The Best Original Song race is starting to fill out. We’ve added a few more to our contenders page in recent days, including tracks from “Celeste & Jesse Forever” and “West of Memphis,” but today comes the news that DreamWorks Animation’s “Rise of the Guardians” will feature a tune from acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming
“Still Dream” — a closing credits song — was written and produced by the film’s composer, Alexandre Desplat, with lyrics from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. It will be included on the soundtrack when it releases on November 13.
Said Desplat, “There is much more music in ‘Rise of the Guardians’ than is found in the average live-action film. The goal with the score was to emphasize every moment of joy, sadness and soul so that audiences would be able to dive with the characters into their worlds. The main theme, conveying all the wonder of children’s dreams and their beliefs, became the melody on which I wrote the song.”
Desplat is a four-time Oscar nominee and is one of the most prolific composing talents of his generation. He is in the hunt for Best Original Score recognition as well for the film and also contributed the scores to “Argo,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Rust & Bone” and “Zero Dark Thirty” this year.
Fleming was named 2012 Female Singer of the Year by the German Echo awards and is a three-time Grammy winner. Lindsay-Abaire, meanwhile, won the Pulitzer for “Rabbit Hole,” which was adapted into a film in 2010 by John Cameron Mitchell with Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman. He wrote the screenplay for “Rise of the Guardians,” which was adapted from William Joyce’s book. (You may recall Joyce won the Best Animated Short Oscar last year for “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.”
There will be more on the animated feature race here in the coming weeks. For now, we’ll add another contender to the Best Original Song category.
“Rise of the Guardians” opens nationwide on November 21.