Categories One-by-One: Original Song

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Big Magilla
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Original Song

Post by Big Magilla »

My favorite song of the year was Glasgow (No Place Like Home) from Wild Rose. If it were nominated might have a chance of winning but it isn't, so we'll have to settle for something else.

With Glasgow out of the running, I can't see the Elton John-Bernie Taupin song as losing. Academy members will have seen the film and heard the song in context. It's not a great song, but it provides an uplifting finish to the film. The average age of Academy members is somewhere in the 60s. They've all grown up listening to Elton John and the songs Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to. It's the reunion of the year!

The song from Harriet is next to Cynthia Erivo's performance the best thing about the movie which was a major disappointment for me. Instead of being a factual presentation of Harriet Tubman's life, it's only part of the story, presenting her as a superhero. That scene where she forces her former owner off his white and then slowly rides off on his white steed was really too much. Anyone who votes for the song will likely be voting for the song, not the film, which won't be a detriment but it's enough to keep it from overtaking the front-runner. I think Erivo will have to wait to become the next EGOT winner.

The Diane Warren song is a powerful 80s style ballad, but the film was probably not seen by too many voters so its best chances of winning are to end Diane Warren's having to smile while someone else goes to the stage instead of her for the 13th time. I'm not sure she has that many friends amongst the Academy members.

The song from Frozen II is OK but not all that special. It's certainly not as powerful as the song from Frozen that won a few years ago. The Randy Newman song from the still beloved Toy Story franchise is really sweet and could get him another Oscar if voters aren't really all that impressed with the Elton John-Bernie Taupin song, but I don't think that's the case.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Original Song

Post by dws1982 »

Breakthrough actually grossed $40 million itself, but it's still very obscure compared to Harriet which was thought (at least in the very early stages) to have a chance at several nominations, and which many Oscar voters will have seen. Breakthrough is a niche Christian film that got a lot of its money from the Christian market, where they will sometimes have an entire church group buy tickets to go see a Christian-themed movie. It's also bad bad bad. A climactic scene in the movie is a group of people having a candle-light vigil outside of a hospital singing the very popular Christian song "Oceans". One reason that song is so popular is because it's pretty well-written: it's easy to get it stuck in your head, and this Diane Warren song does not stick in your head; you forget it as soon as the credits are over. So I would say that having "Oceans" featured so prominently in the film actually works against Warren and her Oscar bid, especially if, as I suspect, a lot of voters who watch this movie are going to be people who are only watching it for the nominated song. II feel bad around my family when, nearly every time a Christian-themed movie comes up, I come out with a long list of things I hated about it, but Christian filmmakers need to do better. I'll take the Christian themes in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Little Women, Waves and A Hidden Life and be happy with that.

I'm with Tee in that the Rocketman song feels like a weak frontrunner. I feel like this category could be one that wins the Oscar pool for some people. I could see the Harriet song winning, because, as Tee says, many voters may just be catching up with. But I'm tempted to go with Randy Newman, which is odd because I'm not sure that I'm going with Toy Story 4 in Animated. Newman has two other Oscars that were both won in similar fields--the other nominees ranged from lackluster to terrible, and he was a big name who had a song in a hit movie that people liked. I don't know what I'll go with in the end, but I think Randy Newman has upset potential.
Last edited by dws1982 on Sat Feb 08, 2020 10:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Original Song

Post by Mister Tee »

This is one of those categories where virtually everyone's predicting the same thing, and I understand everyone's reasoning, but still think the favored one is a very shaky front-runner and, in an earlier era, I'd have almost bet on an upset. Maybe this hive-mind era -- combined with this infernally short season -- will preclude that, but I'm still less certain about this category than most seem to be.

Diane Warren ought to tell her cronies in the music branch that it doesn't help to repeatedly nominate her for songs in obscure movies. Until they nominate her for a movie most people have seen, she's just going to rack up more losses.

I don't get a sense anyone likes any of the remaining nominees strictly for their value as tunes. But at least they're all featured in films that have visibility. Toy Story 4 and Frozen II are blockbusters, Rocketman did near $100 million, and Harriet cracked a respectable $40 mill, so none are disqualified the way Breakthrough's song is (or poor Glasgow was, at the nomination stage).

In that Glasgow discussion a month or two back, I spelled out my theory of this category: that a song has a better chance of winning if it's in a film people have watched for other reasons. In that sense, Elton & Bernie's effort got unlucky in the nominations: upfront, it looked like it might parley acting/costume design/sound/make-up nods into a package that would compel voters who'd missed it in theatres to watch now. With the song nomination its sole citation, the film loses an edge it might otherwise have had over the pack.

Conversely, I'd say the one to watch with that in mind is Stand Up. Honest voters will have sat down to watch Harriet, and might just tick off the song because it's the one they've most recently heard.

Or...the "this is our first time winning together" campaign may be as effective as so many seem to think. It's certainly the safest way to bet. But it feels Winona Ryder/Age of Innocence-ish to me -- posted as front-runner because something has to be, but lacking any evidence people have enthusiasm for it.
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Categories One-by-One: Original Song

Post by anonymous1980 »

The nominees:

"I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" from Toy Story 4
"(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" from Rocketman
"I'm Standing With You" from Breakthrough
"Into the Unknown" from Frozen II
"Stand Up" from Harriet

Diane Warren is apparently the most Oscar-nominated woman without a single win. That's most likely not gonna change this year. "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" is catchy and fun within the film but it feels like the kind of ditty Randy Newman can write in his sleep and there's no hurry giving him another Oscar. The rest of these songs, however, have a shot.

The Lopezes are once again nominated for a song for an animated Disney film and it should be noted that the couple are 2-for-2 with their wins so they can't be discounted. However, Frozen II failed to get an Animated Feature nomination so they're not as strong as the other two times they won. Cynthia Erivo is the third consecutive person to get an acting nomination and Best Song nomination in the same year. They could give it to her for Song and allow her to complete her EGOT (if she does, she'd break Robert Lopez's record as the youngest to do so). But I think the allure of giving Elton John another Oscar and this time with his longtime lyricist would be too much to resist though. So I think the Rocketman song has this.
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