Friday, April 10, 2009

Academy Award Song Performances

Okay this is just a bit of venting I've been holding in for a month and a half. What the hell was wrong with the Academy Award producers this year when it came to the song performances. Based on the performances, it's no question why Jai Ho won, it was the only one of the three nominated that reached it's full performance potential that night.
The brilliance of O... Saya in my opinion is the combination of AR Rahman's Indian sounding wails with MIA's english rap. Unfortunately in the performance, the song was cut off right before MIA would have started singing. It would have been awesome to have seen the two of them perform that song live. MIA lived up to her name, probably because she'd given birth only three weeks before. But seriously, if she can perform at the Grammy's hours before giving birth, she can perform at the Oscars weeks after.
O... Saya was cut off by a performance of my personal pick Down to Earth (which currently holds the record for most played song on my itunes). They really had a good idea going here. I can just imagine it in the Academy Awards planning meeting.
"Well, it sounds kind of African, let's have an African chorus sing in the background"
It really was a good idea, until some jackass interupted the meeting and said, "Hey, I have an idea. Instead of Peter Gabriel, let's have some random dude that can't sing"
"Oh that would be wonderful." the commitee would chime in, " Totally unexpected and original".
Seriously, what the hell?
Oh, and don't even get me started about The Wrestler not even being nominated. I'm fine with it not winning...but them cutting down to three nominations when they could have included it in the usual five? What's that about? I suppose it's a good thing though, they probably would have got Britney Spears to sing it instead of the obvious Bruce Springstein.