2001 Oscar Best Original Song: Revisited

The nominees for Best Original Song at the upcoming 97th Academy Awards include two songs from “Emilia Pérez,” an original Elton John number from the documentary for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road concert tour, “Like a Bird” from “Sing Sing,” not to be confused with (God help us all) “Like a Bird” by Tiffany T*ump, and “The Journey” by Diane Warren from Tyler Perry’s “The Six Triple Eight.” This is Warren’s 16th Oscar nomination, five shy of Meryl Streep’s 21 Oscar nominations, which are 33 short of John Williams’s 54 and 38 short of Walt Disney’s 59. So, Warren has a long way to go to approach the record, but still, 16 is an impressive haul, even if she’s never won, recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2022 after getting stiffed all those years. Were all her nominations truly earned?

Gees, I don’t know, and I wasn’t about to scour every year to find out. And though I originally intended to go back to the scene of her first nomination in 1987 for “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from “Mannequin,” which stood no chance in the year of “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” from “Dirty Dancing,” well, in my Best Original Song revisitations, I had already traveled back in time to the 80s, as well as the 90s, and so I figured it was time to bring this pointless exercise into the current century. When Warren was nominated in 2001, did she deserve it given what else might have been nominated that year, and whatever did win, should it have, at least if I, and I alone, were the nominating committee? Let’s find out!

2001 Best Original Song Oscar Nominees & Winner (in bold):

“Until...” from Kate & Leopold – Music and Lyrics by Sting

“If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc. – Music and Lyrics by Randy Newman

“May It Be” from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Music and Lyrics by Enya, Nicky Ryan, and Roma Ryan

“There You’ll Be” from Pearl Harbor – Music and Lyrics by Diane Warren

“Vanilla Sky” from Vanilla Sky – Music and Lyrics by Paul McCartney

Of course, we are required to remember right up front that Best Original Song is strictly limited to original songs in whatever byzantine way the Academy defines originality, eliminating old pop hits used in movies which should be a category unto itself but, as always, do not get me started. That means “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star” by Linda Scott in “Mulholland Drive” and “These Days” by Nico in “The Royal Tenenbaums” are ineligible. Add “69 Police” by David Holmes in “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Beat It” by Michael Jackson in “Zoolander,” and Jamie O’Neal’s version of “All by Myself” in “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and, as always, my God, what a category. Alas. 

The unexpected box office hit “Save the Last Dance” hearkens back to the glorious era of Julia Stiles: Movie Star just as the movie itself hearkened back to the golden era of the movie theme song with Fredro Starr and Jill Scott’s “Shining Through” which itself hearkened back to (borrowed from) Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” which is going to touch any Gen-Xer’s soul. As such, it takes the place of Warren’s “Pearl Harbor” theme. Sorry, Diane, you’ll have to settle for 15 nominations. 

At the 2014 Tony Awards, Neil Patrick Harris gave Sting a lap dance during a performance of “Sugar Baby” from “Hedwig and The Angry Inch.” And though the 74th Academy Awards might have finally been ready to give Oscars to two African Americans for leading roles, it probably was not ready for John Cameron Mitchell to give Jack Nicholson a lap dance on live TV. But that’s not my problem. I wish it would have happened, and even if it didn’t, “Sugar Baby” from the movie version of “Hedwig and The Angry Inch” still should have been nominated. And in an ironic twist that I think the writer of “Every Breath You Take” could appreciate, it replaces Sting’s “Until...” and knocks him down to three Oscar nominations all-time.

I’ll be honest, I am desperate to give Natalie Imbruglia a retroactive Oscar nomination for “Cold Air,” her contribution to the “Y Tu Mamá También” soundtrack, but then I re-listened to Enya’s nominated song. And while I might contend the LOTR trilogy is terribly overrated (to paraphrase Elaine Benes talking about “The English Patient,” stop telling your stupid story about the stupid ring and just throw it in the fire already), Enya is not. She stays. 

Paul McCartney had earned both an Oscar nomination and a win thirty-one years before in 1970 for “Let It Be.” But do you know who has never been nominated, before 2001 or after? Her majesty Mariah Carey, that’s who, the same woman who remains but one elusive #1 hit away from tying, ahem, The Beatles for most all-time. And while “Glitter” was a cultural punching bag, set those preconceived notions aside and the fact is, “Want You” should have been a hit itself. A #1 hit? Eh, I’m not sure, maybe more like #26, but a hit, nevertheless, and imagine Mariah following Enya at that Academy ceremony. 

