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Things Are Looking 'Up' for Emmy, Grammy, Globe Winner Michael Giacchino

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Disney/Pixar's “Up" is a major player in this year's Oscars race, with nominations in five races, including one for best picture (the second 'toon ever to receive such a nomination). Its other nods are for original screenplay, sound editing, original music score and animated feature.

It's considered a lock to win for animated feature and has emerged as a front-runner in the music category where composer Michael Giacchino has received his second Oscar nomination. (His first was for Disney/Pixar's “Ratatouille" in 2007.)

Giacchino has already racked up several awards for his “Up" work, including the Critics Choice, Golden Globe and Grammy awards and is nominated for a BAFTA award -- the UK's version of the Oscar -- this weekend. He's already an Emmy winner as well for his regular work on ABC's “Lost," which is in its final season. He's had a big year since he also scored the Grammy-nominated music for “Star Trek" and another summer flick, the flop “Land Of The Lost."

“Land Of The Lost" aside, Giacchino is very picky about which projects he gets involved with, saying he needs to be inspired in some way to spend so much time working on a film. For him, “Up" was a no-brainer.

“When I heard the story, instantly I said I have to do that movie. I wanted to do it so badly. I'm always looking for the thing that inspires me or sets the fire in me somehow. I don't look for jobs per se, just things that will be fun for me to do and things I can get passionate about," he says.

That's why he gravitates to directors like J.J. Abrams, whom he has worked with on “Star Trek," “Lost" and “Alias"; Brad Bird on “Ratatouille" and “The Incredibles"; and “Up's" Pete Docter, because he feels they are just as passionate as he is about the music in their films. His next screen assignment is back at Pixar with director Andrew Stanton ("Wall E") on “John Carter From Mars," but that's a year away.

On “Up" he had a particular challenge in creating, musically, the dynamic between Carl (Ed Asner) and his wife, Ellie, who has died and left him a lonely widower but remains a very important part of the film. His composition “Ellie's Theme" is used in wildly different ways during the course of the entire movie.

“The music was going to represent her spirit. It's something I wanted to start out very small and just grow bigger and bigger as the film goes on," he says. “By the end it's done in kind of the most heroic way imaginable, and then at the very end comes right back where it started, a basic piano."

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