Composer-conductor Ennio
Morricone, who has composed more than 300 motion picture
scores over a 45-year career, has been voted an Honorary
Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.
The Award, an Oscar? statuette,
will be given to Morricone at the 79th Academy Awards? presentation
on February 25, 2007, “for his magnificent and multifaceted
contributions to the art of film music.”
Morricone has earned five
Academy Award nominations for original score — for “Days
of Heaven” (1978), “The Mission” (1986), “The Untouchables”
(1987), “Bugsy” (1991) and “Malèna” (2000) — but has not
previously received an Oscar.
“The board was responding
not just to the remarkable number of scores that Mr. Morricone
has produced,” said Academy President Sid Ganis, “but to
the fact that so many of them are beloved and popular masterpieces.”
While the bulk of his work
has been on Italian films, including “The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly,” “Once upon a Time in America” and “Cinema
Paradiso,” Morricone has composed memorable scores for such
international titles as “Bulworth,” “In the Line of Fire,”
“La Cage aux Folles” and “Two Mules for Sister Sara.” His
current project, “Leningrad,” has been announced for a 2008
release.
Born in Rome, Morricone was
hired in 1964 by Sergio Leone and began a long collaboration
with the director on what came to be known as “spaghetti
westerns,” though his career has spanned most film genres
from comedy to romance to horror.
Morricone’s Honorary Oscar
will be presented, along with other Academy Awards for outstanding
film achievements of 2006, on Sunday, February 25, 2007
at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center?.
The Oscars? will be televised live by the ABC Television
Network beginning at 5 p.m. PST (8 p.m. EST), with a half-hour
red carpet arrivals segment, “The Road to the Oscars.”(see
here)
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