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Academy Award Winners 2009
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 82nd Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2009.
In the Best Original Score category, American composer Michael Giacchino won the Academy Award for his score for Pete Docter’s animated Pixar film Up. In his acceptance speech Giacchino said:
Thank you, guys. When I was… I was nine and I asked my dad, “Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8mm camera that was in your drawer?” And he goes, “Sure, take it.” And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, “What you’re doing is a waste of time.” Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you’re doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was okay to do that. I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system, so if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it; it’s not a waste of time. Do it. Okay? Thank you. Thank you.
The other nominees for Best Original Score were James Horner for Avatar, Alexandre Desplat for Fantastic Mr. Fox, Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders for The Hurt Locker, and Hans Zimmer for Sherlock Holmes.
In the Best Original Song category, Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett won the Academy Award for “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart, about a washed-up country singer seeking redemption.
The other nominees for Best Original Song were Randy Newman for “Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog; Randy Newman again for “Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog; Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas for “Loin de Paname” from Paris 36; and Maury Yeston for “Take It All” from Nine.
LAND OF THE LOST – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A big-budget remake of the classic 1970s TV series, Land of the Lost is directed by Brad Silberling and stars Will Ferrell as Dr. Rick Marshall, a world renowned scientist and paleontologist who, along with his beautiful research assistant Holly (Anna Friel) and a redneck survivalist called Will (Danny McBride), is sucked into an intergalactic wormhole and is transported to an alternate universe where dinosaurs still rule the world. Played as much for laughs as it is its action/adventure element, Land of the Lost was critically mauled and, as a result, became a spectacular box-office flop; this unexpected lack of quality also transferred itself to Michael Giacchino’s score, which marks one of the few instances where his music doesn’t quite hit the spot. Read more…
UP – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When we look back on his career, 2009 could well be seen as a watershed year for Michael Giacchino in terms of public awareness and his place in the film music hierarchy. Film music fans have known about Giacchino for a long time, of course, initially through his work on the Medal of Honor video game series and the TV shows Lost and Alias. This year alone he has already scored the rebooted Star Trek movie and a new big screen version of Land of the Lost. However, it is his new status as one of Pixar’s go-to guys (alongside Randy and Thomas Newman) that may cement his reputation. The Incredibles was a critical and commercial success, Ratatouille earned Giacchino his first Academy Award nomination, and now he has Up, which many writers have acclaimed as the best Pixar movie to date. Read more…
STAR TREK – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The last composer not named Jerry Goldsmith to score a Star Trek movie was Dennis McCarthy, who scored Star Trek Generations in 1994. We’ve had a full 15 years of Star Trek on the big screen with one sound from one legendary composer – talk about big shoes for Michael Giacchino to fill. But then again, Giacchino has made a career filling big shoes, from his early days following John Williams on the Jurassic Park video games, to picking up Lalo Schifrin’s mantle on Mission: Impossible III in 2006. Read more…
SPEED RACER – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A cartoonish action adventure inspired by the classic 1960s Japanese animated TV series of the same name (which, I have to admit, I had never heard of prior to this movie), Speed Racer is directed by ‘Matrix’ creators Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, and stars Emile Hirsch as the eponymous hero, a young driver from a racing-crazy family who competes in a series of neon-garish grand prix in various locations around the world. The film also stars Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, and features an original score by Michael Giacchino.
It almost pains me to say it, but Speed Racer follows on from Mission Impossible III as one of the few Giacchino scores I really didn’t like. Like the film itself, the score is a fast-moving, energetic, but ultimately rather chaotic musical collage of styles and influences Read more…
CLOVERFIELD – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A silly but enjoyable monster movie written by JJ Abrams (the creator of Lost) and directed by Matt Reeves, Cloverfield stars Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller, Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan, Odette Yustman and Michael Stahl-David as a group of young twenty-somethings in New York who, while attending a going-away party, become the unwitting observers of a catastrophe when a huge monster of indeterminate origin begins attacking the city. The film then unfolds in pseudo-documentary fashion, as video taped on a hand held camera by one of the group, as they make their way across the increasingly devastated downtown Manhattan, trying to make their way to safety. Read more…
RATATOUILLE – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Clark Douglas
First of all, let me say that I often have trouble just getting past the opening of this album… because I love it so very much. It’s a song called “Le Festin”, performed in French by Camille, and written by Michael Giacchino. It’s one of those lovely tunes that can make a hot room feel cool and a cold room feel warm. You know the sort of song… the kind that makes flat-footed klutzes like me feel like dancing, the kind of song that makes you want to rush out and kiss someone (my co-workers have grown increasingly uncomfortable around me over the past couple of months). Read more…
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s not so long ago that JJ Abrams was just another budding writer/director in Hollywood, and Michael Giacchino was a promising young composer writing music for video games. However, following the huge success of Abrams’ TV shows Alias and Lost, and Giacchino’s work on the box-office blockbuster The Incredibles, the pair of them are now cinematic hot properties, working together on one of summer 2006’s most-eagerly awaited and high-profile action movies: Mission Impossible III. The third film based on the classic 1960s spy thriller show, Mission: Impossible III once again stars Tom Cruise as special agent Ethan Hunt, trotting around the globe to all manner of exotic locations, on a secret mission to thwart the nefarious plans of the film’s arch-villain, Owen Davian, played by recent Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman. Along for the ride is a big name supporting cast which includes Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and by all accounts the film is a spectacular, gadget-filled, explosion-laden thrill ride which pushes all the right blockbuster buttons. Read more…
THE FAMILY STONE – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s a wonderful thing to see the career of Michael Giacchino developing in the way it has. In many ways he is the trailblazer of his generation – a massively successful composer in the video game arena who has made the successful transition over into movies, and is now well on his way to becoming a top name there too, off the back of scores such as The Incredibles and Sky High. The fact that he is now regularly scoring major studio movies is one of the most pleasing developments in years, and one can only hope the trend continues. His latest assignment is the romantic comedy The Family Stone, which is likely to surprise many of his most ardent fans, because for the most part it sounds like nothing he’s ever written before. Read more…
MERCENARIES: PLAYGROUND OF DESTRUCTION – Michael Giacchino, Chris Tilton
GAME ZONE REVIEW
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Whereas television was once the breeding ground for aspiring composers, in the year 2005 the best place for the young and the talented to hone their craft is in the video game arena. I remember back in the 1980s when video game music consisted solely of little electronic blips and bloops; if you were lucky, you got a little synthesised melody which looped endlessly as you played. Not so today – it seems that every new ‘prestige’ game comes loaded with a full, thematic, orchestral score, many of which can rival the best of Hollywood’s output. So it is with Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, the latest release from LucasArts and software developers Pandemic. Read more…
THE INCREDIBLES – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Within our little world of film music, Michael Giacchino is already pretty famous. Having written some of the most spectacular game scores in history for Dreamworks’ Medal of Honor series, and having contributed music to the hit ABC series Alias since its debut in 2001, Giacchino has gradually built up a strong fan base of admirers who fully expect him to develop into one of film music’s major players in the next 10 to 15 years. When it was announced that John Barry, the original choice of composer for The Incredibles, was no longer attached to the project, and that Giacchino would be his replacement, a great whoop of delight was heard: finally, a big screen vehicle worthy of his talents! Read more…
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