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2012 Oscar Discussion Thread (Tintin and War Horse nominated for Best Original Score!)


Romão

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Congratulations to Maestro for 2 nominations!

And as many have said he has about a snow flake's chance in hell to win this year. But he has made history with 47 nominations. Way to go Johnny! :)

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But the nice thing about it all is that we get to hear Bill Conti (or whoever is in charge of the Academy orchestra this year) conducting pieces from "Tintin" and "War Horse"... :)

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Maybe The Artist and Hugo will cancel one another out and War Horse will sneak through!!

Deadline Hollywood's Nikki says, "Alexandre Desplat did eight scores last year and got zero Oscar love. John Williams does two and gets both in. He’s a god and the gods rule in this category."

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Actually I am starting to think that JW will win this year. I certainly have a better feeling than I did in 2006 (MoaG, Munich) or 2005 (PoA).

Just a hunch.

But he's been so much in the news lately (all this Spielberg/Williams collaboration reports and articles), the Academy has to take notice. And also, like somebody already mentioned, this is the year he will turn 80. It'd be a nice birthday gift for the maestro!

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HUGE CONGRATS to Mr. Williams on his 46th AND 47th Nomination!

This is a great day for all of us.

Both of Mr. Williams scores got in!

Hey, but John Williams has now broken the record for most nominations for Best Score, right?

I believe Alfred Newman got "only" 45 nominations (although he won 9)!

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I'd rather have a complete release of KotCS than Tintin...by far

Well, that could be because Tintin is close to complete.

In the parade of themes and direct quotes Williams reused for KOTCS I forgot the Jones Family Theme.

Tintin is alot more original than KOTCS.

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KotCS reuses some old music, yes.

But so do the Star Wars prequels, the second and third HP movies, etc. It's got to do with the fact that these are sequels of an established franchise.

KotCS was a great score, with some outstanding cues, written for a mediocre movie. But yeah, Tintin is way better--score and movie.

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Come on, comparing PoA and KOTCS isn't fair, they're not on the same level. And Williams didn't score CoS full time, it wasn't his sole effort that year, contrary to KOTCS in 2008. And come to think of it, I enjoy COS way more than KOTCS.

For neither the Star Wars prequels, nor PoA, JW uses established themes in exact quotes from the originals (except for the Yoda/Sidious fight), whereas in Crystal Skull, he took exact quotes and didn't change much about composition or orchestration.

And it goes on to the point where the old themes seem a lot more important than they really are in the score because the rest around it doesn't keep what the themes promise.

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I'm not even really following Oscars these days. Couldn't tell who was nominated for what in the past 5 years or so. Nevertheless, I'm happy Williams got a double nod. That's probably as good as winning, as many people already said. The guy doesn't need another one. Been there, done that, if you will. ;)

Good to see Alberto Iglesias among the nominees. Never heard the score on album, but in the film it's absolutely fantastic. In fact, all of them really shine in their films. That's why I completely expected Tintin to get a nom. From all the negative reviews, I expect that War Horse music does the exact same thing. ;)

BTW I'm really happy Janusz Kaminski got a nod this year (and not only because he's my fellow countryman). Haven't seen the film yet (I will next week), but it might be one of his very best yet.

Karol

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I really don't get the hatred for Reznor on this board.

Me neither. It's very annoying. Not just because it's a different opinion than my own, but because they are inserted as 'cheap shots' at every opportunity, even when it really doesn't have any relevance to the topic.

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Come on, comparing PoA and KOTCS isn't fair, they're not on the same level. And Williams didn't score CoS full time, it wasn't his sole effort that year, contrary to KOTCS in 2008. And come to think of it, I enjoy COS way more than KOTCS.

For neither the Star Wars prequels, nor PoA, JW uses established themes in exact quotes from the originals (except for the Yoda/Sidious fight), whereas in Crystal Skull, he took exact quotes and didn't change much about composition or orchestration.

And it goes on to the point where the old themes seem a lot more important than they really are in the score because the rest around it doesn't keep what the themes promise.

Well, I am just saying that IMO KotCS (the score) is not bad at all. It has some great new themes, and some oustanding standalone pieces (Jungle Chase, Whirl, Departure, etc.). So it uses a couple of pieces originally written for Raiders, so what? The movie, however, is a different matter . . . it was just mediocre, especially the second part. It's hard, maybe even impossible, to write an outstandingly good score for a mediocre movie.

