IFMCA Award Nominations 2013
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED; POLISH COMPOSER ABEL KORZENIOWSKI LEADS FIELD
The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its list of nominees for excellence in musical scoring in 2013. In this 10th Anniversary year of the IFMCA’s creation, the most nominated composer is Abel Korzeniowski, who received six nominations: Score of the Year, Best Drama Score and Film Music Composition of the Year for his work on director Carlo Carlei’s new screen version of the classic Shakespeare romance “Romeo and Juliet”; Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror Score and Film Music Composition of the Year for his work on director Randy Moore’s unusual satirical fantasy-horror set in a nightmarish Disney theme park, “Escape From Tomorrow”; and a personal nomination as Composer of the Year. Kraków, Poland-born Korzeniowski has previously been nominated for three IFMCA Awards, winning the award for Best Drama Score for “A Single Man” in 2009. Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2013, Part 3
Movie Music UK Awards 2013
Film music went from strength to strength again in 2013. In terms of it’s world wide excellence, the breadth of outstanding music coming from all corners of the globe is astonishing – some of the best scores of year emerged not only from mainstream Hollywood productions, but also from Japan, Poland, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Spain, Germany and even Russia. As such, narrowing down my choices for the best of the year has been a very difficult task – one of the most difficult in recent memory. However, I’ve finally been able to put everything into some sort of logical order – so, for your reading and listening pleasure, I present the 2013 Movie Music UK Awards! Read more…
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2013, Part 2
Academy Award Nominations 2013
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the nominations for the 86th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2013.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- WILLIAM BUTLER and OWEN PALLETT for Her
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for Philomena
- THOMAS NEWMAN for Saving Mr. Banks
- STEVEN PRICE for Gravity
- JOHN WILLIAMS for The Book Thief
These are the first Oscar nominations for Butler, Pallett and Price, although Price was nominated for a Golden Globe earlier this year for Gravity, and Butler and Pallett have been nominated for 7 Grammy awards for their work as members of the rock group Arcade Fire. This is the 6th Oscar nomination for Desplat, the 12th Oscar nomination for Newman, and the 49th Oscar nomination for Williams, who previously won in 1971 for Fiddler on the Roof, 1975 for Jaws, 1977 for Star Wars, 1982 for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and 1993 for Schindler’s List.
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- KRISTEN ANDERSON-LOPEZ and ROBERT LOPEZ for “Let It Go” from Frozen
- PAUL HEWSON (BONO), DAVID EVANS (THE EDGE), ADAM CLAYTON and LARRY MULLEN Jr. for “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
- KAREN ORZOLEK and SPIKE JONZE for “Moon Song” from Her
- PHARRELL WILLIAMS for “Happy” from Despicable Me 2
A fifth nomination, “Alone Yet Not Alone” from the film Alone Yet Not Alone by Bruce Broughton and Dennis Spiegel, was issued, but later rescinded when it was discovered that Broughton had breached Academy campaign rules
The winners of the 86th Academy Awards will be announced on March 2, 2014.
Golden Globe Winners 2013
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) have announced the winners of the 71st Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2013.
In the Best Original Score category composer Alex Ebert, from the band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, won the award for his score for All is Lost. In his acceptance speech, after a brief and humorous aside with award presenter Sean “Puffy” Combs, Ebert said:
“Thank you, and thank you guys here. JC [Chandor], thank you, for having the faith to see into what I had done before and see that you thought that I could do this. You know, even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool, and yet we still try for magic. Thanks for letting me try, all over your movie. Thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press. I cannot believe this, this is crazy. Thanks to Brian Ling, and Linnie, and I’ll wrap it up. That’s it. Thanks, thanks to everybody, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
The other nominees were Alex Heffes for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Steven Price for Gravity, John Williams for The Book Thief, and Hans Zimmer for 12 Years a Slave.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Paul Hewson (Bono), David Evans (The Edge), Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. of the Irish rock band U2, and Brian Burton (Danger Mouse), for the song “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
The other nominees were Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez for “Let It Go” from Frozen; Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion from Coldplay for “Atlas” from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire; Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T-Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for “Please Mr. Kennedy” from Inside Llewyn Davis; and Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff for “Sweeter Than Fiction” from One Chance.
BAFTA Nominations 2013
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced the nominations for the 67th British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2013.
