Academy Awards tonight boil down to one word – Sinners. On this, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, aka Laetare Sunday, it seems only fitting that a movie titled Sinners will run the table at the Awards later this evening. Sinners should win just for this scene in the following video alone. Note that I am a sucker for those long, one take scenes and initially thought that this was an example of that starting at 2:38 mark. However, it turns out that it was the result of a couple of takes (click here). (Entertainment Weekly did a nice article also discussing this scene and how it was filmed (click here.))
Regardless how they filmed it, I found myself going back several times to re-watch this scene as it takes you for a musical history lesson.
And speaking of re-watching things, I checked out three of the 10 nominated movies Sinners, One Battle After Another and Sentimental Value for a second viewing. After doing so, I still have problems saying which one I like the best. Sinners was great and should clean up awards-wise tonight. However, One Battle was also great and I enjoyed re-watching it a little more so than I did Sinners.
Sentimental Value however, was my overall favorite as it took me the second viewing to put it all together and appreciate just how well done it was. Bottom line, I think Sinners will and should win Best Movie tonight. However, I am going with Sentimental Value for well, sentimental reasons.
P.S. After I had bad mouthed Frankenstein in a previous Buzzyblog post and said that I would not be watching it, Jeffery Shuman sent me the following comment:
So, proving that old dogs and farts can learn new tricks, guess what? Heeding Jeffrey’s advice, I watched Frankenstein last night and it really was pretty amazing! I now see why it was nominated for Best Movie. Thank you for the tip Jeffrey!
As for Best Song, Diane Warren has been nominated 17 times for an Academy Award but has yet to win one. The consensus seems to be that she will be 0 for 18 after tonight when once again she gets overlooked.
On the other hand (ear?) the little heard/known Sweet Dreams of Joy from the documentary Viva Verdi! is also nominated. The movie is about residents of a home for retired musicians. NPR described it as follows:
For a good breakdown of all the nominated songs and videos for each of them (click here.) As I discussed in a previous Buzzyblog post, Golden is the heavy favorite to win Best Song. That said, I’m sticking with the Sinners and their I Lied to You.
Here then is Sweet Dreams of Joy in a very sweet video. Talk about being a little sentimental!
Tune in tomorrow for Buzzy Podcast where Chief Larry and I sat down with Leslie LeDonne to discuss her murder mystery Killing Henrietta.