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Oscars 2019 thread.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
    Parasite is a spectacular film in a year of pretty average ones. Green Book didn’t have that kind of competition (Roma was good, but didn’t have the punch and drive of Parasite; The Favourite is hilarious and excellent but people like WOM don’t like it).
    Almost every year is a year of pretty average ones. Regression to the mean and all that.

    The Ringer does a regular feature where they get a few critics to reconsider the nominees from five years prior, as well as films that should have been nominated but weren’t.

    No awards show would ever do it that way, but if they did, a lot more people would like the results. Or at least I would. Sometimes I really like a film when I see it, but then after further reflection, or reading about the subject matter, or rewatching it, it doesn’t seem quite that great. But sometimes it goes the other way. I’m reminded about a film I’d only seen once and mostly forgotten, so I watch it again and realize it’s one of my favorites.

    Two years ago, The Shape of Water won, but it seems like the films from that year that have legs and will still be watched in a few years are Lady Bird and Get Out. (And maybe some high school history classes will watch The Post.) If the academy voted on 2018 again, one of those two would win, I’d bet.

    Longevity isn’t the only measure of greatness, but it is one of them, I think.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 02-03-2020, 04:19.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Originally posted by WOM View Post
    We tried to watch The Favourite the other night. After 30 minutes, just when I was about to weep openly from boredom, Mrs WOM asked if I was enjoying it and I wailed 'No!' and neither was she, so we immediately abandoned it.
    I had the same experience. It was so well-reviewed and I love all the actors, but I couldn’t figure out what was happening or why I ought to care and I couldn’t see how seeing it to the end would help. And they were killing animals for no reason.


    That’s an example of how, now more than ever, the opinions of critics are a poor guide for average viewers.

    If it were my job to watch films, and I knew that I had to watch a certain group of films all the way through and pay attention to them, whether I wanted to or not, I might have liked The Favourite.I wouldn’t feel like it was taking up time better spent watching something else or doing something else, so I could just focus on the quality of the performances and the set design, etc. And it certainly felt different than anything I’d seen recently. I’m sure critics, who have to watch all the shit, really appreciated that.

    Or if I were at a film festival with nowhere else to be and nobody texting me or emailing me to do this or that, and I was feeling really excited about the potential of film as an art and looking forward to hearing from the director, I might be able to focus on something like that.

    But it isn’t my job. And I only have so much time to spend watching films and it’s usually at the end of the day when I’m exhausted and depressed about work and people are still sending me messages that I know I’ll have to look at sooner or later and I am not going to hear a Q&A with the director. In fact, I am probably only watching movies or TV because I don’t have the energy for anything else..

    I think that’s true or most people, to some extent. Certainly the limited time part.

    I just don’t have it in me any more to watch something that feels like a fucking chore, no matter how virtuous. It’s unfortunate that this is how it is, but it is. The days when I would look forward to spending a few hours in a theater watching something I knew would be gutwrenching or hard to follow are long gone.*

    That’s another reason why TV is becoming so much more important to pop culture than film. We’re all so distracted and overscheduled, that it’s hard for us to stop and focus on anything for more than 22 minutes at a time. 50 minutes maybe. But two or three hours? It just feels impossible most days. The friend I watch Penn State football with often has to do work while he’s watching the game.

    That is sad, I guess.


    *Part of the joy of seeing a difficult film is discussing it with somebody and I don’t know many people who want to see films at all any more. It’s hard to have friends in middle age and the ones I have are busy and/or have kids. They’re not going to go with me to see Uncut Gems or Parasite.
    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 02-03-2020, 04:16.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    Parasite is a spectacular film in a year of pretty average ones. Green Book didn’t have that kind of competition (Roma was good, but didn’t have the punch and drive of Parasite; The Favourite is hilarious and excellent but people like WOM don’t like it).

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  • WOM
    replied
    We tried to watch The Favourite the other night. After 30 minutes, just when I was about to weep openly from boredom, Mrs WOM asked if I was enjoying it and I wailed 'No!' and neither was she, so we immediately abandoned it.

    Leave a comment:


  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    That’s right.

    The Oscars do not always reward the films that will be well-remembered in years to come. I think Parasite will be. I don’t think Green Book will be.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    Yeah - that's it. The preferential ballot thing was why they said it won. It was nobody's favourite film, but also nobody's least favourite. I can see people of various stripes, for differing reasons, taking against Black Panther, Blackkklansmanm, The Favourite, Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice. Perhaps it won not because there's overwhelming enthusiasm for it, but because people felt it was harmless.

    But, again, I'm not convinced that it is harmless.

    Leave a comment:


  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    It was very controversial on Twitter, at least. Lots of people hated it. But that’s not representative of the ever-shrinking movie-going public. I didn’t see it because I heard the family of Donald Shirley was unhappy about it and that bothered me.*

    But given that it won with the preferential ballot system, it was probably in most voters’ top or 5, I guess.


