Andy Stilp | Spielberg at the Olympics

Ladies and gentlemen, for the twelfth time in his career, John Williams has been nominated multiple times in one year. Yes, some of those instances were many categories for one movie, and yes, some of those were across categories, but this is also the (gulp) sixth time he has run two nominees against each other in the same category:

1972 — Images vs. The Poseidon Adventure
1977 — Star Wars vs. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1984 — The River vs. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
1987 — Empire of the Sun vs. The Witches of Eastwick
1989 — Born on the Fourth of July vs. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
2002 — A.I. vs. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Of all these competing pieces, how many won? Exactly one — Star Wars. (I fully contend that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade got robbed blind — the winner that year was … The Little Mermaid, dammit.)

We can assume that John Williams habitually splits his vote … to a degree. His only win in the past 20 years was Schindler's List, which had no chance of losing with Itzhak Perlman's endorsement. The question, though — with all the pro-American hoopla, the true jingoism going around, Spielberg marching in with Desmond Tutu, is there any way that the well-respected composer of such American blockbuster hits as E.T., Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters, Superman, Indiana Jones and Home Alone will lose?

There's the usual cast of characters in this category — James Horner, Randy Newman, et al — and it would be a true shame for the mesmerizing artistry of the Beautiful Mind score to lose (especially considering the fact that the Potter score was all but memorable, and most of Williams's recent creations are derivations of earlier hits), but is this our litmus at these awards?

Sean Weitner | Nonpareil

I think that Horner's Beautiful Mind score has a lot of heat behind it, and that's one of those easy awards to give in order to help a film rack up prestige ("Winner of five Academy Awards!") I personally think Williams' work on A.I. was nonpareil among its contemporaries, particularly considering how right you are about the derivative ruts he often gets stuck in, but remember that A.I. is so loathed it couldn't even get Jude Law his nomination. I doubt it'll win.

What do you mean when you say John Williams has been nominated in "many categories for one movie"? What else has he been nominated for besides Best Score?

Andy Stilp | J-Will

Oh, I just mean instances like Home Alone, where he was nominated for score and song ("Somewhere In My Memory," methinks). Also, in some past years, there were two music categories, so he could pull off having, say, Sabrina in the musical or comedy category and, oh, Nixon (checking … wow! Yep. 1995. Pulled that one from memory) for the dramatic score.

Besides, does anyone remember the theme for Amistad? Saving Private Ryan? JFK? Or does John Williams not need a major theme to write a good score? Or … did he use up all his good themes on his earlier movies, like Star Wars, which arguably has three or four major themes within its score?

I'm listening to the main theme for A Beautiful Mind again right now on mp3. I like it very much. It's actually a great differentiator for me — the vocals (yes, Horner pulled the same stunt for Titanic) really tip their hand at a journey far deeper than the trailers suggest.

Sean Weitner | What a thankless business film scoring is

Of all of the components of movie-digesting, it's the score that I lack the enzyme for. Part of it may be a desire to suppress the bald emotional manipulation that colors many scores (I can feel for myself, thank you), part of it may just be a lack of a properly trained ear for appreciating orchestral music, I'm not sure. But I'm reading your comment and thinking: "The theme to A Beautiful Mind had a choral element?"

Part of the problem with film scoring is that it's the one film element that you're expected to be able to composite out of a film. (The screenplay too, sort of, I guess, not really.) It has to stand on its own and complement the movie, which is a tall task. Sometimes there's a great synergy, like Vertigo and Bernard Herrmann's love theme for it, where the music succeeds because it so strongly recalls the film, but I don't think original film music is adequately subtle to qualify it as a great, standalone original composition.

This ties into another discussion in which I praised the use of pop music in films. In a way, I register pop music less like a score and more like a setting: "Oh, this is a scene in a dank hotel room." "Oh, this is a scene in Central Park." "Oh, this is a scene that uses 'Where the Streets Have No Name.'" Do you know what I mean? Pop music's use as score is secondary, and it's more about the director trading in on the emotional connections that we already have to that distinct, extra-filmic element. And I would extend that from pop to any music not originally written for a film, including orchestral: Gershwin in Manhattan is memorable. Joplin in The Sting is memorable. Copeland in He Got Game is memorable. I hate to sound like a square, and it's not that I can't appreciate the occasional score (like I said, I loved A.I.'s), but the film which uses commissioned music and the film which uses found music are two different beasts, and I respond more to the second.

Andy Ross | Here's an idea

This is where I become the stereotypical cultural critic, but maybe you like found music more because you're a product of postmodernity. You like pastiche and reinterpretation of recognizable elements, like music. It makes not only this new artwork — a movie — more interesting, but also changes how you interact with the old piece of art — music. To go back to something I said yesterday, that's how I feel about "Christmas Time is Here" and its use in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Sean Weitner | Busted

Yeah, I've taken up space in two threads to make the same point. Sigh.

So, to sum up: Yea rah John Willams.