The Great Oscar Baiter

I was watching Belfast with my friend last week, and- like all great films- it raised a lot of questions. Questions like, “Hey, remember the last time I watched Belfast and was inspired to write a blog post because of it ?” and “Hey, why haven’t I written anything Oscar Bait related in a while?” Well, luckily for all of us “The Ballad of High Noon” wasn’t the only Oscar-nominated song featured in Belfast. Unluckily for us, that other song just happens to be “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” (via Wikipedia) Readers of this blog will hopefully remember that I love a good movie musical. Sadly, those were few and far between in the 1960s. Oh sure, movie musicals certainly had a brief resurgence in those days. Many of them were big hits, both critically and commercially. Hell, Best Picture went to a musical on four separate occasions in that decade! But how many of them were actually any good? Not a lot. Oh sure, The Music Man is great fun and Mary Poppins is a classic. But far too many mu...

The Academy Awards have come and gone, and in the wake of all the controversy, we all overlooked one thing- “No Time to Die” beat “Dos Oruguitas” for Best Original Song! Not only was that a terrible decision on the Academy’s part, it also meant that I was wrong in my predictions! And perhaps it proved people right when they said Disney should have submitted “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” as Encanto’ s song. After all, Disney didn’t always get nominated for its serious songs. For proof of that, look no further than Cinderella’s “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.” (via Wikipedia) Disney's 1950 film Cinderella is an odd duck of a motion picture. The studio's first animated smash hit since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it might also be the platonic ideal of what people think of as a "Disney Movie." It's got everything- a prince, animal sidekicks, singing and dancing, dead parents. It is also, quite frankly, not very good. Oh sure, the animation is pretty great, excluding the h...

Once again, I find myself asking you to forgive me for my extended absence. I’ve been rather busy with schoolwork, and- if I’m being perfectly honest- I just haven’t really had a whole lot of thoughts which were worth writing down. I can’t really imagine a worse time for an Oscar blogger to have writer’s block than during Oscar season, but there you are. Still, if there’s one thing I’ve had a lot of thoughts about, it’s the Academy’s bone-headed decision to present eight categories before the ceremony, off the air- including all three short categories.  (via Wikipedia) Every category more than deserves its proper due on Oscar night, but few films benefit from that air time more than the shorts. Excepting the animated shorts that might get played before a family film, the Oscars are easily the biggest audience these shorts get. It’s a chance for people to get a look at them and check out a film they might not otherwise be interested in. It’s for this same reason I was against the O...

The 94th Academy Awards are rapidly approaching, and the one question absolutely no one is asking is, “Who will win Best Original Song?” Because, I mean… it’s Lin-Manuel Miranda. Sure, Disney didn’t submit the surprise smash hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno'' for nomination, but I don’t think that’s going to hold him back much, do you? But it might come as a surprise that there are four other songs nominated in that category this year. And in the spirit of the Oscars- namely taking works of art and arbitrarily declaring one to be better than the others- we’re going to rank them all from worst to best. Won’t that be fun? Well too bad, we’re doing it anyway! #5) "Somehow You Do"- Four Good Days You're probably familiar with the phrase, "Always a bridesmaid, and never a bride", and boy howdy does that phrase some up Diane Warren. This song marks her thirteenth Oscar nomination in over three decades, and it seems very unlikely that her unlucky streak's go...

All things considered, 2021 was a pretty damn good year for movies. I saw a lot of fantastic films over the past year, and I've still got plenty more to catch up on. Of course, just because a year is good for movies doesn't mean that the Oscars are going to reflect that. Far too often the Academy will overlook the truly great stuff released within a year in favor of a bunch of generic crap that no one will remember ten years on. But luckily, that largely doesn't seem to be the case with the 94th Academy Awards, at least from my perspective. (via Wikipedia) As always I'd like to start with a disclaimer about the movies from 2021 I haven't seen yet, and there are a lot of them! These include overlooked films like Titane and Passing, as well as contenders like CODA, Drive My Car, The Worst Person in the World, The Lost Daughter, Flee or Licorice Pizza. Hopefully I get the chance to catch up with some of these soon (or, in the case of movies already available on str...