The Oscar Nominations Are In, And Bruce Springsteen Is Out
The nominations for Hollywood’s annual tribute to itself are in and, hmm… not my favorite batch of Best Picture nominees this year (I was profoundly disappointed by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and David Fincher’s Zodiac was my favorite movie of last year!), but we’re not here to talk movies. We’re here to discuss the usual travesty that is the Academy’s music nominations. Here they are:
Original Score The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Alexandre Desplat Defiance, James Newton Howard Milk, Danny Elfman Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman WALL-E, Thomas Newman
Original Song “Down to Earth” from WALL-E, Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman and Gulzar “O Saya” from Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam.
As far as score goes, no real surprises there, though I guess I would like to say that WALL-E certainly qualified for Best Picture as much as the moribund Button. That stupid Best Animated Feature award regularly ghettoizes some of the year’s best movies (Ratatouille, Persepolis, The Incredibles).
In the Original Song category, I thought these three things immediately:
“Only three nominees?!” “No Bruce Springsteen?!” “M.I.A. got an Oscar nomination?!”
The third thought is a nice bit of news, but I thought that this was another surefire year for The Boss. His song from “The Wrestler” is a soaker; when that trailer comes on, that thing guts me. It gets me right here. As far as there only being three nominees, that’s usually a good thing, as some years they struggle to get to five. Not seeing Randy Newman up for another song he crapped out is a nice development, but there were definitely more than three original songs out there. Was it that hard not to include Springsteen? Bah. I get worked up every year over the Oscar noms, and I promise myself that I won’t.
Anyway, not a total travesty here. Go M.I.A. Also, I do like that WALL-E song. I think it was because I saw some kids bouncing around to it after the movie. It made me really happy.
Bruce was robbed:
Academy Awards [Official site]
