Monday, January 18, 2010

ScoreShell

Pleasant surprise yesterday as it was announced the Golden Globe award for Best Original Score went to... guess what? Michael Giacchino for Up! I was expecting it to go to the tremendously hyped (but decent) score of Avatar by James Horner. And it was a great experience to see my favourite score and composer of 2009 get some well deserved recognition (and Michael's first Golden Globe as well). Here's a video of our man of the moment receiving his well deserved award as his wonderful score plays in the background -



I don't know whether everyone is happy with this decision (I certainly saw quite some statements of disappointment around), but I feel the voters at the Globes chose the correct nominee here. As good as several other scores this year were (A Single Man, Agora, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, Baaria, etc.), none have touched me like Michael Giacchino's wonderfully bittersweet and yet joyful score to Up did. The development of themes throughout the score is remarkable and, in Pete Docter's own words, it's almost like Michael reached up and pulled down an already existing score which was created just for this movie. The music is the heart and soul of the (excellent) film and a most engaging standalone listen as well. I hope for this gem to repeat the same feat at the Oscars, the nominations of which shall be announced on the second of February.

On another note, FSM reports that Alexandre Desplat has been chosen for scoring the first part of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. A fine choice, I'd say. Desplat's New Moon is one of the best scores from last year and Golden Compass, Lust Caution and Largo Winch are all among my favourites. Although I was expecting James Newton Howard as my first composer of choice after John Williams, I am sure Alexandre will shine in scoring the beautiful emotional scenes in the film. Although the first part isn't seemingly too heavy on the action side, the Seven Potters aerial chase is one sequence I'm truly looking forward to - visually and musically - and I hope Desplat delivers a most bombastic action cue here. There's still hoping that John Williams is back for Part 2, although I wouldn't mind if Desplat stays onboard till the end.

Finally, Danny Elfman's Alice In Wonderland seems to be getting a CD release from Walt Disney Records on March 2. I don't know how many, if any, songs are on there, but I hope we get a decent 50-60 minutes of uninterrupted score on the CD with any songs pushed either to the very beginning or end (unlike Nightmare Before Christmas). Cheerio!

EDIT (5th Feb 2010) - The tracklist of Alice has been out, and it looks like the CD is all score and no songs. Unless any of those have children/Disney ensemble singing of course, but I doubt that. And Elfman's score to The Wolfman also comes out on February 23 from Varese Sarabande. Woot!