Oscars 2012 Category Breakdown: Best Original Song & Best Original Score & Best Foreign Language Film
Today we continue my breakdown of all the Oscar categories by going into Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Foreign Language Film.
Foreign Language Film is a category I don’t care about, and I’m glad this is an easy year for that.
Best Original Score is a category I like, even if they don’t always nominate stuff I like or vote for what should actually win. But there’s not much to say there. It’s like Cinematography. It’s usually more interesting than not and usually they vote well in it.
Best Original Song — I’m glad they finally changed that stupid ass voting process. That said, now the problem is that they don’t write good songs for films anymore. But that has nothing to do with the Oscar category. The branch tried to make their stupidity right, and I’ll respect that for the time being. Because that was much easier changed than a lack of great original songs for movies.
But, that’s what we’re doing today. I’ll go over all the past nominees of the categories, list this year’s nominees, then rank what I think each’s chances at winning are.
We start with Best Original Score, then move onto Song, then finish with Foreign Language Film: (more…)
2012 Oscars Update: Best Original Song Shortlist
This category is so much easier now. Remember before, when it used to be that stupid shit, they vote from 6-10 in increments of .5s, and a song needs an aggregate of 8.25 in order to be nominated? And how if no song did, they’d take the two highest vote-getters (kind of like last year, where we only had two nominees)? Well, there’s no more of that bullshit. Now there are guaranteed to be five nominees. And whichever songs from this following list get the highest votes from the music branch will be the five songs nominated.
So basically this is just like Best Picture, except we have a guaranteed list of shit. The songs I’m about to show you are songs that the music branch will sit down and watch (they make clips videos of all the songs), and whichever songs get the most votes (I’m assuming everyone gets to pick a 1-5, like with Best Picture) will be the ones in the final category.
So let’s start listening and seeing what we’d vote for, huh? (more…)
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (2006-2011)
Yeah…
2006: ”I NEED TO WAKE UP,” FROM AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (2001-2005)
And — the 2000s. Here’s where you really see why everyone asks what happened to this category.
2001: ”IF I DIDN’T HAVE YOU” from Monsters, Inc.
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1996-2000)
Not as strong as the first half of the 90s, but… it’ll do, pig.
1996: ”YOU MUST LOVE ME,” FROM EVITA
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1991-1995)
There are no words for this one. Just listen:
1991: ”BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,” FROM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1981-1985)
They don’t get any better than this first song:
1981: ”ARTHUR’S THEME (BEST THAT YOU CAN DO),” FROM ARTHUR
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1976-1980)
This will be a fun article. Because I think we can all agree that in nearly every year here, they made the wrong decisions. Well, at least in the majority of them. Still — jesus.
1976: ”EVERGREEN (LOVE THEME FROM A STAR IS BORN),” FROM A STAR IS BORN
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1971-1975)
This is where this category gets really interesting, because more people will have exponentially stronger opinions from here on out. So here’s 1971-1975
1971: ”THEME FROM SHAFT,” FROM SHAFT
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1966-1970)
Oh man, there’s some great stuff 1966-1970.
1966: ”BORN FREE,” FROM BORN FREE
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1961-1965)
Today is 1961-1965, and it’s gonna be great:
1961: ”MOON RIVER,” FROM BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1956-1960)
Today we round out the 50s. There’s some great stuff on here.
1956: ”WHATEVER WILL BE, WILL BE (QUÉ SERÁ, SERÁ), FROM THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1951-1955)
Today we hit the 50s, which is the golden age of the studio Technicolor musical and the golden age of the theme song. Let’s count how many times Sinatra and Dean Martin show up over the next decade.
1951: ”IN THE COOL, COOL, COOL OF THE EVENING,” FROM HERE COMES THE GROOM
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1946-1950)
1946-1950 today. Let’s get started:
1946: “ON THE ATCHISON, TOPEKA AND SANTA FE,” FROM THE HARVEY GIRLS
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1941-1945)
This is a lot of fun for me. I’m not even going to waste time with an introduction. Today we do Best Original Song from 1941-1945.
1941: ”THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS,” FROM LADY BE GOOD
Best Original Song: A Categorical History (1934-1940)
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Once I got done with all the Oscar Quest categories, I said to myself, “What other categories can I write up that would be fun?” And most of them wouldn’t be terribly interesting. Who really wants to hear me talk in depth about Best Sound? This one seemed like an obvious one because — we can all do it so easily.
All you really need to do to put forth an opinion on the Best Original Song category is listen to all the songs. Pretty simple. The hard part’s just finding them. Which I did. Though I’m linking to so many Youtube videos I can only do a couple of years at a time. Five, in fact. Otherwise it gets crazy and the pages take forever to load.
So that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll go through every year of Best Original Song, I’ll link to as many songs as I can find, and I’ll tell what I like and what I’d have voted for. And we’ll get to go over the rich history that is original songs in movies. (more…)
Oscars 2011 Breakdown: Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Animated Feature
Today we’re just grouping random things together. Normally I could spend a whole article just talking about Best Original Song and Best Original Score, but the music branch of the Academy has gotten so bad over the past decade that I can’t even bear to talk about how they make their decisions. I’d much rather look back in history at all the great stuff that’s come out of the categories. But since 2000, it’s been shit on top of shit on top of shit.
Then Best Foreign Langauge Film is a category I don’t much care about. I’m mostly interested in looking at what was nominated (since this is the first time I’m actually looking at the categories), just to see how many films I recognize. I’d wager that many of the films we know to be great foreign films didn’t even so much as make the nominees list, which is precisely why this category never meant anything to me. And Best Animated Feature — it’s a new category, created because of Pixar and Disney, and has basically been about rewarding Pixar and Disney. Except this year. I don’t really know what happened this year. It’ll take some time to figure that one out.
Anyway, those are the categories we’ll be dealing with today. I’ll try to contain my talk mostly to what’s nominated this year. What I’d actually like to say about these categories is too much for this one article. (more…)
2011 Oscars Update: Best Original Song
I love this category. It’s so fucked up.
The best thing about the Best Original Song category is how badly the Academy is in voting for it. This year, we’re going to catch it in the early stages. Just like cancer. Ideally.
The Academy has just announced 39 songs that have been shortlisted for Best Original Song. Very soon, the music branch of the Academy — those fuckers — will get together, listen to all these songs, along with accompanying clips. Clips from the film — kind of like when people make those shitty youtube videos. Then what they do is vote on the songs. The voting goes from 6-10, with half-star increments. Don’t ask why, that’s just how it works.
A song is required to have an average of 8.25 in order to be nominated. The highest 5 (if five songs get above 8.25) are nominated. If no songs receive an 8.25, there is no Best Original Song category that year. If only one receives an 8.25 average, then that one song, and the song that gets the second highest average, will be nominated. If two songs get it, they’re in. And I believe there’s some kind of tie scenario that leads to a revote. It’s fucked up, right? This explains how such terrible choices can get in year after year and the really good stuff routinely gets left off. (more…)
