Congratulations to the Movie-ish Grammy Nominees !

Given that roughly 193,026 musicians can call themselves Grammy nominees for the first time or again in the wake of last night's announcement (so many categories), we'd like to congratulate those nominees that are somehow connected to the movies. But before we do that, tell me who has your vote for "album of the year"?

poll by twiigs.com

I have the Gaga and Adele CDs and love both. Do you recommend the others?

Anyway... Silver screen type nominees & best music videos after the jump
Including: Val Kilmer, Patton Oswalt, Daniel Radcliffe and more...

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European Award Noms (Shades of Oscar, 2011 AND 2010)

Our Oscar chart updates are underway (much more coming at you tomorrow) and now The European Film Award nominations are out. The Film Experience always enjoys their attempt at boiling down so many countries into one group of "best of"s. The American and British Film Academies don't have it so hard, you know, each generally only dealing with the best of Hollywood and London with the occasional embassy outreach to a hot foreigner. (That'd be The Artist this year).

Melancholia vs. The Artist at the EFAs

For our Oscar discussion purposes the most amusing thing about this year's lineup is that two Oscar winners from 2010 (the UK's The Kings Speech and Denmark's In a Better World) are competing against one of the presumed frontrunners of 2011 (France's The Artist) with a few arthouse madman (The Melancholia) and French language side dishes (The Kid With a Bike -- not submitted for this year's Oscar race -- and Le Havre, which is an Oscar submission for in Best Foreign Film).

FILM

• The Artist
• Le Havre
• In a Better World
• The Kid With a Bike
• The King's Speech 
• Melancholia

Sigh. The King's Speech. At this point it's like an unstaked British vampire, sucking the life from Gallic beauties and crazy Danes. 

DIRECTOR

• Susanne Bier, In a Better World
• The Dardenne Brothers, The Kid With a Bike
• Aki Kaurismäki, Le Havre
• Béla Tarr, The Turin Horse
• Lars von Trier, Melancholia

It seems absolutlely bizarre to snub Michael Hazanavicius for direction (The Artist, more than most movies, would've been a disaster without its careful but exuberant guiding hand). Meanwhile Tom Hooper probably won't lose sleep over his snubbing here. Once you've won the Oscar...

ACTRESS

• Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
• Cécile de France, The Kid With a Bike
• Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melancholia
• Nadezdha Markina, Elena
• Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Melancholia's sisters (Dunst & Gainsbourg) each get half the movie. They also share the EFA nom.

We're literally revisiting Cannes jury deliberations for this lineup since all of the women were there. Remember when everyone was all: will it be Kiki or Tilda in "Best Actress"? I wish the EFA had a higher profile just to give Dunst another boost and get back into the Oscar conversation.

More after the jump including actors, composers, and dreamy unsettling production design.

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John Williams Heading Toward Oscar Nomination #46

John Williams © Chad Batka, New York TimesIn the long history of the Academy Awards, only one man can claim more nominations than composer John Williams. And that man, long gone, is now less a man and rather more like a symbol, a legend, an industry, a way of life. 

John Williams never opened a theme park and his name is decidedly less distinctive that "Walt Disney" but he's also inextricably embedded in our popular culture. In a very literal way John Williams has scored our collective dreams and adventures for over a half century now. Though the movies of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are hardly his only playground in terms of beloved movies, they're probably the scores that people think of first. (The fan tribute video below provides a thorough overview of just that.)

After an unusually long break from features the much celebrated composer is now back at work. He's got three new Spielberg movies on the way (The Adventures of Tintin, War Horse, Lincoln) and he could be celebrating his 80th birthday in February as a 46 or even 47 time Oscar nominee. Take that, Streep, with your piddly 16 nominations!

Tribute to John Williams, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas from whoispablo on Vimeo.

Do you think John Williams (45 nominations / 5 wins) will finally break his nomination tie with Oscar's other most awarded composer Alfred Newman (45 nominations / 9 wins) this January. Either War Horse or TinTin could do it. But will it be both? 

Related
Oscar Predictions - Aural Categories
Recent New York Times Interview
Awards Daily posted pieces from the Tintin score

Oscar Horrors: King of the Zombies' Tribal Beats

In this series, Team Experience is looking at Oscar nominated or Oscar winning contributions from or related to the horror genre. In this episode, Robert Gannon -- who dreamt up this whole series for us! -- looks at a true oddity in Oscar history.

HERE LIES...The original score of King of the Zombies (1941). There are a few interesting things to note about the Oscar nomination for a brief horror film (67 minutes!) that has not aged well. The least of which is that, music aside, it's not a particularly great or memorable film.

The year is 1942. Music is still a respected category at the Academy Awards. In an odd twist, 20 films are nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture. Only at the 1945 ceremony were more films nominated in the category. At this point in Oscar history, there was no limit on the number of nominees. The nominated films simply met a quality threshold. That meant films like Citizen Kane and How Green Was My Valley could compete right alongside B-pictures like King of the Zombies.