In the Best Original Music category, which is named in memory of the film director Anthony Asquith, the nominees are:
- HENRY JACKMAN for Captain Phillips
- THOMAS NEWMAN for Saving Mr. Banks
- STEVEN PRICE for Gravity
- JOHN WILLIAMS for The Book Thief
- HANS ZIMMER for 12 Years a Slave
These are the first BAFTA nominations for Jackman and Price. It is the 4th BAFTA nomination for Newman, who won the award in 2000 for American Beauty and again in 2013 for Skyfall. It is the 15th nomination for Williams, who has won on seven previous occasions: for Jaws in 1975, Star Wars in 1977, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1983, Empire of the Sun in 1987, Schindler’s List in 1993, and Memoirs of a Geisha in 2006. It is the 6th BAFTA film nomination for Zimmer.
The winners of the 67th BAFTA Awards will be announced on February 16, 2014.
Under-the-Radar Round Up 2013, Part 1
GUNSHI KANBEE – Yugo Kanno
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The annual NHK Taiga drama is a year-long television series broadcast on Japan’s main television network, NHK, and has been a staple of Japanese television since the first one was broadcast in 1963. It is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious television events of the Japanese calendar, attracting the dream of Japan’s dramatic talent, actors, writers, directors and composers – recent previous Taiga dramas have included Clouds on the Slope scored by Joe Hisaishi, Yae No Sakura scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Ryōmaden scored by Naoki Sato. The 2014 NHK Taiga drama is Gunshi Kanbee, an epic story of a young man finding his way through the war-like and feudal Japanese society of the 16th century. Directed by Kenji Yanaka, it stars Junichi Okada in the title role, and has an original score by 37-year-old Japanese composer Yugo Kanno. Read more…
WYATT EARP – James Newton Howard
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
Kevin Costner’s original vision for a biopic on Wyatt Earp was a six-part TV mini series. Director Lawrence Kasdan, who had previously directed Costner in Silverado, convinced him that his story was best presented on the big screen. Costner trusted Kasdan and so gave him the reigns to bring forth his vision. Kasdan rewrote much of the Dan Gordon’s original screenplay and fashioned it into an epic American journey of a complex man, an anti-hero whose love of family and kin defined his life and kept him true as he struggled to find his destiny. Set in the years following the Civil War through the Alaskan gold rush, we see Earp in many guises; as a family man, outlaw, U.S. Marshall and finally a prospector. Western folklore reveals Earp to be one of the most iconic men of the old American West, a man who fully embodied its fierce independence and nobility, but also its cruelty, violence and brutality. For the film Kasdan assembled a stellar cast, which included Costner in the title role, Dennis Quaid (Doc Holliday) and Gene Hackman (Nicholas Earp). Regretfully an earlier release of “Tombstone”, a very similar film, diminished “Wyatt Earp’s” impact. The overly long and plodding pace of the film failed to resonate with the public, which viewed it as a bloated “copy cat”, that resulted in both a much-derided critical and commercial failure. Read more…
Wojciech Kilar, 1932-2013
Composer Wojciech Kilar died on December 29, 2013 at his home in Katowice, Poland, after a battle with cancer. He was 81.
Kilar was born in Lvov, Ukraine, when it was still part of Poland, in July 1932, but moved to Katowice in Silesia in 1948 with his father, a gynecologist, and his mother, an actress. Kilar studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice under composer and pianist Władysława Markiewiczówna, at the State Higher School of Music in Kraków under composer and pianist Bolesław Woytowicz, and in Paris with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in the late 1950s. Upon his return to Poland, Kilar and fellow composers Henryk Górecki and Krzysztof Penderecki led an avant-garde music movement in the 1960s, during which time he wrote several acclaimed classical works.
