What can I say? I’m speechless and really surprised to read my name near the ones of some of my idols like Danny Elfman, Marco Beltrami, James Newton Howard !
K.
MOVIE MUSIC UK AWARDS 2012 PART VIII
Here are my choices in the BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A FANTASY/SCI-FI/HORROR FILM
by JON BROXTON http://moviemusicuk.us/
Winner:
– CLOUD ATLAS, Tom Tykwer, Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek
Nominees:
– THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, Howard Shore
– JOHN CARTER, Michael Giacchino
– SINISTER, Christopher Young
– THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN, PART 2, Carter Burwell
2012 was a strong year for genre films, with several standout scores making a real positive impression. For me, the crowning achievement was CLOUD ATLAS by Tom Tykwer, Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek, who were faced with the unenviable task of linking through music six stories set in six different time periods, six different locations, and in six different genres, while simultaneously writing a memorable classical piece that, according to the film’s screenplay, needed to sound as though it would last across the ages. Amazingly, they actually succeeded in doing this, writing a score which was dramatically appropriate and conceptually brilliant, weaving themes and motifs across the different stories to create an elaborate musical tapestry of freedom, loss and predestination.
Michael Giacchino’s score for the critically maligned JOHN CARTER was a triumph, and runs Cloud Atlas a close second; a broad and sweeping fantasy score in the classic John Williams tradition, the music managed to transcend its origins with epic orchestral themes, thunderous action cues, and a sense of majesty. Elsewhere, despite tremendous pressure and anticipation from the film music community, Howard Shore was able to recapture the sense of scope and drama of The Lord of the Rings trilogy with his score for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, which combined the familiar themes from the first three films with a host of new themes to capture the epic journey of Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves of Erebor.
Another scores based on fantasy literature – albeit with slightly less acclaim than those by JRR Tolkein – was Carter Burwell’s score for the fifth and final Twilight film, BREAKING DAWN, PART 2, which showed Burwell in a new light, writing large-scale and driving fantasy action music in addition to the familiar contemporary romantic scoring that accompanied the developing relationship between moody teenager Bella Swan and her bloodsucking suitor, vampire Edward Cullen.
The joker in the pack is Christopher Young’s SINISTER, a creepy horror movie for which Young wrote his first ‘sound effects’ score, which mixed harsh electronic dissonances, contemporary dubstep rhythms, and all manner of orchestral histrionics to create a vicious, unsettling, wonderfully evocative soundscape that is very difficult to listen to, but makes the scares of its film exponentially scarier – which is the whole point of the score in the first place!
Runners up worth special mentions in this category include BAIT 3D by Joe Ng and Alex Oh, DARK SHADOWS by Danny Elfman, DEAD SOULS by Matthew Llewellyn and Jonathan Bartz, HYDE’S SECRET NIGHTMARE by Kristian Sensini, MEN IN BLACK 3 by Danny Elfman, REC 3: GENESIS by Mikel Salas, SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN by James Newton Howard, THE TALL MAN by Todd Bryanton and Joel Douek, THE WICKER TREE by John Scott, and THE WOMAN IN BLACK by Marco Beltrami.
