Oscar's Eligible Original Scores for 2015
Thursday, December 17, 2015 at 7:15AM 
Thomas Newman has 12 nominations but has never won. Can this be the year? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (our much obsessed over AMPAS) has released the list of this year's original score contenders. The music branch is one of the most controversial laden in the Academy and they regularly make rulings that make people crazy. This year the most high profile scores that have been disqualified due to pre-existing material are The Revenant and Love and Mercy. Now, a lot of films use pre-existing material -- particularly if they part of franchises like this year's Creed, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Man From UNCLE, which are all eligible -- it's just a question of "how much?" pre-existing they use. And that's where the annual controversies spring from, as when AMPAS let Babel slide (despite a score that had much much less original music than pre-existing music) and it won the category!
In a strange turn of events given Oscar darling Alexandre Desplat's typical yearly work load, he's not even the most eligible contender this year with only two scores.
The complete list of eligible scores (and more info) is after the jump. I've highlighted 15 my favorites but which are you rooting for?
