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PreggyJolie wrote:

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Hey guys i am in jamaica totally deppressed about the news the whole island is in shock devestated everyone loved mike the first artist i knew i remember watching the thriller vid 10 years after it was made as a child in awww he fascinated me i loved that man he transcended generations anyways i am atuck in the airport

I'm still sad too. Actually, I was surprised at how his death affected me. I was a major fan back in the 80s; the Motown 25 performance of Billie Jean was the start of everything for me, although I had older brothers and sisters who were teens in the 70s, so there was a Jackson 5 foundation instilled in me when I was really young. I'd venture to say that the Motown 25 performance changed many a people's DNA. Complete mindfcuk!!!

I kinda put the MJ thing away after the first allegations, although his work prior to that period was still a major part of who I am. I started paying closer attention to classic movies because of MJ, especially the MGM musicals. It was especially fun when he didn't say which movies influenced his videos and you end up stumbling upon the references accidentally.

Even The Wiz has been on my mind... actually, it's been on my mind since Benjamin Button came out. Benjamin Button has been the victim of a smear campaign by lazy @$$hats who claim to be film enthusiasts who are locked on Forest Gump for some reason (Forest Gump was good, but it wasn't the beginning, middle, or end of filmmaking). And The Wiz was dealt the same cr@p too, since The Wizard of Oz was revered by many (mind you, I thought Meet Me in St. Louis was Judy Garland's best film performance). People can love The Wizard of Oz, but The Wiz deserve some love too, especially since, IMO, it was subversive in its way of touching on the problems plaguing African Americans back then and even today. Plus, MJ sang and danced his @$$ off in it, although I thought Nipsey Russell stole the show.

I guess my point is that before MJ's death, this week was inundated with news of 'celebs' who were known for 'half-@$$ing ' it. The fact that Perez Hilton had days of coverage for essentially lying about who slugged him says a lot about how far celebrity has sunk. Listening to MJ, whether he was a child, during the Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous years, there were dozens of examples of him not half_@$$ing it, which would explain the massive downloads, DVD/CD sales, and impromptu dance parties at street corners and landmarks like the Walk of Fame and the Apollo.

MTV used to be about showcasing artists and musicians like MJ who weren't about 'half-@$$ing' it; now, they're the primary producers and enablers of no talent, useless reality stars who occupy spaces in famedom that clearly don't belong to them. Some decisions have to be made about whether this current course of celebrity should continue; I have no idea who should facilitate it or whether it's too late at this point, but I'm spending my time thinking about MJ when he was at his best.

Nenufar2 wrote:

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Tuneless Oscars? Academy toughens best-song rules

LOS ANGELES - No Academy Award will be presented for best song at next year's ceremony if none of the tunes is considered good enough, Oscar organizers said Friday.

Rules for the 82nd Oscar show next March will require that at least one song must achieve a minimum score of 8.25 on a scale of 6 to 10 in voting by members of the academy's music branch.

"We're trying to improve the quality," said composer Bruce Broughton, who heads the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "There's been a lot of talk about the songs in films, the lack of memorability compared to songs in the past, the almost forgetability of some of them. ... This is an attempt to really make the songs as good as possible."

In another significant change for next year's show, the academy is moving its honorary Oscars out of the Academy Awards ceremony itself and presenting them at a separate event.

The two changes come days after the academy made its most drastic Oscar change in decades, doubling the number of best-picture nominees from five to 10.

The music branch has about 230 members, who rate songs after viewing them in a marathon screening or on a DVD compilation of the tunes as they appear in the films.

If no song achieves the minimum score, there will be no best-song Oscar awarded. If only one song scores that well, then it and the tune with the next-highest score will be the category's two nominees. The number of nominees in the category can range from two to five depending on how many hit the minimum score.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090626/ap_en_mo/us_oscars_best_songs

Excuse my skepticism, but this seems like a publicity stunt to me, much like the extending the best pic noms to 10.

One of the best gifts my sister ever gave to me was a box set of Oscar winning songs. The range was from The Continential from 1934 thru Streets of Philadelphia from 1993. Sure, there were songs that were indelible, but the trick was that the movie studios had a hand in the till, where movie songs were concerned. They got a piece of the profits from the recordings, sheet music, and they controlled when and where the stars who made the songs famous would sing it. Even the cartoon studios (Warner and MGM) would usually insert songs from their movies into their cartoon shorts; rarely, Warners and MGM would include songs (and star images) from other rival studios. And...hello... the music and lyric writers used to receive some prestige too - hell, they were sometimes included in the movie trailer as an additional selling point; nowadays, you'd think that Randy Newman is the only movie song writer.

And if the Academy insists in shaving down the best song performance segments, since that seems to be the only place where song and music writers get any sort of acknowledgement, then what is the incentive to write better movie songs? And hello, Academy... what about making better movies?