Composing Greatness: #5. James Horner - "Braveheart" (1995)

Scene from Braveheart

Welcome to Composing Greatness: a column dedicated to exploring the work of film composers. This will specifically focus on the films that earned them Oscar nominations while exploring what makes it so special. This will be broken down into a look at the overall style, interesting moments within the composition, and what made the score worth nominating in the first place. This will also include various subcategories where I will rank the themes of each film along with any time that the composer actually wins. This is a column meant to explore a side of film that doesn't get enough credit while hopefully introducing audiences to an enriched view of more prolific composers' work. This will only cover scores/songs that are compiled in an easily accessible format (so no extended scores will be considered). Join me every Sunday as I cover these talents that if you don't know by name, you recognize by sound.

Composing Greatness' Next Subject Is... James Horner!

Scene from Titanic

After a longer than expected hiatus, it's time for the return of Composing Greatness. The column recognizes the best in movie music composition by analyzing the work of greats through their Oscar-nominated work. Past subjects have included such figures as John Williams, Rachel Portman, and Thomas Newman. In the latest installment, I thought that I would shift focus to someone whose work holds a significant place in pop culture in a different way. This Oscar-nominated composer not only received nominations for three Best Picture winners but also worked on two of the highest grossing movies in box office history. Who is this amazing talent? Read on to find out!

Why "Moonlight" Winning Best Picture is a Big Deal

By all accounts, the 89th annual Academy Awards ceremony was going according to plan. Over the course of the evening through 24 categories, the nominees who had won almost every preliminary got up and gave acceptance speeches. There was nothing new. There rarely is when it comes to the Oscars. Viola Davis won. Emma Stone won It was a predictable even. That is, until the last category was announced. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced La La Land, which was predicted to sweep the entire ceremony. Moments later, it was revealed that there was a mistake and that Moonlight actually won. While this is a moment that will be analyzed for decades to come, it should also be seen as a ceremonious moment that hopefully marks a change in the Academy Awards. Hopefully, this is the moment where things become more inclusive.

Theory Thursday: "Braveheart" is Overrated

Mel Gibson

Welcome to a weekly column called Theory Thursdays, which will be released every Thursday and discuss my "controversial opinion" related to something relative to the week of release. Sometimes it will be birthdays while others is current events or a new film release. Whatever the case may be, this is a personal defense for why I disagree with the general opinion and hope to convince you of the same. While I don't expect you to be on my side, I do hope for a rational argument. After all, film is a subjective medium and this is merely just a theory that can be proven either way. 

Nothing But the Best: "Braveheart" (1995)

Mel Gibson

Welcome to the series Nothing But the Best in which I chronicle all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners as they celebrate their anniversaries. Instead of going in chronological order, this series will be presented on each film's anniversary and will feature personal opinions as well as facts regarding its legacy and behind the scenes information. The goal is to create an in depth essay for each film while looking not only how the medium progressed, but how the film is integral to pop culture. In some cases, it will be easy. Others not so much. Without further ado, let's start the show.

What "The Danish Girl," Says About the Oscar's Problematic Relationship with LGBT Movies

Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl

Last night, I decided to catch up on the missing links in my Oscar-nominated movies for this year. I decided to tackle director Tom Hooper's The Danish Girl: a film that I inevitably had high hopes for, if just because of what 2015 was symbolically in the LGBT community. Beyond America legalizing gay marriage, it was the time when we had multiple noteworthy trans celebrities, cinema was hitting new strides with Tangerine, and Transparent was continuing its yearlong (and arguably still going) success. Transgender culture is probably more accepted than it ever had been, and The Danish Girl could be the period to the sentence. Of course, that is problematic to say, but what became abundantly clear is that it was actually doing the opposite. Despite its romanticism, The Danish Girl featured stereotypes akin to the gay best friend with flamboyancy and a lisp. While it took some reading to fully understand why, it's generally one of the problems with The Academy's recent crop of nominees.

Do Historical Dramas Need to Be Entirely Accurate?

Scene from Stonewall

There's been something that I have secretly been hoping for this Oscar season. I have hoped that there would be a strong representation of gay culture. Of course, there's The Danish Girl and Carol leading the pack while hopefuls like Freeheld have faded from bad reviews. However, there's likely not to be a film more perplexing than that of director Roland Emmerich's Stonewall. More than these three films, Stonewall felt like a film that wanted to matter for a lot of reasons, specifically at capturing the intensity and historical aspects of one of the LGBT community's most important events. Much like how Selma captured the plight of the 60's Civil Rights movement, I hoped that this would be some unexpected masterpiece. Is it? Well, the film currently holds a low 8% on critics aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes for a variety of reasons. So, be honest with yourself, was Stonewall good intention or just one of the most misguided Oscar-bait movies in years?

Why "Apollo 13" Remains One of the Best Space Films 20 Years Later

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 known as Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. It was a historic moment in American history and one that has come to epitomize the dreamers in all of us. It is likely why outer space has always been an intriguing place for fiction to visit, whether it be Star Trek or more recently with last year's Interstellar. Yet despite the real world success, outer space remains a largely fictional place on screen where even the best films like Gravity are nitpicked by scientists like Neil Degrasse Tyson for its numerous inaccuracies. It is with this general dissent that makes it harder to argue against director Ron Howard's Apollo 13, which turns 20 today and still features one of the most accurate depictions of space and remains one of the few true stories to tackle a realm beyond our atmosphere. For that reason, and so much more, it deserves far more recognition than it gets.

R.I.P. James Horner (1953-2015)

On Monday, June 22, film composer James Horner died in a plane crash around Los Padres National Forest in California. He was an advocate for aviation and was one of many who owned personal planes. In a way, it was like the music that he composed for various epics with their soaring, enchanting beauty that took us someplace unexpected. His prolific output made him a household name and his collaborations with director James Cameron meant that he scored the two highest grossing films in history: Titanic and Avatar. What the legendary composer leaves behind is an impressive body of work that redefined how music was used in film and how it could impact our emotional responses.