The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced their nominations for the 67th annual Golden Globes. The music nominees are as follows:
BEST SONG
- “Cinema Italiano” – NINE (Maury Yeston)
- “I Want to Come Home” – EVERYBODY’S FINE (Paul McCartney)
- “I See You” – AVATAR (James Horner, Simon Franglen, Kuk Harrell)
- “The Weary Kind (Theme from CRAZY HEART)” – CRAY HEART (Ryan Bingham, T-Bone Burnett) (WINNER)
- “Winter” – BROTHERS (U2, Bono)
Along with the three songs you see appearing on a lot of lists, the HFPA mixed things up with two new titles. “I Will See You” stands a very good chance at an Oscar nomination, though the song sounds a lot like a first draft version of Horner’s own “My Heart Will Go On” from TITANIC (and I don’t mean that in a good way). The the nomination for “Winter” shows how much the HFPA loves its stars. Though I wouldn’t discount the quality of any song written by Bono. I was surprised (but not displeased) that Randy Newman is missing from both the Song and Original Score categories.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
- AVATAR, James Horner
- THE INFORMANT!, Marvin Hamlisch
- A SINGLE MAN, Abel Korzeniowski
- UP, Michael Giacchino (WINNER)
- WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, Karen O, Carter Burwell
Like the Song category, you see three nominees that have received a lot of press so far in the awards season, and two new entries. AVATAR is an obvious choice given Horner’s track record. Because of the film’s sure-to-be massive box office, it could easily pull Horner into the category for Oscars. I’ll have my review of the soundtrack later this week.
The wild card is Korzeniowski’s score for A SINGLE MAN. His inclusion certainly shows the international reach of the Hollywood Foreign Press. But I’ve also heard very good things about this score from other film music journalists and I look forward to hearing it.
No matter how much you read or hear about how the Golden Globes are a prognosticator of the Academy Awards, don’t believe it. This is not to say that the HFPA gives out their awards as predictors of the Oscars. No guild, organization, or critical group does. But the mainstream press will have you believe that the winners of the Globes stand the best chance of winning the Oscar.
If so, consider this…
Since its inception, the Globes have matched the Oscars in the following categories (including both Drama and Comedy/Musical in the top three categories):
- Best Picture- 32 times
- Actor – 48 times
- Actress – 44 times
- Supporting Actor – 31 times
- Supporting Actress – 26 times (27 if you count Kate Winslet’s award for THE READER, which was considered a lead for Oscar)
- Director – 35 times
I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that as to whether or not the Globes are good predictors. In the category of Best Original Score, the results are even worse.
Since 1947, when the first Best Original Score award was handed out, the Golden Globes have matched the Oscars only 23 times. Out of the 266 nominees since then, only 128 (give or take a few) have gone on to be nominated for the Oscar. You’d think with that many chances, they’d have a better track record of “predicting” than they do.
Over the past decade, the winners include (Oscar winners are in BOLD):
- 2008 – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE – A. R. Rahman
- 2007 – ATONEMENT – Dario Marianelli
- 2006 – THE PAINTED VEIL – Alexandre Desplat
- 2005 – MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA – John Williams
- 2004 – THE AVIATOR – Howard Shore
- 2003 – THE LORD OF THE RINGS – THE RETURN OF THE KING – Howard Shore
- 2002 – FRIDA – Elliot Goldenthal
- 2001 – MOULIN ROUGE! – Craig Armstrong
- 2000 – GLADIATOR – Hans Zimmer, Lisa Gerrard
- 1999 – THE LEGEND OF 1900 – Ennio Morricone
If you think the Oscar nominees and winners are odd, check out the Golden Globes page on Wikipedia. I guarantee you’ll scratch your head at more than a couple of them.
The nominees for Golden Globe have never exactly matched the nominees for the Academy Award…NEVER! Not even when there were more than the normal five nominees at the Oscars, like in the late 1990′s. So no matter how likely the nominees this year look, there are always a couple of scores that rightly or wrongly don’t make it into the Oscar cut. The only two shoo-in’s I would say are Hamlisch and Giacchino.
Do the Golden Globes mean anything when predicting Oscars, much less by themselves? Of course not, not any more or less than any other award does. But it’s still fun to contrast and compare.
What do you think of this year’s nominees? And who do you think will continue on to the Oscars?
Agreed re Hamlisch and Giacchino, but in the absence of a runaway favorite (although “Up” is close to Vegas odds), I would also proffer “Avatar” as a lock at this point.
If it were the general Academy voting, I’d say yes to AVATAR. But since it’s the Music Branch, it’s anybody’s guess. I’d say he’s a strong candidate, but by no means a lock. Or at least that’s my take on it.