Oscar nominations

This morning’s Oscar nominations were fairly predictable (with one regrettable omission):

Gustavo Santaolalla, Brokeback Mountain
Alberto Iglesias, The Constant Gardener
John Williams, Memoirs of a Geisha
John Williams, Munich
Dario Marianelli, Pride & Prejudice

Predictable in that two worthy Williams scores got nominated (doesn’t this happen a lot, unfortunately canceling each other out?) and some composers people have never heard of, with scores coincidentally attached to films with a lot of nominations. I’m not sure why people get all hot and bothered over the Oscar nominations. It’s very clear that there’s a formula behind nominations — a very small handful of composers (such as a Williams or a Newman) can get nominated regardless of the film’s “hotness” in the Oscar race, while the rest of the nominations are reserved for scores that are attached to Oscar frontrunners. (Even my own favorite composers have been beneficiaries of this formula in years past.) So it seems fairly straightforward, the whys and wherefores of Oscar noms.

That said, the wailing commences every year and I guess I must join in. My disappointment this year is over James Newton Howard not getting a nod for King Kong. I’m not really into JNH, but he is good, and I find whenever I hear a score by him there is always some moment or other that seems a standout. He almost makes me forget my indifference to American film scoring. You would think Kong stood an outside chance to get a technical/arts nomination like Original Score, but I guess Peter Jackson is not on anyone’s reward list this year.

Long ago, in the previous incarnation of this blog, I blogged at length on the politics of film score awards, and asked the question if there is any such thing as a “real” film score award.