Everything Matters - 2/19/09 - Academy Awards Edition - part 3

Everything Matters – 2/19/09 – Academy Awards Edition – Part 3

ORIGINAL SONG – the nominees are Down to Earth from Wall-E,
Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire, and O Saya from Slumdog Millionaire.
Down to Earth from Wall-E – I love Peter Gabriel. He’s was championing
world music before we even called it world music. And who can forget John
Cusack holding the boombox in the rain in Say Anything while In Your Eyes plays?
But for all the hype about Wall-E, the first 30-40 minutes are brilliant when it’s
just the machines and their world. Once humans are introduced, as in life, the
whole thing turns to shit, or in this case, an eco-friendly lesson episode of The Jetsons.
With fat people. And this song is not In Your Eyes. There is no light, no heat,
and no Oscar.
Jai Ho – the perfect Bollywood ending, the entire cast dancing in the train station
to the uplifting Jai Ho. This should win and if not, you are a mother-jodh which
probably means what we all think it means.
And if it doesn’t win then
O Saya – should win. MIA just had a baby and she should win simply because
she didn’t have eight babies!! At the Grammys her belly looked almost as big as
Kanye West’s ego. I’m playing this now.
The Oscar goes to O Saya.
Had there been a Love Theme from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button done by,
let’s say, Phil Collins, that’s another Oscar that The CC of BB wouldn’t win.
Either way, Jai Ho or O Saya, world music wins. Sorry, Peter. And for the record
they don’t call it world music. Wherever it’s made they just call it THEIR MUSIC.

ORIGINAL SCORE – the nominees are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button/Alexandre Desplat, Defiance/James Newton Howard, Milk/Danny Elfman, Slumdog Millionaire/A.R.Rahman, and WALL-E/Thomas Newton.
I defy anyone to hum or whistle anything from the CC of BB. Impossible. We were
too busy thinking about all those different Brad Pitts.
Defiance? Belorussian Jews killing Nazis? No, but if you hum a few bars…
Milk, score by Danny Elfman. Elfman usually works with Tim Burton.
What would Tim Burton’s Milk have looked like? First off, Johnny Depp is Milk
and he’s the single prettiest 40 year old Jew in history. And I’m counting Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson and they’re younger!!! So lets be glad it wasn’t Tim Burton’s Milk. But still, not a winner.
WALL-E? NO-E?
And the winner, Slumdog Millionaire. Accepting the Oscar are the 39 million people
of Mumbai. We may be here a while.


SOUND EDITING – the nominees are The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Slumdog Millionaire, WALL-E, and Wanted.
The Dark Knight, great look. But the sound? I heard everything. Isn’t that the fucking point?!
Iron Man. Yep, heard everything here too. Even Samuel L. Jackson screaming as Nick Fury after the credits. Okay, making his voice palatable for the human ear, I can see that thia is sound editing.
WALL-E is animated. The actors are in a recording studio. How hard is that? Nope.
Wanted. What the fuck was Wanted? Anybody? It’s not even on IMDB. Nope.
The winner – Slumdog Millionaire. The filmmakers went all over the Indian subcontinent and we heard everything in glorious SOUND.

SOUND MIXING – the nominees are The CC of BB, The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, WALL-E, and Wanted.
Once again, if the sound mixers of The CC of BB had aged backwards maybe they’d
win an Oscar but as they didn’t, no way.
The Dark Knight – a real movie movie. But we come out talking about Heath Ledger
as The Joker. I guess that means we heard everything he had to say. Thank you sound mixers but no big prize yet.
WALL-E – again, you don’t like the sound, call the actors up and have them do it again, over and over. It’s an animated feature, you have them locked in a room. You can do anything you want with them. No big deal mixing this sound. Sorry.
Wanted. Again? Somebody greased some Academy palms. Wanted? Oh, that mindless movie with Anglina Jolie where they bend bullets by flicking their wrists as they shot their guns? Even as I watched it I realized I was dying a little more as time was slipping away from me for the 2 hours I was in the theater. No fucking way!
And the winner is – Slumdog Millionaire. Y’know how hard it is to mix Hindi and Urdu and Bengali and English and cars and cows and cellphones and television studios and television sets and the sound the Taj Mahal makes at night? Clearly the best Sound Mixing.