After years of stasis followed by a few experiments and tweaks, the Academy Awards show — which airs Sunday, March 7 — has turned itself upside down this year. Not only have they expanded the Best Picture category to include 10 nominees (rather than the usual five), the producers of the telecast also announced that the nominees for Best Original Song won't be performing on the show. Rather than five staged performances, the music will be integrated into the show via montages and other video segments.
Considering how middling this year's Best Original Song nominees are, this decision isn't necessarily a crime. After all, do we really want to take time out of an already bloated block of programming to watch Randy Newman sing two songs from a kid's movie? Unlikely.
On the other hand, the Oscars have played host to a handful of absolutely stunning, bizarre and moving musical performances, especially in the past 10 or 15 years. By turning the musicians away at the door, the producers may be denying the world a great musical moment like one of the following.
Elliott Smith
Dressed in a suit that looked like it was made from the couch in a '70s bachelor apartment and looking profoundly uncomfortable in front of the cameras, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith still managed to create one of the most memorable Oscar moments in history at the 1998 show. His tenderly savage performance of his breakout hit "Miss Misery" (which was nominated for its inclusion in "Good Will Hunting") was gorgeous and sad, and it thrust Smith into fame, a major label deal and a rapidly-growing discomfort with fame.
Aimee Mann
Mann really should have been scored all five nominations for her contributions to the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling "Magnolia." Read More...