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Actually, I don't think it's about Williams *needing* another Oscar.

For me at least, it's about doing justice to the concept of awarding the best score of the year. I could live better with Williams not being nominated at all than with him losing to a greatly inferior score that was boosted for whatever reasons.

This year, it's actually not that bad because The Artist is listenable, but before something like in 2006 happens, please don't nominate him.

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The Academy seems to be saying, "Okay, we possibly can't NOT nominate John Williams because we don't want to lose our credibility here, but we don't wanna give the Best Score Oscar to John Williams every second frigging year, either!"

And let's face it, just to be nominated (out of how many? hundreds of submissions?) is an honor. And JW got two this year... well, again!

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Well, I am just saying that IMO KotCS (the score) is not bad at all. It has some great new themes, and some oustanding standalone pieces (Jungle Chase, Whirl, Departure, etc.). So it uses a couple of pieces originally written for Raiders, so what?

I think the original discussion was that Indy 4 wasn't nominated for the Oscar in 2009. And I'm saying that quoting Raiders as well as Last Crusade left and right undermined its chances even further (on top of it being an average JW score IMO and being written for an average at best movie).

And wouldn't you gladly change the quotes that are in the film for some new variations on those themes? Or new themes? Those quotes in Crystal Skull detract from what should have been a 100% original Indy score.

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Well, of course, in a perfect world, yes.

But how much music was actually quoted in a score which lasts what? Around 100 minutes? Let's see: apart from Raiders March, there are the snippets from Flight from Peru, Map Room, and a ten-second-or-so quote from Indy's father theme from TLC. And this amounts to what? 4-5 minutes?

Give me a break. IMO that's really nitpicking. And I don't think that's the main reason Indy 4 the score wasn't nominated, either. The overall score wasn't strong enough.

But again, to me it serves the movie perfectly and we got a few great concert/standalone pieces out of it.

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The Academy seems to be saying, "Okay, we possibly can't NOT nominate John Williams because we don't want to lose our credibility here, but we don't wanna give the Best Score Oscar to John Williams every second frigging year, either!"

And let's face it, just to be nominated (out of how many? hundreds of submissions?) is an honor. And JW got two this year... well, again!

I wouldn't call one Oscar in 18 years "every second year", with the last one being Schindler's List, and assuming he will win another one in his lifetime.

Especially with a track record in these 18 years that includes Seven Years In Tibet, Saving Private Ryan, Angela's Ashes, A.I., Philosopher's Stone, Catch Me If You Can, Prisoner Of Azkaban, Memoirs Of A Geisha, Munich, War Of The Worlds, War Horse, just counting the more popular ones.

Given that, you can give JW a nomination and the award any year, just for recognition, and it would be deserved.

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The Academy seems to be saying, "Okay, we possibly can't NOT nominate John Williams because we don't want to lose our credibility here, but we don't wanna give the Best Score Oscar to John Williams every second frigging year, either!"

And let's face it, just to be nominated (out of how many? hundreds of submissions?) is an honor. And JW got two this year... well, again!

I wouldn't call one Oscar in 18 years "every second year", with the last one being Schindler's List, and assuming he will win another one in his lifetime.

Especially with a track record in these 18 years that includes Seven Years In Tibet, Saving Private Ryan, Angela's Ashes, A.I., Philosopher's Stone, Catch Me If You Can, Prisoner Of Azkaban, Memoirs Of A Geisha, Munich, War Of The Worlds, War Horse, just counting the more popular ones.

Given that, you can give JW a nomination and the award any year, just for recognition, and it would be deserved.

Well, maybe not "every second year" like I said, but I am getting the feeling that the Academy is basically saying, "We will acknowledge JW's contributions with nominations, but we are very reluctant to award him any more Oscars . . . since he already has five!"

Keep in my mind, that that's NOT what I am saying. If it were up to me, the truly best score should always win, and it would be JW most times. But this might go a long way toward explaining why JW hasn't won in the past 18 years.

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We'll have to accept it: JWfan will only be able to fully and truly embrace Oscar winners once John is dead :D

But I already hear the voices ... "Williams could write something better in his grave."

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We'll have to accept it: JWfan will only be able to fully and truly embrace Oscar winners once John is dead :D

But I already hear the voices ... "Williams could write something better in his grave."

:sigh:

Like I said in the other thread, I don't really care whether he wins or not anymore. I was sorely disappointed in 2005, and again in 2006, so I don't care anymore.

