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News just broke that performances of Original Song nominees Youth's "Simple Song No. 3" (read our interview) and Facing Extinction's "Manta Ray" have been nixed from the Oscar broadcast, the producers citing "time constraints" for the always lengthy show. Performances of the other three nominated songs by Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Sam Smith are still in play.
TFE must express rage at yet another stupid Academy blunder. This sends an incredibly bad faith message to nominees -- if you're not famous pop stars, your nominations are "lesser than". And in a year where the Academy has been the subject of immense criticism for their lack of diversity they've essentially excluded the sole trans nominee (Antony Hegarty of Antony & the Johnsons fame who co-wrote and sings "Manta Ray") from valuable air time.
As a longtime fan of Antony and as a member of the LGBT community this enrages me. Diversity is about more than just skin color. Here's J Ralph & Antony's nominated song. And do yourself a favor and get acquainted with Antony Hegarty's music because it's brilliant.
Glenn here bringing you some more trivia from this year’s best original song category. Obviously, I could be mistaken about some of these, but, well, in which case la la la, not listening, move along.
Trivia #1 – 2016 marks the first time in Oscar history that two documentaries have ever been nominated in a category outside of the non-fiction categories. While documentaries have been nominated in the original song category in the past – Mondo Cane in ’62 being the first, I believe – and Hoop Dreams scored a best editing nomination in 1995, this year both The Hunting Ground’s “Til It Happens to You” and Racing Extinction’s “Manta Ray” make for a first that two have been cited.
Trivia #2 – This year’s nomination for “Manta Ray” is the third nomination for an enviro-doc in this category in the last decade. While Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up” from An Inconvenient Truth was a guaranteed nominee and winner (albeit, not a particularly good one), both Racing Extinction this year and Chasing Ice in 2013 were completely unexpected (and both written by J. Ralph). Are the music branch the most environmentally conscious voters in the Academy? Were they secretly hoping The Cove had a Bono theme song they could have nominated? Because they love him, too.
Trivia #3 - Lady Gaga is the fourth Oscar nominee(/winner) to perform the national anthem at the Super Bowl following Diana Ross in 1982, Cher in 1999 and Jennifer Hudson in 2009. Gaga is, however, the first to do so in the same year as her nomination. Good work on whoever it was in her management that got "Academy Award nominee" listed before "Six-time Grammy winner" in her SB50 performance earlier this week.
Trivia #4 - Diane Warren and J. Ralph are the only nominees not on their first nomination. Warren now has eight nominations to Ralph's two. Ralph is a documentary good luck charm lately, however, with an additional five best documentary nominees to his credit (including Man on Wire and The Cove, which won).
Trivia #5 - David Lang, nominated for "Simple Song #3", could become only the third Oscar winning composer in history to have won a Pulitzer Prize prior to his Oscar. He received the Pulitzer in 2008 for his composition "The Little Match Girl Passion". The first was Richard Rodgers* and the second was Stephen Sondheim**. Several other Oscar winning composers including Marvin Hamlisch (best original song, score, and adapted song score for The Way We Were and The Sting respectively), John Corigliano (best original score, The Red Violin) and Bob Dylan (best original song, The Wonder Boys) did, however, win a Pulitzer Prize after their Oscar.
*Rodgers won a special Pulitzer for "Oklahoma!", but won his official Pulitzer Drama Prize in 1950 after he won an Oscar for State Fair's "It Might As Well Be Spring" **Sondheim's Pulitzer for Sunday in the Park with George is curiously in "Drama" rather than "Music", He later won the Oscar for Dick Tracy's "Sooner or Later"
Glenn here with a look at everybody’s favourite category – best original song! Okay, so, sure, even if this year’s roster for best original song doesn’t look like a vintage one for the category, there’s actually some fun to be had when you consider who will win.
Will Diane Warren finally win an Oscar on her eighth nomination? And how strange will it be to see her win for a song from a documentary about sexual abuse alongside Lady Gaga rather than one of the chart-busting hit-singles that her first six nominations were for (lest we forget, Beyond the Lights’ “Grateful” didn’t chart because, well, Rita Ora).
Will an opera tune win for the first time? No work of opera has ever been nominated if my research is correct, which is kinda neat even though I think the song is dirge (albeit appropriately so for the film).
Will all the talk of diversity in cinema this year give us a winner that is either black (The Weeknd), transgender (Antony Hegarty), or gay (Sam Smith)?
It’s been 18 years since the last occurrence of a movie winning both a Razzie and an Oscar. Plenty of films have been nominated for both of the awards, but neither has won an award from each since Wall Street in 1988. Could Fifty Shades of Grey break a very unique drought?
