# "Best original score" Oscar nominations in 1995



## HansZimmer

In this thread I propose a little game: to vote the best film score between the five Oscar nominations of 1995.
You can simply vote your favourite one in the poll and, if you want, you can write a post reply with a vote for each one (insufficient, sufficient, average, good, excellent), like I do.

If you don't know how Academy Awards (Oscar) work, you can read a short explanation here below.
Each year, for the Academy Awards, five film scores are nominated for the award "Best original score". At the end, only one of the five wins.

The "Best original score" award must not be confused with "Best original song" awards. The first one is a competion for orchestral music written for films, while the second one is a competion between pop songs written for films.

This thread is only about scores.

In 1995 the following film scores got a nomination:
- Lion King (winner): composed by Hans Zimmer
- Little Women: composed and conducted by Thomas Newman
- Forrest Gump: composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri
- Shawshank Redemption: composed and conducted By Thomas Newman
- Interview with the vampire: composed by Elliot Goldenthal

Here below you can find all suites.

*Lion King*

The score of the animated film "Lion King", composed by Hans Zimmer, won.

Hans Zimmer lost his father when he was 6 years old and so he said that he felt connected with the main carachter Simba (the little lion) and so he wanted to compose a powerful and deep score for him.

Indeed, this score is wonderful and Hans Zimmer has never been able to write an other score like this one. 
In his entire career, he has only won one (and deserved) award: this one.

My vote (insufficient, sufficient, average, good, excellent) is: excellent.

The live suite. The interpretation of the orchestra in this live concert is amazing, especially the frontman.






*Little Women*

My second favourite score is the one of Little Women, composed and conducted by Thomas Newman.

My vote (insufficient, sufficient, average, good, excellent) is: good.

The suite.






*Forrest Gump*

My third favourite is Forrest Gump, composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri.

My vote (insufficient, sufficient, average, good, excellent) is: good.

The suite.






*Shawshank Redemption*

My fourth is Shawshank Redemption, composed and conducted by Thomas Newman.

The main theme.






*Interview with the vampire*

I don't like this score so much, although is suitable for the film.

My vote (insufficient, sufficient, average, good, excellent): average.

The suite.


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## pianozach

I'll go with *The Lion King*. It really was the best in a weak year.

In addition to his one Academy Award for The Lion King (and 11 or 12 nominations), *Hans Zimmer* has received four Grammy Awards (two for The Lion King, and one each for The Crimson Tide and the Dark Knight), four Classical BRIT Awards, and three Golden Globes (for Lion King, Gladiator, and Dune).


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## HansZimmer

pianozach said:


> I'll go with *The Lion King*. It really was the best in a weak year.
> 
> In addition to his one Academy Award for The Lion King (and 11 or 12 nominations), *Hans Zimmer* has received four Grammy Awards (two for The Lion King, and one each for The Crimson Tide and the Dark Knight), four Classical BRIT Awards, and three Golden Globes (for Lion King, Gladiator, and Dune).


Thanks for your vote.

I didn't explain this detail in the OP, but I want to do the same game for each year until the current year. At the end, all scores which won in polls will compete between each others in a final poll... and so there will be a final winner.


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## pianozach

HansZimmer said:


> Thanks for your vote.
> 
> I didn't explain this detail in the OP, but I want to do the same game for each year until the current year. At the end, all scores which won in polls will compete between each others in a final poll... and so there will be a final winner.


Cool. I'd though about doing something similar, but I'm just not all _that_ familiar with a hundred years of film scores, not even the nominated ones.

Considering the 1995 nominations for 1994 films: There are probably a couple dozen films that did NOT get nominated for their score that year, many that you could make a serious (or comical) case for being snubbed. Of course, comedies rarely get nominated for their score. Consider these snubbed films: *Pulp Fiction, Nell* (Mark Isham), *True Lies*, *Bad Girls* (Jerry Goldsmith), *Clear and Present Danger* (James Horner), *Legends of the Fall* (James Horner), *Immortal Beloved, Renaissance* (Hans Zimmer), *The Road To Wellville* (Rachel Portman), and *Wyatt Earp* (James Newton Howard), to name a few.

They didn't even start giving out nominations until, like 1933 or 1935 or something, and then every studio got to nominate a score from one of their released films, so there'd be a dozen every year for several years. And at first the composer only got credit for the score for a film if he were also the Head of the Music Department at the Studio that made the film.

I did get as far as making a list of best scores by year (well, mostly best; I included every NOMINATED score from the Academy, but not all of those are truly "great").

But here's a *FUN FACT* for ya: Though the exact number isn't known, it has been estimated that there are approximately 500,000 movies (or, narrative fiction feature-length, theatrical-cinema films) currently in existence.

