It’s that time of year again, the World Soundtrack Nominations have been announced and it feels like the Grammy Awards, meaning, these awards feel so last year (the Grammys also never feel relevant because their award cycle goes from October to August of that following year…odd). So yeah, the Oscars were six months ago, but the WSA are a little behind the times.
Regardless, A.R. Rahman’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” score — which one the Oscars for Best Original Song and Best Original Score — leads the pack of nominees with three nods in all two of the three categories. Alexandre Desplat (‘Benjamin Button’)and Marvin Hamlisch — composer of the upcoming, “The Informant!” and receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award — will both perform.
Winners will be announced Oct. 17 at the closing night of the 36th Ghent International Film Festival according to THR.
Fans of Bruce Springsteen and “The Wrestler,” will be happy to hear that the World Soundtrack Awards have corrected the Oscar move of not nominating the excellent titular track for Best Original Song, so perhaps the WSA’s are good for something. The other travesty slightly corrected here is including a nomination for Hans Zimmer in the Film Composer of the year nominees. “The Dark Knight” was infamously overlooked in the 2009 Oscar Best Original score category which was simply insult to injury to all the ‘TDK’ fans already outraged that the film was snubbed in the Best Picture category.
The nominations are as follows:
Film Composer of the Year
Carter Burwell, “Burn After Reading,” “Twilight”
Desplat, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Coco Avant Chanel,” “Largo Winch,” “Cheri”
Danny Elfman, “Milk,” “Taking Woodstock,” “Notorious”
Michael Giacchino, “Star Trek,” “Up,” “Land of the Lost”
Hans Zimmer, “Frost/Nixon,” “Angels & Demons,” “The Dark Knight”
Best original score of the year
“Burn After Reading,” Burwell
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Desplat
“Frost/Nixon,” Zimmer
“The International,” Reinhold Heil, Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek
“Slumdog Millionaire,” A.R. Rahman
Best original song written directly for a film
“Gran Torino” from “Gran Torino,” Music & Lyrics by Jamie Cullum, Clint Eastwood, Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens, Performed by Cullum & Don Runner
“Jai Ho,” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” Music by Rahman, Lyrics by Gulzar and Tanvi Shah, Performed by Rahman, Sukhvinder Singh, Shah, Mahalaksmi Iyver, Vijay Prakash
“O Saya,” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” Music & Lyrics by Rahman and Mathangi Arulpragasam, Performed by M.I.A. & Rahman
“Run & Hyde,” from “Je l”aimais,” Music & lyrics by Anna Chalon, Performed by Chalon
“The Wrestler,” from “The Wrestler,” Music & lyrics by Bruce Springsteen, Performed by Springsteen
If you want a deeper look, check out our feature on the Best Scores, Soundtracks & Film Songs of 2008 which tracks many of these artists. The big winners of the 2008 World Soundtrack Awards were Dario Marianelli (“Atonement,” Best Original 2008 Score), Peter Gabriel’s “Down To Earth” song for “Wall-E” (see? This was at the 2009 Oscars, these people’s schedule is out of wack) and James Newton Howard who won the Composer of the year award for his work on “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Michael Clayton” and “I Am Legend.”
