Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Song

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Original Song

The nominees are:

“Down to Joy” from Belfast, by Van Morrison

“Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto, by Lin-Manuel Miranda

“Somehow You Do” from Four Good Days, by Diane Warren

“Be Alive” from King Richard, by Beyoncé and Dixson

“No Time to Die” from No Time to Die, by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell

Raise your hand if you are sick of me complaining about the Best Original Song category every year. … My hand is up, too. It is the worst, and it never gets any better. To twist the knife a little more, given the current circumstances – eliminating categories from the show and pandering to the most general possible audience – it is the least likely category to be left on the cutting room floor. 

Just look at the talent lined up for the show this year: Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, Van Morrison, Reba McIntire (singing the Diane Warren song), and internationally known Colombian singer Sebatián Yatra (singing his track from Encanto). Massive stars, all, to one degree or another. 

Not only are we getting all of these performers on the show, we will be getting an extra song performance from Encanto, the Academy announced this week. With producers likely bereft at the idea Disney submitted “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto instead of the No. 1 pop hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” they seem to have said, ‘Screw it,’ and added “Bruno” to the performances. So, not only are we forgoing filmmakers and craftspeople who are nominated, we are also getting extra performances of songs that are not nominated. Just brutal, brutal decision making by the Academy every step of the way here.

“Dos Oruguitas” (Encanto) – Miranda should already have the EGOT. To go with his three Tony Awards, two Emmys, and three Grammys, he should have won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2016 for “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana. It remains the best original song from a movie this century. “Dos Oruguitas” does not quite rise to that level – what could? – but it is a brilliant track from one of our most accomplished songwriters. 

Deployed beautifully in the film, it tells the story of how the Familia Madrigal became who they are and the trauma they suffered to get there. It is probably the best song of the bunch – depending on your love of classic Van Morrison – but apart from that, it is the only song that exists in the true spirit of the award. It is a lovely song, thematically rich, and meaningful to the plot of the film. Give this man his damn Oscar. 

“Be Alive” (King Richard) – Let’s just say right off the bat that Beyoncé is obviously one of the most famous individuals in the world, and the Academy is lucky to have her on the show. There absolutely will be people who tune into the broadcast just to see her perform, so mission accomplished for the show’s producers.

In general, I am not a fan of songs that play over the end credits being nominated for an Oscar, though the use of “Be Alive” is quite rousing at the end of King Richard, with song playing over footage of the real Venus and Serena Williams. Outside that context, though, it is a wonderful track. Beyoncé performs it powerfully, and the lyrics are a poignant ode to pride in family, community, and self.

“No Time to Die” (No Time to Die) – Of the 25 official James Bond movies, six have been nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars, which actually feels a bit light given the perceived cultural relevance of each new “Bond Theme.” That said, this is the third consecutive 007 picture to be so honored by the Academy, with the previous two (Skyfall and Spectre) actually winning the award. This song, by Billie Eilish and brother Finneas O’Connell is not as good as “Skyfall,” but it is miles better than “Spectre,” and as the concluding theme of Daniel Craig’s run as the character, it hits all the right notes. 

Eilish is the youngest person ever to write and record a Bond theme, which is a neat bit of trivia. This song is in a particularly odd situation – it was released in anticipation of the film in February 2020, but due to the pandemic, the release date of the movie kept getting pushed back. So, now, the song has been out for more than two years, it won a Grammy more than a year ago, and the Academy is just now getting the chance to recognize it. Weird times, indeed.

“Down to Joy” (Belfast) – I was a little surprised to learn this is Van Morrison’s first Academy Award nomination, but he has not done much work for films. His style certainly lends itself to the medium, but he has mostly avoided Hollywood. Surely, he was drawn to this film about growing up in Ireland during The Troubles due to a personal connection to the material – though Morrison has said his family left Ireland just before the war. The song is fun, lighthearted, and an all-around feel-good listen that fits perfectly within the mood of the film director Kenneth Branagh is making.

Unfortunately, Morrison has come out several times and in major ways as a COVID denier. He went so far as to release a trio of songs questioning the science around COVID-19 and undermining the need for health and safety measures. Worse, the Academy has decided not to require vaccinations for presenters and performers on the broadcast, and though no one will confirm, it appears the likely reason is to lure Van Morrison onto the stage. Everything else aside, the producers are actually risking people’s health for ratings. There is no good way to spin that.

