Open Letter To Sky Movies (Oscars 2012: Episode III: Revenge of the John Williams Fans)

Dear Sky Movies,

I settled down at 11.30pm on Sunday 26th February 2012 for a 5 hour viewing of your Oscars coverage. I was excited. This is arguably the most important day of the calendar year for the film, fashion and television industry. I expected laughter, tears, frustration, joy (with regards to the awards) and Billy Crystal doing something incredibly American and cheesy. No doubt the speeches, dresses and spectacle would be talked about for weeks to come.

At 11.30 your 'Red Carpet' coverage began. I enjoy watching the stars arrive and I thought what better way to do it than with Sky Movies, a package that I would be lost without. They know what they're talking about, don't they? They always seem to be showing films that I enjoy and want to see, they must have some sort of amazing coverage planned. So you can imagine my surprise when Alex Zane, Nick Moran, Natalia Tena and a film critic from Heat Magazine (Heat Magazine have a film critic?) were broadcasting from a studio. If I had wanted to hear a bunch of people chatting about the films nominated, I would have started a conversation about the Oscars with my friends. I don't think one meaningful insight into films was made, yet the 'panel' were discussing how 'totally awesome' The Artist was as if they were wisened scholars.

Nick Moran. Who is Nick Moran? Has he ever been nominated for an Oscar? Who is he? Seriously, can someone please tell me. Alex Zane set himself up for a fail by introducing him as "the guy who terrorised Harry Potter and has recently turned his hand to directing". The guy I thought terrorised Harry Potter and has recently turned his hand to directing was Ralph Fiennes, and for a moment I was pretty impressed that Sky Movies had managed to get someone so famous on their show. But no. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be entitled to their views, but he was about as contrary as he could possibly be. He simply had to express the view that is not held by the masses. Fair enough if he's not into mainstream films, but that is essentially what the Oscars are about, is it not? I don't recall an award for best independent picture.

I think this Nick Moran (whoever he is) probably received a hard enough time on Twitter for his horrifying remarks about John Williams, one of the most famous and well-loved film composers of all time, but it really was out of line. Just in case he was wondering, I can sing Schindler's List and then Harry Potter with no trouble whatsoever. His soundtracks might have a very distinctive sound, but they don't all sound the same by a long way, and he's written some brilliant music for fantasy, sci-fi, war, dramas and comedies. Just because he always uses a full traditional orchestra it really doesn't make him boring. Fair enough he's rather mainstream, and probably filthy rich, but he's had 47 Oscar nominations... he's not exactly lazy is he? If his soundtracks really do all sound the same, I'm pretty sure someone at the Academy would have thought 'hang on, this soundtrack to War Horse is the spit of the Jaws soundtrack, he's clearly self-plagarising' and not nominated him. 

(Totally on a rant here, but: besides, there's brilliant composers that self-plagarise way more than Williams - Hans Zimmer literally lifted a whole part of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack from his Gladiator score, and his Batman Scores are definitely from the same family as his Dan Brown scores (Da Vinci Code etc). Composers recycle ideas, get over it. It's better for a composer to use his own idea again and again than to use someone else's again and again. Film music works because the audience are comfortable with a set of rules that most mainstream film music sticks to - they know how to read the music - John Williams is brilliant at this, why should he change just because Nick Moran wants something different. No thank you.)

In fact, I'd go so far as to say I'd advocate censoring Nick Moran's views on film music because he is quite obviously wrong.

As for Natalia Tena, I've always found her annoying, but tonight she really brought it to new levels. She should have been forgotten about after About A Boy, but no, they had to bring her back. She was probably the least pleasing member of the 'panel' because at least Nick Moran tried to express some sort of intelligent opinion, I don't think she said anything worthwhile the whole time she was there. Plus she fiddled. ALL THE TIME. She was like a small child who had been given way too much Coca-Cola.

Oh well, I thought, it can't be too much of them just chatting about how 'overrated' Hugo was or how Meryl Streep leaves Nick Moran 'cold'. After all, it's the red carpet coverage. So after an hour, I was getting a little worried. I could see from Twitter that people such as FilmFour and Total Film were seeing red carpet coverage somewhere, but Sky Movies was still lacking in any interviews with celebrities. I finally switched over to E! where the majority of people on Twitter seemed to be headed, and that was what I wanted to see. Some guy with a mic asking celebrities who they were wearing and a couple of questions about who they thought should win. Then there was a panel gossiping about the dresses and stars. If you're not going to have a proper debate about the films and nominees, then please go the whole hog and have really shallow discussion about the films. Given that all the credible film critics are probably at the Oscars, this is probably a safer bet than having people who think they know what they're talking about chat mindlessly about their favourite films.

Next year, please sort yourself out and actually give some decent coverage of the red carpet, or just don't bother. Also you could save a lot of money by not putting on the panel after each advert break, but rather just broadcast the whole ceremony live without any interruptions from annoying television presenters like Alex Zane.

Yours sincerely,
The writers at Movies, Music and Soap

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Oscars 2012 (Episode II: Attack of the Academy Awards)

This is actually the serious post about the Oscars, following the last shambles! We're not making predictions, this is just a post about which films we want to win. We usually end up backing the films that don't end up winning the award, so we're not much good there, but such is life. The ones in red are the ones we want to win, and the ones in blue are the ones we think will win.

Best Picture:

The Artist

The Descendants

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

Moneyball

The Tree of Life

War Horse

The Tree of Life was a pretentious load of garbage, and we haven't heard brilliant things about War Horse or Extremely.. (although the latter does look interesting). The Descendants was a really nice film, despite being generally quite scathing of George Clooney's performances. We think The Artist may win, if the BAFTAs and the worldwide crush the entire population of film critics seems to have on it, but we're supporting Hugo for this one. It was a beautifully made film, a lovely story and had a fantastic cast - even the kids were good! We didn't see it in 3D, and can't imagine it actually being that good in 3D as a lot of the beautiful set design would have been lost (that's our main problem with 3D films). Obviously we're always going to cheer on any Woody Allen film too, but Hugo was just lovely.

