MOVIE MUSIC UK

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 71st Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 1998.

In the Best Original Dramatic Score category, Italian composer Nicola Piovani won the award for his score for Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful. In his acceptance speech, Piovani said:

It’s impossible for me in this moment [to] speak about my emotion in English. I can tell just: Thank you to the jury. Thank you, the Academy. Thank you, Roberto.

The other nominees for Best Original Dramatic Score were David Hirschfelder for Elizabeth, Randy Newman for Pleasantville, John Williams for Saving Private Ryan, and Hans Zimmer for The Thin Red Line.

In the Best Original Comedy Score category composer Stephen Warbeck won for his score for the Elizabethan-era comedy Shakespeare in Love. In her acceptance speech, Warbeck said:

It’s a very, very exciting moment. Thank you very much. Especially exciting because John Madden is such a fantastically stimulating person to collaborate with. So thank you, John. Thank you to the Academy. Thank you to Sarah, Jessica, Herbert, Matilda. And thank you to my mother and father. Thank you to the lovely producers, without whom we wouldn’t be here or the people involved in this. Thank you to William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, and The Kippers, for inspiring me to write music for the theater and other things. And thank you, thank you to all the friends who worked on the music, without whom it would just be squiggles on a piece of paper: John Parricelli, Eleanor Alberga, Chris Dibble, Nick Ingman, Martin Robinson, Paul, Gary and Frank. Thank you very much indeed. This is lovely. Thank you.

The other nominees were Randy Newman for A Bug’s Life; Matthew Wilder, David Zippel and Jerry Goldsmith for Mulan; Marc Shaiman for Patch Adams; and Stephen Schwartz and Hans Zimmer for The Prince of Egypt.

In the Best Original Song category, composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz won for “When You Believe” from The Prince of Egypt performed by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Schwartz, however, was not present to accept the award, as he was in New York rehearsing a show.

The other nominees were Diane Warren for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon; Carole Bayer Sager, David Foster, Tony Renis and Alberto Testa for “The Prayer” from Quest for Camelot; Allison Moorer and Gwil Owen for “A Soft Place to Fall” from The Horse Whisperer; and Randy Newman for “That’ll Do” from Babe: Pig in the City.