Norah Jones.
Norah Jones: Grammy winner to sing Ted song at 2013 Oscar ceremony
Norah Jones, the Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter, will perform Walter Murphy and Seth MacFarlane’s “Everybody Needs a Best Friend” from the movie Ted at the Oscar 2013 ceremony, telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced yesterday. That will mark Norah Jones’ first time performing on an Oscar show.
Norah Jones’ music and movie career
Norah Jones’ breakthrough hit was her 2002 album “Come Away with Me,” which sold more than 10 million copies and earned Jones no less than five Grammy Awards. Jones’ subsequent solo albums include “Feels Like Home” (2004), “Not Too Late” (2007), “The Fall” (2009), and “Little Broken Hearts,” which came out last year. She also took part in two albums with her country collective, The Little Willies, while in the 2010 compilation “…Featuring Norah Jones” she’s heard singing alongside the likes of Herbie Hancock, Willie Nelson, Outkast, and Foo Fighters.
Additionally, Norah Jones’ songs have been featured on the soundtrack of numerous movie and television shows, ranging from Maid in Manhattan, Two Weeks Notice, and Love Actually to Dawson’s Creek, Sesame Street, and French and Saunders. Jones herself made her feature-film acting debut in Wong Kar-Wai’s international effort My Blueberry Nights (2007), which features an extensive cast that includes Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and David Strathairn. Since then, she has acted in only one other feature, Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner’s Wah Do Dem (2009), in which she has a supporting role.
Directed by Seth MacFarlane, and written by MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild, Ted stars Mark Wahlberg as a man whose best friend is a talking Teddy bear. Mila Kunis co-stars in the worldwide box office hit.
The 2013 Oscar ceremony will be held on Sunday, Feb. 24, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, located in (in one of) the heart(s) of Hollywood. “Everybody Needs a Best Friend” lyricist and Oscar nominee Seth MacFarlane will host the Oscar show.
Barbra Streisand, a two-time Academy Award winner, will sing at the 2013 Oscar ceremony on Feb. 24, 2013. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences press release, Streisand has only performed once at the Oscars, nearly 36 years ago. On the March 28, 1977, telecast, she sang the Oscar-nominated song “Evergreen” from A Star Is Born, which she herself composed with Paul Williams. (Check out: Director Barbra Streisand to return in 2013?)
“In an evening that celebrates the artistry of movies and music,” Oscarcast 2013 producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are quoted as saying, “how could the telecast be complete without Barbra Streisand?” Now, what exactly Streisand is going to sing remains a mystery – perhaps one more intriguing than whether or not Ben Affleck’s Argo will beat both Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook for the Best Picture Oscar. (Check out: “Women Bypassed by the Honorary Oscars.”)
Barbra Streisand at the Oscars
Barbra Streisand has attended quite a few Oscar ceremonies in the last 45 years or so. So far this century, Streisand presented Robert Redford with an Honorary Oscar in 2002 and handed the Best Director Oscar to The Hurt Locker‘s Kathryn Bigelow in 2010. Also, she and Dustin Hoffman handed Clint Eastwood and his fellow producers the 2005 Best Picture Academy Award for Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby. (Check out: “Barbra Streisand and The Guilt Trip box office.”)
And Barbra Streisand was certainly in attendance when she made history at the 1969 Academy Awards ceremony. For starters, Streisand won a Best Actress Oscar for her first feature film, William Wyler’s Funny Girl. That in itself is remarkable, of course, but Streisand’s “history making” was a result of her tying with veteran Katharine Hepburn, who also won for Anthony Harvey’s The Lion in Winter. (Check out: “Barbra Streisand in Restored Funny Girl.”)
Barbra Streisand’s second Oscar was for “Evergreen.” She was nominated a second time in the Best Actress category, for Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were (1973). Additionally, she was nominated for producing the 1991 Best Picture nominee The Prince of Tides (1991), which she also directed and in which she played the female lead opposite Nick Nolte; and for co-writing the original song “I Finally Found Someone” from The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), which she also directed and in which she played the female lead opposite Jeff Bridges. (Check out: “Yentl and The Prince of Tides: Barbra Streisand and the Biggest Oscar Snubs in History.”)
Oscar 2013 ceremony
To date, the other confirmed Oscar 2013 performers are Adele, who’ll sing the theme song from the Sam Mendes / Daniel Craig James Bond flick Skyfall, and Norah Jones, who’ll perform “Everybody Needs a Best Friend” from Seth MacFarlane’s Ted.
The Academy Awards 2013 ceremony will be held on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center. Seth MacFarlane, himself an Oscar nominee for co-composing the Ted tune, will host the event.
Barbra Streisand and James Brolin at the 2005 Academy Awards ceremony photo: © Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.