Who's the Diane Warren of Every Category?

by Cláudio Alves

Another year, another Diane Warren campaign to finally get herself that Oscar. She's already got an Honorary Award, but the competitive prize eludes her. This year, the songwriter's best bets are Flamin' Hot and 80 for Brady, though Warren also penned an original tune for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. After she got a in for the virtually unreleased Tell It Like a Woman, anything's possible.

This got me thinking about the other people the Academy nominated constantly without ever giving them the win. Who's the Diane Warren in the categories beyond Best Original Song? Trying to answer that question, I dove deep into Oscar history, counting who's the most honored person who never won their respective race for gold. I focused on feature films and living artists, those who still have a chance to win or increase their record. Like Warren, some names are back in contention this season. From Picture to Documentary, here they are...

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1999 with Nick: Best Original Score

This week, in advance of the 2019 Oscars, Nick Davis is looking back at the Academy races of 20 years ago, spotlighting movies he’d never seen and what they teach us about those categories, then and now...

the surprise winner

Spotlight Movie: The Red Violin
One of the most exciting things that can happen on Oscar night is when a movie with no other nominations wins one of the “craft” or “technical” or “below-the-line” categories—three bad names for the races where very few contenders are celebrities. In a year like the current one, where the Best Picture nominees ran the table to a historic degree, and consuming most of the spots in every other race, we have even fewer prospects than usual to see this occur. I’d love to watch The Lighthouse win Cinematography or Ad Astra win Sound Mixing, both because they deserve these victories on merit and because it’s nice (but mostly false) to hope that Oscar voters make discerning judgments from category to category based on each discrete department of artistry.

The Red Violin’s Best Original Score trophy at the 1999 Oscars represented one of these glorious instances, and registered as a significant upset at the time...

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Is it (finally) Thomas Newman's time?

Just 15 days til Oscar. Here's Cláudio Alves on a 15 time nominee...

When we think of Hollywood royalty, our mind tends to go to those dynasties of movie stars or celebrity directors -- families like the Barrymores, the Hustons, the Fondas or the Coppolas. But not every tinsel town lineage is made up of those who sit on the director's chair or dazzle in front of the cameras.

The Newmans are a good example. With more than 90 collective nominations and many wins, they're the Academy Awards' most beloved family. Alfred Newman is the most Oscar-winning composer of all-time with a total of 43 nods and 9 victories. His son David Newman is a one time nominee and his brother, Lionel Newman, won the Oscar for adapting the score of Hello Dolly! and received 10 additional nominations. Emil Newman, another brother, was nominated for the score of 1941's Sun Valley Serenade. Their nephew, Randy Newman, has amassed 22 nods and 2 statuettes. 

And then there's Alfred's other Oscar-beloved son, Thomas Newman…

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14 Days Until Oscar. When will Thomas Newman win?

Thomas Newman is currently the most nominated composer to have never won the Oscar (and third in line of most nominations for a living artist without a win). Sci-fi hit Passengers marks his 14th nomination. Unfortunately this year he's up against the La La Land juggernaut so he'll have to wait for #15. Or beyond. His cousin Randy Newman waited until his 16th before taking home the gold.

Thomas Newman is on his 14th nomination at age 61. His father won 9 Oscars but he's still waiting on his first.

Composing for Hollywood is a family business in case that connection escaped you but their relatives didn't have to wait nearly as long...

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Christmas Classics: Little Women (1994)

A few members of Team Experience will be sharing posts on their favorite Christmas movies. Here's Lynn Lee 

You can have your Christmas Story or your It’s a Wonderful Life.  For me, my Christmas movie will always be Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women, which took its bow Christmas Day, 1994, and has kept a place in my heart ever since.  Even though it faithfully adapts a literary classic, the movie’s also a perfect encapsulation of the ’90s: besides Winona Ryder, for whom Little Women was something of a pet project, it also featured a very young Kirsten Dunst, fresh off her star-making turn in Interview With a Vampire, and Claire Danes, still in her Angela Chase days, making her big-screen debut, as well as a 20-year-old Christian Bale completing his transition from child to adult actor.

None of that, of course, meant anything to me when I first saw the film...

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