IFMCA nominees

A few days ago the International Film Music Critics Association very quietly announced their nominees for 2013 (I don't know if they even issued a press release, as I haven't seen the news published anywhere but their official website). Since composers don't have a guild or trade society of their own, this is the closest we get to a precursor award just for movie music, but it doesn't always align with the Academy's taste.

This year, for instance, the top category of 'Film Score of the Year' is a real head-scratcher, featuring only one of the five Oscar nominees (probable winner Stephen Price for Gravity). Rounding it out is Howard Shore's swollen Hobbit score and three other soundtracks that I doubt were on anyone's award radar!

It looks like this might be Price's to lose, but he isn't the composer with the most nominations from this group. That distinction goes to Abel Korzeniowski, who has multiple scores recognized.

Check out the eclectic group of nominees after the cut.

One Category at a Time: Original Score

Along with Best Art Direction, this is the only other craft category that I think we can assume is locked up. And I have to say that I rather like the lineup, myself. Even with the silly disqualification of Drive and the inevitable snubs of Hanna and The Ides of March, the music branch still managed to pin down five of the year's best scores.

Review - Hugo

A lonely orphan who winds the clocks from within the walls of a Parisian train station attempts to decipher the mystery of a mechanical man in Hugo, Martin Scorsese's courageous foray into 3D family entertainment.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), for that is his name, used to love fixing things with his clockmaker father before his untimely death. A rusty old automaton designed to write on paper is all he has to member his dad, and repairing the robot has become a project on which the boy has become dependent. He often pilfers parts from a sad old toymaker, Papa George (Ben Kingsley), who seems somehow connected to the machine, but reluctant to divulge. Hugo finds an ally in the toymaker's goddaughter (Chloe Moretz), an avid reader who yearns for adventure beyond her leather-bound tomes. Together, they attempt to discover the secret concealed within the automaton's intricate clockwork and seek a window into Papa George's past.

Best of the Decade #2: The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003)

The epic undertaking of filming Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy certainly got results. Peter Jackson fills the screen with not only spectacular images but with strong performances from well-cast actors. Each shot is beautifully framed and lit by DP Andrew Lesnie, and Howard Shore's music is both rousing and touching.

While Fellowship of the Ring is the most immediately memorable and structurally sound of the trilogy, don't watch it unless you plan to watch its two sequels shortly afterward, because only then can one truly appreciate Jackson's achievement. With The Two Towers, he faced the structural challenge of fitting three separate storylines with no beginnings and no ends into a digestible cinematic narrative. But he builds the tension equally through all the subplots, balancing suspense and exposition, right up to the hair-raising Battle of Helm's Deep. The Two Towers also features one of the best performances of the decade from motion-capture and voice actor Andy Serkis as Gollum. Serkis' embodiment and vocalization of the simultaneously despicable and pitiable creature is so astonishing and authentic, that we soon forget Gollum is a CG character at all.

And it was in grand fashion that Jackson capped off his marvelous fantasy trilogy, not that the first two parts weren't grand enough. Complaints about Return of the King's seemingly endless ending are legitimate, but when one stops to think about it, there was no other way Jackson could have concluded such a lengthy piece of film (it is a 10 hour movie after all). In that respect, Jackson ties up all the loose ends quite appropriately, giving all the characters the detailed endings they deserve.