[Dixielandjazz] The Oscars' Disgraceful Nominees for Best Song

[Robert Ringwald]

The Oscars' Disgraceful Nominees for Best Song
by David Hajdu
New Republic blog, January 27, 2012
An academy more ephemeral than Kaplan University, the body of movie-industry workers
who vote for the Oscars acted with rare judiciousness this week and made only two
nominations -- the lowest number in Academy Award history -- for Best Original Song.
To qualify, a tune must have been composed especially for the film in which it appears,
and it must play within the body of the movie or immediately at the end. (If a film
has more than one song during the closing credits, only the first of them qualifies
for a nomination.) Last month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released
a short list of thirty-nine qualifying songs, most of them musical numbers from kids'
films (such as "Love Builds a Garden" from "Gnomeo and Juliet" and "Bridge of Light"
from "Happy Feet Two") or grand, mushy "love themes" (such as "Lay Your Head Down"
from "Albert Nobbs" and "Rainbird" from "Dirty Girl," which are musically interchangeable).
Out of the thirty-nine, the only songs to receive scores high enough to earn nominations
are "Real in Rio," written by Sergio Mendes for the cartoon romance "Rio," and "Man
or Muppet," by Bret McKenzie for Disney's franchise reboot, "The Muppets." Neither
song is very good. But, in Oscar season, "best" is more relative a term than usual.
The other thirty-seven songs are no better.
Established in 1934, when the nominated tunes all came from the budding genre of
movie musicals ("The Gay Divorcee," "Flying Down to Rio," and the aptly forgotten
"She Loves Me Not"), the Best Original Song award is an artifact from the time when
people got nearly all their entertainment at the movies and expected to get every
kind of entertainment while they were there -- thrills, romance, comedy, and songs.
By the 1940s, the most esteemed composers in popular music -- Irving Berlin, Jerome
Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, among others -- were all writing
original songs for film, and the Oscar nominations for Best Song went to tunes that
soon came to be regarded as standards: Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," the Gershwins'
"They Can't Take That Away from Me," Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin," Arlen
and Yip Harburg's "Over the Rainbow." With the exception today of animated features,
which carry on the tradition of movie musicals as kitsch for kids, films have no
need for songs except as marketing tools -- mechanisms of cross-promotion and free
publicity on YouTube. The songs that cue up now with the end credits and vie for
Oscar nominations tend to sound like what they are: marketing passing for music.
Of course, there have always been bad songs in contention for Oscars: years ago,
piff like "Silver Shadows and Golden Dreams" and "Sleighride in July"; and more recently,
the pandering things like "Almost There" and "We Belong Together" that the otherwise
great and important Randy Newman blurts out every few years on contract. Moreover,
some of the most memorable songs in Oscar history have appeared in movies best forgotten,
such as Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's "Accentuate the Positive," which made its
debut in a performance by Bing Crosby in blackface in the wartime trifle "Here Come
the Waves." Duck your head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GLz5OjosOo
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-famous-door/100109/oscars-muppets-song-nominees-bad-choice


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.