Annal:2002 Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Anthony Asquith Award in the year 2002. For a ranked list of albums, try an honor roll:
Moulin Rouge: Music from the Film
- 2002 BAFTA-Music winner
- 2002 Golden Globe-Score winner
- Score: 20.52
Nicole Kidman playing a singing prostitute? Ewan McGregor channeling the Police? If the soundtrack to director Baz Luhrmann’s freakish musical Moulin Rouge has its way, we’ll all be wearing corsets and swinging from the ceiling while the former Mrs. Tom Cruise becomes our favorite new pop sensation. As daring as Luhrmann himself, the compositions test Kidman—who could have easily used a league of backup singers and studio knob-twiddlers to hide her inexperience—and she actually passes. She’s no Olivia Newton-John, but she capably mixes Madonna’s “Material…
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Music from the Motion Picture
- 2002 BAFTA-Music nominee
- Score: 6.52
Howard Shore’s music for the massively successful first film chapter of Tolkien’s Ring saga won him the Oscar® for Best Original Score, something of a surprise given the music’s ambitious scale and determinedly dark overtones, factors that handily blurred the line between typical film fantasy music and accomplished concert work. Its sequel takes the same, often Wagnerian-scaled dramatic tack, following the film’s story line into even more brooding and ominous dark corners. The previous film’s Hobbit-inspired pastoralism is supplanted here…
Mulholland Drive: Original Motion Picture Score
Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch
- 2002 BAFTA-Music nominee
- 2002 Golden Globe-Score nominee
- Score: 12.52
Director David Lynch’s affection for kitschy lounge music and emotionally overwrought mid-century pop has long since proven to be more than trend or irony; indeed, it’s often the uneasy spiritual axis of his films. The soundtrack of Mulholland Dr. turns on the usual Lynchian motifs (the brooding atmosphere of Angelo Badalamenti’s ominous synth-and-orchestra cues tossed with a dash of Lynch’s own off-center compositions), yet manages to evoke a sense of foreboding that’s distinctly its own. Badalamenti leads off with a curve, the nervous orchestra…
Shrek: Music from the Original Motion Picture
Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, Various Artists
- 2002 BAFTA-Music nominee
- Score: 6.52
Like The Muppet Show or The Simpsons, Shrek is tiered with visual appeal, fantasy, and sophisticated humor that appeals to children and adults on two mutually exclusive levels. Judging by the soundtrack alone, there is some genuine emotion coming from this movie; Rufus Wainwright, the Proclaimers, and especially the Eels all pen winsome, longing tunes. Dana Glover’s “It Is You (I Have Loved)” represents the soundtrack’s requisite glossy ballad, but it’s better than most, and John Powell’s climactic, orchestral “True Love’s First Kiss” makes…
Amélie: Original Soundtrack
- 2002 BAFTA-Music nominee
- Score: 6.52
This sunny comic fable from idiosyncratic director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children, Alien Resurrection, Delicatessen) boasts any number of intimate charms, not the least of which is Yann Tiersen’s warmly inviting score. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Tiersen’s work and training may have masterfully encompassed classical, pop, and rock, but his delightful Amélie music proves he is slave to none. In this, his fourth soundtrack, Tiersen displays an impressive command of idiom and melodic subtlety that’s rightfully drawn…
