Geoff Boucher: You’ve worked with Tim Burton on more than a dozen film projects, including some of his signature films — the two “Batman” films, “Beetlejuice,” Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Edward Scissorhands” — and I’m curious how your collaboration has changed through the years? Either in rhythm or approach?
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the 2010 Academy Awards way to frigging early this morning.  Here then are the nominees for the music categories (i.e. the only ones you give a damn about).

Music (Original Score)

Avatar – James Horner
Fantastic Mr. Fox – Alexandre Desplat
The Hurt Locker – Marco Beltrami & Buck Sanders
Sherlock Holmes – Hans Zimmer
Up – Michael Giacchino Read more…

If you can’t find Michael Giacchino these days it’s probably because he’s at Ikea, buying more shelves. When he’s done building those shelves (and using creative new ways to insert “monkey-farmer” into a sentence) he’s likely stocking them with a trove of trophies he’s been racking up lately — including a Golden Globe and two Grammy Awards for his Disney/Pixar effort Up. The award prognosticators like to think Giacchino is front-runner for an Oscar nomination (due to be announced tomorrow, February 2), and considering he’s on a roll faster than an unintended-accelerating Toyota, they may well be right.

While considerably less star-studded than the Grammys (there is no film music equivalent to Lady Gaga), the International Film Music Critics Association has piled on the Giacchino love, having recently announced their nominations for the best in film, television and videogame music in 2009. Michael leads with 9 nominations (including multiple nods for Up, Star Trek, a nod for the doc Earth Days, and for Composer of The Year).

Full disclosure: I am a voting member of this association, but am not easily influenced by expensive gifts and baubles. However, I do appreciate the Avatar-branded iPad from James Horner’s publicist (now I can browse Cinemusic from the toilet!). Further disclosure, I did not cast a single vote to nominate Alexandre Desplat’s musical ode to barbiturates Twilight: New Moon. My top pick for Sci-Fi/Fantasy score, Danny Elfman’s bone-crushing Terminator Salvation, didn’t even make the five nominees. Son of a bitch!

The International Film Music Critics will announce the winners of its Sixth Annual Awards on February 26, 2010.

Check out the full list of nominees at filmmusiccritics.org.

Film Score Monthly founder and soundtrack label overseer Lukas Kendall has revealed that FSM will release a 2-CD set of Jerry Goldsmith’s monster classic (and Oscar-nominated, oooh), 1983 chiller-score Poltergeist.

Originally available on a 38-minute LP presentation, Rhino Records re-issued an expanded CD in 1997.  That release, albeit more representative of the score, has been criticized for sound quality issues and had gone “into the light” (see: out-of-print) very quickly after it was released. Often pricey on the secondary market, watch for copies of the Rhino Poltergeist to start popping up on eBay like muddy corpses in an unfinished swimming pool. Read more…

Danny Elfman

Updated 1/22/10! In November I brought you the news about Danny Elfman and his unceremonious booting from Universal Pix’s The Wolf Man, a film so thoroughly manhandled by the studio that it laid waste to an unknown number of marketing interns, required an assembly of editors, composers and wholesale replacement of Rick Baker’s make-up effects with bulging CGI.

In a move no doubt meant to downplay the grandiose heritage of the legendary Wolf Man character (because old is crap, right?), after a disastrous suburban test screening, the filmmakers swapped Elfman for Paul Haslinger, whose atmospheric, pulsing electronic scores for the first and third, color-drained Underworld films was no doubt what the marketing department and studio honcho geniuses thought would be a notch up on the wicked awesome scale from Elfman’s decidedly old-fashioned approach.

Now, if you thought that was the end of it, well you’d be wrong, as there is one final (is there such a thing as “final” in the Wolf Man world?) twist in this story, and that is that some if not most of Elfman’s music is back in the film. Read more…

Hans Zimmer continues his exhaustive press tour for Sherlock Holmes, this time talking with David Poland of DP/30, who has the entire exchange on video, which was shot in Hans’ crimson, velvety studio in Santa Monica. Yes, that is a skull at the base of a lamp over Hans’ shoulder (no word if Hans ripped it straight from Klaus’ still twitching body after Curse of The Black Pearl). Warning: mammoth proprietary-Apple file format load time is longer than even “Psychological Recovery… 6 Months” from Zimmer’s Sherlock Holmes album, so bring your patience.

Looks like Randy Newman has been bitch-slapped by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His original score for The Princess and The Frog has been denied eligibility in this year’s pony show.