In my BEGINNER'S GUIDE, starting at #201, I've "got a little list", a few little lists actually.

Here's one:

Bernard Herrmann Citizen Kane
Miklos Rozsa Ben-Hur
Bernard Herrmann Vertigo
Elmer Bernstein To Kill a Mockingbird
Max Steiner King Kong
Hugo Friedhofer The Best Years of Our Lives
Dimitri Tiomkin High Noon
Alex North Spartacus
Erich Wolfgang Korngold The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
David Raksin Laura

And here's another:

1. The Lord of the Rings Series (Howard Shore)
2. Star Wars (John Williams)
3. The Mission (Ennio Morricone)
4. Schindler's List (John Williams)
5. Dances with Wolves (John Barry)
6. Doctor Zhivago (Maurice Jarre)
7. Out of Africa (John Barry)
8. Lawrence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre)
9. Harry Potter Series (John Williams/Alexandre Desplat)
10. Seven Years in Tibet (John Williams)

Or . . . how about a list of best film composers?:

John Williams,
Hans Zimmer, 
Bernard Herrmann, 
Elmer Bernstein,
Maurice Jarre, 
Jerry Goldsmith, 
Alfred Newman,
Miklos Rozsa, 
James Horner, 
Korngold, 
Tiomkin

Of course, the pickings were slim until the advent of "Talkies" in, what, 1929 was it? And even then it was a neglected facet of filmmaking until Max Steiner took it seriously in 1933 for King Kong. He also scored Cimarron in 1931

But here's my list of *Notable Film Score for Pre-WWI Films* [* several of these have scores that were created decades later]

1907	Edgar Stillman Kelley	Ben Hur
1908	Camille Saint-Saens The Assassination of the Duke of Guise
1909	(Robert Israel)	The Sealed Room
1910	cue sheet Frankenstein
1910	(Robert Israel)	The Unchanging Sea

1911	(Marius-Francois Gaillard, 1943)	Baron Munchausen's Dream (Les Hallucinations du baron de Munchhausen)
1911	Georgiy Kozachenko Defence of Sevastopol
1911	Ernesto Nazareth	The Dream
1911	Raffaele Caravaglios	L'Inferno
1911	(Ben Model, 2005)	The Pasha's Daughter
1911	WC Simons Arrah-Na-Pogue

1912	(Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida, 2000)	Cleopatra
1912	(Ennio Morricone, 2001) Richard III
1912	WC Simons A Spartan Mother
1912	WC Simons An Arabian Tragedy

1913	(Philip Carl, 1994)	Traffic in Souls


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## Forster

HansZimmer said:


> In this thread I propose a little game: to vote the best film score between the five Oscar nominations of 1995.


So, why 1995? Why not 1935, when the Academy started awarding Oscars for music scores?


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## pianozach

_Just riffing on *Film Score snubs* from the *Academy*_

John Barry - The Last Valley (1971)
John Powell - How To Train Your Dragon (2010)
Alexandre Desplat - The King's Speech (2010)

John Williams - Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
John Williams - Superman (1978)
John Williams - Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
John Williams - Empire of the Sun (1987)
John Williams - Saving Private Ryan (1998)
John Williams - Catch Me If You Can (2002)
John Williams - Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
John Williams - War Horse (2011)

Jerry Goldsmith - A Patch of Blue (1965)
Jerry Goldsmith - Patton (1970)
Jerry Goldsmith - Planet of the Apes (1968)
Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Jerry Goldsmith - Pappillon (1973)
Jerry Goldsmith - Chinatown (1974)

David Raksin - Laura (1944*)

Alex North** - A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Alex North - Viva Zapata! (1952)

Bernard Herrmann - The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Bernard Herrmann - Vertigo (1958)
Bernard Herrmann - North By Northwest (1959)
Bernard Herrmann - Psycho (1960) 
Bernard Herrmann - Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Ennio Morricone - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Ennio Morricone - Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)
Ennio Morricone - The Mission (1986)
Ennio Morricone - The Untouchables (1987)
Ennio Morricone - Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Hans Zimmer - Inception (2010)
Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch - Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

*1944: "Laura" received no nomination even though in 1944 there were two music categories in the Academy Awards for a total of 34 nominees. These days it is regarded as one of the greatest film scores of all time.

** Alex North actually completed a film score for 2001: A Space Odyssey, written expressly to director Stanley Kubrick's specifications, but it was discarded when Kubrick fell in love with the "Temp" tracks he was using (and which he gave to North as guidelines).


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## HansZimmer

Forster said:


> So, why 1995? Why not 1935, when the Academy started awarding Oscars for music scores?


Because I had to select a start point. 1935-2022 would be an infinite competition.

It will be a competion between all nominated scores between 1990 and current year, I think.

So, for the next I'll go back to 1990.


