Thursday, January 22, 2009

OSCAR SNUBS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

This has to rate high on the list of all time gaffes by nominating committees of major awards shows. Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler" wasn't nominated for "Best Original Song" at this years Oscars. Not only that, but only three songs were nominated - most categories have five nominees. The others were Peter Gabriel's "Down To Earth" from Wall-E and A.R. Rahman's "Jai Ho" and "O Saya" from Slumdog Millionaire. Backstreets has a number of possible explanations for why Bruce was snubbed -- all bad ones.  The Academy should be embarrassed. Also snubbed: Clint Eastwood, who did a song for his film Gran Torino. Messing with a rock star is one thing, but Clint?  Come on! 

I should mention that I am in no way dissing the other nominees, I love Peter Gabriel's song, and I've written about that already. And having seen Slumdog Millionaire, I can say that the soundtrack was extraordinary. But I don't think that any of the single songs are as important to the film as the entire score as a whole. Whereas in The Wrestler, the song is the perfect punctuation for the end of the film. But A.R. Rahman definitely deserves to win Best Score. 

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