It looks like this is an annual occurence (Howard Shore’s The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s The Dark Knight are two high-profile, recent snubbing examples), denying certain film scores based on “original” material, just a few short years after Gustavo Santaolla stunned film score nerds with his two straight “Best Score” wins in 2005, 2006 (will he ever live that down?). Thankfully, Randy is rich as hell, famous, adored by women and well-respected by his peers. Not to mention he’s already got an Academy Award (for his original song, “If I Didn’t Have You”, from Monsters, Inc.) and been nominated 17 times (!!) for musical Oscars.

The official statement from the Acad:

Randy with his “Monsters, Inc.” Oscar

After nominations ballots and reminder lists for the Original Score category were mailed to members of the Academy’s Music Branch (on December 28), questions were raised regarding the eligibility of the score of “The Princess and the Frog.”

On Monday, January 11, the Music Branch Executive Committee met to discuss the score’s status. Based on the committee’s interpretation of the rules, it was determined that the film is not eligible in the score category, though four songs from the movie remain eligible for consideration.

The relevant language is contained in Rule 16, Section II, Paragraph E: “…scores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other preexisting music, diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs, or assembled from the music of more than one composer shall not be eligible”.

The tabulators at PricewaterhouseCoopers have been instructed to disregard any votes cast for the Original Score of “The Princess and the Frog.” The movie remains eligible in all other categories for which it qualified.

Fist fights, hand guns, massive explosions and bondage… There’s only one guy who could score a thorough re-imagining of the starchy Sherlock Holmes: the guy who lent wonky musical edge to Capt. Jack Sparrow! Klaus Badelt? Um, no (who is that anyways?). I’m talking Hans… Zimmer! (And then get Lorne Balfe, just in case…)

Sony Music / Watertower released Hans Zimmer and Co.’s Sherlock Holmes digitally on December 22 (a CD release is set for January 12), three days before the film broke Christmas Day box office records. Zimmer’s playful, winking score features heavy use of dulcimer, banjos and fiddles… In other words this is not Basil Rathbone as Holmes. Read on for details on the soundtrack and score…

The final design element was the music of Hans Zimmer to accompany and enhance the drama, playfulness, action and intrigue. “It was such a joy to work with Guy to capture the different tones of the worlds Holmes and Watson navigate, ranging from the halls of Parliament to a bare-knuckle boxing ring to the shadowy crypts beneath a cathedral,” comments Zimmer, who was working with Ritchie for the first time. “This story has so many textures and personalities, that it really gave us the opportunity to create a diverse language of music for the film.”

Ritchie offers, “Hans and I are very much on the same page about taking a fresh approach to the music. The music has taken on its own identity and become a significant part of the creative process in giving Sherlock Holmes a contemporary feel.”

Read more…

Kristopher Tapley of InContention.com has posted a clip, “Discombobulate” from Hans Zimmer’s upcoming score for Sherlock Holmes, and dubbed it “Danny Elfman meets Ennio Morricone”. And you know what? He’s right. Check out the preview.

Real quickly… Stream these: The Princess and The Frog (warning: pop songs stream first!) and Nine… Daniel Schweiger talks with James Horner about his work for Avatar… Jon Burlingame’s latest piece in Variety frowns as “Film composers lose luster”… Christopher Young says about scoring the videogame: “The Saboteur’s visually striking environments were a major inspiration for me when composing.”

This news requires little of my useless commentary… So let’s just get to what is shaping up to be the mega-soundtrack release of the year. I’ll let the Intrada folks take it from here:

Back To The Future (2 CD Set) Alan Silvestri $29.99
Label: Intrada Special Collection Volume 117

’80s score, 2009 pricing

(89:08) Wow! At last! Alan Silvestri’s complete orchestral soundtrack for legendary Robert Zemeckis movie, released by Universal, produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd. Spectacular 2-CD set offers every cue Silvestri fashioned for landmark movie, presented from complete multi-track scoring session masters. CD 1 features now-iconic score used in movie. (Songs can be found on MCA label release.) But there’s more! Many film fans know movie underwent changes in lead actor & serious tone of initial production. Find out now how Silvestri made changes as well! CD 2 presents early sessions featuring entire score Silvestri recorded before re-scoring with now-familiar one. Early version features darker, more serious tone in music than final version. Cool alternate scoring highlight: powerful trombone chords for initial version of Marty arriving in “Peabody Barn”. Another powerful highlight: lengthy, intense action music for “George To The Rescue”. Highlighting both discs, of course: early and final versions of complete “Clocktower” sequence, a genuine cinema-scoring milestone. Authoritative notes by Michael Matessino on background of production, scoring details, session dates plus great color stills complete package. Both early version and familiar “famous” version of score offer non-stop excitement! Alan Silvestri conducts. Note: While this is a limited release, we don’t want anyone to miss out on this important album. For that reason, we are electing not to specify a quantity, but our Agreement allows us to exceed the usual 3000 limit. There should be more than enough to go around!

Ordering info: intrada.com