Continuing my personal 2024 Oscar nominations, today I will be writing about the race for Best Supporting Actress.
I had fewer candidates for this category than for Supporting Actor, and my list ended up having significant overlap with the Academy’s — three out of five. Nice to see them get it mostly right for a change.
With the 97th Academy Awards a month away, now is the time for me to offer up my personal nominations in the acting and directing categories before counting down my favorite movies of 2024.
As always, I have a laundry list of contenders for each of these categories and the challenge is to whittle it down to a satisfying five. The usual caveat applies: on a different day, this list might look different. But right now, this is where I’m landing.
The week of February 2, 1985, found Foreigner atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘I Want to Know What Love Is.’
Foreigner’s ‘Waiting For a Girl Like You’ holds the record for the most weeks at #2 without ever reaching #1. That happened in 1981. Four years later, the band finally got over that hump and landed their first (and only) #1 hit with this undeniable power ballad.
Throwing back to the week of February 1, 1975, we find Neil Sedaka at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Laughter in the Rain.’ The song spent one week at #1 before dropping to #8 the following week, and then out of the top ten.
This was Sedaka’s second #1 hit, following the 1962 doo-wop hit ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do.’ He would reach the top spot again later in 1975 with ‘Bad Blood’ (which might just show up on a future Throwback Weekend).
My final musical selection from a 2024 film comes from a movie that has too many to count. I could have dedicated all ten of my posts from the past two weeks to A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic.
If I had to pick just one, I’d go with a performance of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin” at the Newport Folk Festival. In that scene, the crowd — hearing the song for the first time — instantly recognizes its impact and starts singing along by the second chorus.
Meet Me In Montauk 