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John Williams Best Score Oscar Nomination for The Rise of Skywalker!


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De-aging isn't the way to go, it looks plain awful and dates the films it's used in. At least Tron Legacy and Rogue One have other visual factors going for them, but in a drama like The Irishman, it's the main focus.

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Just wondering if I'm out of the loop; why does everyone seem to think Hildur will win the Oscar? I thought the score worked alright enough in the film—not bad, but not amazing. Just a normal score. And I didn't find it that engaging to listen to on-album, either. What am I missing?

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Pretty much anyone could receive an oscar for scoring Joker because the academy just wants to be seen to be awarding a character-driven, relevant film. The fact that the composer is female and Icelandic is a bonus. Diversity!

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3 hours ago, Arpy said:

Because it's edgy, non-thematic and is produced by the only female composer nominee.

 


It’s thematic in that there’s fragments and outright statements of a theme for the Joker all over the score... 

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I haven't listened to the score outside of the film, so I was going by what I remembered from the film which was too depressing to enjoy as music.

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I listened to bits of it on Spotify and wasn't drawn to listen to the rest.

 

I'm not saying necessarily that it doesn't work great in the film, and therefore shouldn't be awarded as such, but the gender and nationality of the composer is playing a very critical political role in the inevitable win.

 

Hey, maybe the academy will do a LotR and give JW a franchise award.

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Are you implying our comments are somehow sexist? More power to any gender that's nominated or wins, but the distinction really is what's considered in such a politically charged platform like The Oscars. 

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2 hours ago, Arpy said:

a politically charged platform like The Oscars. 

a politically *challenged* platform like... We all preserve old ways of seeing things by societal design and legacy. I get that JW's knowledge base is not being properly preserved and transmitted in the larger culture as it proceeds clumsily. But hey, we're here.

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1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

But I guess that even if she was male and had written the exact same score, she would be the frontrunner as well, based entirely on the Academy's past record.

 

Unless there was another female composer in the mix ;)

 

Williams is ultimately judged against his own best, not against the output of others. And the treatment his scores have received by Abrams (and the derided film it accompanied) were the nails in the coffin. 

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Academy Voter: 'John Williams, eh? Okay, he's great, a living legend...'

*hits play on the FYC site

'Wait a minute... wait... I've heard that theme before. Oh boy, he's just regurgitating old material. NEXT!'

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, Edmilson said:

But most of the composers that DID come from English speaking countries, i.e. Shore, Resznor and Ross, Danna, Price and Hurwitz were on their first nominations when they won their first Oscars. Giacchino was on his second, and Goldenthal was on his third, which make them, specially the latter, the exceptions to the rule.

 

I think there's usually one of two things going on. Either theyre awarding an unusual, patriotic or gimmicky film, or they want to show diversity.

 

Social Network is an American success story, Gravity is patriotic/gimmicky, The Artist is as gimmicky as it gets, LaLaLand is a feel-good celebration of Hollywood and music. Maybe the exception to that is Life of Pi which is actually a really good film on its own terms.

 

Hollywood in general feels very 'shouting from the rooftops' in that it wants to proclaim that Joe Bloggs is the best composer (because he/she is from <insert country name and it makes us look more diverse> while also shouting that 'we will never work with <insert name>' or be associate with them' because 'they do not share our values' (we are terrified that their admission they tried drugs once 30 years ago will somehow ruin our reputation if we cast them, even though we privately couldn''t give a shit).  In other words, whatever will make Hollywood look like it's relevant and cares deeply about contemporary issues.

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I used to care about Williams winning because it meant a lot to me that America (and people from many other countries, of course) was watching, and I wanted people to see my dude up there. But now no one even really watches the Oscars anyways with their ratings worsening every year, so...

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The most relevant thing about the Oscars is that they USED to be relevant, especially pre-Internet and even pre-late night TV. They're almost 100 years old and so they've meant a lot of different things over the decades. The fact that it tracks the entirety of Hollywood history is what makes them interesting. Now that we as a society are long over the novelty of seeing actors as themselves, people only watch the ceremony hoping to see the Hollywood congress confronted with a streaker or Michael Moore (or both at once! :folder:) which is one reason why ratings have gone down in the age of tighter security and the 5-second delay. The La La Land-Moonlight mixup was a rare exception in what is now seen as boring predictable television. It's also obviously why Ricky dominates the Globes. 

