Tonight at 8 PM EST, NBC will air the HFPA's 72nd Golden Globe Awards! After skipping out on publishing anything over the course of last year's awards season, Rodney&Roger's annual Globes' prognostications make their triumphant return with this post. Per usual, this post's intent is not to list what or whom I think should have been nominated, but rather to provide commentary on what films and individuals have indeed been nominated and to pronounce what should win out of the existing pool.
Best Original Score:
Alexandre Desplat -The Imitation Game
So this is the conversation that I imagine transpired between The Imitations Game's director Morten Tyldum and its composer Alexandre Desplat: "So Alexandre, the movie is about a team's race against time to protect Allied forces from Nazi bombs..." "Oh good Morten, I'll make a score that sounds like ticking. See it can represent both the time element AND the whole bomb thing AND it will EVEN sound as though cogs are clicking together just like each of the film's team-members are like individual cogs that fit together to constitute a larger machine..." "Perfect Alexandre, that's subtle. It's certainly not something that's been mind-numbingly over-done. And no one will accuse it of being heavy-handedly literal at all."
Johann Johannsson -The Theory of Everything
As soulful and devastating as Felicity Jones' performance in the film and as hopeful and triumphant as Eddie Redmayne's, Johannsson's score for The Theory of Everything unfortunately takes approximately the same amount of time as the film does to take flight (about the first third), but once it goes airborne -it soars.
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross -Gone Girl
The Reznor/Ross composition duo have long been the object of my deep-seeded disdain. Dating back to their first collaboration on The Social Network (for which they were unjustly rewarded Hans Zimmer's Oscar that should have belonged to his game-changing, rousing, beautiful score for Inception even if for nothing more than it's invention of the "BWAAAH" sound... seriously, can anyone in fact recall any sounds, tunes, anything from The Social Network?... exactly...) and growing with their hammer-to-the-ears score for the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("What's that Rooney Mara? Come again Daniel Craig? I can't hear either of you or anyone else in this movie for that matter over this music!"), my "Reznor/Ross-score-hatred" runs deep. Then came Gone Girl. "Brilliant", "salacious", "iconic" -words I never ever thought I'd use to describe a Reznor/Ross collaboration. Yet they and any other number of resoundingly positive superlatives ring true in regards to their compositions for Gone Girl: a subtle, twisty, manipulative little score that's almost as tricky as Rosamund Pike's "Amazing Amy". And just like Amy, this score truly is amazing.
Antonio Sanchez -Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
"Unique" is a term that can rarely be accurately summoned upon to describe a film's musical score, but "unique" this score is (just like the film it was composed for); Birdman never comes up for air -utilizing a perfectly choreographed faux-long-shot, its camera's gaze never blinks, its beat never stops; the pulse of each scene hastens and slows with the ebb and flow of its characters emotions, but as a living heart never stops, so Birdman's pulse never flat-lines. That pulse is made audible through Antonio Sanchez's virtuoso drum score (excluding brief samplings from some jazz standards, Sanchez's drum-beats comprise the entire picture's music and act as the whole film's pace-maker: pacing the characters rage and sorrow, their meandering entrances and hasty exits, and pacing audiences hearts straight up to Birdman's last beat).
Hans Zimmer -Interstellar
Like a symphonic flood bathing the empty spaces of the universe's barren wasteland in a bursting stream of reverie, Zimmer's Interstellar score escorts audiences through the doors of director Christopher Nolan's church of awe and seats them at his alter to wonder. Though somewhat derivative in the tradition of any over-zealous homage, Interstellar's score ultimately proves more interpretive tribute than imitative copy. Its blaring organ strokes seemingly borrow inspiration from the classical orchestrations compiled for Kubrick's interplanetary opus 2001: A Space Odyssey, but they still cut through space's still silences and into audience's emotional depths. Similar to fellow nominee The Theory of Everything, Interstellar's compositions may take the same stretch of time as the film they underscore to make liftoff (not only does the film's first hour call to mind low-rent Spielberg -the score does too), but once it gets off the ground, it's out of this world.
Will Win: Antonio Sanchez -Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Because the Globes will see awarding it as a chance to stand on the right side of history, and history will remember this score's unfair disqualification from the Original Score category at the Oscars due to its "excess of" and "reliance upon" pre-existing music.)
Should Win (Of The Existing Nominees): Antonio Sanchez - Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Because it's the most innovative of the nominated scores and plays a vital role in Birdman's momentum, representative of the film's pulsing, beating heart.)
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