The Academy’s list of 49 tunes deemed eligible for the Best Original Song Oscar this year seems like a lot for the Music Branch to pick through. That is, until you notice that more than one-fifth of those contenders are from the same film (High School Musical3, which, thanks to a new rule, is only allowed, at most, two nominations in this category) and you recall that last year’s list included many more songs (59) to choose from. The talent involved this year, however, is tremendous, at least in terms of those performers who sing the tunes on the soundtrack (many of whom had a hand in the songwriting). These artists include Mariah Carey, Etta James, Beyonce Knowles (who played Etta James), Norah Jones, will.i.am, Jack White and Alicia Keys, Danny Elfman, Emmylou Harris, Chaka Khan and Regina Spektor.
Add to those big names such heavyweights as Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel, both of whom are locks to be nominated, as well as tween favorites Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron (along with the rest of the cast from High School Musical 3), and you could have one hell of a concert if the Academy simply turned its awards telecast into one big celebration of the year’s songs written for the screen. Unfortunately for ABC, the Oscars aren’t just about securing viewers, so there’s no promise that the most popular artists will be among the five nominees. Rather, the true Oscar-worthy songs are those tunes that serve their respective films best — in terms of context as much as in the quality of their songwriting.
This is it, the day we’ve been waiting for two full decades (or, at least, since we first heard it was happening back in December): the Huey Lewis plot song written specifically for the David Gordon Green-driected, Judd Apatow-produced stoner comedy Pineapple Express has hit the web! The Playlist first posted a clip of the song last night; today, Whitney at Pop Candy points to the full thing, available for streaming or download on MySpace.
It’s very much in classic Huey Lewis plot song mode, complete with gratuitous hand claps and sax solo. It’s not as directly narrative as, say, “Back in Time” (above), but it’s slightly more literally connected to the film than, like, “The Power of Love.” A sample from the chorus: “How did we get into this mess? Pineapple Express! Can’t deal with this stress! Totally gone, cause we’re on, Pineapple Express!” It is the best, and it is also totally the worst.
As we’ve discussed before, plot songs take the science of the source cue to a new level. After the jump, a brief, video-guided journey through plot song history. Let us know what we’ve left out.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon recently gave a lengthy interview to the GeeksOn podcast, and half the blogs in my Google Reader are talking about it (yes, the mostly the nerdy ones). You’d assume that the geeks would be most excited about what Whedon had to say about future movie projects, or maybe the his new TV series, which stars Buffy/Angel vet Eliza Dushku. Wrong. All anyone is talking about is a throwaway diss from Whedon on the subject of John Hughes’ Weird Science:
I hate Weird Science not a little. I find it offensive. The boy fantasy of building a girl. Obviously, we were doing the nasty version of it, because I find it grotesque.
When Whedon says “we”, he’s talking about a storyline on a late season of Buffy, in which ancillary character Warren built a robot version of Buffy for the sexual gratification of Spike. Warren eventually got flayed by Buffy’s lesbian witch friend Willow, and the Buffybot was destroyed by demons, so I guess everyone got their comeupance for engaging in the “grotesquerie” of the robot girlfriend game. Except for Spike, who moved to LA and partnered with Buffy’s other vampire ex-boyfriend to fight evil lawyers. But whatever. Back to Weird Science…
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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