UPDATE! THE RESULTS ARE IN!
Click "Read More" for the results of the 2015 Oscar Nominated Score Poll.
The Academy Awards are coming up on February 22, and it's your turn to pick a winner!
Five films have been nominated for the Best Musical Score Oscar - which is your favorite? Listen to the scores and vote for the one YOU think should win the Oscar this year. See how your pick measures up with Academy voters!
UPDATE! You read, you listened, you voted... and you, IPR Listener, have chosen (drumroll, please...) THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL as your favorite Oscar-Nominated Film Score, with 41% of the vote. Composer Alexandre Desplat took up both top spots, coming in second for THE IMITATION GAME, with 28.2% of the vote.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE!
The Academy Voters have weighed in, and they agree with you! Congratulations to Alexandre Desplat, who has been awarded this year's Oscar for Best Film Score for his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Thanks for voting!
1. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune -- all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent. - Fox Searchlight Pictures.
COMPOSER - ALEXANDRE DESPLAT
Fittingly for a film set in a fictional, middle-European republic, the score is resplendent in the authentic sounds of various European countries. Instruments used include the cimbalom, zither, and balalaika. These qualities become immediately apparent in the score's delightful main theme, first heard in "Mr Moustafa". An endearing piece for the aforementioned plucked instruments, it's both eccentric and lovely, bottling the essence of Europe in times gone by. The theme occurs several times throughout the score, giving a pleasing sense of continuity and structure. - Sean Wilson.
2. THE IMITATION GAME
Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II. - Studio Canal
COMPOSER - ALEXANDRE DESPLAT
There's a vivid sense that Desplat got to know Turing's character intimately, knowledge that allowed him to depict the man's triumphs and complexities with his characteristic musical intelligence. There's a sense of sadness pervading the score that's achingly moving, yet even the most poignant moments shine through with genuine compassion, offset against which are the darker, more complex textures depicting Enigma and the spectre of World War II itself. Consistently engaging and thought-provoking, Desplat's music is well-deserving of its Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. - Sean Wilson
3. INTERSTELLAR
In the near future, Earth has been devastated by drought and famine, causing a scarcity in food and extreme changes in climate. When humanity is facing extinction, a mysterious rip in the space-time continuum is discovered, giving mankind the opportunity to widen its lifespan. A group of explorers must travel beyond our solar system in search of a planet that can sustain life. The crew of the Endurance are required to think bigger and go further than any human in history as they embark on an interstellar voyage into the unknown. Coop, the pilot of the Endurance, must decide between seeing his children again and the future of the human race. - Warren D'Souza
COMPOSER - HANS ZIMMER
The score was recorded mainly in London, for a comparatively small ensemble emphasizing strings and woodwinds, a choir, and featured solo performances for piano, violin, harp, steel guitar and, most notably, organ. The organ was performed by Roger Sayer, the master organist at Temple Church in London, and in many ways is the core musical identity of the score – appropriately so, as the sound immediately triggers in listeners the ingrained response of ‘religious awe’, except in this instance the sound relates to awe at the vast depths of space. In terms of the orchestral and choral parts of the score, Zimmer also experimented with unusual performance and recording techniques to get the sound he wanted, asking the woodwind players to make strange and unusual sounds with their instruments, and having the members of the choir face away from the microphones so that their voices were distant and distorted. - Jonathan Broxton
4. MR. TURNER
Mr. Turner explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies. Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty. - Entertainment One
COMPOSER - GARY YERSHON
Compositionally, the score is very unusual. There is a main theme which runs all the way through the piece: a descending, snake-like motif, heavy on glissando, which has a hint of experimental jazz to it. On an intellectual level, one could hypothesize that Yershon was trying to capture in music what Turner himself captured in art – if you look at Turner’s paintings, many of them have a sort of washed-out feel, as though you are looking at the world through a window covered in water. Yershon’s music has a similarly indistinct feeling, and if that was his intention, then he succeeded admirably in capturing that effect. - Jonathan Broxton
5. THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
The Theory of Everything is the story of the most brilliant and celebrated physicist of our time, Stephen Hawking, and Jane Wilde the arts student he fell in love with whilst studying at Cambridge in the 1960s. Little was expected from Stephen Hawking, a bright but shiftless student of cosmology, given just two years to live following the diagnosis of a fatal illness at 21 years of age. He became galvanized, however, by the love of fellow Cambridge student, Jane Wilde, and he went on to be called the successor to Einstein, as well as a husband and father to their three children. Over the course of their marriage as Stephen's body collapsed and his academic renown soared, fault lines were exposed that tested the lineaments of their relationship and dramatically altered the course of both of their lives. - Spencer Higham
COMPOSER - JOHANN JOHANNSON
Given Jóhann Jóhannsson's relative inexperience in the realm of mainstream film scoring, The Theory of Everything is both a delightful surprise and a very impressive achievement. Such a dialogue-heavy movie, not to mention one that deals with incredibly sensitive subject matter, must have been a very difficult one to score. Push the music too hard and it risks turning the narrative into an overblown melodrama; pitch it too quietly and the emotions of the film may not be drawn out. It's entirely to Jóhannsson's credit that he's composed a score both subtle and highly engaging, gently enhancing the movie whilst allowing Redmayne and Jones' excellent performances to stand out. - Sean Wilson