Newman’s victory that year was a big deal given his scads of prior nods and no victory to show for it. You can see how big a deal it was in the reaction after his name is announced and I hate to take that away from him. But he has since gone on to win again, in 2010 for “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3,” whereas the late Adam Schlesinger was nominated only once in 1997 for penning the title track to “That Thing You Do!,” losing to Celine Dion’s unbeatable Rose and Jack ballad. And so, with the benefit of hindsight, but also with objective analysis vis-a-vis their two songs and every other eligible song, it is absolutely clear in retrospect that the Schlesinger penned “Pretend to Be Nice” from “Josie and the Pussycats” was the real Best Original Song in 2001. [Bangs gavel.]

1993 Oscar Best Original Song: Revisited

Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt’s “I’m Just Ken” and Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell’s “What Was I Made For” from “Barbie” marked the 18th time two tunes from the same movie were nominated for the Best Original Song Academy Award, the most recent being “La La Land” in 2016, the first being “Fame” in 1980. The tenth came 30 years ago when both Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” and Neil Young’s “Philadelphia” from Jonathan Demme’s Best Picture winner of the same city’s name earned nods. Bruce won the Oscar, and though revisiting this category given my being a widely known Springsteen devotee would seem pointless, well, hey, don’t forget, I’m mad at Bruce, our 1-percent blue collar hero whose obscene ticket prices are just a reflection of the market, man, so what if you have to sell your house up in Fairview to be able to afford to go see him. Maybe he won’t win our retroactive category! You never know! TBD.

1993 Best Original Song Oscar Nominees & Winner (in bold):

“Again” from “Poetic Justice” – Music and Lyrics by Janet Jackson and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis

“The Day I Fall in Love” from “Beethoven’s 2nd” – Music and Lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, James Ingram, and Clif Magness 

“Philadelphia” from “Philadelphia” – Music and Lyrics by Neil Young 

“Streets of Philadelphia” from “Philadelphia” – Music and Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

“A Wink and a Smile” from “Sleepless in Seattle” – Music by Marc Shaiman; Lyrics by Ramsey McLean

We are required to remember right up front that this category, as the name implies, is strictly limited to Original Songs, in whatever byzantine way the Academy defines originality, eliminating old pop hits used in movies which should be a category unto itself but, as always, do not get me started. That means “I’ve Got You, Babe” by Sonny & Cher in “Groundhog Day,” as evocative a deployment of pop music in cinema as you will ever get, is verboten, as is a personal favorite, “I Ain’t Got Nobody” by Louis Prima in Mad Dog and Glory.” Add “Blue Moon Revisited (A Song For Elvis)” by Cowboy Junkies in “Untamed Heart,” “Slow Ride” by Foghat in “Dazed and Confused,” and “Saturday Night” by The Bay City Rollers in “So I Married an Axe Murderer” and, once again, my God, what a category. Alas. 

It’s true that the “Sleepless in Seattle” soundtrack was ubiquitous in 1993, going all the way to the top of the Billboard chart, but do you what soundtrack went to #17 on the Billboard chart that same year? “Judgement Night,” that’s what, a forgettable movie I think I might have watched at someone’s birthday party but with a soundtrack that featured hip-hop and rock artists collaborating and that was destined to appeal much more to a rap-obsessed central Iowa teen. So, “A Wink and a Smile” gets the heave-ho, and though a lot of other “Judgement Night” soundtrack fans might disagree, remember, I’m the sole judge and jury in this category revisitation, and “Missing Link” by Del tha Funky Homosapien and Dinosaur Jr. gets the nod by a mile.

I am tempted, really tempted, to nominate a deep cut in the form of “Don’t Waste My Time” by Lisa Taylor from “The Meteor Man” soundtrack in place of “Again”...but then I listened to “Again,” well, again, and I can’t do Janet like that. That song is still dope. It stays. 

Delbert McClinton’s “Weatherman” sort of sounds like something the quirky singer-songwriter might have come up with on his own, but no, it was recorded specifically for “Groundhog Day,” and as such, gives “Philadelphia” the boot, no disrespect to Neil Young. 

As it turns out, 1993 was a heck of a year for material appearing on soundtracks that didn’t qualify for Best Song because of the Academy’s aforementioned byzantine rules, chief among them Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” That song won three Grammys but was ineligible at the Oscars. But there was also Boy George’s “The Crying Game,” which was a cover and therefore ineligible too, and even “Soul to Squeeze,” from “The Coneheads,” which I owned on cassingle, even though I never saw the movie, my second favorite Red Hot Chili Peppers track after “I Could Have Lied,” but recorded for the band’s celebrated fifth record “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” not the movie, and disqualified. 

