Oscar has a little problem this year, and I’m not just talking about the fact that no human being likes The Reader even though the Weinsteins bought it a Best Picture nod. Actually, that is part of the problem. This year’s batch of Best Picture contenders are a moribund lot with no real consensus favorite and no Dark Knight-style blockbuster up there to boost ratings. Sure, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is doing alright at the box office, but it has to make about $100 million more to even recoup, and it has as many detractors as it has supporters. Slumdog Millionaire is the only real “story” to surround this year’s Academy Awards, so you can imagine that the producers of said awards show really want M.I.A. to perform a little bit of her song from the movie, “O Saya,” on Sunday night. There is just one problem: She’s worried about her condition, what with her recently having a baby and all.
Peter Gabriel has decided not to perform at the Academy Awards on Feb. 22 (although he will attend). And if the reasoning he presents for the decision on his Web site can be believed, I can’t say I blame him.
Yesterday’s announcement of the Academy Awards nominations resulted in a lot of questions. Among the “The Reader? Really?” mutterings were a few queries surrounding the Best Original Song category, which only had three nominees from two movies despite a surfeit of potential contenders that included one Bruce Springsteen, who took home a Golden Globe for his title track from The Wrestler last week. Tom O’Neil at the Los Angeles Times‘ Gold Derby blog tried to sort everything out, and he pointed a finger at the semi-arcane criteria for nominating songs as part of the problem. Here’s the portion of Rule 16—which outlines eligibility for the Original Song, Original Score, and Original Musical categories—that is the likely culprit:
