- “Falling Slowly” from “Once”*
- “Happy Working Song” from “Enchanted”
- “Raise It Up” from “August Rush”
- “So Close” from “Enchanted”
- “That’s How You Know” from “Enchanted”
Discuss.
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Yep. When they were announcing each song to perform, I thought “well, looks like Enchanted will win.” Then “Falling Slowly” was selected and I realized “well, that makes perfect sense.” The vote for Enchanted got divided by 3 (roughly), allowing the other song to win. If I were Alan Menken, I think I’d be a little upset by that.
Certainly looks like the Enchanted votes were cancelling each other out…until you actually listen to the songs and realize how good Falling Slowly was, by far better than any generic Disney garbage this year. I’m guessing it was far and away picked the winner by the judges, but if I guess I can’t say for sure unless someone has the numbers on it.
Also look at it from Disney’s point of view – suppose only 1 of their songs was nominated and it won. Which would they rather have when promoting their DVD – “Won best song” or “3 Oscar nominated songs”…I’m guessing it’s close to neutral with slight edge to the 3 songs. Win win situation.
It may be bad, but what do you suggest as an improvement?
They ought to abolish that category. “Best Soundtrack” I can understand because the soundtrack is a major component of the movie-watching experience. Giving an award for a single song seems a bit like giving an award for for “best chase scene,” or “best kiss.”
And also, despite how horrible the songs from Enchanted truly were, I now have a crush on Amy Adams after her performance
I think “Spider-Pig” was the actual best movie song of the year, but it was probably not eligible for multiple reasons.
There are about a dozen songs in ONCE, all good as far as I could tell. There may be one or two songs there that also deserve a nomination. But Falling Slowly is unique. If it is ever possible to capture a movie in one song, Falling Slowly would have been it. In other words, there is an undisputable global optimum in ONCE whereas there seem to be three local optima in Enchanted. In the end, only one peak would be chosen. I don’t think plurality rule is as distorting as it may seem at the first sight in this case.
There are about a dozen songs in ONCE, all good as far as I could tell. There may be one or two songs there that also deserve a nomination. But Falling Slowly is unique. If it is ever possible to capture a movie in one song, Falling Slowly would have been it. In other words, there is an undisputable global optimum in ONCE whereas there seem to be three local optima in Enchanted. In the end, only one peak would be chosen. I don’t think plurality rule is as distorting as it may seem at the first sight in this case.
Actually, I don’t see what was so wrong with the songs from Enchanted. I didn’t like the movie, but the great-looking 2D animated scenes and Menken songs were breaths of fresh air given Disney’s (and nearly everyone else’s) recent attempts at children’s films. It really just made me wish they had gotten the band back together for a full-on Disney film, rather than a parody of one.
I didn’t see Once, but the soundtrack is fairly good, and I can’t really dispute the win.
Contra Bob Montgomery, who suggests ranked voting, I think a better way to achieve a consent-maximizing outcome among Academy voters is approval voting. Why not just vote for every song/movie/person that deserves to win, in your opinion? No need to artificially rank qualitatively different performances if you use approval voting.
It has drawbacks vs. ranked voting, but it does encourage a result that is acceptable.
If you watched the Oscars you would have heard the audience react for “Once” in a much more positive fashion than any other songs. It was far and away the crowd favorite…
Bob, they use some kind of ranked ballots for nominating not for choosing among the nominees.
Cue the endless arguments between advocates of approval, instant runoff, and Concordcet voting systems…
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