Hans’ Oscar Bites

Oscar Blurbs, Day 3: 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲

As a band geek and orchadork growing up, movie music was one of the first crafts I remember noticing in film at a young age, making the original score category a fun one to parse every year. Typically, this branch has a tendency to remain somewhat insular with the composers they like to nominate (hence why the likes of John Williams and the Newmans rack up dozens of nominations), but newcomers manage to find their place when a film really lands with the Academy. This year features a pleasant mix of the old guard and new.

The nominees are:

• Da 5 Bloods
• Mank
• Minari
• News of the World
• Soul

In order of preference:

5) NEWS OF THE WORLD (James Newton Howard) – I struggle with James Newton’s Howard score here because even after listening to it I simply just cannot remember it. Then I remembered that that was a hallmark of several of his scores (seriously, can you hum a JNH theme off the top of your head?) and tried to keep this in context. It is overall lovely and serves the film well for what it needs to do which is be the old-timey Western it is trying to be. “End Titles” is probably the star track.

4) MANK (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross) – Much like the visual components of this movie, there is A Lot going on here. The first of two Social Network winners Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross scores in this lineup, I actually admire a lot of the effort they’ve put into going for the feel of a 1940s film. Much like the production design, the need to evoke different settings within the film is handled well by these pros, even if a little too basically. Standout track is the “San Simeon Waltz”.

3) DA 5 BLOODS (Terence Blanchard) – An excellent, if disjointedly flawed, film once poised for multiple nominations up and down the board turned up short on Oscar morning with a lone nod in this category, perhaps one of its less-expected citations. Terrence Blanchard, who previously worked with Spike Lee on BlacKkKlansman, produces a score that at both times strives to echo an Apocalypse Now-type cinematically epic sound with the dissonantly confident sensibilities of a Spike Lee film. “Bloods Go Into the Jungle” and “MLK Assassinated” are the stand-outs.

2) SOUL (Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) – Pixar is no stranger to juggling scores set in different realms of existence; Michael Giacchino deftly handled this in recent Pixar offerings Inside Out and Coco. Pixar took a different approach with Soul, hiring Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste to whip up a jazzy underscore for the real world scenes in the heart of NYC and fellow category nominees Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross for the ethereal extra-dimensional Great Beyond and Great Before. The three composers play a game of ping pong between scores and realms as our protagonists protagonate, setting the auditory stage for what is happening. I think they both shine in their respective roles without detracting from the other, augmenting the vital soundscape of the film and elevating it as a whole. “Pursuit/Terry’s World” ends up being the track that marries these the best.

1) MINARI (Emile Mosseri) – I really don’t have much to say about this. It’s just lovely. I’ll probably say this repeatedly about Minari. Standout track: “Minari Suite”.

WILL WIN: Soul
COULD WIN: Mank, though that would be super cruel of the Academy to do Jon Batiste dirty like that
SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE: Tenet