The Oscars have been announcing all sorts of changes in the past couple of weeks. They’re expanding the Best Picture nominee list from 5 to 10, they’re taking the honorary Oscar presentations out of the telecast, and they’re toughening up the rules for Best Song contenders.
On the Best Song front, the Academy will require that at least one song must achieve a minimum score of 8.25 on a scale of 6 to 10 as voted on by member’s of the academy’s music branch.
Okay, I don’t really get it either, but I applaud them for trying to improve the quality of the nominees. According to Bruce Boughton, head of the music branch of AMPAS, “There’s been a lot of talk about the songs in films, the lack of memorability compared to songs in the past, the almost forgetability of them… This is an attempt to really make the songs as good as possible.” Good for them.
I actually find the Best Song winners of late to be far more interesting than when the category was dominated by songs from animated films. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Prince of Egypt and Tarzan all took home Oscars for Best Song the 1990s. What’s up with that? Recent winners include “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire, “Falling Slowly” from Once and “I Need to Wake Up” from An Inconvenient Truth.
Which of these Oscar winners for Best Song do you think will stand the test of time? Voice your choice in today’s featured poll.
I’m on the fence about these rules. I initially had a negative feeling upon first hearing about them, but then again, the changes made during last February’s telecast were not only welcome ones but also helped improve ratings. Maybe these new rules will continue to help the Academy Awards regain its foothold in pop culture again.
Personally, I really do not like the change to the Best Picture category of having 10 nominees now instead of 5. The reason behind this change is pretty evident: The outrage over WALL-E, Doubt, and mainly The Dark Knight not receiving nominations in the category sparked the shift. However is having more mainstream films crowding the Best Picture category really going to strengthen the show’s reputation in the long run? Probably not. I think Entertainment Weekly columnist Mark Harris summed it up best in his column: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20290261,00.html
While I won’t necessarily miss the honorary Oscar presentations, I think the recipients deserve recognition during the telecast.
Finally, I have not formed a real opinion on the song change rule yet (mainly because I do not really understand the rule).
Will these changes improve the awards? Only time will tell…
I’ve been writing scores for films and songs for all kinds of artists since early 70,s. I have almost always agreed with the selection of a movie song by the Oscar committee but the songs for Slumdog milionaire are really the greatest disappointment for several reasons. One, they are so poorly recorded and scored that even an amature musicians would laugh at them. Two, there’s nothing that one can remember about any of the songs of this film no matter how many times one listens to them. 3, After talking to several of my Indian friends in music and film business, the opinion of poor quality of compositions and performance was mutual. 4, it is understood that almost all major film studios are now have their production offices in Bollywood and it comes down to the corrupt businessmen with thier influence peddling tactics. I know the economical downtrends along with Hollywood’s costly productions are some of the reasons for Hollywood’s giants to shift their film making business to Bollywood where its mega rich businessmen have set up Hollywood quality film studios and sfx houses to attract more film makers to Bollywood. One very onverwhelming factor that plays in Hollywood’s who’s who is the rapidly emerging middle and upper middle class in India who can on average, out spend Americans today. At conclusion, no matter how one disects this scenario, Slumdog Millionair’s selection of music was definitely below standards and did not deserve the attention and awards that it received.
Go for “Jai Ho”