10 Oscar Film Categories That Should Totally Exist
5. Best Soundtrack
Where movies are concerned, a soundtrack essentially means "the songs that the people making the film picked to play over the scenes." In that sense, the act of creating a soundtrack is more of an exercise of careful selection than a truly creative endeavour - but there is a undeniable skill involved with doing such a thing. Especially when said soundtracks become later synonymous with the film. Quentin Tarantino has spent the sum of his career defining what it is to render a brilliant movie soundtrack; essentially, the man staples a track to a scene to the point where the scene itself is inseparable from the selected musical cue. Tarantino would have won three or four Oscars by now had this been a legitimate category, of course, though Martin Scorsese certainly would have given him a run for his money. Despite the fact that there are a lot of questionable elements inherent to "Best Soundtrack," it's hard to argue that it's a less relevant Oscar for "Best Original Song," most of which end up totally forgotten.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.