How is “Down to Joy” eligible for an Oscar?

[Moonshadow Joined: Jul 16th, 2018 Topics: 4 Posts: 30 View Predictions]

#1204795882

Rolling Stone reported that Down to Joy from Belfast “appears to be loosely based on an unreleased demo from the early Seventies, Coming Down to Joy.”

Van Morrison’s diehard fans have been noting that it’s not an original song for months now. You can compare the 1970 song “Coming Down to Joy” to “Down to Joy” for yourself. While they aren’t exact soundalikes, Morrison recycles melody and multiple lyrics (“felt the glory” / “what did I see, what did I hear”).

Branagh has been saying in interviews all season that the song was written for the film, but it’s undeniably based on the 52-year-old song. I wonder if the music branch will comment on this and if they were given the full story.

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[Boz Joined: Jan 19th, 2020 Topics: 22 Posts: 3256 View Predictions]

#1204795980

Give Just Look Up its spot back!

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[Zuranthium Joined: Dec 9th, 2014 Topics: 1 Posts: 733 View Predictions]

#1204795996

They are clearly different songs regardless of a couple similarities. All artists recycle certain things and recycling is important for everyone to do, otherwise the planet will die.

Deserved nomination and LOL @ everyone who didn’t predict it, especially because of the anti-vaxx thing, which is entirely irrelevant to the song.

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[jjjmoss Joined: Jun 2nd, 2016 Topics: 2 Posts: 2230 View Predictions]

#1204796011

i mean, aside from original musicals, songs are rarely that relevant to their movies anyway so whatever at this category.

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[Atypical Joined: Dec 1st, 2011 Topics: 91 Posts: 6014 View Predictions]

#1204796043

We discussed “Down to Joy”‘s eligibility a good deal in the original song/score thread. I think it’s different “enough” from “Coming Down to Joy” that the music branch won’t care or be bothered to disqualify it, but the similarities are present. The bigger question is if/how Van Morrison performs this song on the telecast, if that’s being done this year.

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[Hoster1 Joined: Aug 8th, 2016 Topics: 3 Posts: 1560 View Predictions]

#1204796182

Zuranthium wrote:

They are clearly different songs regardless of a couple similarities. All artists recycle certain things and recycling is important for everyone to do, otherwise the planet will die.

And it’s fine, but it clearly is not a song that is written “specifically for the motion picture”.

This shit should be disqualified long ago, but alas probably nothing will be done.

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[starklinson Joined: Jan 10th, 2021 Topics: 2 Posts: 126 View Predictions]

#1204796213

CDTJ was an unreleased demo, correct? the nature of the release (or lack of release) might be the deciding factor.

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[braydenfitzsimmons Joined: May 3rd, 2015 Topics: 97 Posts: 8657 View Predictions]

#1204796242

starklinson wrote:

CDTJ was an unreleased demo, correct? the nature of the release (or lack of release) might be the deciding factor.

Same with Falling Slowly, I believe they changed this rule after the Come What May situation.

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[Manav Joined: Dec 21st, 2019 Topics: 61 Posts: 6707 View Predictions]

#1204796442

I think this nomination was just a namecheck for Van Morrison and for the film Belfast. You don’t remember the song at all after you finish the film.

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[Kai Joined: Oct 26th, 2019 Topics: 2 Posts: 701 View Predictions]

#1204796490

The Academy doesn’t care that much to disqualify it. Basically as long as it wasn’t released before, it is eligible as an “Original Song”.

Last year, they deemed “Only The Young” by Taylor Swift to be eligible, despite the fact in the documentary she literally states it was a scrapped song from her Lover album, thus not written FOR the documentary. It ended up missing regardless, but still never should’ve been allowed to be on the longlist ballot.

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[FairWeatherAffair Joined: May 11th, 2018 Topics: 4 Posts: 489 View Predictions]

#1204796833

wish this dumbass category would just go AWAY already !! bring back Original Musical or fuck offff

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[Orestes Joined: Jun 29th, 2021 Topics: 0 Posts: 367 View Predictions]

#1204797204

FairWeatherAffair wrote:

wish this dumbass category would just go AWAY already !! bring back Original Musical or fuck offff

The Original Musical category still technically exists, as a dormant category. It requires a certain number of eligible films to be activated.

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[JakeZiegler Joined: Oct 10th, 2018 Topics: 0 Posts: 1 View Predictions]

#1204818278

Is this song available to purchase anywhere? I like to have all the Oscar nominated songs.

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[ScottieG Joined: Dec 25th, 2021 Topics: 8 Posts: 324 View Predictions]

#1204818403

I’m always confused by eligibility of songs for original song. Kate Bush wrote and recorded a song for Dinosaurs which wasn’t used at all and then reworked it for The Golden Compass, the first time the song had been released and it was ineligible. Surely this situation is the same?

"I'm not mad at you Helga. I'm mad at the dirt!"

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