Damn you, Beyonce!
Feb. 28th, 2005 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frameofmind6Beyonce? Beyonce??!! BEYONCE???!!
Why?! Why did they feel the need to profane two potentially excellent musical pieces with someone who can't sing real music? (The third song -- her duet with Josh Groban -- wasn't that great a song to begin with, so I'll forgive them for that)
Seriously, I was actually cringing throughout her performances. I mean, these were real musical works that could have been absolutely beautiful if they had been performed by someone who was trained in the style that they were intended to be sung in, but apparently whoever plans the Oscars doesn't know the difference between pop singing and real singing. Her vowels were too lateral, her voice too nasal, and she kept sticking these damn popish ornamentations in all over the place. Why not just get Britney Spears up there singing Handel, have Justin Timberlake crank out an aria or two and call it a night?
You may not be able to tell, but I'm a little bit bitter...(*grin*) I can't help it -- I'm a singer. I had the same issue last year with whats-her-name singing that song "Into the West," from Lord of the Rings (the one that won, come to think of it) -- her voice was just bizarre. And that was twice as bad, because they had failed to give an award to Enya for "May it Be" (from Fellowship) two years before, and that's the one that really should have won (now *there's* a voice).
And John Williams lost *again*! He's my favorite composer ever, and I have yet to see him win an Oscar. Though I have to admit, the score from Finding Neverland was very beautiful...still, the harmonics and the big sweeping violin/string lines in Williams's score for Prisoner of Azkaban were really fantastic.
I really *really* wanted Johnny Depp to win Best Actor this year -- not just because he's incredibly hot (which he is), but mainly because he has consistently shown himself to be a remarkable performer, and he doesn't really "play the Hollywood game" like all the other actors around these days. He does the work he wants to do because he wants to do it, and not because it will advance his career. A win for Johnny Depp would be a victory against the over-commercialization of Hollywood.
Then again, I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite, because in practice I do tend to gravitate toward the more commercial movies. But at least I know and *admit* that I'm a hypocrite...I get points for that, right? (*grin*)
And then, of course, there was Best Picture -- Million Dollar Baby. Ugh. Granted, I didn't actually see the movie, but I really wish something else had won. MDB just did not appeal to me at all. I'm sure it was very good, and I know it has this fantastic twist at the end (a friend of mine told me what it was, since I didn't plan to see the movie anyway), but I was really pulling for Finding Neverland and The Aviator. Oh well -- maybe next year...
I had fun matching up the music they were playing with the movies they were from though (my main source of entertainment during the awards). They kept playing Terminator for some odd reason. The weirdest thing was when they played the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation as Morgan Freeman was leaving the stage from his award -- what the hell was that? Ooh, and they played stuff from the score of Meet Joe Black several times too -- I always forget how beautiful that one is until I hear a snatch of it. Gotta watch that movie again sometime...
Why?! Why did they feel the need to profane two potentially excellent musical pieces with someone who can't sing real music? (The third song -- her duet with Josh Groban -- wasn't that great a song to begin with, so I'll forgive them for that)
Seriously, I was actually cringing throughout her performances. I mean, these were real musical works that could have been absolutely beautiful if they had been performed by someone who was trained in the style that they were intended to be sung in, but apparently whoever plans the Oscars doesn't know the difference between pop singing and real singing. Her vowels were too lateral, her voice too nasal, and she kept sticking these damn popish ornamentations in all over the place. Why not just get Britney Spears up there singing Handel, have Justin Timberlake crank out an aria or two and call it a night?
You may not be able to tell, but I'm a little bit bitter...(*grin*) I can't help it -- I'm a singer. I had the same issue last year with whats-her-name singing that song "Into the West," from Lord of the Rings (the one that won, come to think of it) -- her voice was just bizarre. And that was twice as bad, because they had failed to give an award to Enya for "May it Be" (from Fellowship) two years before, and that's the one that really should have won (now *there's* a voice).
And John Williams lost *again*! He's my favorite composer ever, and I have yet to see him win an Oscar. Though I have to admit, the score from Finding Neverland was very beautiful...still, the harmonics and the big sweeping violin/string lines in Williams's score for Prisoner of Azkaban were really fantastic.
I really *really* wanted Johnny Depp to win Best Actor this year -- not just because he's incredibly hot (which he is), but mainly because he has consistently shown himself to be a remarkable performer, and he doesn't really "play the Hollywood game" like all the other actors around these days. He does the work he wants to do because he wants to do it, and not because it will advance his career. A win for Johnny Depp would be a victory against the over-commercialization of Hollywood.
Then again, I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite, because in practice I do tend to gravitate toward the more commercial movies. But at least I know and *admit* that I'm a hypocrite...I get points for that, right? (*grin*)
And then, of course, there was Best Picture -- Million Dollar Baby. Ugh. Granted, I didn't actually see the movie, but I really wish something else had won. MDB just did not appeal to me at all. I'm sure it was very good, and I know it has this fantastic twist at the end (a friend of mine told me what it was, since I didn't plan to see the movie anyway), but I was really pulling for Finding Neverland and The Aviator. Oh well -- maybe next year...
I had fun matching up the music they were playing with the movies they were from though (my main source of entertainment during the awards). They kept playing Terminator for some odd reason. The weirdest thing was when they played the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation as Morgan Freeman was leaving the stage from his award -- what the hell was that? Ooh, and they played stuff from the score of Meet Joe Black several times too -- I always forget how beautiful that one is until I hear a snatch of it. Gotta watch that movie again sometime...
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Hey >_<
Date: 2005-03-19 06:43 am (UTC)Would you have preferred Charlotte Church?
Re: Hey >_<
Date: 2005-03-19 09:29 am (UTC)As for Annie Lennox, well, I guess I just don't really get the appeal of her voice. It's not classical, but it's not really pop either -- it just strikes me as odd. (And yes, I actually would have preferred Charlotte Church)