“Somehow You Do” (Four Good Days) – At a certain point, one really has to feel for the Music Branch – not me, I don’t have any sympathy for a branch that so consistently gets this category wrong. Members really, really love Diane Warren, and they seem positively desperate to get her an Oscar. This is the fifth consecutive year in which Warren has received a nomination and seventh out of the previous eight. She has 12 total nominations and no wins. She probably could have won for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon or “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from Mannequin, but she didn’t. So, here we are in an endless cycle of nominating not very good work every year just to try to get her over that hill.

This brings us to “Somehow You Do,” which not only is not very good, but it is actually quite bad. More than that, it is part of a pretty bad movie. Ironically, the song’s lack of subtlety is kind of a perfect fit for the generically somber addiction drama that is Four Good Days. Once again, Warren will be a bridesmaid, and even if I can muster no sympathy for the Music Branch, I do feel a little bad for Warren having to get dressed up every damn year just to lose an award.

The final analysis

We talked about Diane Warren. That’s not going to happen. Van Morrison, even without the cloud of COVID denial hovering over him, is probably in fourth place for this award – though if he pulls off a surprise win, all hell will break loose among the commentariat. So, we are down to two massive stars and one massively successful soundtrack.

Speaking of which, I probably did not make it clear enough above how big of a cultural phenomenon the Encanto soundtrack has become. If Lin-Manuel Miranda had not already proved himself by getting a Broadway musical cast album to chart with Hamilton, this would be all the evidence we need that the man is a genius. Consider: The soundtrack album reached No. 1 in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. 

It is the only Disney soundtrack to produce multiple top 10 hits, with “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” reaching No. 1 and “Surface Pressure” hitting No. 8. Every original song on the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100, with nominated track “Dos Oruguitas” peaking at No. 36. As a result of all this, Miranda reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Songwriters list for the first time in his career. I mention all of this only to say that Beyoncé and Billie Eilish do not eclipse Miranda and the Encanto soundtrack as much as one might think.

For the win, star power does matter, and Beyoncé cannot be counted out. The recent track record of Bond themes suggests Eilish has a puncher’s chance. If the nominated Encanto song had been “Bruno,” it would be over, the massive popularity of that track likely carrying the day. Instead, Miranda chose to submit “Dos Oruguitas” because he felt it better represented the spirit of the film. That is commendable, but it makes this more of a race than it needed to be. That said, I fully expect Miranda to be holding that gold statue at the end of the night.

Will win: “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto

Should win: “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto

Should have been here: “Just Look Up” from Don’t Look Up

Next time: Best Animated Feature

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Sound

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Sound

The nominees are:

Belfast

Dune

No Time to Die

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

We have already talked a lot about the marginalizing of the crafts categories on the Oscars broadcast this year. For those paying close attention, though, that marginalization began last year, when the Academy combined the awards for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing into a single Best Sound award. 

If you know a little about filmmaking or, perhaps, have followed the site over the years, you know how distinct those two disciplines are. For the Oscars producers and the network, it was just one fewer award they had to show. Now, the lone Sound award will not be presented on the show anyway, which begs the question: Why not go back to two separate awards?

Putting all that aside, it will be interesting to see how voters interpret this award moving forward. What part of the discipline will be given more weight: mixing (the levels of sound) or editing (the creation and placement of sound)? War films and action films have always done well across the board for the very obvious reason that they are often quite loud and feature a lot of interconnecting sounds. However, musicals will occasionally slip in and steal the win in Sound Mixing.

Take a look at these recent splits: 2002 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Editing) and Chicago (Mixing); 2004 - The Incredibles (Editing) and Ray (Mixing); 2006 - Letters from Iwo Jima (Editing) and Dreamgirls (Mixing); 2012 - Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty (tie - Editing) and Les Misérables (Mixing); 2014 - American Sniper (Editing) and Whiplash (Mixing). Nine times from 2000-2019, both awards went to the same movie. Seven of the nine are either action or war films and one a musical (Hugo is the ninth and a bit of an outlier).

Given that recent history, I would anticipate the future of this award to look a lot more like Sound Editing than Sound Mixing. However, last year, the first year of the combined award, the Oscar went to the highly deserving Sound of Metal, which is neither war/action nor musical in any true sense of the word. That was likely a special case, though, since the film, itself, is so much about the ways we hear and perceive sound. My guess is that was an anomaly and this year will resemble much more closely the future of the award.

Dune – Nominated team: Mac Ruth, Mark A. Mangini, Theo Green, Doug Hemphill, Ron Bartlett

This fits in with previous recent winners such as Inception, Gravity, and Denis Villeneuve’s own Arrival. These are big, bold science-fiction concepts featuring rich soundscapes that highlight the complexities of the worlds they depict. Dune is a sound showcase with intense action, a driving score, and a host of inventive sonic ideas used to fill out the edges of a foreign planet.