As best I can tell, however, and I really did dig into it as much as I could without emailing director Jon Turtletaub, “Rise Above It” from the “Cool Runnings” soundtrack, credited to a band called Lock Stock & Barrell that I could not find much about, and featuring MC PC and Howard Chen, was an original specifically for the beloved (by me) movie about the Jamaican bobsledding team. (I remain available, free of charge, to write the essay for its Criterion edition.) And because the American version of the “Cool Runnings” soundtrack was egregiously released sans “Rise Above It,” and because this was 1993 and before the advent of every single song in the history of the world being a digital click away, and because “Rise Above It” was never going to appear on Q-102 in Des Moines so I could tape it to a mix, I was forced to record it by literally holding my boombox up to the television speaker during the montage featuring the song as it played on my rented VHS. I really did this! And unless we get a last-minute note before the faux restaging of the ceremony, we are including it over the elevator dross of “The Day I Fall in Love.” In fact, you know what, I have loved “Rise Above It” and “Cool Runnings” so much, for so long, that...

I was almost going to do it, I swear I was, but I can’t just because I’m mad at Bruce. I’ve written variations of this before, but in eschewing director Jonathan Demme’s request for a rock song to essentially write a hymn instead, Springsteen transformed the opening credits of “Philadelphia” into nothing less than a preamble of America itself. I watch it now, and I still get goosebumps. What’s more, in rewriting history, I don’t wish to erase Burce’s Oscar speech, “Back to the Future”-style. Have you seen that Oscar speech? Eloquent, thankful, and to the point. “The Line” is a model of the story song, and that is the model of an Oscar speech. “You do your best work and you hope that it pulls out the best in your audience and some piece of it spills over into the real world and into people's everyday lives, and it takes the edge off of fear and allows us to recognize each other through our veil of differences. I always thought that was one of the things popular art was supposed to be about, along with the merchandising and all the other stuff.” 

[Wipes away a tear.] Dammit, it’s almost enough to make me think I’m not mad at him anymore. 

1990 Best Original Song: Revisited

It’s been a quarter-century since I graduated high school but every year about this time, an old familiar feeling settles over me, like a person who has been struck by lightning feeling the hairs on the back of his/her neck stand up when a thunderstorm draws near. That feeling is one of dread, the kind I would get on the last day before the first day of school. Indeed, the last couple weeks, as friends splattered Mark Zuckerberg’s Yelling-at-Clouds app with pictures of their kids going back to school, all I felt was anxiety. I used to smile in those photos, too, but those smiles were lies, masking my gloom. And this year, since Labor Day seems ready to coincide with my return to the office after 16 months away on account of Pandemic caution, I am feeling that old back to school-ish foreboding bubbling back up. As it will, this awful sensation flashed me back to those terrible dog days of August in the late 80s and early 90s and how I’d cope with music. Going into my sophomore year of high school, I curled up with The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Soul to Squeeze”, isolating Flea’s bass in my ears, letting its groove carry me away; going into my junior year, not believing I still had two more years of this shit, I channeled my fear and fury with Public Enemy’s “Give It Up”; going into seventh grade I was listening non-stop, like a lot of people that summer, to Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory”, fancifully imagining my last day of summer vacation as a last stand. 

When all those old feelings came up again last week, I found Jon Bon Jovi’s “Young Guns II” soundtrack streaming and exercised some nostalgia, returning to the summer of 1990 in my headphones. Honestly, I only listened to about three-and-a-half songs and then gave up. Turns out some music from our youth doesn’t hold up. What it mostly did was send me down a rabbit hole of movie songs from 1990, since “Blaze of Glory”, as I had forgotten, was nominated for Best Original Song at the 63rd Academy Awards, losing to Madonna’s “Sooner or Later” from “Dick Tracy.” Their competitors: “I’m Checking Out” from “Postcards from the Edge”, “Promise Me You’ll Remember” from “The Godfather Part III”, and “Somewhere in My Memory” from “Home Alone.”

Of course, we must remember right up front that Best Original Song is strictly limited to, well, Original Songs. You can’t include old pop hits, which should be a whole new Oscar category unto itself, so vital has it become to the medium, but do not get me started. That eliminates Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” from “Pump Up the Volume” and Nicolas Cage singing “Love Me Tender” In David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” (which, woah, imagine that Oscar performance), never mind arguably the greatest use of pop music in cinematic history – “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals from “Goodfellas.” Add, say, “Come Go With Me” by The Dell Vikings from “Joe Versus the Volcano” and “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers from “Ghost” and, gawd, what a category. Alas.