Kilar scored his first film in 1959, and went gone on to write music from some of Poland’s most acclaimed directors, including Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Kazimierz Kutz and Andrzej Wajda. He worked on over 100 titles in his home country, including internationally recognized titles such as Bilans Kwartalny (1975), Ziemia Obiecana (1975), Rok Spokojnego Słońca (1984), Życie Za Życie (1991) and Pan Tadeusz (1999), plus several others in France and across other parts of Europe. Read more…
12 YEARS A SLAVE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the most important and acclaimed films of 2013, 12 Years a Slave tells the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York in the pre-Civil War United States, who is tricked, abducted and sold into slavery. Arriving in the South, the story chronicles the next twelve years of his life as he faces cruelty after cruelty, indignity after indignity, relentlessly barbaric treatment at the hands of a malevolent slave owner, and his struggle to maintain some semblance of dignity and humanity as he strives to find a way back home to his family. The film is directed by British filmmaker Steve McQueen, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup, and features an outstanding supporting cast including Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Alfre Woodard, Brad Pitt, and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, who is destined for an Academy Award nomination for her soulful performance as Solomon’s fellow slave, Patsey. A brutal, difficult, and at times excruciatingly raw film, 12 Years a Slave is clearly one of the year’s best films, in that it examines in unflinching detail one of the most heinous periods in American history, and features a powerhouse central performance from Ejiofor as the man who refuses to be beaten down by the wrongs done to him. Read more…
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The second film in Peter Jackson’s new Middle Earth trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is The Desolation of Smaug; it picks up immediately where the first film in the trilogy, An Unexpected Journey, left off last year, with the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) journeying to the ancient dwarf stronghold of Erebor in the company of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), dwarfish king-in-waiting Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), and his band of adventurers, to take back their homeland from the dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch). Along way, however, the heroic company must traverse any number of dangers, including vicious orcs, unfriendly elves, a treacherous forest, and the inhabitants of an impoverished lake town in the shadow of the lonely mountain. Meanwhile, much to Gandalf’s consternation, the shadowy threat of a mysterious necromancer continues to grow, looming large over all of Middle Earth, and threatening its long-lasting peace. The film is a significant improvement over the first installment, eschewing some of its comic action material and embracing a more serious tone that befits a story that touches on much more adult themes involving obsession and corruption. It’s visually spectacular, of course (although the orc leader Azog still looks like a bad video game rendering), has a wonderful supporting cast that includes Stephen Fry, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans and a returning Orlando Bloom as Legolas, and – most importantly from this website’s point of view – sees Howard Shore returning to Middle Earth for the fifth time as composer. Read more…
SAVING MR. BANKS – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The much-loved Disney feature Mary Poppins celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2014. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since the world first learned the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, or were first able to hear the worst Cockney accent in cinematic history courtesy of Dick Van Dyke, but it’s true, and the legacy and popularity of the film remains as strong today as it was in 1964. The new film Saving Mr. Banks, directed by John Lee Hancock, tells two parallel stories. Firstly, it charts how the film Mary Poppins was made, with the irascible English spinster P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) traveling from her home in London to Los Angeles, where she is wooed mercilessly by no lesser figure that Walt Disney himself (Tom Hanks), in an attempt to secure the rights to her book, which she is loathe to give up. Secondly, and possibly most importantly, it explores in flashback Travers’ childhood in rural Australia, and how her relationship with her loving, caring, but hopelessly drunk and irresponsible father (Colin Farrell) helped inspired her work, and her famous umbrella-wielding nanny. Read more…
Golden Globe Nominations 2013
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) have announced the nominations for the 71st Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2013.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- ALEX EBERT for All is Lost
- ALEX HEFFES for Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
- STEVEN PRICE for Gravity
- JOHN WILLIAMS for The Book Thief
- HANS ZIMMER for 12 Years a Slave
These are the first major film music award nominations for Ebert, Heffes and Price, although Ebert has previously been nominated for a Grammy award for his work as a member of the alt-rock group Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. This is the 24th nomination for Williams, who previously won Globes in 1975 for Jaws, 1977 for Star Wars, 1982 for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and 2005 for Memoirs of a Geisga. It’s also the 11th nomination for Zimmer, who previously won Globes for The Lion King in 1994 and Gladiator in 2000.
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- KRISTEN ANDERSON-LOPEZ and ROBERT LOPEZ for “Let It Go” from Frozen
- PAUL HEWSON (BONO), DAVID EVANS (THE EDGE), ADAM CLAYTON, LARRY MULLEN Jr. and BRIAN BURTON for “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
- CHRIS MARTIN, JONNY BUCKLAND, GUY BERRYMAN and WILL CHAMPION (COLDPLAY) for “Atlas” from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
- ED RUSH, GEORGE CROMARTY, T BONE BURNETT, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, JOEL COEN and ETHAN COEN for “Please Mr. Kennedy” from Inside Llewyn Davis
- TAYLOR SWIFT and JACK ANTONOFF for “Sweeter Than Fiction” from One Chance
The winners of the 71st Golden Globe Awards will be announced on January 12, 2014.
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 