent songs - ”Star Spangled Man” from Captain America, “Lay Your Head Down” from Albert Nobbs, “The Living Proof” from The Help, “Coeur Valent” from Hugo, “Hello Hello” from Gnomeo and Juliet, the rest of the songs from The Muppets, and all the songs from Winnie the Pooh – is inexplicable to say the least, and throws into doubt the future validity of the entire category. Nevertheless, I’ll be cheering for The Muppets.
Hugo led the overall nominee field, with 11 nominations; The Artist has 10, Moneyball and War Horse 6 each, and The Descendents (which had no original score) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 5 apiece.
The Oscar ceremony will be held on Sunday, February 26th.
Hi Jonathan,
A big fan of your reviews here
‘Drive’ was not eligible for consideration, it didn’t get to the final longlist of eligible scores. ‘Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy’ is the surprise here. I know you really didn’t like this score and I’m very surprised because I tend to agree with you but not this time. I’m a big fan of Iglesias and I really understand and connect with his music. He is a very smart composer very much the spanish Desplat. His work here is very similar to some Almodovar soundtracks he wrote, it’s the same jazzy style and I think it has the deepness you don’t get. I hope you can feel what i hear through this score because this Iglesias is the closest to the essence of the composer. The other two nominated scores of his career are the rare ones, the ones that reallygo away a little from his own style. It’s a wonderful score and a very deserved nomination IMO.
Anyway, for me ‘The Artist’ is a bit repetitive throughout the film and very sometimes a simple melody machine.Even is frontrunner I hope Williams can pull this off and win for ‘War Horse’ or for ‘Tintin’. ‘Hugo’ can also win like ‘Chrouching Tiger’ did almost 12 years ago, this score is a delight. But at the end, I would love to see Iglesias or Williams winning this award.
It’s interesting how many reviewers were slamming Williams’ scores for being old-fashioned this year…only to have a score that’s, if anything, more old-fashioned be the front-runner and favorite!
You kinda dismissed the score for The Help in your review of The Iron Lady, but I agree: I’m very disappointed “The Living Proof” wasn’t nominated for Best Song.