Michael Giacchino won his first Academy Award last night. The Oscar for ‘Best Original Score’ went to his widely acclaimed score for the Pixar hit Up, a score that previously has been awarded the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and a Grammy among many other honours. Giacchino spoke about the dream coming true in his acceptance speech, saying to the “kid out there who do not have a support system” that “if you want to be creative, go out there and do it. It is not a waste of time.”

Ryan Bingham and T. Bone Burnett took home the ‘Best Original Song’ Oscar with “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart. The score from the same film was never in competition as it had been ruled ineligible.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed this year’s Oscar nominations. No big surprises in the Best Original Score category, where Michael Giacchino’s Golden Globe-nominated score for Up was joined by Hans Zimmer’s Sherlock Holmes, Marco Beltrami’s and Buck Sanders’ The Hurt Locker, Alexandre Desplat’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and, of course, James Horner’s Avatar.

Composer Michael Giacchino set a new record in the six year long history of the International Film Music Critics Association Awards with nine (9) nominations for his output in 2009. Along with several mentions for his score to the animated Up (which also earned the composer the Golden Globe) and Star Trek, the 42-year old composer received nominations for television series Lost as well as documentary Earth Days.

Michael Giacchino won the Golden Globe Award for his score for the Pixar movie Up when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association revealed their final honours for 2009 yesterday. Up also won the ‘Best Animated Feature Film’ award. The Golden Globe for ‘Best Original Song’ went to Ryan Bingham and T. Bone Burnett for “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)”. The other nominees in the score category were Marvin Hamlisch for The Informant!, James Horner for Avatar, Abel Korzeniwoski and A Single Man and Karen O./Carter Burwell for Where the Wild Things Are.

Below is video footage of Giacchino’s short and appearance at the press conference.

In the past ten years, Hans Zimmer has been the most commercially succesful film composer working in Hollywood. Other composers who join the exclusive club of composers who worked on films grossing over 2.5 billion dollars in the USA during the first decade of the new millennium are John Powell, John Debney, Danny Elfman, John Williams, James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri. MovieScore Magazine has made an exclusive analysis of the US box office figures 2000-2009 and brings you the list of the top-100 most succesful film composers in the US.

A number of critically acclaimed composers will not be a part of the Oscar race this year, The Wrap reports. Brian Eno, who recently scored Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, is not eligible simply due to the reason that the composer never was submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration. According to the Warp article by Steve Pond, Eno “simply felt that he didn’t have time to submit the required paperwork and submit to the type of publicity campaign necessary” to run for an Oscar nomination.

The Golden Globe nominations for the 2010 awards were revealed yesterday, and the score category was a mix of surprises and “usual suspects”. Veterans James Horner and Marvin Hamlisch were nominated for Avatar and The Informant respectively, fan favorite Michael Giacchino for Up and newcomer Abel Korzeniowski for A Single Man (Korzeniowski only just had his big break in the business with the big orchestral score for animated feature Battle for Terra). Also nominated are Karen O. and Carter Burwell for Where the Wild Things Are.