Friday, June 26, 2009

Best Song category

Last year it was declared that no film could receive more than 2 Oscar nominations in the Best Song category. This year, a new rule has been applied that could affect the number of nominees in the category altogether. Indeed, a song must now receive a tuning score of over 8.25 between 6 and 10 to be determined by Academy members in order to qualify for a nomination. That means that if no song receives a score higher than 8.25, then no Best Song Oscar will be awarded that year. If only one song gets the score, then the next song with the highest score qualifies for a nomination and only 2 songs would be nominated. And with this new rule, the number of nominees will vary between 2 and 5 every year. Not to judge too harshly, but does the Academy really want to be too difficult with this category? This looks very ridiculous in my view, but what do you think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Instead of tinkering with the documentary feature category, which really DOES need some new rules, the Academy prefers to penalize songwriters. Most movies are greatly enhanced by their scores and songs. This seems a ridiculous thing to mess with. The best song category has always been one of the highlights of the ceremony, even if many were not great songs. This just seems unnecessary.

G1000 said...

Agree totally. The problem is not the category, but the fact that they always pick the wrong ongs. For example: three songs from "Enchanted" in '07, while the best musical of the year, "Once", only got one nomination. Granted, they got the winner right ("Falling Slowly" was hands down the best original song that year), but forgive me if I'd rather hear "When Your Mind's Made Up" and "If You Want Me" and the "Oscars" instead of "Happy Working Song" and "Raise It Up". Who votes for these songs, anyway?