Soundtracking: The Best Oscar Winning Original Songs

by Chris Feil

While Soundtracking aims to look at the depth and relationship between movies and their music, one of this series’ minor ambitions is to defend the purpose of Oscar’s much maligned Original Song category. Complain about some of the weak nominees in recent years and you are (alone yet) not alone. But this category has a rich history of classics and film-defining tracks, some of which you may not know have their origins in the cinema. Case in point: holiday staple of hot takes "Baby It's Cold Outside" won the Oscar in 1949 for Neptune's Daughter.

While this year’s nominees run from the unfortunate to the immaculate, I’d also offer that Oscar’s Original Song is currently in an upswing in quality. It has also faced some underwhelming periods (take a look at the 50s) and may never return to its 70s-80s level of radio rotation, but Original Songs remain as essential as the films themselves. So to showcase the category, I’ve ranked the best of the Original Song winners! If your favorite didn’t make the list, consider that a reminder of how much you actually cherish the category...

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16 days til Oscar. Ranking the 16 Animated Feature Winners

by Nathaniel R

which movies willed this category into existence?

With just 16 days to go until Coco wins Pixar its 9th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature let's look back over the first 16 years of the category. (Yes, that's right math geniuses, Pixar has won a full 50% of the animated Oscars thus far.)

The History, Chronologically

1988-2000 The category didn't exist until 2001 but it wasn't just created on a whim. The previous dozen years which included the renaissance of Disney, the sizeable popularity influence and beauty of what was happening in Japanese animation, the explosion of new animation studios all over the map, and the rise of Pixar in particular, all led us to the inevitable: an Oscar category for animated features...

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Coco Rules Over the Annie Awards

by Nathaniel R

In one of the least shocking events of this awards season, Disney/Pixar's Coco swept the Annie Awards this weekend, winning in every category in which it was nominated. 2017 was widely seen as an underwhelming year for animated features but we should face facts: Coco would have been a strong contender for Oscar gold in many other years, too.

The complete list of winners (Coco wasn't eligible in every category) and a few more comments after the jump...

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R2Link2

Episode something or other.... [cue link theme]

• Racked Titanic's necklace almost bankrupted a whole company!
• My New Plaid Pants geeking out over Ms. Laura Dern who spoke to NYC at the Film Society of Lincoln Center recently
• Deadline an interview with the great production designer Santo Loquasto on Wonder Wheel 
• Out Ryan Murphy's Boys in the Band Broadway Revival has cast a bunch of its players already and it's basically all the famous gays: Charlie Carver, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Zachary Quinto some of whom at least have stage experience.
• The Muse talks to Glenn Close who has some interesting things to say about gossip, Harvey Weinstein, and being an older actor in Hollywood

• Indie Wire on the multi-pronged creative casting efforts for The Florida Project
• Vanity Fair interviews Joe Wright of Darkest Hour, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice fame
• Variety the Roseanne reunion sitcom will start airing March 27th. Wheeee
• Mubi on the Berlinale lineup or February 2018
• / Film If you only think of Disney/Fox merger in terms of superheroes, you'll probably be overjoyed
• Vox remembering what might be 2017's signature movie scene "No Man's Land" in Wonder Woman
• Broadway World the cast of Cats posing with adoptable felines. Awww
• Variety that young JRR Tolkien biopic starring Nicholas Hoult has wrapped. Biopics aren't always Oscar favorites anymore but we shall see. 
• Film School Rejects looked at new releases of old movies on dvd: Election, China Moon and more
• Deadline TV/film producer Martin Ransohoff has died. Among his credits The Sandpiper, The Cincinatti Kid, The Beverly Hilbillies and Jagged Edge

Star Wars Time Again
• The Verge thinks Rogue One is about net neutrality
• /Film 10 the greatest female characters in the Star Wars universe (wait, there are ten?)
• Vanity Fair the plea for LGBT characters in the Star Wars movies and why they've been ignored

Exit Video
James Corden's Crosswalk the Musical welcomes The Greatest Showman's Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron

59 days til nominations. Time for a little Disney trivia

by Nathaniel R

Disney won every single short category plus Documentary Feature at the 1953 OscarsWith 59 days left until Oscar nominations, it seems an appropriate time to remind everyone that it's not Meryl Streep (20) or Woody Allen (24) or even John Williams (50) who holds the record for Most Oscar Nominations of All Time, but industry titan and one of the most influential people who ever lived: Walt Disney. His fingerprints... or mouse glove prints if you will, are still all over showbiz, especially the business part. But we're here to talk Oscar. He received an incredible 59 competitive Oscar nominations, winning 22 of those races.

So in addition to holding the record for most nominations, he also holds the record for most wins. The last of those nominations and wins was his only posthumous honor -- Winnie Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) took the Animated Short Oscar (then called "Best Short Subject, Cartoons")...

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