Every year, the day after the Oscar presentation, beside the winners there is all sorts of talk about what went well at the Oscar show and what sucked. And every year someone always mentions the musical performances. Some people love those bits and others tend to think they lengthen an already yawn-inducing show and just bog down the entire ceremony.
– Well, we’re about to find out exactly what an Oscar show will be like without all of the performances. Oscar producers have already contacted the nominees and told them their services will no longer be needed. Instead, the music will be played in snippets over the top of clips from the nominated film. Ruffled feathers anyone?
While in some ways I’ll miss the performances (would’ve been damn fun to see Bridges perform his song from Crazy Heart), I do agree that it tends to just slow down the night a little bit. Also, I remember people throwing a fit a few year back when “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” won best song; because the on stage performance was undefendably atrocious. But I had to constantly defend the win (I still do) because within the context of the film, the song absolutely deserved to win. So placing the song within it’s film as to give it some context and depth will be a nice touch I think.
– Next up are the droning on and on speeches (“the single most-hated thing on the show,” producer Bill Mechanic said). The producers have asked potential winners to prepare two speeches: one 45-second bit for the on-stage, “what the Oscar means to you,” and then a second speech to be given backstage to a “Thank You Cam” during which the winner can thank specific people. These bits will be posted online and winners can email them to whoever they choose and even post them on their Facebook profiles.
– Amidst all of these tweaks and changes, apparently they’re going to stick with the way the presentations were given out last year: with the five previous year’s nominees reading the nominees for the Best Actor and Actress categories this year. A lot of people hated that bit last year but I thought that the ones that were done well were pretty good and more big stars is better than less big stars in my opinion. I also like the personal approach some of the actors took to their presentations; looking directly at the nominee and speaking just to them.
The Oscars will be broadcast on Sunday, March 7th. Here are the Best Original Song nominees:
“Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman
“Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman
“Loin de Paname” from Paris 36 Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyrics by Frank Thomas
“Take It All” from Nine Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston
“The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart Music and Lyrics by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett
No musical performances?! That’s it, I’m boycotting.
Okay, probably not really, but I do love them. Damn good thing they didn’t decide to take them out the year Once won – Hansard and Irglova were the best part of the whole show.
The Globes tried controlling peoples speeches and that culminated in Robert Downey Jnr making fun of them. The moment you try to control the way people act in a heightened emotional state it will end in disaster. The winners will try to subvert them, and quite frankly the most memorable moments from Oscar history is when people had done crazy things with their speeches: Michael Moore bringing the other nominees on stage, Cuba Gooding Jnr saying he loved the crowd way too many times etc.
And the same was with the music, they ran into problems trying to limit the performance of the song from Wall-E, it almost seemed two years down the track theyve gone screw it we will drop it all. These are the first casualties of having 10 nominees, will be interesting if anything else changes.
More Montages, More Celebration of Movies. More Speeches. This is the only thing that Makes THE OSCARS entertaining. Why they would scale back on the only unscripted portion of the show (hence ‘baited breath’) is beyond me.
Scrapping the Live Musical Numbers is smart though. It ain’t the Grammies, it’s the Oscars.
The Thank-you Cam is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The whole point is that you thank people infront of the mega-wide live audience.
They should give each person 5 minutes, not 90 seconds.
And scrapping the honorary oscar speech is more than a tad disrespectful. If the guy has earned a life-time achievement award, can’t he have about 10 minutes of the broadcasts time?
I’m not bothered about missing the musical numbers, Oscar songs are generally pretty cheesy anyway. I know there’s generally 1 nomination each year that’s pretty good, but I can live with sacrificing that so that I don’t have to sit through several warbling ballads.
I agree with Ray about the speeches, it’s just encouraging people to break the rules and take the piss, so good luck with that.
Speaking of Robert Downey Jr., I think the Oscars should just be three hour of him tap dancing and singing. I guarantee it’d get higher ratings than the Super Bowl.