2016 Oscar nominations for Best Original Score: Morricone v. Williams

This morning, nominations for the 88th Academy Awards were announced — with, of course, plenty of attendant discussion and controversy.

In the Best Original Score category, the controversy started before the nominations were even announced, with an innovative and acclaimed score for an Alejandro G. Iñárritu film being thrown out on a technicality for the second year in a row. (In this case, it was The Revenant — ironically, the most-nominated film this year overall.) Two return-to-glory scores were considered locks for nominations, and indeed, both are in the running: John Williams's Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ennio Morricone'sThe Hateful Eight.

One of those is almost certain to win — my money's on Morricone — so the other three nominees are essentially just filling out the bracket. The most conspicuous omission, besides The Revenant, is the Danish Girl score composed by last year's Oscar winner, and double nominee, Alexandre Desplat.

So, who made the cut?

Thomas Newman, Bridge of Spies

With regular collaborator John Williams busy composing his new Star Wars score, Steven Spielberg turned to Thomas Newman to score his latest effort. While many of the music cues represent distinctively Newman stylings, the composer also seems to have some reverence for the multi-decade partnership between Spielberg and Williams. Newman's score incorporates ideas you could imagine Williams using for an interesting amalgamation that I could stand to hear more of if this augurs something new for future Spielberg films.

Carter Burwell: Carol

It would seem Carter Burwell was inspired by some ideas from Philip Glass (most specifically Glass's work on The Hours) to craft a beautiful score wrapped in a musical landscape that's not overly nostalgic for the film's 1950s time period — it's more like a personal soundtrack for the characters, representative of what is going on in their heads. A longtime composer for the Coen Brothers, Burwell has never before been nominated for an Academy Award (something that's almost impossible to believe considering the number of his themes — like Fargo — that have become integral to the cinema-scoring canon).

Ennio Morricone: The Hateful Eight

The moment Morricone signed on to The Hateful Eight, he could have gone ahead and drafted his acceptance speech for this award. Coming back after 40 years' absence to a genre — the Western — whose soundscape he virtually defined and creating something inspired and new is just the kind of narrative the Academy loves to reward. Despite the fact that much of the score was originally written for John Carpenter's The Thing, the Academy has probably guaranteed an Oscar for this movie music legend.

Jóhann Jóhannsson: Sicario

Sicario is an unusual (though completely warranted) nomination in that its music does not grandstand or make itself apparent too obviously in the film. Jóhann Jóhannsson, who was nominated last year for Theory of Everything, created a pulse for the narrative with a score that lies low throughout and establishes a level of dread more often associated with horror films than crime thrillers. The film would not succeed without his work informing every second with arrangements of brass, strings, and drums so low you feel them in your gut.

John Williams: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

There was not much doubt that the score for Star Wars was going to earn Williams his 50th nomination. (Only Walt Disney himself has received more Oscar nominations.) Almost by default it had to be nominated — especially since The Force Awakens, already the all-time top-grossing film of all time and one of the biggest events in movie history, was shut out in all the bigger categories. That's not to say the score is anything but sensational. It's fascinating to hear musical ideas that have become so integral to our culture reinterpreted for a new generation by the same composer who invented them. With Desplat already announced as the composer who will take the helm for spinoff Rogue One, this is the last score we'll hear before our whole idea of Star Wars music begins to change.

Garrett Tiedemann is a writer, filmmaker and composer who owns the multimedia lab CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records.

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