Composing Greatness: #9. Thomas Newman - "WALL-E" (2008)

Scene from WALL-E

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.

Best Song: "Jai Ho" (2008)

Scene from Slumdog Millionaire

Welcome to Best Song, a new weekly column released on Sunday dedicated to chronicling the Best Original Song category over the course of its many decades. The goal is to listen to and critique every song that has ever been nominated in the category as well as find the Best Best Song and the Best Loser. By the end, we'll have a comprehensive list of this music category and will hopefully have a better understanding not only of the evolution, but what it takes to receive a nomination here. It may seem easy now, but wait until the bad years.

The Top 10 Pixar Directors

This weekend marks the release of Pixar's 17th feature Finding Dory (review coming soon). Following the highly successful Finding Nemo after 13 years, it continues to see Pixar's influence on the zeitgeist being held strong and true. But what about the voices behind these now iconic films? With a strong and diverse roster of talents, it feels important to recognize the voices that brought the works to life. The following is a list of my Top 10 favorite Pixar directors based on how I ranked every entry. While the Top 5 features the familiar heavyweights, the bottom half manages to feature some lesser known talents that will hopefully continue to make quality work and find themselves further up on the list. For those missing, it was an often close competition and hopefully they will pose a threat as the studio enters its third decade of quality animated work.

Trivia: How Many Oscars Has Pixar Been Nominated For?

When it comes to the Oscars, few studios have had as unanimous a reputation with them as Pixar. Where many directors and actors have been known to get countless nominations, there hasn't been a studio with a release schedule in which audiences could pretty much not only predict a nomination, but also a win (specifically in Best Animated Feature). But how well does Pixar actually do at the Oscars? Is their reputation as great as you'd think? In honor of this week's release of Inside Out, here's a by the numbers look of each film and short that the studio has released and what their actual winning track record actually is.

Ranking Pixar's Best Animated Feature Winners

Pop Quiz: How many times has Pixar won Best Animated Feature? To some, the notion is to believe that it has won every time out of the gate. However, as noted yesterday, this fact may not be entirely true. While the studio has earned an impressive 7 of the 14 wins, there's been a few that have missed the cut, including Monsters Inc. and Cars - and some didn't even get nominated at all. However, with Inside Out coming out Friday and looking to be a strong contender for an eighth victory, it feels like a good time to not necessarily rank all of Pixar's films, but only those that have won an Oscar. Who comes out on top? You'll have to read on to find out.