Re: Categories One by One: Best Original Score
Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2024 11:05 pm
I HAVE done the due diligence -- sat through all of Dial of Destiny, even ate the $5.99 cost (curse you, Netflix disc, for disappearing in my hour of need). And I can confirm your sonic-only impression: occasionally I'd find myself thinking, Oh: there's some new music...and then, a few minutes later, the familiar bom-da-dum-dum would show up, and I'd remember why I hated this nomination. Okri rightly notes that other composers have been declared ineligible for even a smidgen of borrowed melody, but Williams skates year after year. I honestly think this is a greater music branch scandal than anything connected to Diane Warren, and the only thing that looks likely to end it will be Williams going, as they say, to his eternal rest.
I have only a vague impression of American Fiction's score (I WASN'T alerted to it ahead of time). I'd happily accept a win, but can't make any argument for it.
It's probably not true, but my memory of the Poor Things score is of one approaching atonality. In a good way. But it seems a pretty unusual nominee, and, if getting past the composers' branch was a hurdle, sneaking it past the schmaltz-lovers in the overall membership seems mission: impossible.
I didn't so much note the Killers of the Flower Moon score while in the theatre, but I watched the movie again on Apple TV, and was struck by how much of it there was and how effectively rendered it was. It's not in the wheelhouse of scores I truly love (I'm not sure what the last such one was? -- Joker? Shape of Water maybe?). But I'd root for it as career tribute to Robertson, and as alternative to what's coming.
It's not so much I dislike the music in Oppenheimer -- I don't love it, but I don't actively rebel. I do, however, hate the way it's used in the film; throughout, it feels like it's pushing me to feel things beyond what the narrative can justify. Something apparently a lot of fans (and voters) are all for; the win seems pretty much a slam dunk. But it won't make me happy.
I have only a vague impression of American Fiction's score (I WASN'T alerted to it ahead of time). I'd happily accept a win, but can't make any argument for it.
It's probably not true, but my memory of the Poor Things score is of one approaching atonality. In a good way. But it seems a pretty unusual nominee, and, if getting past the composers' branch was a hurdle, sneaking it past the schmaltz-lovers in the overall membership seems mission: impossible.
I didn't so much note the Killers of the Flower Moon score while in the theatre, but I watched the movie again on Apple TV, and was struck by how much of it there was and how effectively rendered it was. It's not in the wheelhouse of scores I truly love (I'm not sure what the last such one was? -- Joker? Shape of Water maybe?). But I'd root for it as career tribute to Robertson, and as alternative to what's coming.
It's not so much I dislike the music in Oppenheimer -- I don't love it, but I don't actively rebel. I do, however, hate the way it's used in the film; throughout, it feels like it's pushing me to feel things beyond what the narrative can justify. Something apparently a lot of fans (and voters) are all for; the win seems pretty much a slam dunk. But it won't make me happy.