 

The awards themselves, they're basically still at least the highest-profile time capsule of the year in American cinema (with some international concessions) going back to the 1920s so people do want the results to represent the landscape as they see it. Depending on who you ask, this means either more Marvel, or more A24, or more comedies, or more women or racial minorities. But the idea that it is an artistic standard bearer is uhhhhh debatable at best and has always been rightly criticized over this. Then again everyone has their own idea of when it was most correct.

 

I think they do still have some influence on people's careers, though. There's definitely a trend where you see recent Oscar winners and highly publicized nominees immediately landing gigs with MCU and other franchises, or getting some prime lead roles. Anyway I'm pretty sure Tom Hooper doesn't make Les Mis and Cats without The King's Speech winning Best Picture/Director LOL.

 

4 hours ago, Taikomochi said:

I used to care about Williams winning because it meant a lot to me that America (and people from many other countries, of course) was watching, and I wanted people to see my dude up there. But now no one even really watches the Oscars anyways with their ratings worsening every year, so...

 

The funniest thing to me about John Williams's Oscar history is the fact that there's always been the perception that he basically gets nominated for anything at this point. Yet at the same time, it's also generally acknowledged that he hasn't won in forever and that he's even been overlooked for some of his most popular scores -- no noms for Jurassic Park or the SW prequels, no win for Raiders or Superman -- while his 4 original wins are generally accepted as fair dues. 

 

But it puts him in this weird space where he is simultaneously over-lauded, rated correctly, and...not awarded enough? :lol: in a way it's a relief he hasn't won for the Disney Star Wars.

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The Academy mindset is usually something like this for the Best Original Score award:


"Orchestral scores by established composers like John Williams, Thomas Newman, etc, we have that almost every year. It is part of the Hollywood sound already. We need to give the award from composers that come from different backgrounds that usually give an interesting, new perspective to film scoring, to show how diverse the music for our movies is".

 

They applied this mindset on such scores like:

 

Crouching Tiger - Chinese composer - Makes extensive use of chinese music and instruments

Brokeback Mountain - Argentine composer - Small, intimate score mostly for guitars

Slumdog Millionaire - Indian composer - Traditionally bollywoodian score, makes use of typical Indian instruments

The Artist - French composer - pays homage to the classic scores from silent movies

Life of Pi - Canadian composer - extensive use of world music

The Social Network - American composers, but no film score background - Modern electronic score refleting the coldness of the social media world

Black Panther - Swedish composer - lots of research and homage to traditional African music

 

Heck, in 2016, this mindset was applied to almost all of the nominees, excluding Newman's Passengers. Which was a little sad, we had some amazing scores that year that went completly overlooked by the Academy (Desplat's The Light Between the Oceans, JNH's Fantastic Beasts, Korzeniowski's Nocturnal Animals and Jo Yeong-wook's The Handmaiden, the latter of which btw COULD have been nominated by the mindset instead of utter crap like Lion or Moonlight). 

 

I'm not judging the quality of these scores, as I like some of them: Life of Pi, Black Panther, Crouching Tiger and even Brokeback (please don't kill me, I find some of the guitar cues relaxing, lol) and Social Network (please don't kill me, pt. 2).

 

But, again, it shows how the Oscars are less about quality and more about the message Hollywood wants to send the world.

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I think you're all overthinking it. Like all Oscar categories, it's not really "Best Score," it's "Most Score." They give it to the score that's most prominent. There are many moments in Joker where the score is basically the only thing you hear in the mix. It carries a lot of scenes. I personally don't think the score is very good, but it is incredibly prominent. I'd almost even call it obnoxious in its use. But they love that stuff. It's super sad music for the sad clown movie. It'll win for that reason alone. I'd wager the majority of voters have no idea it was composed by a woman, and that won't factor much into their voting at all.

 

The politics of Oscar choices are incredibly overstated. Year after year we end up with majority white and male nominees and winners. Most of the voters are old white dudes who don't care about diversity. It's a misconception that they're always trying to be progressive.

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Congratulations, John Williams! :groupwave:

 

But I won't be holding my breath. I'm not gonna fall for the Oscars again, after over 25 (!!) years of hoping. I pretty much gave up after Azkaban. 

