Sunday, February 24, 2008

Hansard and Irglova Win the Oscar (and The Police)

Unlike the Grammys, where all of my top choices LOST, the only category I was paying attention to in this year's Academy Awards went to the folks I wanted to win - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for "Falling Slowly " from the movie Once in the Best Song category. Cool. I've posted about them and their movie a few times, here, here and here.

Hansard said, "We made this film two years ago, we shot it on two handy-cams, it took us three weeks to make, we made it for 100 grand and we never thought we'd come into a room like this and be in front of you people... This is amazing."

Sometimes the good guys win! Right on.

Here is the vid of them doing the song, and below that the speech:





But I am not watching the Oscars right now. I have VH1 Classic on and am watching The Police play a concert for the BBC that was filmed the week before they went to America for the first time. This was the tour where they would play to three people at a crappy club, get in the van and hear Roxanne on the radio. They were young and hungry and so they are rocking the hell out of this show.

Needless to say, they were on the map by the end of that first US tour. On the VH1 Classic concert, they just got through Message In A Bottle, which hadn't been released when this thing was filmed. That second album, Regatta de Blanc, may be my favorite Police album.

Anyway, I bring all of this up because I got tickets to The Police at the Clark County Amphitheater yesterday. Rather, my buddy Pat got them for me, using my Ticketbastard account because I was at my kid's basketball game when they went on sale. (Pat, if I see a bunch of UFO tickets billed to my account I will know you did not delete my password!)

Looking to be a great summer of live music for me. Got tickets for Rush, Mark Knoplfer and now the Police with Elvis Costello opening. Sweet!

3 comments:

VoxMoose said...

That was a very sweet, well-deserved win. I particularly liked that that they let Marketa Irglova come back out. There was some confusion with the orchestra during Glen Hansard's speech which cut her off prematurely. What isn't clear from the YouTube clip is that there was a full commercial break between the two speeches. Also, Jon Stewart's comment right after Hansard's speech was classic (also not in the clip): [sarcastically]Wow, that guy is SO arrogant[/sarcastically].

laurie said...

nice posting. i agree completely.

you're in portland, eh? my nephew is just a regular guitar-playing dude up in Seattle. can't remember the name of his most recent band. he used to play in a band in the bay area called the Tommy Lasordas.

Isorski said...

The Tommy Lasordas. That is classic!