Now, naturally because we all love lists so I thought it would be fun to rank every winner of Oscar’s best original song category and see where this year’s contenders would fit in when they take home that golden statue. What could possible go wrong with a completely subjective ranking of over 80 songs?!? Oh dear. You’ve been warned, I guess. Two things to note: I have not included "The Last Time I Saw Paris" from Lady Be Good since even the writer of that 1941 song was angry it was given an award when it wasn't written for the movie (it was subsequently the impetus for the category's rule change). Secondly, I have tried to rank as close to original film versions as possible so some songs that were improved upon in later recordings (like Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa”) may not rank as high. And, yes, before you ask, I am the person that hates Mary Poppins and who has never seen much of the appeal of the overtly twee “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”.
Refresh your screen periodically for updates as this post will evolve
If you missed the Oscar nominations this morning you can check out the full list at our Official Nomination Index Page. The individual Oscar charts will take some time to update but should go up throughout the day. But while we're all gathered let's have so fun checking off some trivia and stats. This post is dedicated to the first timers in Oscar's club.
Feel free to contribute "firsts" in the comments!
First Time Lucky Mad Max Fury Road is the first live action sequel ever nominated for Best Picture whose original wasn't nominated. In fact the entire Mad Max franchise had received zero nominations up until this morning. Mad Max is only the second sequel ever nominated for Best Picture whose original wasn't up for the same prize. The only other example is Toy Story 3 (the first Toy Story did receive a special Oscar though, before the creation of the Animated Feature Category)
First Time Nominees Acting: Bryan Cranston, Brie Larson, Alicia Vikander, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rachel McAdams, Tom Hardy, and two acting legends, film goddess Charlotte Rampling and stage giant Mark Rylance (whose shelves have all fallen from the weight of various trophies... but he doesn't work in movies much.)
Directing: Adam McKay, Lenny Abrahamson, Thomas McCarthy... and George Miller, believe it or not. Yes, he is an Oscar winner and previous nominee but in different categories (and two of three previous Oscar trips were for talking animal pictures, LOL, the super classic Babe and the animated winner Happy Feet). As of today he's now been nominated in five separate categories: Best Director (MMFR), Best Picture (MMFR & Babe), Best Original Screenplay (Lorenzo's Oil), Best Adapted Screenplay (Babe), and Best Animated Feature (Happy Feet).
Pop Star: Lady Gaga follows up her Oscar Sound of Music medley performance with an actual Oscar nomination for songwriting for "Til It Happens To You". Oscar voters seem happy with her which is weird because they've shunned her predecessor Madonna remarkably oftenn in this category with movie songs that becamse big hits like Into the Groove, This Used to Be My Playground, Live to Tell, etcetera.
Other hit songwriters on their first nods include Sam Smith and James Napier for "Writing's on the Wall" from Spectre. And "Earned It" from 50 Shades of Grey from The Weeknd, whose star went supernova recently. The LA Times on his rise to fame.
First Time? Not Exactly but It's Still Cool The Muse reports that Antony Hegarty (of Antony & The Johnsons fame) is the first trans person to receive an Oscar nomination. Antony is nominated for co-writing the "Manta Ray" the Original Song nominee from the documentary Facing Extinction. But this isn't strictly true. First time in modern era when people are quite aware of such things.
Coincidentally, the only previous example of a trans Oscar nominee also comes from the music categories. Angela Morley (born Wally Stott) was nominated in the music categories twice in the 1970s for The Little Prince (1974) and The Slipper in the Rose (1976). (Lana Wachowski, Hollywood's most famous trans filmmaker, has yet to be Oscar nominated -- the Matrix (1999) which she co-directed with her brother Andy, was nominated for and won four Oscars but none of them went to the Wachowskis.)
First For Your Country Colombia and Jordan are enjoying their first Foreign Language Film nominations for Embrace of the Serpent and Theeb respectably. Also though I haven't fact-checked I believe Chile is enjoying it's first animated short film nomination with Bear Story.
FINALLY...
The First Mean Girl Oscar Nominee Queen Bee Regina George it is. Rachel McAdams is up for Spotlight. Tina Fey has won Globes & Emmys, Lizzy Caplan has been nominated for an Emmy. Will their be a second Mean Girls Oscar nominee at some point? If so who you think it'll be?
Friday, February 19, 2016 at 5:23PM 
News just broke that performances of Original Song nominees Youth's "Simple Song No. 3" (read our interview) and Facing Extinction's "Manta Ray" have been nixed from the Oscar broadcast, the producers citing "time constraints" for the always lengthy show. Performances of the other three nominated songs by Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Sam Smith are still in play.
Antony Hegarty
