As most of you know my taste in music lies in classical and film score predominantly; several people know rock and popular artists, I know film composers and classical music composers. For classical, Beethoven, Mozart and Copland are amongst my favorites, for film scores (and even video & PC games) John Williams, James Horner, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith, Howard Shore, and Dario Marianelli. There are some rising stars though like Marc Streitenfeld (Robin Hood, Prometheus), Steve Jablonsky (Transformers), Mychael Danna (Life of Pi), Micahel Giacchino (Star Trek), and Nicholas Hooper (The Half-Blood Prince). There are several others who have created some excellent scores here and there, or some bits of a score that were really good, but it's been difficult for me to spot another great like John Williams or Hans Zimmer; both men have completely different styles of composing music, but they both have created some of the most memorable music (or rather John Williams has more often than not). Anyways, all of this talk of music, film scores and composers is because I am focusing on the Oscar for Best Original Score. The nominees are: John Williams (The Book Thief), Steven Price (Gravity), William Butler & Owen Pallett (Her), Alexandre Desplat (Philomena), and Thomas Newman (Saving Mr. Banks). Last year I had it narrowed down pretty good, and there were a good many scores to choose from, and I have listened to most of the scores from this year and I'm not really that impressed. Most of the scores were tinkly sounding, or just strange sounding with no melodious harmony to it. I would prefer John Williams to win it as his score stood out the most and was quite good, but I have a feeling that Alexandre Desplat will win it, which is odd considering most of his music sounds very, very similar (a part of me is bitter for his lackluster performance on his film compositions for the last 2 Harry Potter films). With less than a week of February left it is amazing how quickly time has gone by. Apparently tis the season for revolutions and overthrowing governments. Ukraine booted out their conniving president and issued an arrest warrant for killing civilians (he had snipers killing protesters), which I'm certain was a huge irritating disappointment for Russian president Vladimir Putin. Bummer for him. Hopefully that will be the beginning of the Russian's president's waning geopolitical influence in all of Europe. Now if only the Syrian people could successfully boot Assad out of power than the circle would be complete. It's a shame that they're a forgotten news story with over 150,000 people dead so far with no sign of the civil war ending. I wonder how many of those people would still be alive if the West had intervened right from the start? I wonder if those people and others in the Middle East and the rest of the world are thinking the same exact thing, except with more of a bitter aftertaste left in their mouths?
The Book Thief by John Williams
Gravity by Steven Price
Her by William Butler & Owen Pallett
Philomena by Alexandre Desplat
Saving Mr. Banks by Thomas Newman
