Our favorite piece of them all however – and more apropos of what we do – is the music and sound piece on the Coen Brothers’ “No Country For Old Men,” which had lots of interesting factoids in it. Most primary being the fact that composer Carter Burwell’s score was all of 16 minutes long (it’s a 2 1/2 hour movie) and the film used mainly deafening silence, sound design and very quick, subtle minimalist music cues. We saw it so long ago and it had such a huge impact on us, we can’t say we consciously noticed there wasn’t much music in the film and that’s probably a testament to how engrossed we were in the overall film.
“The idea was to use the music to deepen the tension in some of these transitional scenes, when there’s not much going on,” Burwell said. “The sounds are snuck in underneath the wind or the sound of a car. When the wind or car goes away, the sound is left behind, but you never hear it appear.”
Burwell didn’t think his score – being so short, all of 16 minutes – would be eligible for an Oscar nomination, nor did he really want to submit it for Academy consideration, but at the behest of Miramax he did so. Could you imagine if it was nominated won? It would likely be the shortest musical score to ever win an Oscar.
As wise man usually knows less is more. “If you ask film composers — and I have — whether they feel there’s too much or too little music in the average film, they will all say too much,” he said. “I’m very happy this time to be on the other side of that balance.”
Will he get an Oscar nomination? Hard to say. We’re personally rooting for Jonny Greenwood’s ‘Blood’ score, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ elegiac ‘Assassination of Jesse James’ compositions. Not just cause they’re rock affiliated either, we just think they’re incredibly distinctive and different. A more traditional score we’d like to see nominated is Paul Cantelon work on “The Diving Bell & The Butterfly,” John Murphy’s “Sunshine” score, but the latter will never happen. Look for “Atonement” or even Burwell’s “The Devil Knows Your Dead” original music to possibly score nominations and don’t count out shit like “Enchanted” and “Hairspray” though those might just hog Best Original Song. We’ll see.
Why would you possibly want to nominate Cantelon for Diving Bell? He had a total of 7 cues in the entire film- three of which were repetitions of a single piano piece. So, all in all, only 4 original cues within the entire film.
Very nice and pretty, but certainly not connected to the a film in any sort of salient way. There was no real interaction between picture and music that would justify a nomination for an academy award.
He writes pretty little melodies, but can’t actually score on any sort of level that is common to mainstream film composing (Alan Silvestri, John Williams, Harry gregson Willams, John powell, etc, etc). He shows little sense of being able to mutually support the action and events onscreen. Rather, he dabbles away with his piano pieces beneath the action, unrelated to the events transpiring.
And for that, you want him nominated? Bizarre.
Your point about minimal score presence (4 cues) is taken, but not connected to the film in any salient way? I guess that’s your subjective opinion. I vehemently disagree.
“Score common to a mainstream level”? Did you really go there? Are you actually suggesting that unless a score is a typical, orchestral score with tons of instrumentation and all the regular sweeping doo-dads that it’s not a “Real” score and shouldn’t be open for Oscar consideration?
Well, at least you’re not close minded or rigid or anything.
Not bizarre at all.