Thomas Newman's haunting Oscar-nominated score to Saving Mr. Banks. LISTEN

If I can't have Desplat's Philomena for Best Score, I'll take the score to Saving Mr. Banks. Thomas Newman's work is my second choice to beat out Gravity, Her and even The Book Thief - from the iconic and 49 time nominee, John Williams, another audience favorite. Williams has won the award five times, the last time the maestro won was for Schindler's List in 1994; we'll take a listen to The Book Thief in my next post.
You can hear Newman and some of his fellow nominees chat about their work in this THR composers roundtable I posted back at the end of December.

There is something so haunting about Newman's music, in much the same way that Emma Thompson's JP Travers character is haunted by the past. And the way Newman married the Sherman Bros familiar music with his original compositions was genius. Newman has been nominated 10 times but like Desplat has yet to take Oscar home with him. This is a win I could happily live with. Newman was previously nominated for Skyfall, WALL·E, The Good German, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Finding Nemo, Road to Perdition, American Beauty, Unstrung Heroes, Little Women and The Shawshank Redemption. A pretty impressive batch of scores, to be sure. LISTEN to what he's done this time around.