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Academy Award Winners 2023
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 96th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2023.
In the Best Original Score category Ludwig Göransson won the award for his score for Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan’s epic drama about the life and work of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer whose work on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapon. Accepting his award, Göransson said:
“Thank you Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas for inviting me on this incredible world. Christopher Nolan it was your idea to use the violin in the score, and it allowed me to work and collaborate with my wonderful wife and acclaimed violinist Serena Göransson. We had… we recorded at night and we were rushing to home and put our kids Apollo and Romeo down to bed, but the result of that was amazing and it really set a really nice tone for the film of that performance. Theresa Stanislav, Jake Brown, Chris Fogel, Anthony Parnther, Alyssa Park, thank you for making the music sound great, and to my parents up there, thank you for giving me guitars and drum machines instead of video games! Thank you!
The other nominees were Joscelin Dent-Pooley (Jerskin Fendrix) for Poor Things, Laura Karpman for American Fiction, Robbie Robertson for Killers of the Flower Moon, and John Williams for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for “What Was I Made For” from the smash hit movie Barbie.
The other nominees were Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson for “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony, Scott George for “Wahzhazhe – A Song for My People” from Killers of the Flower Moon, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie, and Diane Warren for “The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot.
In film-music adjacent news, composer Kris Bowers also won an Oscar, not for music, but for co-directing and producing the documentary short film The Last Repair Shop, which is about a workshop in Los Angeles who find, repair, and donate musical instruments to under-privileged students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. This makes Bowers one of the few full-time film music composers to win an Academy Award for something other that composing.
BAFTA Winners 2023
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) have announced the winners of the 77th British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2023.
In the Best Original Music category, the winner was Ludwig Göransson, who won the award for his score for Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan’s epic drama about the life and work of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer whose work on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapon. Accepting his award, Göransson said:
“Thank you to the BAFTA, and thank you Chris [Nolan] and Emma [Thomas], for all the love and dedication your poured into Oppenheimer. Chris, also thank you so much for spending so much time with me working on this music. All the time you allowed for experimentation, listening to my music over and over again, dissecting the score, talking about the sounds, the themes, and making it into the musical world of Oppenheimer meant… it meant everything to me. That was an incredible experience. I want to also thank all the musicians that poured their hearts into playing on this score and making the music come alive. Without them it wouldn’t be possible. And I also want to thank my partner in life and music, Serena, I love you.”
The other nominees were Jerskin Fendrix for Poor Things, Daniel Pemberton for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Robbie Robertson for Killers of the Flower Moon, and Anthony Willis for Saltburn.
Golden Globe Winners 2023
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) have announced the winners of the 81st Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2023.
In the Best Original Score category composer Ludwig Göransson won the award for his score for Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan’s epic drama about the life and work of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer whose work on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapon. This is the first Golden Globe for Göransson, in his fourth nomination – he was previously nominated for Best Score for Black Panther in 2019, and Tenet in 2021, and for Best Song for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2022. In his acceptance speech, Göransson said:
“Thank you to the HFPA, and thank you to Chris Nolan and Emma Thomas for inviting me on this journey, and for creating this masterpiece. Working with Christopher Nolan has been an incredible experience and I think the way that you use music in your films and your storytelling has inspired a lot of people. I want to also thank Cillian Murphy, I have been watching your face over and over and over again [laughs] – it’s been an incredible experience and thank you for inspiring me. I want thank all the musicians that played on this incredible score… on this score, they made an incredible effort. And I also want to thank my partner in life and partner in music, Serena, for helping me to realize this music. I love you.”
The other nominees were Joscelin Dent-Pooley (Jerskin Fendrix) for Poor Things, Joe Hisaishi for The Boy and the Heron, Mica Levi for The Zone of Interest, Daniel Pemberton for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Robbie Robertson for Killers of the Flower Moon
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for their song “What Was I Made For,” one of three nominees from the smash hit summer blockbuster Barbie.
The other nominees were Jack Black, Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Eric Osmond, and John Spiker for “Peaches” from The Super Mario Bros. Movie; Lenny Kravitz for “Road to Freedom” from Rustin; Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie; Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, Dua Lipa, and Caroline Ailin for “Dance the Night” from Barbie; and Bruce Springsteen for “Addicted to Romance” from She Came to Me.
OPPENHEIMER – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
In lesser hands, a movie about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer could have been a dusty, staid affair. Oppenheimer, for those who don’t know, was a theoretical physicist who, in 1942, was recruited by the US government to lead the Manhattan Project, a top-secret military program created with one goal: to design and build a nuclear weapon before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did the same, so that they could bring about the end of World War II. Oppenheimer and his colleagues successfully built several bombs over the course of many years, culminating in the detonation of two such devices over the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. However, despite his ‘success’ and initial celebrity, Oppenheimer was haunted by the ethical questions that surrounded his creation, and suffered a great deal of personal and political turmoil in the years that followed. This latter issue was compounded by the fact that, early in his life, Oppenheimer had pro-communist opinions, and was friendly with many members of the US Communist Party – something that certainly wouldn’t fly with the House Un-American Activities Committee and the McCarthy-era politics of the 1950s. Read more…
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