Star Trek & Giacchino Nominated by Film Music Critics + Saldana at DGA Awards + Final Oscar Predictions

I hope Michael wins something for his Trek score. I just heard the War track from Avatar (haven’t seen the film yet) but to be honest it sounds kind of bland. It sounds like any other epic piece of soundtrack. This could be replaced with something from X-Ray Dog or by Horner himself and few would notice a difference. Up is the only serious contender to me as it did manage to move me, together with the images shown (such as the Married Life bit and on the end with the Adventure Book) but Trek’s score stands more on its own as Labor of Love for example moves me even without the video part (which it works extremely well with, best short scene ever). Enterprising Young Men is great but it only made a real impact when I watched it for the first time and saw the Star Trek title pop up and such.

On a side note, is there a competition for trailer (music)? Because I just watched Trailer 3 (that came with James Bond 22) of Trek09 and it blew me away again. One of the best trailers ever. That should win some awards too. The Kirk taking command was done excellently in that trailer as it actually had a musical buildup. In the movie it was extremely bland as there was no musical buildup so Kirk just sat down and there was no magic which there should’ve been as it was the culmination of 3/4 of the movies. That and Spock saying the Final Words are my biggest problems with the movie even moreso than the lack of Nero’s backstory (it’s nice so that people can see it in the Countdown books but it makes him very flat in the movie) and Delta Vega.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes. My computer has gone sideways. But, I hope, my ideas were made clear.

I don’t want Star Trek to get any nominations. The bar will then be set way too high for the sequel. Any sequel following an Oscar-nominated film is bound to fail at the box office and with the critics. After that we know the score. Paramount cuts budget and we’re back to cardboard sets. Or we wait for another “25 years”.

But if it does win something, I won’t complain.

#5 makes a great point – it really is a tune that stays with you – the others are forgotten already

Glad to see that ‘Enterprising Young Men’ is getting the attention it deserves.
I LOVE that piece of music.

For those who haven’t heard this yet, here is my version of that track from the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJiVWCOFOkk

Hope you like it.

@3 – i laughed out loud when I read your comment, because I find that true regarding most of Horner’s scores – a rehash/combinations of his previous scores. I lost interest in Horner’s work when I heard entire threads of it were rolled into Cocoon and others. Its one thing to have a recurring style, its another to fire up the xerox.

I am delighted that Trek is getting quality recognition, although I personally do not share the enthusiasm here for Giacchino’s ST09 score. I found it tedious and unimaginative, but clearly the best elements are Labor of Love and Enterprising Young Men. I just know there’s no way we’ll be humming or recognizing the theme to ST09 as a legendary piece of film music as we have Goldsmith’s TMP score.

While Avatar had a good score, it suffers the same fate that all of Horner’s scores have since he’s achieved elite status in Hollywood. He likes to apply the same tonal or thematic structure to his scores and simply modifies them to accommodate the unique environment of the film he’s making the score for. It may make for an efficient way to score a film, but you definitely get a sense of “been there, done that” while listening to his later works and end up with only a couple unique tracks of original music per score, if any at all.

Horner used to be my favorite, and I’ll still place early Horner high on my list of favorites, but newer artists like Giacchino and even more experienced artists like Hans Zimmer, who knows how to keep film scores fresh, have risen on my favorites list due to later Horner cutting corners.

So due to Horner’s paint by numbers composing as of late, (you can so hear the theme to “Glory” when the Na’vi first go to catch their flying creatures) and the sound effects ripped right out of Jurassic Park, “Star Trek” should have those awards in the bag if the Oscar voters even bother to watch movies.

Best visual effects. Deserving. My one (seemingly odd) beef, not against the effects themselves but the industrial vision of the future — the giant factory farm towers in Iowa (just finished Jonathan Saffran Foer’s “Eating Animals” so this terrified me) the brutalist buildings in San Francisco (which in TMP was planned to have been portrayed as a city taken over by nature) and on Vulcan. It worked in that it seemed a lot more real… but not quite a blueprint for what the future should look like… Can’t it be functional AND not so ugly? I’ve been waiting to find somewhere to post this…

Let’s hope it does win Trek XI you got to realise this movie was brilliant in my opinion off course

I do like James Horner. But he does, on occasion, copy from himself at times.

Haven’t seen Up or heard Giacchinno’s score from it. But it seems to be the best bet of Michael. Which is unfortunate as I felt his Trek work was pretty good. And his Lost stuff I think is under appreciated as well.