Oscar Contenders for Best Original Score Cover Range of Genres
variety.comJon Burlingame editorThe Academy’s 400-member music branch singled out an especially diverse group this year, including composers born in England, Spain and Germany, along with two Americans – one of whom is not only female but also a person of color.They also cast a wide net in terms of genre: a comedy, two dramas, a science-fiction epic and an animated family film.
And while “Dune” has long been the favorite of Oscar prognosticators, don’t count out critically praised “Power of the Dog,” the colorful backdrop of “Encanto,” or Academy voters’ frequent use of the score category as consolation prize: a convenient way to reward a film that won’t win anything else.“Don’t Look Up”New York composer Nicholas Britell received his third Oscar nomination for the music of Adam McKay’s sci-fi social satire: an eclectic brew of big-band jazz, traditional orchestral sounds, considerable electronics and a wild collection of offbeat instruments from toy piano to banjo and mandolin.
The challenge, says the composer, was to chart “the musical landscape of the movie, to get the tone right and have it balance all these different elements, from the seriousness to the comedy, in a way where it feels right, and doesn’t feel forced.”“Dune”Hans Zimmer’s 12th Oscar nomination may be his most meaningful.
He read Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel when he was 18 and has long imagined the sounds of the desert planet Arrakis, its sandworms, and the invaluable spice that makes interstellar travel possible.
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