The Best "Let It Go" Covers

HELP ME!!!
I've fallen in a YouTube hole of "Let it Go" covers. And really, I have so many more important things to do and articles to write and encroaching deadlines. There are a lot of terrible off-pitch covers all over YouTube though "The Worst" of the covers is obviously Demi Lovato's. Many covers are kind of good but i'm not quite sure about them and there's even a drag version or two one with very hit and miss jokes (but the "the fears that once controlled me" bit in Dixie Lynn Cartwright's is priceless)

But these six I find impressive.

Elizabeth Saw with just the piano and played by ear... which is so cool because it's not exact but the flourishes feel right

Jun Sung Angh with just a violin

And the best vocals I've heard apart from Idina...

Sonnet Son - no mic, editing, no autotuning but very strong

Caleb Hyles has some impressive control of the vocal shifts between his higher register and normal voice

And the best mega-budgeted version is this Africanized Tribal Cover. Seriously someone spent lots of bank. Sets, a huge choir, costume changes.

And finally the best multi-voiced cover from the always delightful Christina Blanco who we've raved about before.

What was your last YouTube bender about?

ACE Eddie Awards: "Captain Phillips" Surprises

The Ace Eddie Award is given by Hollywood's film editor's guild. It was a very good year for music, since three of the big winners (20 Feet From Stardom, Frozen, and Behind the Candelabra) are musicals or in bed with the genre somehow. But that's not the big story.

The big surprise has to be the win for Captain Phillips which was up against both Gravity and 12 Years A Slave, the two presumed frontrunners for the Best Picture Oscar. What a tight race this year is bringing us and BEST EDITING, when it's announced on Oscar night, will not tell us who's winning Best Picture. It's oft repeated that it's nearly impossible to win Best Picture without an Editing nomination. But it's VERY possible to lose Editing and still win Best Picture. In fact, nearly half of modern Best Pictures do lose that statue...

Click to read more ...

USC Scripter Prize

As discussed on the podcast this past Monday, we like it when guilds and specialty groups have slightly different rules of eligibility than the Oscars. This prevents everyone from choosing the same five everything and draws attention to other noteworthy accomplishments. For example, The Spectacular Now and What Maisie Knew, two good films that haven't been mentioned at all for months, won nominations at the USC Scripters.

The Scripter Prize is basically a version of Adapted Screenplay but the nominees are determined by a small panel each year (Leonard Maltin was on it this year) and the award goes to both the screenwriter and the original author. Naturally the original authors don't always show; we won't be hearing an acceptance speech from Henry James should What Maisie Knew surprise. The Scripters require that you're actually be based on previously published material, not just "previously established characters" which is the sequel-friendly insanity that started just in the past ten years or so and by which the Before Sunset and Before Midnight films won well deserved Oscar nominations albeit in the wrong categories. The only thing those films are "based on" is the imagination of Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke.

This year in addition to Spectacular and Maisie they selected three Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave, Philomena, and Captain Phillips. Have you read any of these books and which would you vote for? The winner will be announced tomorrow. Their winner matches Oscar's just under 50% of the time... though like all awards bodies they seem to be moving closer to correlation of late. 

Original Song: Pharrell Will Sing "Happy" at the Oscars

One down. Four more Three more songs to go (unless I missed an announcement)...

It's official: there will be Song performances at the Oscars. Pharrell Williams, fresh off his hat-loving Grammy success, will be performing Despicable Me 2's hit song "Happy", currently #11 on Billboard's Hot 100 and rising, on Oscar night. No word yet on the other songs up for the gold but if anyone other than Idina Menzel is asked to sing "Let It Go", currently #26 on Billboard's Hot 100 and rising (and when was the last time two Original Song nominees were actual hits???), I hope there are protests / riots. I'm not even a huge Idina fan but come on! (Still it'd be just like the Oscars to pull something like that.)

Stay tuned...

Related: Aural Oscar Charts, Song Nomination Revoked

A Personal Note on Allen/Farrow and a Plea For Sanity

I'm about to pull a Hannah Horvath and make something that's not about me entirely about me for a moment but... I had a really difficult week. As long time readers undoubtedly now, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow as artists and as a unit were largely responsible for making me the cinephile that I am today. The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) was a major turning point in my life, the moment that I realized innately if not quite in a self-aware way, how much the movies meant to me.

Woody & Mia in the 80s

I will never be able to thank either of them enough for that gift. Were it not for them, and over the rest of the 80s an actress we should probably just call "Michellyl Glenn Turnstreepfer", I would not be the person I am and you would never have read The Film Experience as it would not exist.

So Allen and Farrow were a superhero duo to wee Nathaniel and their movies, events. To this day, I'd rather think of them that way. I turned up every year from 1984 (Broadway Danny Rose, my older brother drove me because he said "it looks funny") through 1992 (Husbands and Wives, their last film together) even when I had to drag reluctant family or friends. The catatrosphic end of their relationship -- there's no other word for it -- drove Farrow away from Hollywood and thus tarnished her justified place in film history (I hate how often I've had to explain her career/celebrity/talent to people over the years) and permanently tarnished Woody's own reputation; no one who has ever been accused of child molestation, whether or not they are convicted (and Woody was never even charged), is ever presumed innocent again. [more...]

Click to read more ...