Latest Articles by Sarah Canice Funke
I went to the best Oscar party I have ever been to since Roberto Benigni jumped over auditorium chairs when he discovered La Vita è Bella won best foreign film. Yes, that was the last Oscar award ceremony I had the privilege to watch. Considering that IMDB informs me that ten years have elapsed since this occurrence, I've needed to get back in touch with pop celebrity culture and the pastimes of greater America. But I digress.
I do have to say that I was happy Pan's Labyrinth and Little Miss Sunshine got a decent amount of awards, but I was disappointed that the awards Pan's Labyrinth picked up were mostly techie. Not that techie awards are bad, but come on, it was a good fairy tale, too.
What is the deal with honorary awards? Why didn't they realize Ennio Morricone wrote one of the most memorable film scores for The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (and don't forget to throw in the The Mission while we are at it) the first time around? I wonder what his competition was at the time. It was rather sad that Clint Eastwood doesn't even know the term for film composer. It's such an under-appreciated job, unless you are John Williams. [Film scorer really is a term, but a film scorer doesn't necessarily have to create original music. A film scorer just has to create a score, which could include any number of pre-existing songs.]
We all agreed that we HAVE to hunt down The Danish Poet (best animated short film) and WestBank Story (best short film).
The tragic moment of the award ceremony was when An Inconvenient Truth won best original song. I guess they don't care that the song be good any more, only green.
Another disappointment: I want to see Johnny Depp when I watch the Oscars. We did not.
Posted by funke at 26.02.07 9:39 | TrackBack | Posted to Film & TelevisionMy spontaneous think-out-loud comment about Ennio's Oscar: Yes, let's give the man an Oscar for writing hundreds of crappy scores and a few good ones that weren't even the best in the year they were written. The kicker is that none of his memorable scores would be memorable if they weren't attached to good movies. I suppose sheer quantity counts for something though...
Posted by: Jared at 26.02.07 10:02The sheer quantity doesn't count for anything if indeed all of it were crappy. But even if hundreds of his film scores were unmemorable, I still think Morricone should have won something for the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It's such a classic Western. Maybe Westerns aren't your thing, but I seriously doubt there has been a subsequent film in the genre that was not influenced either by Morricone or by Elmer Bernstein (depending on whether it was going for post-modern individualistic roamer ideology or community-oriented Americana). I think that influence alone (the sheer genre significance) should merit him an award, regardless of anything else he wrote.
....Hmmm....The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly came out in 1966. I looked up the Oscar Awards for 1967 and 1966 (I am confused how these things work) and the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly didn't appear on any of the lists for any award in any category. Which really surprises me. But then it was running against stuff like The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, Wait Until Dark, and Barefoot in the Park in 1967 or else Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and a Man for All Seasons in 1966.
Man. 1967. What a year. Sgt. Pepper. Velvet Underground and Nico. Pipers at the Gates of Dawn. And so many freaking good movies.
Posted by: funke at 26.02.07 10:26"It's not easy being green." - Van Morrison
Posted by: Evan Donovan at 26.02.07 22:16