Twelve Days of Oscars, Day 8: Original Song and Makeup/Hairstyling

What do *these* two categories have to do with each other? you might be asking yourself. I think a better question would be, how intertwined is success in these categories with the greatness of the film? And my answer to that question is.... not at all.

Both Original Song and Makeup/Hairstyling (which was pretty much just "Makeup" until, like, five minutes ago, in the scheme of things) are these weird categories that can totally 100% merit an Oscar nomination while just being part of abjectly ridiculous, terrible films. And even if you're not hating on the films, subjectively, you can acknowledge, objectively, that they are not relevant to any part of the Oscar discussion other than these two categories. Seriously. This is a thing that happens. That is totally a thing that can, and does, happen. Let's check out the nominees:

Makeup/Hairstyling: Victoria and Abdul, Darkest Hour, Wonder
(and by the way, see, only three nominees? it's totes one of those weird categories that just does whatever the eff it wants)

Original Song:
"Mighty River" - Mudbound
"Mystery of Love" - Call Me By Your Name
"Remember Me" - Coco
"Stand Up For Something" - Marshall
"This Is Me" - The Greatest Showman

Seriously - these movies. The songs can exist separately from them, or they can be an important part of the movie, but they're never really, truly related to the greatness of the flicks like other categories are. OK, for a second I forgot that I even saw The Greatest Showman, by the way, which I absolutely did. It was weirdly entertaining and fun to watch, despite being objectively kind of not great, the exact opposite of The Florida Project, which was MISERABLE to watch but acknowledged by me to be "good" - or, well done, anyway. So, that song from The Greatest Showman was all right, I guess, but I didn't love it. Confession time: I haven't seen Marshall yet, so I'm not 100% equipped to judge. But. Is this category Coco's to lose? Or does "Mighty River" have a chance? I loved Mudbound. I'm cool with it winning here.What about the song from Call Me By Your Name, though? I don't know that that film, which I like lots, is going to win anything...

Clearly, another hard-to-pick category. Seriously, this is a category, though, in which I legit don't care if I don't check off seeing all the films; for example, when some Fifty Shades of  nonsense was nominated for Original Song a couple of years ago I was like, "NO thanks! Goodbye! Not completing the checklist this year!" Yeah. Don't care.

As for Makeup, do we all remember that Suicide Squad  won this category last year?

I haven't seen Wonder yet, but it could be triumphant here. So could Darkest Hour, I suppose, more so than Victoria and Abdul.. Since I haven't seen what they did in Wonder, I'm not really equipped to judge this small category.

So we'll leave Day 8 at that: two categories that include one-off nominees pretty much every single year and linger at the bottom of my priority checklist.

Will we get good performances of the nominated songs this year? What do you think?