[drumroll] It's Time! Our annual April Foolish Oscar Predictions have begun.
Ad Astra was supposed to be out next month but rumors are that it's not finished yet
First we looked at Animated Features and now we turn our attention to the Sound categories. It's rather perverse to do them second and here's why: Original Songs and Original Scores are among the last things we have confirmed each year. Technically speaking you can wait until your whole film is nearly complete before adding a score or commissioning an original song. It's not always wise to wait of course since songs, especially, can be more effective if they're woven in and some directors prefer to work with some idea of what the score will be like while they're editing. Nevertheless there is much that's completely unknown about this film year in terms of its music...
For example, major possible contenders like The Irishman, Little Women, and that Untitled Todd Haynes film dont even have composer assigned yet... at least not that we've heard or that IMDb has listed. Aside from the presence of perennial John Williams (who is now 87 and basically only coming out to retirement to score Star Wars pictures on occassion now) one possible cause of excitement this year in the category is that the usual suspects in the category seem to be movie free this year. For example, the ever prolific Alexandre Desplat has only one movie for 2019 (extremely unusual for him) and it's a French film. So we could theoretically have a year where it's battle of the most exciting newbies.
Or as we've predicted at this juncture, battle of some well-respected musicians with an all too sparse Oscar nomination count none of whom have won: Marco Beltrami, Alberto Iglesias, Carter Burwell, or Terence Blanchard (who probably came close to winning last year with BlacKkKlansman, the main theme of which picked up a Grammy).
If Oscar doesn't go for highly familiar but Oscarless composers there are a ton of new "voices" out there in film music. The music branch at the Academy has less gender parity than a lot of other branches so it'll be interesting to see if any of the fresh female composers can break through that boys club. Some women to watch out for / Listen to:
- Hildur Gudnadottir - She played the cello for the scores of famous movies like The Revenant, Arrival, and Sicario but now she's graduated to full film scores. She has a few under her belt now with Joker a very higher profile shot at totally changing her career
- Tamar-Kali - She also has just a few previous films under her belt, most prominently Mudbound. You might also remember her in the incredible lesbian drama Pariah (she played herself). The Last Thing He Wanted marks her third collaboration with Dee Rees.
- Pinar Toprak -This Turkish composer has been working steadily for about 12 years but Captain Marvel was a huge profile boost for her after a lot of B crime pictures and TV movie work.
- Mica Levi - she's been Oscar-nominated once so they're at least somewhat aware of her. Her scores are daring enough to be divisive (we're on the side of being ecstatic about them. Listen to Jackie and Under the Skin and be amazed.)
Check out the charts and let us know what you think. It'd be great to hear from some film score enthusiasts out there.
THE INDEX OF OSCAR PREDICTIONS (in progress)
THE SOUND CHARTS
THE ANIMATED CHART (we'll add docs in a bit later)