This week on Oscars Outsider, we dive into one of the Academy’s strangest and most confusing categories: Best Original Score.From the early days of studio music departments to decades of split categories, reunited categories, musical exceptions, adaptations, and shifting definitions of what “original” even means, the Oscar for film music has had one of the messiest histories of any Academy Award. We trace how the category changed over time, why musicals caused so many problems, and how the Academy ended up rewarding — and ignoring — some of the most famous scores in movie history.Along the way, we talk Bernard Herrmann, Henry Mancini, Duke Ellington, West Side Story, John Williams, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Hans Zimmer, The Lion King, and why Oscar voters keep struggling to separate great movie music from great scores.

Spielberg is back with aliens — but is that enough to make Disclosure Day a real Oscar contender?

This week on Oscars Outsider, we close the book on Cannes, revisit whether the Palme d’Or winner Fjord is now a serious awards player, and dig into the strange politics already forming around its Oscar narrative. Then we turn to the summer movie season: Scorsese’s AI storyboarding controversy, Taylor Swift entering the Best Original Song race with Toy Story 5, whether Project Hail Mary could follow the Sinners path, and the big question behind our thumbnail: can Spielberg turn aliens into Oscar gold one more time?

We also talk Netflix’s shifting awards strategy, YouTuber-to-filmmaker anxiety, horror’s box office boom, Obsession, The Backrooms, and why nostalgia for the 1980s may finally be losing to internet-era nostalgia.

Chapters:

0:00 Cold Open

0:27 Welcome

0:54 Cannes Capstone: Fjord Wins the Palme d'Or

2:01 The Black Ball & Netflix's Awards Retreat

6:53 Is Fjord the Conservatives' Oscar Movie?

12:52 Scorsese Endorses an AI Company

16:30 Taylor Swift's Toy Story 5 Song

18:14 Project Hail Mary & the Sinners Playbook

19:45 Spielberg's Disclosure Day: Best Picture Player?

25:31 Obsession: The $1M Box Office Monster

28:22 The YouTuber-to-Filmmaker Debate

31:12 Backrooms Review

34:19 The Future of Nostalgia (RIP Masters of the Universe)

36:05 Tribeca & the Holding Pattern

37:33 Honorary Oscars + Outro

The Cannes awards are here, and somehow the Oscar race feels less clear than it did before.

In this episode of The Oscars Outsider Podcast, we react to the major winners from the Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d’Or win for Fjord, and try to figure out what any of it means for the Oscar race.

The big question: did Cannes give us a new frontrunner, or did it make the whole season even messier?

We dig into the Screen Cannes jury grid, where Fjord landed at 2.5 while several other contenders, including Fatherland, Minotaur, and All of a Sudden, scored higher. We also talk through the mismatch between critical consensus and jury awards, which films feel stronger after Cannes, which ones suddenly look shakier, and whether the Palme winner is actually positioned for Oscar attention.

If you follow Cannes, Oscar season, festival buzz, or the strange gap between critics’ favorites and awards bodies, this episode is for you.

Subscribe for more Oscar race analysis, festival reactions, and awards season chaos.