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18 hours ago, DominicCobb said:

The politics of Oscar choices are incredibly overstated. Year after year we end up with majority white and male nominees and winners. Most of the voters are old white dudes who don't care about diversity. It's a misconception that they're always trying to be progressive.

 

The mindset I explained above it's not much about Hildur being a woman, more about her being foreign. Heck, Ludovic Bource and Goransson are white, male, european, heterossexual (don't know, and don't care about this last part, but anyway), and they've won on their years because they're foreigners whose scores sounded "fresh" to the ears of the Academy instead of the typical John Williams score they all know for decades.

 

And yeah, while most of the Academy is indeed conservative, I think they do care about what the media has been saying about them, at least since the #OscarsSoWhite. After this year's debacle on the Best Director category, they'll love to see positive headlines about them: "Joker composer is the first woman to win Best Original Score in 20 years".

 

(which is actually very hypocrite and not exactly helpful for female composers, there's a lot of blockbusters coming out by female directors this year and all of them will be scored by men, but then again Hollywood has a worldwide fame for his hypocrisy).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Someone should probably mention they uploaded a CMYK version of the photo by mistake.

 

8 minutes ago, Cerebral Cortex said:

He might have been getting ready/traveling for his Vienna concert. Would have been cool to have placed him next to Rian.

 

Says the event took place Monday (presumably yesterday) so maybe JW is still in New York. He was there for the West Side Story sessions after Vienna, no?

 

Still, shame he didn't attend for the photo (and yeah, he could've gone next to Dern or Johnson).

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They do this photo every year and I can’t remember him ever going. I always check lol. 

 

The year Hugo and War Horse were nommed Spielberg and Scorsese were put together. That was cute.

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Honestly, as a European, I find Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals incomparably better. They are much less predictable than the Oscars, and the films that they show are more concerned with depicting something artistic and creative in an original way, rather than being appealing to the masses. Parasite by Bong Joon-ho seemed to be a rare exception that ticked both of those boxes this year. I can only hope it wins for Best Picture - that would be a first for a foreign film.

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On 1/27/2020 at 8:31 PM, crumbs said:

Someone should probably mention they uploaded a CMYK version of the photo by mistake.

 

What does that mean?

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On 1/27/2020 at 11:48 PM, First TROS March Accolyte said:

Did anyone else notice how mainstream dumbass commentators consider him straight unworthy of an Oscar, as if he was someone "overstaying his welcome"?

 

I am yet to see him on a list of "should win"...

 

Most mainstream commentators of awards season are dumbasses anyway. They probably think that Mica Levi's Jackie or Nicholas Britell's Moonlight are better scores "than anything John Williams has done since Jurassic Park". 

 

I have exactly zero patience for reading opinion columns on the entertainment "journalism" these days.

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

 

What does that mean?

 

Looks like they fixed it but CMYK versions of photos will look washed out (noticeably shades of black) on RGB monitors because they're formatted for printing. It's just a difference in colour space, basically. 

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRhOH2hfEehYkLiGzvjH05

 

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IndieWire is posting their annual series of anonymous interviews with Oscar voters. The first one (reportedly from the directors branch) is probably representative of where most Academy members are:

 

Quote

“Joker” will win for Hildur Guðnadóttir. I can’t deny it’s a great score.

“1917.” However, Thomas Newman has never won. The music for that flaming village scene and the end cue of the movie are both extraordinary. I may vote for this.

“Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker” is the only bullshit nomination. John Williams has done some amazing work, but not a single cue in this pops at all.

 

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That 1917 comment says it all. Stunning ignorance and indifference and why the Oscars have lost my respect. 

 

4 hours ago, Tydirium said:

For instance, the glorious choral finale of "Farewell" could have been an all-time great JW moment for a Spielberg film; in a JJ movie it's practically an afterthought.

For me, that was the only part of the film where the score was mixed loud enough to hear, it's the rest that was shockingly hidden.

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I think they're nearer right than wrong about TROS, as heard in the film, which is what the general Academy is basing their votes on, not OSTs or FYCs.  The Music branch members are, I guarantee you, the only people that listen to FYCs.  I would vote for 1917 if I was an Academy member.

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