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Academy Award Winners 2004
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 77th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2004.
In the Best Original Score category, Polish composer Jan A. P. Kaczmarek won the Academy Award for his score for Marc Forster’s Finding Neverland, which looked at the life of author J. M. Barrie and the creation of his character Peter Pan. In his acceptance speech Kaczmarek said:
I cannot tell you how happy I am, and thank you, Academy. “Finding Neverland” was a great adventure and I’m so proud to be part of it. Marc Forster, he should be here. Marc, thank you for your subtle mind, for your incredible talent. Also Richard is here, Richard Gladstein, a man who truly understands the power of music. I’m very thankful for this as well. And then my wife Elzbieta, who always surprises me with her intellectual passion and incredible taste. She’s responsible for many good notes I’ve written. And to my friend and agent Anita Greenspan, thank you so much.
The other nominees for Best Original Score were John Williams for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Thomas Newman for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, John Debney for The Passion of the Christ, and James Newton Howard for The Village.
In the Best Original Song category, Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler won the Academy Award for “Al Otro Lado del Río” from Walter Salles’s The Motorcycle Diaries. The victory was historic as “Al Otro Lado del Río” became the first song performed entirely in a language other than English to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
The other nominees for Best Original Song were Adam Duritz, Charles Gillingham, Jim Bogios, David Immergluck, Matthew Malley, David Bryson and Daniel Vickrey for “Accidentally in Love” from Shrek 2; Glen Ballard and Alan Silvestri for “Believe” from The Polar Express; Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart for “Learn to Be Lonely” from The Phantom of the Opera; and Bruno Coulais and Christophe Barratier for “Look to Your Path (Vois Sur Ton Chemin)” from The Chorus (Les Choristes).
THE DEADLY SPAWN – Michael Perilstein
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I was about nine or ten years old, my best friend at school had one of those Casio keyboards – the kind of inexpensive ones you bought a nine year old so they would have something to do when the weather was bad outside. I distinctly remember being at my friend’s house one time, playing with the keyboard, and improvising some stupid little melody using one finger. Now bearing in mind that I cannot read music, cannot write music, and never graduated beyond one-fingered keyboard tapping, you will begin to understand what I mean when I say that my amateur plonkings that day were, on the whole, better than Michael Perilstein’s score for The Deadly Spawn. Read more…
DER UNTERGANG/DOWNFALL – Stephan Zacharias
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most critically acclaimed – and controversial – films to come out of Germany in recent years is Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang (Downfall). The first German production to feature Adolf Hitler as a central figure, Der Untergang is based on the memoirs of Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge (played by Alexandra Maria Lara), and tells of the final days of the life of the Führer, deep within his bunker beneath Berlin, as the Russian troops close in. Not afraid to exploit the long-standing fascination with one of the most hated men of the 20th century, Hirschbiegel has nevertheless been criticized in some circles for presenting a portrait of Hitler that is “too sympathetic” – a claim which he vehemently denies. The film is blessed with a powerhouse performance by Bruno Ganz as Hitler, and features sterling support from Corinna Harfouch and Ulrich Matthes as the doomed Goebbels family, and Julianne Köhler as Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun. The film played at the Toronto Film Festival in 2004, and is scheduled for release in major cities world-wide in 2005. Read more…
CONSTANTINE – Brian Tyler, Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest in a long line of comic book adaptations to hit the silver screen, director Francis Lawrence’s film Constantine is based on the classic Hellblazer story by Jamie Delano and Garth Ellis, transposed from Liverpool to contemporary Los Angeles. Keanu Reeves stars as John Constantine, a man cursed with the awareness that a war between angels and demons is taking place on Earth. Having been driven insane by his visions, he committed suicide as a youth, but was sent back by the angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) and charged with destroying as many demons as possible, in order to atone for his sins and be able to enter Heaven again when he finally dies for the second time. However, as the story begins, Constantine finds himself facing his biggest challenge yet: with the help of a similarly gifted Los Angeles cop (Rachel Weisz), Constantine must thwart the plans of Satan’s son, who is planning to be re-born on Earth himself. Read more…
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