If we are redoing the actual 1990 Best Original Song category, you gotta substitute that “Godfather III” and “Home Alone” schlock straight away for Gang Starr’s “Jazz Thing” from “Mo’ Better Blues” and “Don’t Look At Me” by Melissa Etheridge from “Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael.” I mean, I know Wilson Phillips topped the Billboard Hot 100 come 1990’s end, but seriously. I sort of like “I’m Checking Out”, because Meryl Streep herself is singing it in the movie, but I’m going to substitute that one for “Last Note of Freedom” by David Coverdale for the “Days of Thunder” soundtrack because I’m inspired by Whitesnake augmented by Yanni-ish synthesizers. (Is inspired the right word?) No disrespect to Madonna but I’m ditching “Sooner or Later” for Brenda Lee’s “You’re in the Doghouse Now” from the same film. And I’m not disrespecting Madonna because do you know what song is on Madonna’s “I’m Breathless”, an album of Music From and Inspired By “Dick Tracy”?

Now “Vogue” was not technically from “Dick Tracy” or inspired by it. It was, in fact, intended as the B-side for the last single off Madge’s “Like a Prayer” album. Realizing, however, that “Vogue” was so good it needed to be its own single, the song was instead shoehorned onto “I’m Breathless.” And as “one of pop culture’s most prominent advocates for gay rights”, to quote Jon Blistein in Rolling Stone, Madonna brought voguing of the underground ballroom scene into the mainstream. “Whether that was Madonna's true intent,” Blistein continued “it’s hard to think of a more shrewd move than using a Disney movie as a Trojan horse for a song like ‘Vogue.’” 

That it wasn’t nominated for the Oscar was because it wasn’t eligible, not written for the film, or some such. Whatever. Like Ed Lee blowing off those arcane, asinine game show rules on Top Chef to offer a vote on behalf of Dawn Burrell anyway after she had failed to qualify for some meaningless violation of some meaningless edict, my vote for best 1990 Original Song goes to “Vogue”.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Reimagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be “original” or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.



The Dead Don’t Die by Sturgill Simpson in The Dead Don’t Die. For one film, at least, Jim Jarmusch brings the movie theme back with Sturgill Simpson’s country-western throwback. And while the song, sharing the film’s title, sets the stage, certainly, it keeps coming back throughout, like “The Ballad of Higher Noon”, but to even slyer effect, transforming the sensation of the living dead into one of getting a song stuck in your head.



Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads in Transit. The lyrics might be on the nose, given how “Transit” ends, which I won’t reveal, though not only does the song’s buoyant tone in the face of calamity fit snugly with the ending nonetheless, that familiar chugging rhythm also feels true to the film’s temporal loop. It hits so perfectly, you laugh; then, you cry.



Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen in Blinded by the Light. When Javed (Viveik Kalra), a Pakistani immigrant in 80s London, first hears Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”, it is on a dark and stormy night, which sounds stupid but is just right. The inner-teenage tempest is universal, after all, and when he hits play and that song comes rushing out, he suddenly an outlet for everything he’s feeling. And even if a song often speaks for the person singing it, like “Dancing in the Dark” did for Bruce, it just as frequently, whether the creator likes it or not, speaks for the person listening to it, which the movie’s presentation of it denotes, the lyrics splayed across the screen. The synths, non-reactionary Springsteen fans know, aren’t gloss of the era but howls of desperation, and when Javed hears them, he plugs right into them, connected to the Springsteen current; he, like Bruce, is just about starving tonight.



Control by Janet Jackson in Hustlers. Famously, Janet Jackson’s second album was the first she made free of the domineering interference of her father, which is why she titled it “Control.” And so it only makes sense that “Hustlers”, which is all about women exerting control, would open with Janet’s 1986 title cut, its introductory manifesto, and close with another Janet track, “Miss You Much.” She’s the soundtrack to female empowerment.



Out of Time by The Rolling Stones in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. The greatest Quentin Tarantino needle drop, which is really saying something, I know, and which is why I don’t say it lightly, believe me. He repurposes The Stones’ stay-away-girl slice of baroque pop, improbably, to craft his own version of The Busy Sunday sequence in “Goodfellas”, elegiac rather than out of control, a dirge for the Sixties, and all that term entails, and for Hollywood too, one that might never have existed, which, epitomized in all those neon signs that spring to life as the song winds up, shines bright one last time. It was my favorite single movie sequence in 2019.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Reimagined

In a pleasant twist, this year’s Oscar Best Song category eschewed its typical lackluster nominees for at least a pair of worthy entrants. This blog’s heroine, Lady Gaga, was nominated along with for “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born”, which accompanies the movie’s high point, while “When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings”, written for “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” by the impeccable Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, was a nifty austere sort of spin on Gene Autry. My heart desperately wants “Shallow“ to win, as you no doubt assume, but either song would be a worthy victor. Still, the modern art of selecting pop songs to accompany film moments continues to go unrecognized, and this blog continues to contend it should become the new basis of the Best Song Category.

So, as we do every Oscar season, Cinema Romantico reimagines the Best Song category as one in which pop music curation was rightfully honored and this blog and this blog alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.

Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets in Cold War. “Once upon a time,”  Aaron Leitko wrote in a Washington Post article a couple years back reviewing a few music memoirs, “rock-and-roll was strange, wild and dangerous.” That’s true, as any cursory history of the movement can go to show, but that sonic menace has inevitably been strained out over the years. In “Cold War”, however, for one astonishing sequence, the best implementation of pop music in a 2018 movie, director Pawel Pawlikowski puts it back in. As Zula (Joanna Kulig) wastes away at the end of the bar, the sudden appearance of Bill Haley’s immortal chart-topper becomes a mythic invitation to freedom, and then danger, and then self-destruction.

Angel Baby by Rosie & The Originals in You Were Never Really Here. If pop songs are often used in juxtaposition to moments of brutal screen violence (see: Quentin Tarantino), director Lynne Ramsay is not seeking juxtaposition at all. No, this song was famously recorded on a two-track machine in an abandoned airline hangar, directly contributing to its rough, nigh eerie, sound, which is why it effortlessly harmonizes with rather than running counter to the eerie, oblique manner in which Ramsay recounts Joaquin Phoenix’s character violently liberating a young girl.


Too Late To Turn Back Now by Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose in BlacKkKlansman. We already wrote about this selection for our year-end Random Awards and, as such, simply re-offer our digression: What music does, whether it’s on your headphones, in person, or at a club, is let you slide into an in-between place for a few minutes at a time. That’s the sensation Spike Lee’s implentation of the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose’s 1972 hit captures. And in “BlackKkKlansman”, after the thrill of the Kwame Ture rally and then the pain of the activists at the rally getting stopped by the police, when “Too Late to Turn Back Now” appears, that’s where the characters briefly, blessedly go...into the in-between of both those places.


Harvest Moon by Neil Young in A Quiet Place. If I told you that real-life wife and husband Emily Blunt and John Krasinski share a slow dance to this song in this movie you would probably retch. Ah, but in the film’s context, a world where positively no noise can be made lest monsters with acute sense of hearing come and eat you up, A Quiet Place’s single implementation of a pop song (heard through earbuds) therefore assumes deeper meaning, for them and for us, a reminder of how, in a cacophonous modern world of piped-in music everywhere you go, a single pop song remains capable of providing salvation.


Goodnight Ladies by Lou Reed in Can You Ever Forgive Me? If “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is nominally about a forger who gets caught, it is also about an unlikely, effervescent friendship that forger forms as she breaks the law and which inevitably ends and pointedly without any sort of traditional redemption. That is what makes “Goodnight Ladies”, culled from the Bard of New York’s second solo album, such an ideal anthem. It is heard during the movie’s high point, a joyful night out, sung at a nightclub by transgender singer Justin Vivian Bond, before Reed’s original version plays over the closing credits after that joyful feeling has faded and the consequences of the characters’ actions are all that’s left.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Reimagined

Today Cinema Romantico reimagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be “original” or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees. (Note: “Fortunate Son” by CCR in “Logan Lucky” should be on this list but is not only because I already wrote about it for my year-end Random Awards, as well as in my actual review of said film, citing it as the best use of a pop song in a 2017 movie, which it absolutely was. But since this category is fake, I wanted the chance to spotlight another pop song in “Logan Lucky”.)




Lovely Day by The Soul Rebels in Girls Trip. Heralding the principal quartet’s arrival in New Orleans for its eponymous Girls Trip, this cover of Bill Withers’s 1977 tune functions like a B12 shot of pure, soul feeling, the consummate sonic kickoff.



Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band in Lady Bird. Back in 1996, at the height of Dave Matthews Band, I remember the Parade Magazine in my family’s Sunday Des Moines Register having a survey about which of four (or maybe five) bands were most likely to someday be in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Two of the bands? Hootie and the Blowfish and Dave Matthews Band. That is to say, Dave Matthews was a prisoner of his time, and so was his big song of that year, “Crash Into Me.” By 2002, “Crash Into Me” and that band had become, in certain circles, a pretty big punchline, which Greta Gerwig plays to the hilt by sort of turning the song into her main character’s inadvertent anthem. When her date to the prom she doesn’t even really like (and who doesn’t even really like her) wants to ditch the big event, it is “Crash Into Me” mystically appearing on the radio that inspires her to ditch her date instead and squire her best friend to prom, wonderfully evoking that “Almost Famous” Lester Bangs line: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” Dave Matthews never sounded so true.