But still, again, it's an honor to be nominated. And an even greater honor to get double-nominations.

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LOL. Of course there is nothing "interchangeable" about modern film scores.

But, seriously, I don't exactly get the criticism behind not nominating people who didn't even score the film, technically speaking. They just wrote music, which then was placed by director in the film wherever he thought was appropriate. If there is an award in there, then it would go to sound editor. A proper scoring, as we all know, is much more demanding task.

Karol

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The funny thing about all this situation is that none of these people seem to give us any sensible reason why this music is supposed to be so fitting for films. It's mostly about being "different from old" and "something for young audience", but there is no mention how it enriches film and what does it do to the narrative. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from it, despite it being modern. I have nothing against such music, but there is absolutely no substance to this discussion (though, the word "discussion" is a big overstatement).

Karol

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Yeah it's like the elephant in the room, except it's one that no one knows the answer to. It's far too subjective and personal.

An intimate, modern score has just as much business in the oscars as a sweeping orchestral epic, but it seems that the preference goes towards whatever's in fashion that year.

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One more thing: I guess Reznor and Ross are perfect for creating music for a film in which one of the main characters listens to this kind of stuff or the film is about modern stuff (like this Facebook movie, for example). The music just recapitulates what we already know about these worlds. That's their comfort zone.

But give them War Horse to score or a Star Wars movie. Or The Lord of the Rings. Or a romantic comedy. I want to hear how capable and versatile are they ?

I mean, show me EXACTLY what John Williams, or Howard Shore, are doing wrong!

Karol

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One more thing: I guess Reznor and Ross are perfect for creating music for a film in which one of the main characters listens to this kind of stuff or the film is about modern stuff (like this Facebook movie, for example). The music just recapitulates what we already know about these worlds. That's their comfort zone.

But give them War Horse to score or a Star Wars movie. Or The Lord of the Rings. Or a romantic comedy. I want to hear how capable and versatile are they ?

I mean, show me EXACTLY what John Williams, or Howard Shore, are doing wrong!

Karol

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

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I really don't get the hatred for Reznor on this board.

But anyway, it's nice to see that unlike Spielberg, Williams still hasn't lost the Academy's respect. Any note he puts to paper gets nominated.

He can't write good film music. In my case, it's not even that I don't like ambient/synth stuff, but Reznor can't even write good ambient scores. At least he hasn't in the two movies he's done so far.

That's the problem, the guy can't write good film music. Personal tastes aside, he's simply not a good composer. I mean, I've had a really hard time connecting emotionally to Giacchino's scores. For some reason the guy's music just doesn't do it for me, but I will never say that he can't write music.

I can't say the same about Reznor. He may be great with NIN, but writing music for movies, he fails.

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That's because John Williams is the worst thing that ever happened to film music. We all know that!

Howard Shore is just the 13th worst thing...

Karol

Yeah a plague if there ever was one.They keep cranking out those ol' formulaic scores that don't address the modern mindset but are stuck in the 20th century aesthetics that do not speak to the young, hip and cool audience who view everything with extreme cynicism and sarcasm and demand constant innovation from their music.

I am hip and cool btw. So this post may contain frustrated sarcasm, nudge nudge, wink wink.

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But the nice thing about it all is that we get to hear Bill Conti (or whoever is in charge of the Academy orchestra this year) conducting pieces from "Tintin" and "War Horse"... :)

Isn't Hans Zimmer (and Pharell Williams) in charge of music this year? Not looking forward to hearing Pharrell's remix of The Adventures of Tintin, or Hans' "action" re-orchestration of No Man's Land.

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You guys have to remember that those who nominate Williams and those who elect the winner are not the same people. In many ways, it's more prestigious to be nominated that to win

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The big problem there is Williams, whose scores are so formulaic and interchangeable that you could literally assign any of them to any one of Steven Spielberg’s movies.

How did this guy get a job writing about music? He can hate Williams for all I care, but this one is just plain stupid.

"...you could literally assign any of them to any one of Steven Spielberg's movies."

Oh really, Mr. Music Critic? Literally?

Because we all know that just as Oscar Schindler is writing out his list, we're all on the edge of our seats hoping...wishing....that he could just put more of his workers on there....the tension is building...just one or two more.... and then..... BOOM TIZZ!!!! Raider's March! "I COULD HAVE SAVED MORE!!!"

That's heroic music, right? And so interchangeable!

ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO:rolleyes:

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