Continuing my personal 2021 Oscar rundown, today I’m focusing on the gentlemen I would recognize for Best Actor.
First a shout out to five actors I considered for this lineup but ended up leaving out. Alphabetically, they are Bradley Cooper (Nightmare Alley), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Peter Dinklage (Cyrano), Joaquin Phoenix (C'mon C'mon), and Anthony Ramos (In the Heights).
Wonderful performances, all.
Continuing my recap of the 2021 movie year, this week I will present my personal nominees and winners for Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress. I have now caught up with almost every movie on my watchlist, so I’m pretty confident these lists won’t change.
Before I start, I’d like to shout out a couple of additional musical movie moments that I hadn’t yet seen when writing last week’s posts.
One is the ‘Wherever I Fall‘ sequence in Cyrano, which depicts doomed soldiers singing their final letters home. It’s the film’s best song and best scene, a powerful use of music to plumb the depths of despair.
It’s been more than two years since I last featured a Vampire Weekend song on the blog — a whole pandemic!
It’s been just shy of three years since the band released a new album. 2019’s Father of the Bride, their fourth release, was the first without founding member and co-songwriter Rostam Batmanglij. The left lead singer Ezra Koenig to carry the creative weight, a role he seemed to relish.
But no new music since.
This is the second appearance of ‘The Beehive State’ on the blog. The first was by the song’s writer, Randy Newman, and was posted without comment during a week when my family was on vacation in Utah.
Today’s version is from Harry Nilsson’s 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman, which found the successful singer-songwriter covering songs by a then relatively unknown Randy Newman.
My final selection for best musical moments in a 2021 film comes from another movie I’ll be writing about in more detail later this month — CODA, the second feature from writer/director Sian Heder.
CODA is the story of Ruby, a hearing daughter of deaf parents who develops a passion for singing that doesn’t fit her parents’ expectations. It’s an oft-told tale of a young person fighting to forge an identity outside of a constrictive environment, but given a fresh and emotionally resonant twist.
Meet Me In Montauk 