Oscars 2013

I think he is as well, but I can see why some struggle to warm to him. His (some would say) clinical approach, so carefully considered all the time, wouldn't be for everyone. Besides which, Thor has very odd tastes!

Oh, I'd agree with that too. Nothing from Desplat sounds like it lacks meaning for me. In fact, that's probably the one thing I'd pick about him above most others at the moment - in stark contrast to the Zimmer generation, he doesn't put music there for music's sake - everything's there for a reason.

True, Thor's statement is so odd; Desplat is perhaps - from the younger generation of composers, the most FILM composer of his contemporary colleagues in the medium. His knowledge and understanding of the medium and narrative's needs are outstanding.

And we are back to the "you need to see the film in order to make a meaningful assessment of the score" discussion.

I don't really enjoy listening to Indian-influenced scores and I certainly would not sit through a film that I have no interest in seeing.

No, I don't think that's true. You don't need to see the film in order to make a meaningful assessment of the score, but I do think it makes a listening experience richer when you are cognizent of the reason a score was written the way it was written. You can glean that from all sorts of sources - plot summaries, reviews of the film, trailers - without having to actually sit down and watch the film.

LIKING a score or not is one thing; there are plenty of scores I don't LIKE listening to which I am fully prepared to acknowledge work wonderfully within their film and are exactly what the film required, and on those terms are completely successful. They just don't fit with my personal taste.

However, I think that when it comes to things like the Oscars, which are awarding excellence of music in a FILM context, the combination of its use in the film and its compositional excellence as a standalone piece of music need to be taken together to get a full appreciation of what the music is trying to achieve. SEEING the film isn't necessary, but knowing ABOUT the film is, for me at least.

Agree and I'll add Ryuichi Sakamoto's incredible score for Liittle Buddha to that.

Then perhaps voting for the Best Score of the Year is a ... questionable notion.

This is why we Greeks, invented democracy, the rule of the majority. Although story proved a bitch and it backfired, slapping us on the ass!

The persistance in the grouping of completely unrelated categories into the so-called "technical categories" only adds to the controversy of the Oscar. I've already read an article on the BBC web pages that dismissively refers to some of the nominations for Lincoln, Life of Pi, and others using that term, as though they were irrelevant to the public, or even worse: of little artistic relevance. The category of music is likely to be the most autonomous of film making diciplines. The composer collaborates with virtually every single person in a production, from the screen writers to the actors and producers and directors. On the other hand: very few work with the composer, and those that do certainly don't have enough influence to interfere with the autonimity of the work. After all, one rarely hears a listener go "ah, that's typical Herrmann - when working with Hitchcock!". What is typical Herrmann is typical Herrmann in any context. The same goes for most composers, if not all. The categorisation and treatment of the music category in many award contexts limits the art of music to its purely psychological (technical) premises, rendering the actual artistic discussion of its merits as totally irrelevant. Still, it's a pretty good PR-boost for most composers, perhaps with the exception of Williams, who would perhaps evoke far more attention if he, for once, wasn't nominated!

This would be Williams' 48th, I think

→ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_New … %29#Awards

It's hard to see anyone ever taking over Disney's haul of 26 Oscars, highly unlikely.

Indeed. Let's not forget that Alan Menken has 8 Academy Awards, 3 more than Williams, and is currently the mostwinning living person, as far as I know. And half of those Oscars were for songs.

... And they're not that good, really.

If there was a category for safe scoring, I'd vote for Lincoln.