Every year I watch the Academy Awards to see the musical performances of the songs nominated for Best Original Song. One thing I love about musical performances at the Oscar Awards is the fact that they are all live performances. The 2012 Oscars featured only two nominees for Best Original Song which was kind of a bummer because there were bound to be fewer musical performances.
This year the songs nominated for Best Original Song were:
- Man Or A Muppet from The Muppets
- Real In Rio from RIO
The winner of Best Original Song was Man Or A Muppet written by Bret McKenzie.
On a side note the nominees for Best Music (Original Score) were:
- The Adventures Of Tintin by John Williams
- The Artist by Ludovic Bource
- Hugo by Howard Shore
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Alberto Iglesias
- War Horse by John Williams
The winner of Best Music (Original Score) was The Artist by Ludovic Bource. This was an interesting win because Ludovic Bource has no formal musical training. He is just a simple accordion player. So all you accordion players out there, keep writing movie music because you could one day beat out John Williams.
Now for the saddest news of the evening. There were no live musical performances of either of the songs nominated for Best Original Song. I think they could have at least had someone perform Man Or A Muppet but sadly they did not. Luckily I DVR’d the Oscars and was able to skip most of it searching for the musical segments. The good news is I was able to watch the 84th Annual Academy Awards in about 35 minutes this year!
The show wasn’t completely devoid of live music. The Oscar orchestra did play music during all commercial breaks and some of the music they played was most likely from the movies. But without any introduction of the musical pieces it was up to the audience to figure out what song was being played. Esperanza Spalding did do a beautiful live rendition of “What A Wonderful World” during the Memorium segment. It was beautifully mixed and Esperanza sang the song perfectly.
[phpbay]84th academy awards, 6[/phpbay]
