Soundtracks Matter: Time to Settle the Score

By John Mallory

As it gets closer to Oscar night, movie fans and film critics will continue to discuss who will be rewarded or disappointed by this year's Academy Awards. People naturally focus on what they consider to be the "major" awards. (Best Director, Best Picture, Best Leading Actress, etc) But I want to focus on the real magic of the movies... the music. It's true that directors went to film school and actors occasionally have some type of "craft" that is usually wasted on cell phone commercials, but the beautiful, uplifting, sad, frightening, and euphoric musical themes not only compliment what we're watching, but also shape and control our entire theatrical experience. A poorly scored movie is a waste of time. A film who's music encapsulates the raw and sometimes inexpressible emotions of both the characters and audience is nothing short of magic.

This year's Oscar nominations for Best Original Score provide an interesting sample of some of the best movie music of 2009. First let's look at James Horner's nomination for "Avatar". Horner is a powerful composer who is increasing his stronghold on Hollywood's music having already composed for such films as "Legends of the Fall", "Braveheart", "Apollo 13", "Titanic", and "A Beautiful Mind". His approach to "Avatar" was slightly different from the style we've come to expect, but still keeping to his orchestral basics and adding a little more of everything. This is an epic movie for which he provided a score of epic proportions and epic orchestration. Given the films focus on fictional indigenous tribes, he employed a large array of global vocals which blend almost perfectly with culture of the Navi. Looking at his entire body of work, the music to Avatar sounds most similar to Titanic which won his only two Oscars in 1998. (Best Original Score and Best Original Song) It'll be interesting to see if returning to that style earns him the award again.

Looking next at Alexandre Desplat's music for "Fantastic Mr. Fox" we encounter a lesser known composer. Although he's composed for a few well known films and even 2 previous Oscar nominations ("Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "The Queen"), most of his film music career has focused on French films. In this puppet and claymation movie, Desplat takes a more whimsical focus that matches the film's personality and approach. Although he does an impressive job of providing the type of musical that almost perfectly compliments the film, it's difficult to walk away with an Oscar when your orchestration focuses on Banjos and whistling.

The music for "The Hurt Locker" was a surprising nomination for best Original Score. The soundtrack has allot of originality, but very little score. This was a joint composition by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders who have collaborated on other films such as "I Robot", "Blade", and "Scream". Beltrami received the nomination once before for his work on "3:10 to Yuma", but I think he'll once again go home empty handed. This is an extremely complex psychological film and the music intended to match it's dark internal exploration. What sounds like an attempt to juxtaposition the frustrating anger of war surrounded by Arabic culture ends up sounding like nothing more than a Mosque competing with a Matallica concert. The nomination could've been for Sound Effects.

Hans Zimmer's music for "Sherlock Holmes" also took a very original approach, but presented a fascinating work that was surprisingly fun. Zimmer is a tremendously talented composer ("Crimson Tide", "The Lion King", "Gladiator") who has been nominated 7 previous times and never won the Oscar. The music for "Sherlock Holmes" is disjunct and abrasive yet somehow coherent and organized much like the lead character. His focus on harpsichord gives the entire soundtrack a Victorian feel, but with modern flavor. Also, his frenetic orchestration compliments the entire films urgency as Holmes and Watson frantically search for answers. Zimmer brilliantly combines his musical talent with films personality to create a score that just might win his first Oscar.

Lastly there's Michael Giacchino's second Oscar nomination. (The first was for his work on "Ratatouille") Very seldom have I been so strongly moved by a soundtrack and within the first few minutes of the film, I fell in love. This previously little known composer crafted beautiful sweeping themes that literally saturate the audience with a moving emotional experience. The quieter moments are appropriately intimate and personal, while the larger moments push everyone to the edge of their seats. During the entire film I was mesmerized by the music's beauty and seamless necessity. I'm of course talking about his work on "Star Trek". Why he was instead nominated for "Up", I'm not very sure. Yes, he does an impressive job of employing some beautiful themes with an older style that seems to fit the main character's reminiscence for days gone by. However, it does little else. Giacchino is a talented composer, and I'm glad he was recognized even for the wrong film.

That's my assessment of this year's nominations for Best Original Score. I think this might be the year that Zimmer finally receives what he deserves, but Oscar night is always full of surprises.