Love My Way by The Psychedelic Furs in Call Me by Your Name. If the previous song evoked a line from “Almost Famous” then this song’s specific cinematic usage evoked Rufus Wainwright’s famous line about the truest pop diva: “Self-knowledge is a truly beautiful thing and Kylie (Minogue) knows herself inside out. She is what she is and there is no attempt to make quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy.” Indeed, whatever his character may struggle with elsewhere, Armie Hammer dancing to this 1982 new wave single in “Call Me by Your Name” becomes its own gay shorthand for joy.



Runaway by Del Shannon in Song to Song. The highlight of the brief montage summarizing the fly by night relationship of Ryan Gosling and Lykke Li’s characters occurs at Austin’s Long Center, beneath the night sky, allowing the bright colors of its city terrace ring beam to glow that much brighter, like the illuminated sidewalk of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video, who, frankly, Li sort of resembles in her leather jacket and penny loafers. As a mere image, it is enough to make your spirit levitate, but the accompanying song takes it to the next level. Like a lot of those pop songs of the classic era, Shannon’s “Runaway” has a melodic joy that belies its lyrical edge, were a melancholy man walks alone in the rain trying to figure out where his relationship went wrong. He never figures it out, probably because he is far from introspective, and by utilizing the song here, Terrence Malick turns the scene into a wicked joke, alluding to Gosling’s character’s fate before he even meets it, an idiot who is going to run Lykke Li off and then walk in the rain wondering why she left him when, dude, we can tell you for sure.

Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver in Logan Lucky. I often suspect Steven Soderbergh makes bets with himself to see if he can pull off particular movies, or moments within movies, like how Brian DePalma made a bet that his AD could not make an airplane landing shot feel fresh in The Bonfire of the Vanities. And so I wonder if Soderbergh bet himself that he could take John Denver’s overworked state anthem of West Virgina and still wring something true. Well, he won the bet. Boy, did he. He won it by perhaps winning another bet with himself in cleverly transforming the Oft-Absent Dad Showing Up Just In Time For His Daughter’s Big Moment into his alibi for the heist even as he simultaneously found something true in the Big Event, as the Daughter ditches her planned performance of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” for her Dad’s favorite tune instead, “Take Me Home Country Roads”. In doing so, she honors where she comes from and who she is, as Soderbergh transforms the Oft-Absent Dad Showing Up Just In Time For His Daughter’s Big Moment into a moment more evocative of coal country than 25,000 newspaper profiles combined.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Reimagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be “original” or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees. (Note: this is the sixth consecutive year I have proposed an alternate Best Song category and this is by far the most impressive set of pretend nominees).




“Dancing in the Dark” by Kathleen Hanna and Tommy Buck in “Maggie’s Plan.” A certain sort of Springsteen fanatic will, as the Youtube comments on the above link suggest, quibble with the quality of this particular cover. Fair enough. I dig it. And I also dig it because in the film’s context it is sung at a ficto-critical conference in Quebec. And I dig that because it suggests that while so, so, so many boring reactionary Springsteen fans prefer dismissing this song because of the synth or because of the video writer/director Rebecca Miller is well aware “Dancing in the Dark” is actually a literary masterpiece.



“Moon Is Up" by The Rolling Stones in “A Bigger Splash.” Let Ralph Fiennes tell it in the best movie monologue of 2016: “I can tell you a little story about my contribution to Rolling Stones history. Just after Darryl came in and I was working with Don Smith, who’d done a lot of Keith’s solo stuff with me and we were at Windmill Lane in Dublin and it was raining. Non-stop Irish rain, it wouldn’t fucking stop and I was quitting smoking, so it was coffee, coffee, coffee and this song, which you are going to hear, it just wasn't fucking working. Keith is insisting no drums, you know? We’re working away and I think, no, no, I go to Keith and I say, ‘Okay, so can Ronnie do a track on pedal steel?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, but no drums.’ So I’m thinking ‘What the fuck!’ So I give Mick castanets. So you’ve got Chuck Leavell on the harmonium and everyone is folding in all this beautiful shit, but this song is not taking off, so I say to Keith, ‘Do you trust me?’ He goes, ‘yeah.’ ‘If I promise no drums, can we do a percussion track?’ He says, ‘What’s Charlie going to play?’ And I’m thinking, ‘What is Charlie going to play?’ But I’m asking myself what’s the sound, something, not too crisp and I look over and I see in the corner...Wait, what is it? It’s not a drum. It’s a trash can. It’s an aluminium fucking trash can. So I put Charlie out in the stairwell, we put a mic three floors up and Keith’s shaking his head ’cause he knows I’m right. As soon as Charlie starts banging on it, we’re off. A can for trash. Human evolution in the key of C.” (Bonus: listen close for Keith’s laugh at :11 of the song, which I will now always imagine is him incredulously laughing at Ralph Fiennes being so right.)



