This week, I plan on devoting at least one post per day on the upcoming Academy Awards to be presented on ABC this Sunday, February 22. As you all know, I am keenly interested in movies and the performing arts. During what is now considered award season, I along with many others eagerly await for the time when the one award any filmmaker really wants, the Oscar, can be handed out.
An Academy Award nomination, or even a win, still matters not only to a film; it also matters to whom is being nominated and/or set to win. Any time a person gets nominated; future prospects in the film industry do begin to increase. It could be anything from higher pay to final cut to getting to star in the new action summer blockbuster. Indeed, the value of getting called an Oscar winner, or even a nominee, means a heck of a lot more due to the prestige and worthiness of the award itself.
This coming award ceremony looks to be keenly interesting. I am pretty sure Boyhood, the seminal Richard Linklater film, will receive Best Picture and Best Director at the very least. I am also interested in many of the other categories for awards that perhaps others give little heed for. Will Roger Deakins, for instance, finally win an Oscar for Best Cinematography? 10+ nominations, yet never an award to show for it. Who might perform Lost Stars? I would be enthralled if it led to a New Radicals reunion. How will Neil Patrick Harris do as a host? Will he succeed in a matter that is amongst the best, or as good for the time? And of course, who will show up and surprise us all?
Each post will go into greater detail on what I think will occur, who might win, and I will even look back at past winners and whether the award should have gone to another film or person. This will, I hope, culminate in me live blogging the Oscars in a fashion similar to what I did with Super Bowl 49. Once again, the words may seem disjointed, yet they will make sense in context.
There will certainly be a lot of ground to cover. Some days will be shorter posts, others might take longer. I do hope you will join me in this look at a most important night in film that comes but once a year. And yes, anything that pops into my mind to write and later to show will arrive here.
With that, I end this post with an explanation on the New Radicals. They were a duo consisting of Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois that were around in the late 1990s. Recently, Alexander and Brisebois have been writing songs for other artists; including the Oscar nominated Lost Stars, as performed by among others Adam Levine. None the less, the duo are quite good performers themselves. They only had one hit back in late 98-early 99; yet it is one of the best 5 minutes in recorded music. And here it is.
The celebrity references at the end are quite dated, and do not reflect the overall message of the song. A great example of what could have been had they stayed together.
Check back tomorrow,
Robert
PS. I had gotten a chance to meet Philip Levine two years ago at a reading of his recent poems at my alma mater, Hofstra University. Levine was one of the better modern poets I have read and heard. He passed away on Valentine's Day, leaving behind a lifetime of letters, poems and ideas. He certainly will be missed.
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