Day: January 30, 2008

I missed this Bagger announcement last night: “Falling Slowly,” the Once song, is back in the running as a legitimate Best Song contender, having been pronounced eligible and put back on the ballot by the Academy’s music branch executive committee.

Terrific, guys…but why, given the well-known, not-hidden facts about Glenn Hansard having written the song for the film and he and Marketa Irglova recording it only subsequently on two other albums, was there a challenge in the first place?
The deal all along (or so I’ve understood) has been that since Once failed to gather the Best Picture talk it certainly deserved all along, the Best Song Oscar is being seen as not just a fitting tribute for the song (and Glenn-Mar’s touching performing of it), but as a repository of all feelings of respect and affection for the film itself.

Variety critic Robert Koehler and I were having a beer at Joe’s Cafe this evening when a Barcelona-based journalist friend and a significant other dropped by to say hello. I asked the guy if he knew what the Spanish- language title of Woody Allen‘s latest film is. (The English-language title is one of the all-time worst from a significant American filmmaker — Vicky Cristina Barcelona.) His girlfriend/wife said it was Somewhere in Barcelona, or, roughly translated, En algun lugar de Barcelona.