Next Poll Already Decided
We're doing "Best Original Song"
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A lot of people are talking about how Disney didn't get nominated for their flagship 100th animated feature, Wish. Which is a big deal, I am not disputing that. This was a stellar year for animation and the academy had a glut of good options that did not include Wish. (I would have liked makoto shinkai's Suzume to be nominated but...)
But I want to talk about something else that is probably sticking in Disney's craw.
None of their Animated movies, in particular Wish, were nominated for "best original song."
Starting in 1940 with "when you Wish upon a Star", Disney's animated features could be counted upon to receive a nomination for best original song often winning the Honor. This includes movies such as Bambi; Saludos Amigos; Cinderella, and that racist mess that Disney would like you to forget, Song of the South. Even during the years after Walt's death a bunch of songs were nominated from things like Pete's Dragon and The Rescuers. But it wasn't until The Little Mermaid and the animation Renaissance that Disney's almost stranglehold and expectation that they're animated films would get nominated for an Oscar for best song really came into the forefront.
Take a walk through the best song nominations from 1989 to now and pretty much the majority of Disney and/or Pixar movies put out in those years has a best song nomination. There are a few exceptions, there always are, but generally when Disney includes original songs in its Animated properties it gets nominated.
That makes this year so odd. Disney technically has a nomination with Diane Warren's song for Flamin' Hot, which I suspect has more to do with the fact that the academy loves to nominate Diane Warren and then never give her the Oscar. ~_^ The big thing I noticed was that there were no nominations for Wish or even Elemental. And even more crucially, there was no one setting up a hue or cry that these movies (particularly Wish) didn't get nominated for best song.
Wish had all of the ingredients to be both an Oscar Bait for best animated feature and best original song. And the academy ignored it.
And frankly, I think this is 100% deserved. Wish was an okay movie. It wasn't good it wasn't bad it was just okay. And it's songs were forgettable.
Worse than that, in my opinion, they were unsingable. And what I mean by that is the songs were so complex so lyrically and musically difficult that a four-year-old in a princess dress would struggle to sing them. There were too many jumps and the lyrics were incredibly tongue twisty and they even sounded difficult for an accomplished singer like Ariana DeBose to sing. Seriously, the chorus of This Wish has so many jumps and drops that it is almost impossible to stay on key and also follow the melody. The music is just there.
When I walked out of the theater, I couldn't remember any of the songs. I still can't. And as most of my friends can tell you I have a bloody musical memory. I remember songs.
The first time I saw Barbie, I had three of the songs (What was I made for, I'm just Ken, and Pink) wrestling for dominance over who was going to be my earworm for the day. The same thing was true with Frozen, Moana, Encanto, beauty and the Beast, and even Tarzan. I still can't remember the music from Wish at all. To even write this, I had to go on YouTube and listen to the songs. And after listening to them, I still can't sing them. But just typing "I'm just Ken" has put that song in my head.
So rather than just celebrating Wish being excluded in a very good year for animation (it was so good, y'all) we should also be laughing and pointing that the Disney's attempts at getting a best song nomination for that movie also went unheeded.
Because I sure am.
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278 - Annette
Coming out of the COVID-led doldrums of 2020, the Cannes Film Festival loomed large as a "movies are back!!" starting gate for global cinema. Its opening film, Annette, was a long-in-development rock opera with music by cult fave Sparks and directed by visionary auteur Leos Carax, returning to the Croisette with his first film in nearly a decade. With Adam Driver at the helm as a batboy shock jock comedian who falls in love with opera star Marion Cotillard to disastrous results, the film is a bizarre fantasia about destructive creative ego and features a puppet as the titular baby singer. Though the film drew raves and buzz around Driver and Sparks' score, Annette was alas too freaky for the Academy.
This week, we talk about Driver's career and how his unique physicality makes him a worthy successor to Carax's usual collaborator Denis Lavant. We also talk about the other famous castings while the film sat in development, the 2021 Original Song contenders, and Simon Helberg's supporting performance.
Topics also include Baby Annette in the gay stan wars, Carax's filmography, and the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
The 2021 Academy Awards
The 2021 Cannes Film Festival
Vulture Movies Fantasy League
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Best Original Song Winner
Let's all congratulate "Monorail" from the episode Marge Vs The Monorail for winning Best Original Song!
Next begins The Best Parody Song poll. From Talkin Softball to Dr Zauis, See My Vest to An Amendment to Be. Everybody get ready and thank you for participating!
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I propose a change of rules for The Oscars that the nomination for Best Original song CAN have previously existed in a play. It just can't previously have been performed in another movie.
The reason I suggest this rule change is to discourage companies like Disney and others from writing new subpar songs to be shoe horned into movie adaptations of play musicals. Everyone knows those newly added songs are just Oscar bait and they're usually weak and forgettable.
it also might encourage Disney to stop with the crappy live action remakes and actually make film adaptations of their Broadway versions of things like Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, ect. (They're not the same as the animated versions and have many songs that only theatre goers may have heard.)
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