Photo by David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock (5599373ju)
Legendary composer takes home top honors at the 88th Annual Academy Awards.
After composing well over 500 original scores (not to mention almost single-handedly defining the sound for European horror and genre film film in the 1960s and ’70’s), legendary Italian film music architect Ennio Morricone has won his first competitive Academy Award (he previously won a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2007, blusteringly presented by Clint Eastwood, who starred in many an iconic western scored by the Maestro) at last night’s 88th Annual Academy Awards.
Morricone took the statue for his work in Quentin Tarantino’s disorienting masterwork THE HATEFUL EIGHT, a typically lush, dramatic soundscape that was composed from QT’s screenplay, as opposed to making the music from the finished film. Key cues from earlier Morricone films also pop up in the film, including a passage from John Carpenter’s THE THING.
Morricone had earlier won the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for the critically divisive, 3 hour, 70mm, epic western film.
And while awards are almost meaningless in the face of the staggering impact Morricone has made upon the last half century of cinema, it sure is nice to see this elder statesmen of music, perhaps the greatest arranger of notes in film history, get his dues in front of a room filled with finely tailored artists and craftspeople, in the biggest ceremony of its kind in the world.
Though, as fellow SHOCK contributor Lee Gambin immediately stated after Morricone’s win:
“He should have won for ORCA instead…”