Oscar Matters: Sandra Bullock vs. Meryl Streep

I never thought I would say this, but Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) is giving Meryl Streep (Julia & Julia and 15 other Oscar nominations) a run for her money in this year's best actress race. When I saw trailers for The Blind Side I rolled my eyes and yawned. I thought nothing could get me interested in seeing what was clearly going to be an overly sentimental sport-as-metaphor cliché ridden film. On the other hand, 10 seconds into the trailer for Julia & Julia I was psyched to see the movie. My dream girl, Amy Adams, and acting legend Meryl Streep team up in a movie about Julie Child? Sign me up. In hindsight I was duped by the conniving marketing teams of both films but ultimately saved by the Academy's expanded best picture category (which I thought I hated).

First, the ad team for Julia & Julia promised two great stories for the price of one, but they didn't mention the fact that one story was of unequal and lesser value than the other. While the story of Julia Child living with her husband in Paris and her decision to learn the art of French cooking is funny and touching, the story of Julia Powell writing a blog based on Julie Child's famous cookbook is a failed attempt to equate an insignificant woman with the great woman on whose coat tails she rode. It was also tough to watch my future lover Amy Adams struggle with trying to make this frustrating character likable.

Second, the ad team for The Blind Side refused to target this movie at me. They promised me Sandra Bullock, who has made a string of hit or miss movies over the last twenty years, in a wholesome family drama where some white family in the south adopts a black kid who plays football. Totally implausible. Well, it turns out, that the movie is really a character study of affluent southern white Christians confronted with an opportunity to save the life a young black man. The movie takes a balanced look at two communities that are prejudiced against each other and it goes on to show the human ties that bind those two communities together. Sandra Bullock is also a revelation. She plays Leigh Anne Touhy with bitting authenticity and heartfelt compassion which must mean her talent has been tragically wasted on the glib roles of all those low-stakes rom-coms she's been in.

At the end of the day, Sandra Bullock's performance had to be spot on perfect for The Blind Side to work and there is no doubt she nailed it. On the other hand Meryl Streep's outstanding performance could not salvage the mess that was Julia & Julia. Meryl was by far the best part of the movie, as she often is, but I'm of the school that says, the movie needs to be great to receive any Oscars. Sandra Bullock set The Blind Side up to be great and she deserves the Oscar. Oh gods of the Oscars, forgive me.

Oscar Matters: "The Hurt Locker" and "In the Loop"

The Academy has steadily honored Iraq war documentaries but this is the first year that it honors dramatized depictions of the eight year war. That's partly because the war is happening and documentaries are better at capturing real time events. But dramatized depictions of the war harness the power of fiction to make the audience a part of the story.

In 2004, an election year, the Academy awarded the best documentary feature to Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara a cautionary tale about the Vietnam War and the trap of American hubris. This was the first of a series of documentary features honored by the Academy that marked a not so subtle protest of the Iraq war. During subsequent election years they continued the trend, nominating two Iraq war documentary features in 2006, Iraq in Fragments and My Country, My Country (neither won) and three in 2008, Taxi to the Dark Side (winner), No End in Sight, and Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. It's not shocking that the liberal peacenik hippies of lala land (i.e., the Academy) felt a moral obligation to shine a light on the blunders of the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. But this spotlight was a bit dim.

The documentary is a journalistic form of filmmaking that uses stark facts to tell a story. There's no CGI or clever editing techniques getting in the way of facts. People are interviewed while charts and graphs complete the narrative. Clear, concise and boring. This is not the escape from real life that a night at the movies promises, instead the documentary is a glaring reflection of real life. And while that is an extremely important exercise, especially in the case of the Iraq war, it's not a fun way to spend a Friday night. So while the Academy has honored these Iraq war documentaries with a meteor shower of nominations and Oscars they have failed to light up the sky so the average movie goer can't look away.

With 9 nominations for The Hurt Locker and one for In the Loop the Academy finally turns up the wattage on its Iraq war spotlight. With its nine nominations, The Hurt Locker is tied for the most nominations in 2010 meaning that the Academy is cementing it as one of the films to remember 2009 by. This is a truly great movie that tells a simple, compelling story about soldiers who search for meaning in life when life is cheapened by the scourge of war. Unlike it's documentary brothers, this movie does not delve into the political nuances of why and how the Iraq conflict proves or disproves the efficacy of a policy stance. Instead it deals with how the subtleties of human nature are affected by the Iraq war. The characters in the movie are specific yet representative of the diversity of people touched by this war.

