Evening the Score

Today's News I viewing of Wall-E got me to thinking about a few things. First of all, I couldn't believe that we convinced our professor to watch the whole movie based on the importance of tone of voice. Your tuition at work, parents!

Second (and more significantly), I think that Wall-E really got robbed for best score. Hear me out.

This is nothing against Slumdog Millionaire and A.R. Rahman. The movie and the score were divine, and regular readers/skimmers of this blog already know that I gave it much praise and respect. The score is brilliant to that movie, and really enhances the story and enriches the cultural viewing portion of it.

But without the score, Wall-E would fall flat. The story (which should have been nominated for Best Picture overall, not just Best Animated Picture) has virtually no dialogue, and the first verbal interaction is almost 40 minutes into the movie. Would it really be the same without music? I think not.

So here's to the Oscars re-evaluating what a score means to a movie. Slumdog Millionaire was brilliant and deserves all of its awards. Except for this one, in which Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel got robbed. Come on, how can you resist those little robotic eyes?