Notes not so sweet

Grammy-Award winning Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber are not in the Oscar race for their collaboration Beautiful ghosts in the upcoming movie Cats. The Academy on Monday revealed the Oscars shortlist, sharing the remaining contenders in nine categories, including Best Original Song and Score.

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The biggest surprise was the omission of Beautiful ghosts, the much-talked-about collaboration between Swift and Lloyd Webber.

The shortlisted contenders for Best Original Song and Score features five songs from Disney movies and three from documentaries. The 300-member music branch picked 15 songs from 75 entered this year, and 15 scores from an eligibility list of 170. The lists will be shortlisted further to five each when voting for the nominations begins on January 2. Nominees will be announced on January 13.

Those who got through

Elton John made it to the song list twice: once with lyricist Bernie Taupin for (I’m gonna) love me again from Rocketman and once with Tim Rice for Never too late, the end title song from The Lion King. Beyonce’s Spirit, from The Lion King, also made the cut. Other major pop figures represented in the list include Pharrell Williams for Letter to my godfather, which accompanied the end titles of The Black Godfather and Thom Yorke for Daily Battles in Edward Norton’s period drama Motherless Brooklyn.

The list also mentions Charles Fox-Paul Williams’ Da bronx, Kathryn Bostic’s song High above the water from the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am and A glass of soju from the foreign-language hit Parasite by Jung Jae-il.

There’s also Into the unknown from box-office hit Frozen 2 by two-time Oscar winners Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez; Speechless from the Aladdin remake by eight-time winner Alan Menken and La La Land winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul; and two-time winner Randy Newman’s I can’t let you throw yourself from Toy Story 4. The other animated film to get in the list was The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part for its Catchy song.

Diane Warren also made the cut for her song I’m standing with you from Breakthrough. — IANS