Ruth, Green, and Bartlett are all multiple nominees, while sound editor Mangini is a six-time nominee and previous winner for his work on Mad Max: Fury Road. Veteran sound mixer Hemphill, meanwhile, is on his 10th nomination, having previously taken home the gold in 1992 for The Last of the Mohicans.

West Side Story – Nominated team: Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson, Shawn Murphy

Sound for a musical is a tricky business, and it often comes down to the major question: How much are the songs part of the world of the story or how much do they stand apart from it? Spielberg and his team go the traditional route, using the songs as a break from the linear narrative (as opposed to something more diegetic like Tick, Tick… BOOM!). That gives them more front-and-center placement in the mix and emphasizes the theatricality of the production, which absolutely works for a musical as venerated as this. Also note, the 1961 film won this category.

Supervising sound editor Chumney is a newbie to the awards race on his first career Oscar nomination, while sound mixer Maitland, who also worked on this year’s other big musical Tick, Tick… BOOM!, is a five-time nominee. Murphy has one win (Jurassic Park) from four nominations. Then, there are Nelson and Rydstrom, both legends in the field of sound. Nelson has 22 nominations and two wins, while Rydstrom has seven Academy Awards from 20 nominations, making him one of the most awarded individuals in Oscars history.

The Power of the Dog – Nominated team: Richard Flynn, Robert Mackenzie, Tara Webb

The Sound Branch has a long history of appreciation for westerns, going back to the 1938 Best Sound winner The Cowboy and the Lady. In modern times, films like No Country for Old Men, the 3:10 to Yuma remake, and last year’s News of the World all found footing in the sound categories. The Power of the Dog is part of that proud tradition, and it is easy to see why, with the high difficulty level involved in recreating the sonic landscape of the American West. One thing I would point out about this film, similar to No Country, is to pay attention to the silences, which are just as powerful and just as artful as the sounds.

Flynn and Webb are both on their first career nominations, while Mackenzie previously won Best Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge. He also was nominated with the Sound Editing team on that film.

No Time to Die – Nominated team: Simon Hayes, Oliver Tarney, James Harrison, Paul Massey, Mark Taylor

Here, we have a big, loud shoot-’em-up. Despite a more reflective and sometimes downright gloomy tone, this is still a James Bond movie, which means action galore. Car chases, foot chases, shootouts, explosions, and everything else you can imagine figure heavily into the storytelling. Then, of course, there is that iconic score to weave in and out. This is fun, classically impressive work on both a mixing and editing level.

Massey, who won his only award for Sound Mixing on Bohemian Rhapsody, joins the 10-timers club with his nomination this year. Taylor won Sound Mixing two years ago for 1917 and has been nominated four times. Hayes has a perfect record at the Oscars, winning Sound Mixing for his only other nomination (Les Misérables), and Tarney is a five-time nominee with no wins. Harrison is the only one of the bunch on his first nomination.

Belfast – Nominated team: Denise Yarde, Simon Chase, James Mather, Niv Adiri

Belfast might be a bit of a surprise nominee in this category, especially when compared to flashier work in fellow Best Picture nominees such as Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley. However, what makes Belfast work overall is its seamless integration of differing styles, incorporating elements of the coming-of-age movie, war movies, and even a bit of a musical for good measure. Add to that a musical soundtrack that carries a lot of emotional weight, and the sound team is tying together a lot of seemingly unrelated threads to make this picture work.

In a rarity for this branch, which so often nominates the same people over and over (see, again, the nomination totals for a couple of the West Side Story honorees), three members of this team are first-time nominees. Those would be Yarde, Chase, and Mather. Re-recording mixer Adiri has one previous nomination and one victory for his work on Gravity. Expect to see all of these folks back in future years, since often once you’re in, you’re in.

The final analysis

If we are right and this combined sound award is going to lean more in the direction of action and war pictures, then Dune and No Time to Die are your frontrunners. West Side Story is possible, particularly if the action films cancel each other out and voters rally behind the lone nominated musical, but it would be a curveball.

Like most every other category, Best Picture nominees are heavily favored against non-Best Picture nominees, giving Dune the edge over the James Bond flick. It is interesting to note, however, that the last non-Best Picture nominee to win a sound award was a James Bond movie: Skyfall, though even that tied with Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty. Before that, it was the very Bond-like The Bourne Ultimatum. I do not expect No Time to Die to pull off the same trick, but the precedent is there for an upset.

Will win: Dune

Should win: No Time to Die

Should have been here: Tick, Tick… BOOM!

