Early Oscar Predictions: Music

Obviously, it's impossible to judge a film's soundtrack before it's released, or even recorded which may be the case with many of this year's upcoming prospects. Thankfully for us obsessive prognosticators, the music branch has some old habits that can lay the foundation for early guesswork. For starters, they are notoriously insular, usually only choosing one or two first-time nominees per year in the Best Original Score category.

So who are some branch favourites with multiple irons in the fire this year?

One Category at a Time: Original Score

Best Original Score feels kinda wide open this year. Sure, you could essentially eliminate the two nominees that aren't also up for Best Picture, but of the other three, any of them could win.

My Award nominations: Original Score

Only one of my own Best Original Score nominees went on to be nominated for the Oscar, but that doesn't undercut what a diverse year it's been for film music. The other four that found room on the Academy's slate are quite terrific, even if they didn't find room on mine:

Review - Anna Karenina

With numerous adaptations of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina already dotting the cinematic timeline, director Joe Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard can at least be considered justified in wanting to stir the pot with this newest rendition of the titular adulteress' tragic fall from grace. Yet in attempting to strip the romance down to its emotional essence, their bold experiment misses the mark; a dazzling yet seemingly arbitrary exercise in stylization.

In 1870s tzarist Russia, Anna (Keira Knightley) is afforded all the luxuries and status that her marriage to Alexei Karenin (Jude Law) allows. That means lavish balls, dinners, theatre outings, the works. But when her eye catches the dashing regiment officer Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), her hidden desires prove too tempting to ignore. We watch as she destroys herself for forbidden love, spiraling from envied socialite to reviled pariah.

One Category at a Time: Best Original Score / Song

I'll get these categories out of the way early because there simply is no logical way to go about predicting the nominees until the music has been heard. For Best Original Score, it isn't unreasonable to just pick Best Picture nominees or films with notable composers.

I get the feeling Alexandre Desplat was real close to winning this year for The King's Speech, but it ended up going to Reznor and Ross, whose work was more deserving anyway. Besides, Desplat will have many more opportunities. He scores so many films a year it's hard to keep count! He already has four lined up for 2011, including Terrence Malick's much anticipated The Tree of Life.

John Williams hasn't been nominated in a while (2006 for Memoirs of a Geisha and Munich), but he's got two Spielberg films to garner him some attention from the music branch, including possible Best Picture contender War Horse.

Could the elegant tones and orchestrations that helped Dario Marianelli to nominations for Pride and Prejudice and Atonement (which he went on to win) help him gain some traction for Jane Eyre? The early release is a hindrance, but sometimes a film from the first half of the year can survive it to the nominations.

Were it not for his Oscar-winning score to Up last year, I think Michael Giacchino may have still been in the running for his work on Star Trek. He's got another chance this summer to get our pulses racing with J.J. Abrams Super 8, which has many a movie fan shivering with excitement. If not that, maybe Cars 2?

James Newton Howard is still waiting for his first Oscar after eight nominations, the most recent of which came two years ago for Defiance. He's got a few titles in the running this year, including the adaptation of the bestselling Water for Elephants.

Predicted five:
Jane Eyre
Super 8
The Tree of Life
War Horse
Water for Elephants

Best Original Song is anyone's guess. Who knows what films will have songs? Animated features often feature one or two, so I suppose I'll guess:

Cars 2
Happy Feet 2
The Muppets
Winnie the Pooh