Veterans' Day

Do these defeats rankle the courtly, classy 72-year-old composer? Well, of course--even if it only bugs the completist in him. "It's one of the few honors that is missing for me," acknowledges Morricone, speaking through a translator from his lifelong hometown of Rome. "And it's an important recognition for the morality of the profession." By which he is saying, in his polite fashion, that even other composers are embarrassed that he hasn't won yet.

He probably won't win this year, either: Odds are that Academy voters will opt for the meat-and-potatoes ancient Rome of Hans Zimmer's Gladiator score (how ironic) or the symphonic star power of Tan Dun and Yo-Yo Ma's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Not that the classically trained Morricone is a concert-stage slouch: He's composed some 80 non-film pieces, some of which he conducted at a recent, well-received performance in London. And his habit, rare in the movie-scoring world, of handling all his own arranging and orchestrating chores, bespeaks a man who sees himself as part of a tradition that measures itself in centuries rather than decades. "The great composers of the past," says Morricone, "they alone did their arrangements and orchestrations, and one must always take their example."

Fair enough--and remember, Bach never got an Oscar either. --Ty Burr

CALEB DESCHANEL

The dusk sky was almost blue-black when cinematographer Caleb Deschanel set up an extraordinary battle for The Patriot: a skirmish between British and American soldiers on the front lawn of a Southern mansion circa 1776. What he wanted was to light the scene primarily with flashes of gunpowder exploding like so many strobe lights.

"I kept telling Roland [Emmerich, the director], I don't think we're getting anything on film," Deschanel recalls. "It was so dark, and the flashes so bright. Too contrasty. But I figured, let's keep shooting anyway and see what happens."

The experiment worked beautifully. And that bent for creative envelope-pushing has helped land the 59-year-old Deschanel his fourth Oscar nomination, following The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984), and Fly Away Home (1996). "It's particularly gratifying to be recognized for The Patriot," he says. "Columbia [Pictures] really did almost nothing to promote it in the usual way, which is ads in Variety."

Not that Deschanel is one to demand tribute. Director Philip Kaufman (Quills) attests that his Right Stuff lensman, whose first major screen credit was the John Cassavetes drama A Woman Under the Influence (1974), is the soul of self-effacement off the set. But don't try crossing him on set when he's focused on getting a certain effect. Kaufman recalls one morning when Deschanel arrived at a desert area outside Edwards Air Force Base to find that some joyriding driver had ignored umpteen "Keep Off" signs and was imprinting tire tracks all over what had been scouted as a pristine sand vista. "Caleb jumped out of our car onto the hood of this guy's vehicle, and began jumping up and down," Kaufman says. "He was determined to stop him from ruining our [shot]. It was both mad and incredibly heroic. You want to work with people who care to that extreme." --Steve Daly