Best Director:

The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius

The Descendants - Alexander Payne

Hugo - Martin Scorsese

Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen

The Tree of Life - Terrence Malick

 

We didn't rate the Tree of Life, but it's the kind of thing that critics might enjoy. The Artist might get this too, just because it's the 'in thing' at the moment. The Descendants wasn't particularly unusual or stunning, so maybe it shouldn't win this particular award. As you may have guessed, we love Woody Allen, so any directing award for him is a good thing. Especially when you consider how hard he must work, and how much he does for his films, he usually writes, directs and produces them. However, he doesn't actually care about winning any Oscars, so we think Scorsese should get it for Hugo, just because it's such a lovely picture! 

Actor in a Leading Role

Demian Bichir - A Better Life

George Clooney - The Descendants

Jean Dujardin - The Artist

Gary Oldman - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Brad Pitt - Moneyball

Surely it's got to be Clooney?! It'll probably go to Jean Dujardin (again, The Artist seems to be flavour of the month, so it really wouldn't surprise me). George Clooney was very good in The Descendants. Perhaps Gary Oldman should win an Oscar, but we don't think he will this year, and let's face it, everyone knows he's a top actor, maybe that's why we want Clooney to win.

Shamefully, we haven't seen any of the films that feature any of the actors nominated for Actress in a Leading Role, so we'll gloss over that with a Star Wars-esque scene sweep.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Berenice Bejo - The Artist

Jessica Chastain - The Help

Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids

Janet McTear - Albert Nobbs

Octavia Spencer - The Help

Shailene Woodley was robbed of a nomination for The Descendants and that's all we have to say about that. Probably one of the actors from The Help will win it as the Academy seem to like films about white people helping solve racism (see Sandra Bullock's performance in The Blind Side). It would be nice to see a comedy win an acting award, because that so rarely happens, so we're going to back Melissa McCarthy!

Music (Original Score)

The Adventures of Tintin - John Williams

The Artist - Ludovic Bource

Hugo - Howard Shore

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Alberto Iglesias

War Horse - John Williams

Kudos to John Williams for getting nominated twice! He's pretty much the most famous/successful/commercially viable film composer ever, so it's not like he needs the award. If he doesn't win, people aren't going to say "hey, there's that guy who almost won the Oscar once. Don't think we want him doing our movie." Also if you're making a movie that looks like it needs a John Williams soundtrack/are Steven Spielberg making any movie at all, chances are, you can afford to get John Williams to write the soundtrack. The music must carry The Artist, what with it being silent and all, but from what we've seen of it , it seemed like all music that's played in any 1920s movie ever or in any movie since that's depicting the 1920s. The music for Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, wasn't noticeable. If a film's soundtrack didn't stand out for us, chances are it wasn't very impressive, but that's just because we're massive soundtrack geeks!
This leaves Howard Shore. I guess he's a bit like John Willams really - he's been pretty successful since Lord of the Rings (he won three Oscars for two of the three films - two for the third one), and he's one of those people who if you're making some sort of epic film, you probably want him to write the music for it. However, he's done a lot of soundtrack work that wasn't epic orchestral work, plus he's the only composer to work with Tim Burton who wasn't Danny Elfman, so maybe it's time for him to win another Oscar?! Here's to guessing he might be nominated for one or both of The Hobbit films coming out this year and next year, so maybe he can wait. But we want it to be him! As far as the actual award goes, it's pretty open - John Williams is a favourite of everyone, so he's a safe choice, but they may feel they have to give Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy something.

It would be nice to see Harry Potter win the awards it's been nominated for - particularly Best Visual Effects, as it seems to have done a lot for visual effects in films, just because of what was required from J. K. Rowling's writings!

Oscars 2012 (Episode I: No Hope)

It's the Oscars soon (yay!). I might even stay up all night and watch the ceremony live on Sky like I did last year (OK, so it wasn't on Sky. I was in my university house and that involved some dodgy website streaming with ad-links to very dodgy websites indeed. But I did stay up all night). If you don't stay up all night, and you want to watch the ceremony, you have to isolate yourself from any other people who might know the results, the whole internet (including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Google News, the BBC, the Guardian, Google+, BBC iPlayer, Youtube...), the radio, the television, newspapers, shops that might be playing the radio, shops that sell televisions that are demonstrated in the windows playing news channels, shops that sell newspapers... Basically, it's not practical. One day's sleep deprivation for finding out the results for yourself is worth it.

It's the same reason why I used to buy the Harry Potter books at midnight on the day they were released and read them as fast as I could. There were some pretty mean kids at school who definitely didn't take Harry Potter nearly as seriously as me, and trust me, if they had read the books faster than me, they would have delighted in telling me that Sirius Black died in the 5th one, or that Dumbledore (Note: I love that I spelled that wrong and my spellchecker actually corrected it!) did in the 6th et cetera. But no! Not one mean kid would take the joy out of it for me, for I may be a geek, but being a geek means I can read books quicker than your average bully. And, by the looks of this post, write a completely ridiculous post about the Oscars 2012.

I promise the next one will actually be about the Oscars 2012.

Hey, you! Like the blog? Want to be involved? We're now on Twitter (@MoviesMusicSoap) so feel free to follow and drop us a line. Maybe there's something you want us to write about or maybe you have an idea you want to write yourself, get in touch! If you're a band, filmmaker or any other kind of artist and want us to review you, again, please get in touch! Or hey, maybe you're just lonely and fancy a chat...