Music Oscar Nominations 2009

So the nominations are out, and this year for Best Score we've got:
1) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Music by Alexandre Desplat
2) Defiance: Music by James Newton Howard
3) Milk: Music by Danny Elfman
4) Slumdog Millionaire: Music by A.R. Rahman
5) Wall-E: Music by Thomas Newman

And rounding out the Music Nominations we've got the nominees for Best Song:

1) "Down to Earth" from Wall-E: Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman; Lyric by Peter Gabriel
2) "Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire: Music by A.R. Rahman; Lyric by Gulzar
3) "O Saya" from Slumdog Millionaire: Music by A.R. Rahman; Lyric by A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam

As far as Best Score goes, I'm not sure who I'd pick. I haven't heard Milk or Slumdog Millionaire, but the other three were fantastic. Each one had its own distinct flair, though, as much as I liked JNH's score to Defiance, it was probably the most predictable of the scores. I really like Desplat's neo-Debussy style and Thomas Newman's work on Wall-E, especially that Brass writing, was awesome. I wonder if this will finally be Newman's year?

For Best Song, I'm not familiar with any of the songs apart from "Down to Earth. I wonder if Rahman is going to cancel himself out like Menken did with Enchanted. Hmm...but then again Slumdog Millionaire seems to be the critic favorite this year so that might propel it to the top in both categories...

All in all, it seems like a pretty good year for film music...what are your thoughts?

 

For me its down to Milk and Slumdog Millionaire. The other scores were just standard fare, but I loved the Milk score from the first opening credits sequence, and Slumdog Millionaire's soundtrack was practically a character in the movie, which was great.

 

SoS, I like what you said about Slumdog's soundtrack being another whole character in the movie. It really is a great soundtrack, and the two original songs are currently on the top of my playlist. You want to see people get so into a movie that they're literally dancing in their seats? You should have been in the theater the first time I viewed it with about seventy other people. I thought people were going to start jumping over rows of other people when "Jai Ho" started playing at the end.