Congratulations to Glen, Marketa and the team behind the movie Once. They picked up the Oscar for Best Song just a few hours ago in the 80th Academy Awards…. Well deserved and a great achievement for independent music and film.

Acceptance speech from the Oscars site

Glen Hansard:
Thanks! This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad. We made this film two years ago. We shot on two Handycams. It took us three weeks to make. We made it for a hundred grand. We never thought we would come into a room like this and be in front of you people. It’s been an amazing thing. Thanks for taking this film seriously, all of you. It means a lot to us. Thanks to the Academy, thanks to all the people who’ve helped us, they know who they are, we don’t need to say them. This is amazing. Make art. Make art. Thanks.

Marketa Irglova:
Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much, who helped us along way. Thank you.

Here is the moment…

…and below is the performance clip

Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova – Falling Slowly (live at the Oscars)

Oh no, I’m losing it! Yet another YouTube craze which I’m a bit slow to pick up on (well YouTube isn’t the only site on the internet you know!). So maybe you’ve seen it, maybe you haven’t, either way this is a blast. Back at the end of November 2007, this hit cyberspace…. (pay attention)

It was influenced by this from June 2007..

Well there are loads of spin offs of these now, the top one is on an official Daft Punk YouTube page, so that makes if official, but it doesn’t give any history about it. Posted on the day before elsewhere is this one of the two girls doing the routine without boxes on their heads. Well their choreography is spot on, especially of course in the official version. This video here gives credit to the original by mashing the two together.

In my opinion, these are far better than Daft Punk’s original video, done in the anime style of cartoon. As much of a fan of this art I am, I wasn’t all that impressed by that concept for these music videos / film that is ‘Interstella 555’. Read more