On Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, the Oscars were tone-deaf.
(Granted, music’s big awards night happened a few weeks ago, but Chris Brown’s notable inclusion in the program and his win for Best R&B Album cast a shadow over the other events of the night, like Adele’s five-Grammy sweep or Jennifer Hudson’s short-but-sweet Whitney Houston tribute.)
So the Oscars should have been a redeeming moment for music, a tribute to the impressive achievements in original scores that accompanied this year’s critically acclaimed crop of movies.
To give credit where credit is due, the awards featured a star-studded house band, with jazz songstress Esperanza Spalding and Pharrell on drums.
Unfortunately, the Oscars were feeling particularly anachronistic this year, and celebrating innovation in the year’s music in movies was not in the cards for the retro-leaning awards ceremony.
From Billy Crystal’s ninth stint as Oscar host, to the vintage feel of the night’s two big winners, “The Artist” and “Hugo,” the focus of this year’s ceremony was celebrating Hollywood’s hallowed traditions, and the Oscars’ misty-eyed sentimentality left no room for recognizing many of the more modern scores featured in movies this year.
Notable among the nontraditional scores that went unnoticed from the Academy was Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s original score for David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
Reznor and Ross picked up a statuette for Best Original Score last year for their jarring score for “The Social Network.”
The Oscars teased Reznor’s and Ross’s industrial take on Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” with Karen O during the “Dragon Tattoo” Oscar spots, making the soundtrack’s painful absence from the list of nominees all the more apparent.
“Drive” received no love from the Academy in any major category, and the sleek electro-pop that ran along the film’s backbone was not recognized with a nomination either.
This year’s batch of nominations for Best Original Score featured two for composer and Oscar veteran John Williams, along with nominations for Howard Shore (“Hugo”) and Alberto Iglesias (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”).
But there was no stopping “The Artist” on Sunday night, and newcomer Ludovic Bource’s sweeping, emotive score took home the Best Original Score honors.
“The Artist” had drawn heat from critics in the past for its too-close-for-comfort references to older films, and the score’s borrowing from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” was no exception to this controversy.
However, the sincerity and artistry of the black-and-white French film was clearly enough to persuade Oscar voters that “The Artist” was no copycat, and Bourse’s score gave the film’s tale of silent film star George Valentin the drama and heart “The Artist” needed to win Oscar gold.
Anyone could have guessed that the score for “The Artist” would come out on top, but the nominees for the Academy’s other nod to music in the Best Original Song, “Man or Muppet” by Bret McKenzie (one-half of New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) and “Real in Rio” by Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett from “Rio,” were puzzling at best.
Perhaps the Madonna/Elton John bickering over their competing Golden Globes songs turned off Oscar voters. Maybe “The Living Proof,” Mary J. Blige’s track on the soundtrack for “The Help,” was too obvious of a choice.
The category of Best Original Song has been quite a mixed a bag in years past, including everything from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s heartwarming “Falling Slowly” to “Slumdog Millionaire” anthem “Jai Ho” to the legendary Three Six Mafia win for “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp.”
But the two songs nominated for Best Original Song this year are far less memorable than their counterparts from years past.
McKenzie’s win for “Man Or Muppet” did feature his charming acceptance speech, but with only two songs nominated, supplanting one of the video montages or painful Crystal monologues with performances of the two original songs would have been a welcome change of pace during the four-hour-long ceremony.
Showing the Oscar-nominated musicians perform their songs has the potential of creating the most poignant moments of the night. And while a live performance of “Man or Muppet” probably wouldn’t have stolen the spotlight from Christopher Plummer or Octavia Spencer’s moving speeches, seeing the musicians play their two whimsical songs live would have been an honest and lighthearted change from the uncomfortable humor and dragging sentimentality of this year’s awards.
Next year, we can only hope for a more open-minded list of nominees, live performances and, hey, maybe even a Best Soundtrack award. Until then, we’re stuck with the house band.
mmcdermott@theeagleonline.com