“Just in Time" by Nina Simone in “Krisha.” Songs can mean different things to different people in different contexts and so I am admittedly fascinated by how this same song concludes my beloved “Before Sunset” on a beautifully, dangerously romantic note and how in “Krisha” it becomes the truly terrifying trigger for a human monster movie moment. You can watch the whole scene here, but you should probably just watch the whole movie first if you have not.



Rapper’s Delight by The Sugarhill Gang in Everybody Wants Some!! Unlike the famed music-as-healing “Tiny Dancer” sing along in “Almost Famous”, this rap along exists in an explicit vacuum, where the boys will be boys ball busting of before and after briefly gives way in a Sugarhill Gang ceasefire. What’s more, director Richard Linklater lets this scene go a few beats longer than it probably needs to, which is absolutely perfect.



“Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis in “Moonlight.” Ann Powers wrote about the moment for Slate and no one, let alone me, can describe it better. She writes: “The song he picks, Barbara Lewis’s 1963 droplet of longing ‘Hello Stranger,’ works that clock-stopping magic: Suddenly the two men are in a zone where no personal history or social circumstance can hurt them, and they can begin to open up. It’s a disconcerting moment even within a film grounded in the imperfect logic of memory. Returning home, I pulled out my old Barbara Lewis compilation and read the liner notes: Fascinatingly, ‘Hello Stranger’ has had a Southern afterlife, it turns out, becoming a favorite within the “beach music” scene in the Carolinas. Kevin really might have found that song on a Miami jukebox in the 21st century. The complexity of Jenkins’ musical choice, creating a plausible nostalgic moment that felt like both a fairy tale and a real person’s spontaneous attempt to resurrect a dream, reminded me of how people use recordings as time loops every day.”

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Re-imagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be “original” or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria, and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.



I Can't Go For That, Hall & Oates in “Aloha”. I wrote about this radiant moment in Cameron Crowe's otherwise unfortunately unsuccessful dramedy, or thereabouts, back in June. It's one of those movie moments that could be ruled out of order because it essentially stands outside the movie itself, where the invisible line between Character & Actor falls away, and you see Movie Stars on screen amusing themselves as much as us. And even if that's a mortal sin for some, there isn't much more I could possibly want. (Watch the scene here.)



You Could've Been A Lady, Hot Chocolate in “Mistress America.” The rare closing credit song so impeccably chosen and placed that it bumps a 10/10 movie up to 11.



Waterloo, ABBA in “The Martian.” In “Carol”, which I loved, its characters wind up in Waterloo (Iowa, that is) when they potentially reach their Waterloo. But in “The Martian ”, when its principal character potentially reaches his Waterloo, director Ridley Scott plays “Waterloo.” It's on the nose, yes, but so is disco, and disco is as vital to “The Martian ” as science.



American Girl, Tom Petty in “Ricki and the Flash.” “Someone once described Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the ‘greatest bar band ever’” wrote Michael Nadeau for Boston.com in 2014. Who is this “someone”? I have no idea since Nadeau declines to cite a specific name. But maybe that is merely because the idea of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the “greatest bar band ever” has simply become accepted apocrypha, which is why when Jonathan Demme has but a single song to immediately introduce the titular bar band of his latest semi-musical film he chooses “American Girl”.....as sung by Meryl Streep. {Devil Horns emoji.}



Racing in the Street, Bruce Springsteen in “Joy.” At a delicate moment in David O. Russell's film he turns to what is, on certain days, my favorite Springsteen song of all time. Except it's not the whole song; it's just the piano riff. And whether accidentally or deliberately, Russell underlines the argument I, an E Street Disciple have long made - that is, the single most essential instrument to the Bruce Springsteen sound is the piano. This is a biased inclusion, no doubt, one less connected to the film's overall intention than, say, The Rolling Stones' “Stray Cat Blues”, but it's my list, not yours.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Song Re-imagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be “original” or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria, and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.

5. It Must Have Been Love, Roxette in “Comet.” Jumping around in time, “Comet” chronicles the get-together and break-up and get-together and break-up of Dell (Justin Long) and Kimberly (Emmy Rossum). At one point the film winds up in the eighties where the duo argues over the phone, and while the connection between the moment and the song might be far too blatant, and while Rossum’s hair might too absurdly scream 1980’S!!!!!!!!, well, what’s more relatable than the moment she declares “Wait, this is my favorite part” and interrupts their conversation to sing along and rock out? “It must've been love! But it's ooooover nooooow!” *Thumps chest.* (Listen here.)



