At 10:53 AM 2/23/2009, [email protected] wrote:
Over the past few years, I've noticed that the level of
songwriting in the "Best Song" Academy Award category has
diminished to the point of pure mediocrity. Not only are only THREE
songs nominated (didn't it always used to be 5?), but the songs
that ARE nominated won't be remembered 3 or 4 years from
now---songs like "As Time Goes By" will never be forgotten. Hey,
I'm not a big fan of "Moon River", but it seems like Mozart next to
the inferior "songs" that are nominated these days. When "It's Hard
To Be A Pimp" won a couple of years ago, I thought we'd nit an
all-time low (maybe we had, come to think about it...)
Why wasn't Bruce Springsteen's closing song from "The Wrestler"
nominated? When I saw that film, the whole audience stayed in their
seats to listen to that song, which captured the essence of the
movie perfectly. Isn't that what "Best Song Of The Year" should
do? It was BY FAR the best song of the year. Whether you're a fan
of Springsteen or not, I think you'll agree with me if you watch
"The Wrestler" and listen to it over the closing credits. It seems
like the art of writing a great, enduring song is a thing of the
past when it comes to The Oscars....
The rules for the Oscars are a bizarre amalgam of attempts to correct
problems by which they create new and different problems. In order to
eliminate nominations for songs unrelated to the content of the film but
included at the end to goose up soundtrack album sales, the Academy
change the rules a couple years ago to declare that songs had to appear
during the film and could not be just in the credits (this also dealt with
Disney's submitting versions of songs sung by rock stars over the closing
credits rather than the version sung by voice actors during the actual film).
That's what did in Springstein's song "The Wrestler". Seeing which songs
ended up getting nominations and which songs were ineligible this year
(there was another really good song that got axed for similar reasons but
I forget what it was at the moment), the Academy is going back in to once
again rethink the Best Song category's rules for next year.
Craig.
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Craig Miller Wolfmill Entertainment [email protected]
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