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## HansZimmer

To summarize, you simply have to vote (in the poll) the best scores between the following (which are the scores which were nominated in 1995 for the award "best original score").

You find more information in the OP.

*Lion King (suite)*






*Little Women (suite)*






*Forrest Gump (suite)*






*Shawshank Redemption (main theme)*






*Interview with the Vampire (suite)*


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## pianozach

*"Best original score" Oscar nominations 2022*

The Oscars televised show has been losing ratings as of late, so the Academy has made some changes.

One of the changes is that the *"Best original score"* award has been moved to the non-televised _*"technical"*_ portion of the Awards.

The outcry has been loud and irate, but I doubt that they'll be changing their minds.

Personally, I feel that the soundtrack is incredibly important to a film, as much as the screenplay, art direction, costuming, cinematography, direction, and acting.

Have you ever watched a film without its famous score? It's almost embarrassing.





.
.
.
. . . Or . . . the *WRONG* music.


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## Rogerx

After long consideration I voted Shawshank Redemption the Mozart part is so hear warming. So yes just for that.


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## HansZimmer

Rogerx said:


> After long consideration I voted Shawshank Redemption the Mozart part is so hear warming. So yes just for that.


What is the Mozart part?


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## HansZimmer

The poll will end on 8 march 2022 at midnight UTC + 1. So, from 8 march we will have the winner. The winner will finally compete with the other winners of each year.


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## Forster

@pianozach Yes, I've watched movies without their famous scores. They're called silent movies, many of which were shown without any 'famous' score, or shown and reshown with a variety of different scores.

Music can make a big difference to the emotional heft of a movie, but also alter the tone of a movie so it "feels" different. Eventually, Hollywood got the drift of this and stopped relying on piano accompaniment and went for stereotypical lush romantic instead. Eventually, Hollywood got over that too and started to invest in non-CPT. Hurray for Nine Inch Nails!

But movies are primarily a visual medium anyway and music should know its place.


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## Forster

HansZimmer said:


> Because I had to select a start point. 1935-2022 would be an infinite competition.
> 
> It will be a competion between all nominated scores between 1990 and current year, I think.
> 
> So, for the next I'll go back to 1990.


Given the number of polls here at TC, and the ongoing collation of the most recommended classical works goind back 400 years, I'm pretty sure that a survey of Oscar nominees over the past 90 years is both a finite and manageable operation.

But obviously, if it takes more stamina than is available...

That still doesn't explain why 1995? Or 1990?


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## mikeh375

@Zach...What is also very interesting and often extremely difficult for the composer is the fact that there is no one, absolutely correct, definitive piece of music for a scene because even when composers may well feel as though they've nailed a cue perfectly, the taste of the director and maybe producer(s) will often require revisions or worse still (especially from the deadline p.o.v), a different approach entirely. 

Working through a silent film in post production and adding music is quite scary given the wide open musical choices, even within the confines a brief that may well include a temp track. It's quite remarkable how even a single well chosen note or two can affect the atmosphere and feel of a scene.


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## HansZimmer

Forster said:


> That still doesn't explain why 1995? Or 1990?


Because I wanted to explore the most recent scores, not the oldest scores.


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## pianozach

Forster said:


> @pianozach Yes, I've watched movies without their famous scores. They're called silent movies, many of which were shown without any 'famous' score, or shown and reshown with a variety of different scores.
> 
> Music can make a big difference to the emotional heft of a movie, but also alter the tone of a movie so it "feels" different. Eventually, Hollywood got the drift of this and stopped relying on piano accompaniment and went for stereotypical lush romantic instead. Eventually, Hollywood got over that too and started to invest in non-CPT. Hurray for Nine Inch Nails!
> 
> But movies are primarily a visual medium anyway and music should know its place.


Um, you're mansplaining about silent films, and not even accurately. And people rarely watch silent films silently. Even the cheapest movie houses in the 1920s would, at the very least, drop the needle on a record.

I've actually accompanied some silent films on piano, and am friends with one of the best in the business who accompanies on the organ, *Dean Mora*.

Back in their heyday it was typical for a pit band or tiny orchestra to accompany feature films at the larger venues. In the 1920s some films came with composed scores for a pianist/organist/orchestra to play.

Once the TALKIES took over, almost overnight, the musical soundtrack took a back seat, as the novelty was to hear the actors actually TALKING. I get a kick out of the exaggerated way many of them delivered their lines, like they were announcing a baseball game or something. Ah, them was the days.

*HansZimmer* (the *TC* member, not the actual composer) mentions 1935 as a starting point (obviously because that was when the Motion Picture Academy started nominating in that category, although it was for films from 1934); personally, I'd start at *1933*, with *King Kong* being a film score with serious intent, even if the film wasn't. Or maybe I'd go back to when composer Max Steiner, the "father of film music" scored original music for the 1932 RKO film *Symphony of Six Million*, which was widely considered to be the birth of "modern" film scores. Steiner's score was among the first to be used non-diegetically, driving the mood and narrative from off-screen.