4. Needles and Pins, Petula Clark in “Two Days, One Night.” The Dardenne Brothers, those champions of cinematic naturalism, purposely avoid music on the soundtrack aside a couple specific sequences, which only makes them count for that much more. The first involves a depressed, embattled Marion Cotillard turning back on the radio after her husband turns off Clark’s version of “Needles and Pins” because he fears its sadness will send her right back over the manic edge. She smiles, she laughs, and for a second you worry that’s the kind of grin and the kind of chuckle that prologues tears. It doesn’t. She holds on. (Watch here.)



3. The Big House, Brett McKenzie in “Muppets Most Wanted.” I like to imagine Vladimir Putin watching this Tina Fey-led doo-wop introducing Kermit to the Russian gulag where he has inadvertently wound up and nodding, satisfactorily, as she sings the lines “This is Russia’s premier state funded hotel / We’re very proud of our eclectic clientele” because it is and they are.

2. Harvest, Neil Young in “Inherent Vice.” . To many of my vastly disappointed friends, I have never been a significant Neil Young fan. And yet...this song fills in the single most romantic moment in the considerable Paul Thomas Anderson canon - two stoned lovebirds on a hopeless quest in the rain but hopelessly in love and blissfully unaware that their love affair, like the era in which they exist, like life itself, is diaphanously dancing past them. Fuck it, let's call this #1A. (Listen here.)

1. Land Ho, Keegan Dewitt & Ólöf Rún Benediktsdóttir in “Land Ho!” “I say, make time to dance alone with one hand waving free.” So said Claire Colburn, the Original [redacted]. Mitch and Colin aren't dancing alone in “Land Ho!”, alas, they are dancing side-by-side, but that's okay. They're in this together, this noble quest to find and feel the Divine lurking somewhere beneath the surface of this humdrum reality. And in this blessed moment, as they dance like two guys that can't dance on this beach to this song, they find it. (Listen here.)

Countdown to the Oscars: Oscar Best Song Re-imagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be "original" or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.

5. Dance the Night Away by Van Halen in "Argo." As a CIA agent crafting a phony Hollywood movie in an effort to use it as a cover to get hostages out of Iran in 1979, Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), "the money" behind the "movie", arrives at the lush script reading party in the heart of Hollywood as "Dance the Night Away" perfectly colors in the moment. If you have ever daydreamed about making it in Hollywood, and if you read this blog then I reckon you have, it probably looked and felt a lot like this sequence.



4. Firework by Katy Perry in "Rust and Bone." I'm not even going to try and explain this one. Instead I'm going to let my man Alex of And So It Begins..., who named "Rust and Bone" his favorite film of the year, explain because he captures it perfectly. He writes: "I’m not a fan of Katy Perry’s music. She’s an artist that has reached success doing her own thing, and that’s fair enough. It’s just not for me. Now, there is a scene in this film in which Cotillard conducts hand movements that used to give her calm while Perry’s 'Firework' builds on the soundtrack. Given the context of the scene, I wept in a way no film has caused me to in several years. I’ve seen thousands upon thousands of movies, and I plan on dedicating my life to seeing thousands more, and never in all my years did I think that was possible." Watch the scene here.

3. (I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles by The Proclaimers in "Bachelorette." I know what you probably think of this song and you're probably right and you're especially probably right if you think it would be cheesy for it to turn up on a mixtape from the early 90's that sets the soundtrack for a romantic interlude. Except that you if you really DID grow up in the early 90's then you really WOULD have made mixtapes with this song on it which is WHY this song setting the soundtrack for a romantic interlude is PERFECT. Listen here.

2. Always Alright by Alabama Shakes in "Silver Linings Playbook." Early in the film, our bi-polar hero Pat Solitano Jr. (Bradley Cooper) goes for a jog in his neighborhood, garbage bag strapped on over his sweatsuit to speed up his rate of sweat, stopping to say hello to a teacher from the school where has not returned since his "incident", running into The Manic Depressive Dream Girl (Jennifer Lawrence). He's Rocky. Not the Rocky. Our Rocky. The Twenty-Tens Italian Stallion. He ain't gonna fly now, no, cuz he ain't that kinda hero - he just wants to feel good 'cause he feels like he's about to exploooooode.



1. St. Valentine's Day Massacre by The Twylight Zones in "Not Fade Away." This is the song played by the fictional Stones-ish band (and that, I should mention, was written by Steve Van Zandt, who is Bruce Springsteen's best friend and consigliere which probably explains why I dig it) at the forefront of David Chase's autobiographical film for their climactic audition in front of an agent. It is triumphant, and although that triumph is undercut when the agent refuses to sign the band and suggests they play more live dates to gel which leads to the band slowly drifting apart, well, in retrospect, that makes it even more triumphant. It is their last stand, the final blowout, The Beatles' rooftop concert. Perhaps it's a cliche, but then so often rock 'n' roll is about taking the cliche and making it true.

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