It seems counter-intuative but I think fiction is better suited to reveal truth about human nature than true stories. I think it has something to do with the mutability of fictional realities verses the concreteness of real life. While watching The Hurt Locker I imagined what I would do if put into the same situations as the characters and that gave me a better understanding of myself which added to the film going experience. But when I watched Taxi to the Dark Side, I merely observed the actions of real people. What they did had consequences. Imagining anything different while watching that film would have taken away from the experience. And because most of our exposure to the war is through news reporting (true stories) we compartmentalize the war into something that is outside of ourselves, but fictional depictions of the war give us the latitude to internalize the human impact of the conflict.

The nomination for best adapted screenplay for In the Loop, a brilliant satire of pre-Iraq war Britain and America, was, to me, the biggest shock of the 2010 nominations. First of all, the Academy hasn't consistently honored comedies since the 30s and 40s. And I get it. Comedies are usually poorly made and unsophisticated. In the Loop is neither. The pacing of the movie is lightning fast. Jumping from Downing Street to Pennsylvania Ave, from the Pentagon to the UN this movie's rushed sense of urgency mimics the frenetic pace with which both countries decided to invade Iraq. The concept of hero and villain is obscured by the rampant incompetence and self-promotion of the technocrats on both sides of the Atlantic and the aisle. And after you've laughed at these boobs for an hour and a half you realize that these are the people who convinced you and the rest of the world that Saddam had WMDs. Our collective lack of scrutiny was the farce of this war. And again, you can never get that sort of visibility into human nature by just watching a true story.

As time passes, the films about Iraq will get better and hopefully the Academy will continue to honor all the films that teach us about this conflict but especially the films that expose our individual connection to and responsibilities for the Iraq war.

YouTube Matters: Aaron Mosby Show #4

A couple of things. 1) There is some jerky footage at the beginning because Matthew and I were running for the bus. 2) With the utmost respect for all of the "women in our friend group" I summit this video for your amusement. 3) Those guys are really from Australia and Nick really has very little respect for Melbourne. 4) I have no idea what a serviette is.

Enjoy.

YouTube Matters: How to Report the News

How to report the news according to Charlie Brooker.

Movie Matters: 2010 Oscars: And the Nominees are Leaving Something to be Desired

Watch live streaming video from academyawards at livestream.com

As a loyal EM reader you know that this blog has a general respect for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Their annual awards, commonly known as the Oscars, give the movies the requisite heft to be considered high art. But the announcement of the 2010 nominees irritated me.

First problem, ten best picture nominees. Of course this is not a new phenomenon, but its desperate. Back in the 30's nominating this many films was standard, but back then the Oscars where a more blatant attempt to sell movie tickets. As the awards evolved over the decades it appeared that they were more concerned with honoring a worthy few and were content to let extremely talented artists languish Oscar-free for an entire career (See, Peter O'Toole). They didn't seem to care if they honored movies that no one saw or will ever see (The English Patient). Raising the number of best picture nominees is a shameless attempt to raise Oscar night ratings at the expense of diminishing the prestige of the award. Also, with such a large field the picture that wins theoretically only needs 11% of the vote. Should a picture with that little support be etched in the pages of history forever?

Second problem, Avatar. With nine nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, the Academy is making a bold statement that 2009 was the year of Avatar. I concede that the film grossed over $2 billion, which is good for the industry, and the visual effects rose to level of OMG, but those facts don't make up for the stale plot and stilted dialog. The beauty of film is that it's a collaborative art form but the draw back of that is if there is one weak link the entire production suffers. A best picture nominee should shine from every aspect of the movie making process and Avatar falls short in too many places. Just because people went to see the movie, doesn't mean it's great (See, Spider-Man 3).


Third problem, Star Trek. Science fiction is usually woefully snubbed at the Oscars, but this year the Academy had two science fiction blockbusters that it could honor, and as the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said they, "choose poorly." Save for visual affects (and that's debatable) Star Trek outshines Avatar in every metric. The story is more compelling, the characters are more fully developed, the stakes of the story are much higher and the movie is just plain fun. If the Academy insists on nominating ten pictures they can't miss the one movie that brought nerds and jocks together in 2009.


Final problem, repeat nominees. I get it. Meryl Streep is the greatest ever and the Coen Brothers are clever. But do we need to be reminded of these facts every year? I look to the Oscar nominations as a chance to see what great performances I might have missed over the last year because there were too many ads for Night at the Museum 2. Of course I'm going to go see Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and George Clooney. Academy, please, tell me something I don't know.


This is the first of many posts about the 2010 Oscars. Stay tuned. And don't forget to follow @EnterMatter on Twitter for the latest updates.