We're less than 72 hours away from this year's Academy Awards, and as happens every year, I didn't get to see everything before nominations were revealed. I did better than I've ever done before, coming up just five shy of pre-announcement totality, and in three of the five cases, the films weren't readily available, with … Continue reading Back Row Thoughts – The Blitz Campaign
If you know me, you know I'm sort of a stickler when it comes to rules and organization. Hell, on some of the shows I work on in real life, I literally write them. I'm not completely anal about things, but I do believe that when regulations are made in good faith, they should be … Continue reading Oscar Blitz 2023 – Original Song
Well folks, the last major hurdle of this year's Oscar Blitz is complete. With the viewing of Great Freedom last week, all films to view in and around the ceremony have been seen. I can officially close the book on the 2021 cinematic canon. We've still got two more weeks left of Oscar coverage, of … Continue reading Back Row Thoughts – And the Rest… of the Blitz
Now that a full third of the categories for this year's Oscars have been relegated to a pre-show ceremony that will be easily leaked before they can be edited into the broadcast, we must take stock of the relative value that exists for the five artistic and technical categories that ABC has deigned to allow … Continue reading Oscar Gold 2022 – Original Song
This is often a tricky category year-to-year for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it's one of the few that can still have fewer than five nominees. In 2011, only two songs were nominated, and two years later one was disqualified, giving us four. The current rules state that the category will have either … Continue reading Oscar Gold 2021 – Original Song
Now that the Oscar nominations are out, the annual Blitz is on in full effect. From the moment they were announced, I already had 13 of the 23 categories sewn up, enough for me to plan out my coverage on a tentative basis. I'll go over all that tomorrow, but suffice to say, when all … Continue reading Back Row Thoughts – Blitz Catch-up, Part 1
This year's Golden Globe Awards are finally in the books, and after tonight, we get to pretend for the next 10 months that they don't exist, until we repeat the cycle all over again with next year's set of bribes. After three hours of technical difficulties and over a month of controversy for the latest … Continue reading The World’s Most Expensive Suppository – 78th Golden Globe Winners!
One of the guiding principles of the Academy process for movie music is a bit of a double-edged sword. For both Original Score and Original Song, the Music Branch never actually has to watch the movies for which the music has been submitted. Strictly speaking, they only have to hear snippets of the score and … Continue reading Oscar Gold 2020 – Original Song
Most of the time when I do these breakdowns it's with the intent of being as objective as possible without truly prognosticating on the result. But this year, the Original Song category is one where I just can't pretend. We all know what's going to happen. "Shallow," from A Star is Born, is almost certainly going … Continue reading Oscar Gold 2019 – Original Song
I Actually Paid To See This 