Cinema '62: Best Original Song

From scores we move on to songs - sing along, won't you, if you know the words?:

Cinema '62: Best Original Score

Each category always seems to have one lone nominee, the sole representative of a film that, perhaps, had greater Oscar dreams. I'm sure the lone nominee in this category had higher aspirations: Taras Bulba.

Based on the novel by Nikolai Gogol, Taras Bulba is the story of a family. Taras is a proud Cossack, a ferocious military leader, an enemy of the Poles, a friend as well a father to his sons. His sons Andriy and Ostap are educated in Kyiv, where Andriy falls in love with a Polish noblewoman. This leads to some tensions when the Cossack take arms against the Polish government. Exciting battle scenes, with so many horses, extras, and pyrotechnics, you'll thrill even as you worry for everyone's safety! A bear pit! Lots of drinking and singing! Great performances!

And, of course, a sweeping, epic score - let's discuss further:

Day Three: Best Scores, 1961

A double dose of Oscar fun today, as we look at the nominees for Best Dramatic/Comedy Score and Best Musical Score. The former is what we would now know as Original Score; the latter, an unused category that has gone through many permutations, from Adapted Score to Song Score to Original Musical Score. This year was an especially odd one - a non-musical is nominated for its original score in the Musical category, while a film not in the Musical category lifted its score entirely from another medium. The very next year, the categories were distinguished between Substantially Original Score and Adaptation Or Treatment Score. You'll see why.

We start with the nominees for Musical Score - after the jump...

More Than Mere Noise: Score, 1993

And we're back! I hope you had a loverly weekend, that you caught up with our 1993 Retrospective, that you took a look at Andrew's contributions to our time travelling activities, and that you watched at least some of the flicks written about here.

You've seen Schindler's List, right? John Williams won for it.