This year's race for the original score Oscar is, like last year's, multicultural, with a Frenchman, a Spaniard and an Argentinian competing against two Americans. Two are first-time nominees and one is a past winner.
Don't count out either the foreign-born composers (nine of the past 12 winners were born outside the U.S.) or the first-timers (six of the past 10 winners won on their first nomination). Also, an ethnic-music component never hurts: Seven of the past 12 score winners contained exotic instrumentation.
The front-runners would appear to be the two first-time nominees: Paris-based Alexandre Desplat, for his light and often whimsical music for "The Queen," and Barcelona-based Javier Navarrete, whose alternately tender and dramatic, orchestral and choral score for "Pan's Labyrinth" heightened the emotional stakes of the dark fantasy.
Desplat's nomination carries additional weight because of his well-liked music for "The Painted Veil" (a recent Golden Globe winner) and the much-talked-about but unnominated scores for "Girl With a Pearl Earring" and "Birth" over the past three years.
Americans Thomas Newman and Philip Glass are the veterans in this crowd: Newman, the popular local whose seven prior noms have not yet won him the prize; and Glass, the New York concert and opera composer who previously had two noms without a win.
Newman's 90-piece orchestral score for "The Good German," the film's only nom, had to seem like a Warner Bros. postwar film score, something that Max Steiner might have written, but also had to supply the requisite dramatic beats for a contemporary audience. He could benefit from the same crowd sentiment that won his cousin Randy Newman a first Oscar after 16 tries: It was simply time to give him one.
Glass' ominous music for "Notes on a Scandal" strikes the right mood and helps illuminate the characters played by Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench. But it's also signature Glass with minimalist figures -- still a divisive approach among many in the Hollywood music establishment.
Argentinian Gustavo Santaolalla wrote much of his "Babel" score before shooting, playing such exotic instruments as the oud, gembri and ronrico. He may be the longest shot because he won last year for his guitar score for "Brokeback Mountain."