Next time: Best Original Score

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Visual Effects

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history, what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Visual Effects

The nominees are:

Dune

Free Guy

No Time to Die

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Spider-Man: No Way Home

The list of nominees here reflects what the Academy seems to wish all of its categories looked like, full of crowd-pleasing blockbusters that fall somewhere on the spectrum of mediocre but fun to visionary but flawed. The producers of the Oscars, and to a large degree ABC, seem to believe that stuffing the nominations full of movies like these will bring audiences back to the show. Thinking like this how we get stunts like #OscarsFanFavorite.

That is no knock on these films, which I mostly liked, and all are deserving nominees in this category, but one cannot help but imagine a future very close at hand in which Dune Part II leads a Best Picture slate of Marvel sequels and middling action comedies. But I digress. We are here to kick off our category-by-category rundown of the Oscars with a look at Best Visual Effects.

As I sat in the theater watching Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is a fun enough film that pulls out all the stops to entertain us, I really started to think about what the Visual Effects Oscar rewards. It is a question I have grappled with for years, and I never have reached a satisfying answer. 

History has made it clear what Academy members think they are rewarding: the best film, which happens to feature prominent visual effects work. Fair enough, if not quite what I interpret the spirit of the award to be. Shouldn’t Best Visual Effects reward the best work in the category? Which brings us to the more intriguing question: What does “best” look like?

Dune - Is it the seamless integration of photorealistic effects work, bringing to vibrant life worlds and ideas we never imagined? If so, we have Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, with effects by the nominated team of Paul Lambert, Tristan Myles, Brian Connor, and Gerd Nefzer. The film is gorgeous to look at, with the also-nominated production design buoyed by effects that make Caladan and Arrakis real, visceral places. The sandworms are an achievement unto themselves, and despite the multiverses featured in some of the other nominees, this space epic actually has the grandest scope of any film in the category.

Spider-Man: No Way Home - Or does best mean making the impossible possible, realism be damned? Truth be told, it was the bridge fight between Peter and Doc Ock that got me thinking about all this. I would not say the effects look particularly great in this film, but they are definitely integral to world building. These movies do not exist without the effects – in this case, crafted by nominees Kelly Port, Chris Waegner, Scott Edelstein, and Dan Sudick. Perhaps, that should count for something. We got to watch a spider man fight a cyborg, which is not nothing, and it does not happen without the effects.

Free Guy - If we are going instead with flash and pizzazz, then this year, the category belongs to Free Guy, by director Shawn Levy with effects by Swen Gillberg, Bryan Grill, Nikos Kalaitzidis, and Sudick, a double nominee. Free Guy is mostly fun and diverting, interesting maybe only for the fact that “Ryan Reynolds Movie” seems to be its own genre now. About a non-player character who gains sentience in a video game world, the effects are everywhere, and they are of a piece with the film, replicating the open world-style environments of a Grand Theft Auto or the like.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - This would seem to fall into the same category as fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe nominee Spider-Man, but perhaps with an even greater level of difficulty. In the film’s fantastical final act, nominees Christopher Townsend, Joe Farrell, Sean Noel Walker, and Dan Oliver throw everything at the wall, and most of it sticks. In addition, the Academy is often fond of distinctive creature effects, and the creatures in this film are fun and goofy in a way not often allowed by the genre.

No Time To Die - The supposed final entry in the Daniel Craig James Bond series features solid effects work by Charlie Noble, Joel Green, Jonathan Fawkner, and Christ Corbould, but the 007 franchise will always be better known for its stunt work. Should there be an Oscar for stunt coordinators and performers? Absolutely. But we don’t have that one yet, so for now, we get Bond here in Visual Effects. It is a good film, but not the kind of effects showcase other shortlisted finalists such as Godzilla vs. Kong or The Matrix Resurrections might have been.

The final analysis

This is Dune’s award to lose. Barring the shocking Ex-Machina victory in 2015, which we talk about every time we talk about this category, go with the Best Picture nominee. Spider-Man is a formidable challenger with its big box office and hordes of fans, but when it comes to recognition, that’s what the money’s for. Also, interesting to note that no MCU film has yet to triumph in this category, though Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 – the last time we saw a live-action Doc Ock on screen – was recognized in 2004.

Lambert and Nefzer previously won this award for their work on Villeneuve’s previous film, Blade Runner 2049, while Lambert and Myles were part of the winning team on First Man. Along with first-time nominee Connor, they are all going to need more room on their shelves.

Meanwhile, the question of what “best” means in this category remains open to interpretation, left to each of us to answer on our own. How do you want to be transported at the movies?

Will win: Dune

Should win: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Should have been here: Godzilla vs. Kong

Next time: Makeup and Hairstyling