Record Label: Sony Masterworks
Genre: Film Score
Buy on Amazon.com

Life of Pi won a bunch of awards during the Awards seasons, including the score for Life of Pi. I have no interest in seeing Life of Pi (still) and I was kind of baffled as to why Life of Pi was winning all these awards. Just from the few clips I heard from Mychael Danna’s score, it didn’t seem all that special to me.

After listening to the score in full, I think it’s a good film score but I don’t think comes in comparison to other scores (The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, Lincoln to name a few) that were released in 2012. Maybe it’s just personal preference, I don’t know, but I just didn’t think this was win-worthy. Danna is a good film composer but I’m kind of baffled as to why this earned a win for Best Score last year.

Most of the tracks on the album are under a minute long. As an avid film score listener, I hate that when the tracks are cut up that way. I can’t get into tracks because just as I’m getting a feel of the track, it’s over. But perhaps the way the music is used in the movie is better than the way it’s used on the album. I think the second portion of the score is better, mainly because the tracks are longer than 60 seconds. I think if the album was re-cut in a way that it bunched up the shorter tracks into longer ones, I might like this better.

Bottom Line: This score is okay but I’m wondering why it won an Oscar
Notable Tracks: Tsimtsum, God Storm, Back to the World
Overall Rating: