Hmmm...where do we begin?

Welcome to "Did You Just See What I Saw?"!  I'm your host, Gregory Moore, a somewhat jaded, yet still curious New Yorker with a fascination with popular culture.  I hope to provide an entertaining and sometimes even informative outlet on the web where we observe and recap some of the more interesting and bizarre events in the world as they happen.  I welcome your comments and observations as well and hope you continue to visit me here. (Before you forget, click on "Favorites" and "Save to Favorites" right now!).


Let's begin with...the 2011 Oscar nominations, just announced yesterday in Hollywood.  No big surprises there, right?  The King's Speech, The Social Network, The Black Swan....the usual suspects.   I'd rather discuss the all-but-obsolete category of "Best Song". 


The Academy Award for "Best Song" was first presented in 1934, for the song "The Continental" from The Gay Divorcee.  Subsequent memorable winners through the years have included, "The Way You Look Tonight," "Over the Rainbow," "White Christmas," "Moon River," "The Way We Were," and other classic tunes that were truly deserving of  award consideration.  Let's study the list of the Academy Award winning tunes for the past fifteen years:

1995:  "Colors of the Wind" — Pocahontas • Music: Alan Menken • Lyrics: Stephen Schwartz
1996:  "You Must Love Me" — Evita • Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber • Lyrics: Tim Rice
1997:   "My Heart Will Go On" — Titanic • Music: James Horner • Lyrics: Will Jennings
1998:   "When You Believe" — The Prince of Egypt • Music and lyrics: Stephen Schwartz
1999:  "You'll Be in My Heart" — Tarzan • Music and lyrics: Phil Collins
2000:  "Things Have Changed" — Wonder Boys • Music and lyrics: Bob Dylan
2001:  "If I Didn't Have You" — Monsters, Inc. • Music and Lyrics: Randy Newman
2002:  "Lose Yourself" — 8 Mile • Music: Eminem, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto • Lyrics: Eminem
2003:  "Into the West" — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King • Music and Lyrics: Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox
2004:  "Al otro lado del río" — The Motorcycle Diaries • Music and Lyrics: Jorge Drexler
2005:  "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp" — Hustle & Flow • Music and Lyrics: Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard.
2006:  "I Need to Wake Up" — An Inconvenient Truth • Music and Lyrics: Melissa Etheridge
2007:  "Falling Slowly" — Once • Music and Lyrics: Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová
2008:   "Jai Ho" — Slumdog Millionaire • Music: A. R. Rahman • Lyrics: Gulzar
2009:  "The Weary Kind" — Crazy Heart • Music and Lyrics: Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett
2010:  The nominees are:

• "Coming Home" — Country Strong • Music and Lyrics: Bob DiPiero, Tom Douglas, Hillary Lindsey and Troy Verges
• "I See the Light" — Tangled • Music: Alan Menken • Lyrics: Glenn Slater
• "If I Rise" — 127 Hours • Music: A. R. Rahman • Lyrics: Dido and Rollo Armstrong
• "We Belong Together" — Toy Story 3 • Music and Lyrics: Randy Newman

I'm not altogether unfamiliar with modern music, but as I go over this list, I find myself absolutely stumped to recall the tune to a single one of the winners of the past 15 years, except for "My Heart Will Go On"  from Titanic ("Jai Ho," anyone?  I defy anyone to hum even four consecutive bars of this award-winning tune from  from 2008).  The absolute nadir for this category was most surely 2005, when the winning song--the acknowledged "Best Song" of the year--was a random collection of grunts and howls with the elegant title, "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" (from something called Hustle and Flow).



Was this some kind of anarchic joke? 


And it seems that nearly every year (since around 1994), there is the ubiquitous "Randy Newman Cartoon Song" nomination--he even won the award in 2001.  And every single one of the songs sounds exactly the same as the last--sort of an ersatz-wry, "aren't I adorable?" ditty that one forgets the minute the tune ends.


(above:  The Great Randy Newman)


In recent years, with the utter paucity of screen musicals, it seems that nearly ANY song featured in a major film is an automatic contender for "Best Song".  Which makes one wonder about 2011's most prominent nomination "snub," which was the shut-out of last year's only actual "original musical film".  Though Burlesque was one of the year's biggest bombs, and the music was largely forgettable, the main song, "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me," should certainly have been atleast given a nomination, as the song was one of the few highlights of a pretty dismal film.  And Cher certainly put the song across with conviction (though I'm doubting we'll be hearing her performing it in this key "live," as it has all the earmarks of being digitally, er, "enhanced").





Well, in any case, Cher is pissed and bitter at the snub.  She took to her Twitter today to lament the situation:


“We didn’t get a nomination 4 best song ! That sucks ! Diane’s song Is so beautiful ! It’s hard to understand how u win … The Golden Globe 4 BEST SONG & not even get nominated by the OSCARS? Oh well it is..what it is ,,,,the sun is still shining !”


The bottom line is that this category needs to be put out of its misery altogether.  It's time to face the fact that the era of the "musical film" is lost and, seemingly, gone forever.  It wouldn't be a precedent-setting move:  The Academy has actually eliminated ten categories through the years, ranging from "Best Title Writing" (for silent films, which was only given out once) to "Best Scoring of a Musical" in 1957 (when the death knell for screen musicals had been tolled and heard by the Academy).  In the meantime, we'll all be on the edges of our seats as we breathlessly await Alan Menken's 5th Academy Award acceptance speech, for his latest wonderwork, "I See the Light," from Tangled.  What?  You don't remember it?  Yeah, me either....