As far as I'm concerned, King of the Zombies is the best nominated original score from that year. The zombies in this politically incorrect horror film are voodoo zombies, converted from slaves on a remote island off the coast of South America. Strains of a secret ritual rise and fall out of the sound mix, confusing the American travelers who crashed on the island. Various drums pound out a syncopated rhythm while a chorus of unseen voices chant and sing out a uniform refrain in (presumably) a made up language. It's a haunting blend that offers some of the only scares in the entire film. For a modern equivalent of how the score is used, think of how ineffective The Village would be without James Newton Howard's tension-building score.

I spend a lot of time listening to and researching film scores for my music direction work. The score of King of the Zombies is one that I can pull up in my head instantly and start playing. It's precise, it's perfect for the film, and it's very memorable.

King of the Zombies' score by Edward J. Kay set the foundation for modern voodoo zombie films. If there are voodoo rituals involved, you will hear the same tribal-inspired rhythms and chant-like vocals with nothing else in the mix. It's amazing that a film this small and inconsequential so readily established a horror covention.

Other Oscar Horrors...
Rosemary's Baby - Best Supporting Actress
The Swarm - Best Costume Design
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane -Best Actress in a Leading Role
The Birds - Best Effects, Special Visual Effects
The Fly -Best Makeup
Death Becomes Her -Best Effects, Visual Effects
The Exorcist -Best Actress in a Supporting Role 
Rosemary's Baby - Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Beetlejuice - Best Makeup

Carrie - Best Actress in a Leading Role
Bram Stoker's Dracula - Best Costume Design
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Best Actor in a Leading Role
Poltergeist - Best Effects, Visual Effects
Hellboy II: The Golden Army -Achievement in Makeup
The Silence of the Lambs -Best Director
The Tell-Tale Heart -Best Short Subject, Cartoons

Venice: "Ides" and Oscar, Winslet in "Carnage", Madonna for "W.E."

[Editor's Note: I told you we'd have two correspondents in Venice this year. Doubleplusgood. You've already heard from Ferdi from Italy. Now we have Manolis from Greece. We're very happy to have them both covering the fest this year. Show them comment love. -Nathaniel R.]

Hello Film Experience fans. I’ve been a reader myself for many years and i am happy that this year i have the chance to cover the festival for Nathaniel and for the Greek site Cinema News. English is not my native language but I hope you'll enjoy my coverage. 

DAY 1: Venice at this time of the year is at its finest and busiest. The festival is of course the main attraction but there are many unaware tourists that are wondering what all these people with the badges around their necks are here for.  The event of the day was the opening ceremony of the Festival with the premiere of George Clooney’s The Ides of March. Even though The Ides of March is a political film the atmosphere at the press conference was not heavy at all. Most of the questions were aimed at George Clooney who once more ‘played’ the room as he answered questions with wit and humor. What else could he do when the questions varied from "Is this movie a comment about Dominique Strauss Kahn?" to "Have you ever thought of running for president?". He also joked about the amount of research he did for his character in Ocean’s 11 -- "I spent years researching for this role in Las Vegas" -- and he joked that the right side of the movie's poster was better looking than the left.  

Which side do you prefer?

He also said that Gosling was his first choice for the role and that the production of the film was postponed because after Barack Obama’s win everybody was very hopeful about the future of polictics in the U.S. and the timing wasn’t right for it. 

Of Day One's three other press conferences, the most compelling was the Jury of the Competition Section. This year's president Darren Aronofsky and his jury members were here to discuss how they will pick their winners. Todd Haynes got the most interesting question when asked how partial he could be in judging Kate Winslet’s performance in Carnage so soon after working with her in Mildred Pierce (which is also showing at the festival).

He answered politely and predictably and persuaded nobody. 

I am happy to say that The Ides of March is a very good film, directed with passion and care for detail. However it's the kind of film that everyone likes and respects but nobody is really passionate about. Ryan Gosling is excellent in the lead role and has the audience on his side even when he makes the wrong decisions; he could very well be nominated. One of the difficult things to judge is whether the supporting players will feature in the Oscar race. I would say that Clooney has the best chance in the Supporting Actor category, as he portrays a charismatic character (not an acting stretch, I know) that has faults and is vulnerable. Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are marvelous actors but they don’t do anything we haven’t seen them do before. (Giamatti and Marisa Tomei are in very little of the movie.) Evan Rachel Wood on the other hand has an important role and a lot of screen time and has a good shot at a nomination. If I had to pick the surest nomination that would be in the Adapted Screenplay category since the dialogue is excellent and the the scipt (Written by Clooney and his creative partner Grant Henslov) is the strongest element of the movie.

W.E. and Carnage after the jump

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