This week I’ll continue counting down my ten most surprising Oscar-snubbed songs, picking up with #5.
Here’s a song that probably lost its bid for an Oscar due to the dismal failure of the film in which it appears.
Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York was a box office disaster and confusing, at best, to critics. Following the groundbreaking Taxi Driver, this oddly old-fashioned call back to classical musicals never really found an audience.
A little while into Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is a moment when a portion of the audience decides they just can’t stick with a film this chaotic and assaulting.
The rest of us, who love the film, half agree with that assessment but manage to get caught up in the insanity just enough to make it through to the other side, where the true pleasures await.
That moment is the ‘Hindi San Diamonds’ scene.
I posted “Bob Dylan Weekends” for so long on the blog that I was positive I’d already featured ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ when it popped up as the next random iTunes cut.
But apart from an early version from The Witmark Demos and a cover from my popular “attractive women playing Bob Dylan songs on YouTube” series, this classic has gone up-posted.
If you asked me to name a James Bond theme song, the first one I’d offer up is ‘Nobody Does it Better,’ Carly Simon’s gorgeous contribution to 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. And fittingly, that track was nominated for an Academy Award, though it lost to ‘You Light Up My Life.’
The second song I’d name would be ‘Goldfinger.’ And really, it should have been the first, but I just dig the Carly Simon tune.
My next Oscar-snubbed song was the least egregious oversight the Academy made of this film.
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is unquestionably the finest film of 1989 (and a front-runner for best of the 80s), yet it failed to land a nomination for Best Picture or Best Director. Lee did earn a screenwriting nomination, and Danny Aiello was deservedly nominated for his supporting turn as Sal Frangione.
