Annal:2009 Academy Award® for Achievement in Music (Original Score)

From AwardAnnals

Results of the Academy Award® in the year 2009. For a ranked list of albums, try an honor roll:

<–2008
Academy Award®
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In composing the music for acclaimed director Danny Boyle’s intoxicating new film Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman has conjured the sound of a city, fusing the frenetic scramble of daily life in Mumbai, India into beautiful fugues that ride upon the dust clouds kicked up by its everyday people.

From the movie’s first frames—with children racing through alleyways, knocking over merchants and pottery, police kicking loose clay roof tiles, disrupted birds fluttering from gutters—we hear the sound of their commotion made manifest in “O…Saya.” It’s a rumbling hybrid of Bollywood and hip-hop, a brand new collaboration between Rahman and M.I.A. It’s the kind of cinematic moment where image and sound coexist. And that’s only the first five minutes.

Filmed in the streets and slums of Mumbai, India, Boyle needed just the right music to compliment the film’s cinema verité urban realism. He turned to internationally renowned composer A.R. Rahman (a huge star in South Asia—selling more than 100 million albums worldwide and 200 million cassettes—Rahman is one of the…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Music from the Motion Picture

Alexandre Desplat

Alexandre Desplat’s score creates a mesmerizing sonic mindscape that mirrors the unique emotional world of the movie’s lead character, Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt). Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the score and movie explore the life of some one who is born an old man and ages backwards.

Benjamin’s life progresses in retrograde motion, from his birth at the close of World War I to his death at the start of the 21st century. During his backwards lifetime, he falls in love with an exquisite beauty named Daisy (Cate Blanchett). As deep and genuine as their love may be, Benjamin’s reverse biology makes a lasting union impossible.

Desplat’s haunting score creates a mystical, diaphanous haze through which we watch events in Benjamin Button’s life transpire as if through a scrim of heart-tugging sadness.

Defiance: Music from the Motion Picture

James Newton Howard

2009 Golden Globe-Score nominee
2009 Oscar-Score nominee
Score: 12.59

Milk: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Danny Elfman

2009 Oscar-Score nominee
Score: 6.59

Milk has an original score by Grammy and Emmy Award® winner Danny Elfman (“Batman,” “Desperate Housewives).

WALL•E: An Original Soundtrack

Thomas Newman

2009 BAFTA-Music nominee
2009 Oscar-Score nominee
Score: 12.59

What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?

WALL•E fans will be swept away with this soundtrack that recaptures the fantastic adventures of the Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class. Featuring an original score by Thomas Newman, the soundtrack also includes a brand new track from Peter Gabriel, “Down to Earth.”