Jayaram, My comments are inserted below-
________________________________ From: jayaram81 <jayara...@yahoo.com> To: arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:51:51 PM Subject: Re: [arr] Oscar Watch: Composer By the way you are looking for the most idealistic score. Of course my friend, the best is yet to be and scores of that nature are indeed rare in a lifetime. Are you saying that it's very rare (in a lifetime) that one comes across scores of the kind that I was looking for? I already listed a bunch of such scores (from this year) earlier. Other examples? Almost anything written by John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, Georges Delerue... the list is endless. Thematic Development & Cohesiveness - This has less to do with the composer and more to do with the screenplay. In my opinion, SdM did not offer much for a Thematic Development as you had mentioned. Toying around with ideas - Seriously, of the last 8 Oscars, probably Atonement's score had it. Catch me if you can was there, but it didn't make it to the top. On a different note, if you are saying that Rahman doesn't do that I have to say you are kidding and dude, you need to start watching some of his movies I'll agree with the time constraint but I'm not sure about the screenplay not giving the freedom to think about such things. I should have been more clear about what I meant with 'toying with ideas'. I meant development of theme structure changes (not just tempo and instrumentation). I don't know why you think that only Atonement and 'Catch Me If You Can' satisfy that? Pretty much all the recent Oscar nominations satisfy that with some exceptions like Michael Clayton, Babel & Brokeback Mountain. And I don't recall seeing those kinds of things often in ARR scores (Bose was an exception). Other great works this year - I did listen to them as you said, and I agree that some of them are good, but that doesn't necessarily mean that SdM's soundtrack is inferior to it I neither said nor implied that the SdM soundtrack is inferior to anything this year. I mentioned my method of evaluation of scores (not songs, not soundtracks) and said why I didn't think that SdM demonstrated those qualities enough. I hope that when you're judging the SdM score, you are not adding the influence of the songs (there's a separate award for that). From what I remember there wasn't much score in the movie outside of what has already been released on Itunes. So when I'm talking of the score I think of it as comprised by Riots, Mausam and Escape, Liquid Dance, Latika's theme and Millionaire. Judging a song's greatness also lies with the beholder (a twist there) and unfortunately, how it makes the Oscar cut is definitely going to be dependent upon the other major critic picks. Exactly! Everyone has their own measure of merit. Unfortunately for you SdM has had its fair share of successes among the critics' circle. So if SdM makes it to the nomination list, I would love to see you eat your own words. 'Unfortunately' for me? You are missing the point. I'm delighted at SdM's success and popularity. I'm ecstatic at the praise and recognition that ARR has got for his work in the film. As an ARR fan, I'm always happy to see him win these awards and hope he gets many more. I have a criterion by which I judge scores. I would be a hypocrite if I relaxed that criterion when evaluating the SdM score just because I'm an ARR fan. It's as simple as that. Not letting ones bias get in the way of judgment. Whether he goes on to win or not does nothing to my judgment of the score. As an aside... a lot of people have criticized Morricone's score to Mission to Mars. It doesn't have any awards. I don't care. In my book, it's a fantastic score. SdM offers its own complexity. The movie screams "Indian", which obviously calls for score which does the same. The very nature of the movie which traverses back and forth, that too between unrelated scenes, does very little in helping the composer maintain the cohesiveness that you are looking for. If you had read the main article on which this thread was started, you would get where I am going with this. ... 3 Weeks is not a lot of time, given the fact that Rahman is not known to work like that. I would say "Give the credit where it is due". I've addressed some of these points earlier. I'll only respond to your statement of evaluating SdM based on all the constraints and "giving credit where it's due". In an awards event, you're not really going to look at all the circumstances and constraints and judge relative to that, are you? Say, a film couldn't afford to record the music with an orchestra and so they used cheap synths. Now are you still going to say 'hey, they did a great job in spite of using synths so they deserve an Oscar'. They're judging the end result. If they really wanted to judge based on circumstances and constraints then nearly every score deserves to be nominated and to win. Horror movie scores seldom get nominated. Same with action films. Scores from comedies seldom get a cd release (ask poor Teddy Castellucci or Theodore Shapiro), forget even getting nominated. Let's face it. A lot of these awards go to the the movies that are dramas. It lacks the grandeur that a full fledged orchestral arrangement would bring in - the one that you might define as Oscar worthy. But as much as you would like to keep your eyes closed on other genres of film composition that do exist and might be "Oscar worthy", there are many a critic that would be interested in these soundtracks - the ones that are not stereo-types with horns blowing and cymbals crashing. While I do have a preference for orchestral scores I have never said that that's what makes them Oscar-worthy. You're either misinterpreting what I said, or laying out a lot of straw-man arguments. My only peeve is with the non-thematic approach to scoring (a la Babel and Michael Clayton). I'm happy with themes (SdM has them). I'm thrilled with thematic development. I'm ecstatic with intelligence in scoring. BTW I do like the small scores. Some of Christopher Young's early works (Flowers in the Attic, Invaders from Mars, Haunted Summer) are all synth/electronic based simply because the budget couldn't afford an orchestra, and I love all of them. I do not like the ones that are over-scored, overblown or bombastic and perhaps that's what you are thinking of with "horns blowing and cymbals crashing". RR