1933 brought us Harry Warren's *42nd Street*, and three others from Max Steiner: *Morning Glory, Flying Down to Rio*, and *Little Women*. Oh, and there was *The Private Life of Henry VIII* by Kurt Schroder.

1934 brought three more scores from Steiner: *Of Human Bondage, The Gay Divorcee*, and *The Lost Patrol*. Alfred Newman scored three films as well: *One Night of Love, The Count of Monte Christo*, and *The House of Rothschild*. A few other notable score: *The Man Who Knew Too Much* (Arthur Benjamin), *Moulin Rouge* (Harry Warren), *The Merry Widow* (Franz Lehar), *Cleopatra* (Rudolf George Kopp), *Great Expectations* (Edward Ward), and *Waltzes from Vienna* (Erich Wolfgang Korngold). Oh, and three from Herbert Stothhart: *The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Treasure Island*, and *Chained*.

I find it interesting that from 1938 - 1946 every studio was invited to nominate a score from one of their releases for the year, resulting in more and more every year, until there were 21 nominees in 1945.

But 1935 had only three nominees: The Lost Patrol (1934) (Steiner), The Gay Divorcee (1934) (Kenneth Webb & Sam Hoffenstein)[credited to Steiner, as he was head of the studio*], and the winner, One Night of Love (1934) (Louis Silvers, Head of Columbia Pictures Music Dept., although the music came from many sources, from Donizetti to Alfred Newman).

_* From 1934 until 1937, nominated films were represented by the head of the film studio's music department rather than the composer._


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## Forster

pianozach said:


> Um, you're mansplaining about silent films, and not even accurately. And people rarely watch silent films silently. Even the cheapest movie houses in the 1920s would, at the very least, drop the needle on a record.
> 
> I've actually accompanied some silent films on piano, and am friends with one of the best in the business who accompanies on the organ, *Dean Mora*.
> 
> Back in their heyday it was typical for a pit band or tiny orchestra to accompany feature films at the larger venues. In the 1920s some films came with composed scores for a pianist/organist/orchestra to play.
> 
> _[...]_


I wouldn't say I was 'mansplaining', though maybe I was being unnecessarily sarky in disagreeing with your assertion about the importance of scores, and the idea that it's embarrassing watching movies without. I simply wanted to make the point that unlike the craft of writing soundtracks today, silent movies were often shown with music that had nothing like the same quality or impact that they did once the craft had evolved. Even famous silent movies might have had more than one score (over time)

I wasn't inaccurate either. I didn't say that films were shown without scores. I said they were shown without 'famous' scores and briefly acknowledged that.

I was typing on my phone: it's tedious writing a lecture on the history of silent movies which, IMO, perfectly exemplify that excellent movies can and were made with merely adequate musical accompaniment.


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## Rogerx

HansZimmer said:


> What is the Mozart part?


The Marriage of Figaro: Duettino - Sull'aria, door Edith Mathis, Gundula Janowitz, orkest van de Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm (dir.) (3:32)


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## HansZimmer

Rogerx said:


> The Marriage of Figaro: Duettino - Sull'aria, door Edith Mathis, Gundula Janowitz, orkest van de Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm (dir.) (3:32)


Sorry, but this is a competition between "original scores".

The song of Mozart is not a part of the original score, because:
- By definition, a score is outside the film and not inside
- Even if the Mozart's song was outside, it wouldn't be a part of the ORIGINAL score

If this poll would be about the music in general, then you should know that in "Interview with the vampire" there are the following pieces.
















However, like the Mozart's song, this pieces are not a part of the original score.

In Little Women a member of the family can play the piano and, during the film, she plays different pieces. This pieces are not a part of the original score.

When I was preparing the material for this competition, I had to made sure that the music I posted was all a part of the original score. There is a reason if I didn't post the Mozart's song. You should consider only the music you find here.

That said, I ask you to think again about your vote by taking in account only the original scores. You can reconfirm your vote to Shawshank Redemption if you really like its ORIGINAL SCORE, but for the moment I'll have to substract your vote from the votes of Shawshank Redemption because you gave your vote to a piece of music that has nothing to do with this competition.


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## HansZimmer

The poll is over, so we have the results.

2 votes for The Lion King.

2 votes for Shawshank Redemption.

1 vote for Interview with the Vampire

0 votes for Little Women

0 votes for Forrest Gump

Although Shawshank Redemption has three votes in the poll, one vote was cancelled for the reason explained in my previous post.

We are now doing a runoff to determine the winner between The Lion King and Shawshank Redemption: Lion King vs Shawshank Redemption: runoff


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