    *That wouldn’t always put me off a film - David Foster Wallace’s family didn’t want The End of the Tour to be made, and I saw that. But that wasn’t because it was inaccurate. That was because it was based on transcripts that weren’t supposed to be public. And I didn’t know that when I saw it.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    The weirdest thing about Green Book winning is that some said it won because it was the "least controversial" or "safe" vote. When the moral of the story is "Racist white guys turn out to be OK in the end, and they can teach black folks a thing or two" I can't see how that's a non-controversial winner.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    I haven’t seen it, but it is one of the reasons a lot of critics want the academy to not only do a better job including women and people of color, but younger voters.

    Green Book seems to be what old white people - including Steven Spielberg, apparently - think racial reconciliation looks like.

    Parasite winning this year did a lot to help the Oscars regain some credibility. But it will probably blow it again soon. That’s just how anything voted on by lots of people will work.

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  • MsD
    replied
    Maybe. The two main acting performances are great, though.

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  • Bored Of Education
    replied
    It is only based on a true story and the screen play was written by Tony Lip's son - hence the troubling perspective from the white rescuer - and Shirley's family were not happy with the portrayal of their relationship in the film. Even if some of the corny stuff was true, there is a way of filming them so that you can't predict them happening well in advance as they are so telegraphed.

    I agree that the cinematography, locations etc were fantastic but they do not a great film make just a watchable one.

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  • MsD
    replied
    Green Book is based on a true story, so the things that seemed too corny to be true did happen.

    I loved it, mostly, as I fancy Mortensen, loved the deco theatres and hotels, love old cars, and like to see the South in film.

    In the Heat of the Night ticks those last boxes, and is a far better "Best Picture", but Green Book is pretty good.

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  • Bored Of Education
    replied
    Well, as I started the thread, I may as well end it. I think we have been ripped off by Netflix showing a film that shares the same title as the Oscar-winning "Green Book". The appallingly directed, clunkily-scripted, cliched, blatantly obvious film that Mrs Bored and I were second-guessing every singly plot 'twist' hours ahead can't be the same one that won the Oscars and, totally bizarrely, was fondly reviewed by the usually spot-on Mark Kermode. There must have been a worse Oscar winner but I can't think of one and, if there is, I hope I never see it. That this won in the same year as Roma is quite quite astonishing and Parasite winning this year only partly goes to absolving the Oscars voters.

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  • WOM
    replied
    Finally saw Green Book. Really enjoyed it. Clumsy scripts work toward the beginning, and some points hit with a sledgehammer, but overall really good film.

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  • Rogin the Armchair fan
    replied
    Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
    Of the two Documentary Features I've seen, I really like Free Solo over RBG. The Ginsberg hagiography is fine, but it's a hagiography. Free Solo is brilliantly filmed, makes you actually kind of dislike Alex Honnold rather than just playing him as a hero, and gave me, at least, pains in my legs just watching some of the ridiculous moves he made on the climb.
    Saw Free Solo for the first time last night. That guy is both incredible and a complete lunatic at the same time. He appears to have absolutely no fear of death -not in a brave way, but actually an "If I die, I die" way. I guess some other extreme sports fanatics must have that same absence of giving a toss about themselves.

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  • Ray de Galles
    replied
    Originally posted by Felicity, I guess so View Post
    On Bohemian Rhapsody, a couple of my students are really outraged it got nominated for editing- they showed me the sequence of the band signing up with new manager and the cutting is clumsy, with each member of the band getting a reaction shot each time. I know May and Taylor are behind the film but didn’t realise that included any insistence everyone got a close up!
    That scene is shown and referenced here :

    Bohemian Rhapsody editor wants to put a bag over his head when watching THAT scene



    Leave a comment:


  • Lucy Waterman
    replied
    She deserves it alone for the fact it means there will be a Best Actress Oscar on a mantelpiece in Peckham.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    Olivia Colman is great, but if I were querying dodgy choices of who was lead/supporting in the nominations it would probably be her and Emma Stone in The Favourite rather than Mahershala Ali/Viggo Mortensen in Green Book.

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  • Lucy Waterman
    replied
    Olivia Colman is a friend of a friend and (yes, I will mention this forever) had lunch with the two of us once. I was star struck then, and that was before Broadchurch, Night Manager et al. She is 100% as nice as she seems and absurdly down to earth given her talents.

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  • The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
    replied
    I've heard Green book described as "Driving Miss Daisy 2: This time the white one drives"

    is that fair? I remember being very uncomfortable watching that movie as a child.

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  • WOM
    replied
    Sorry...I was responding to SB. You slipped in...

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  • Ray de Galles
    replied
    No, I don't have one. Just explaining why one would be terms "lead" actor and one "supporting" for awards. 'Green Book' is far more about a central duo than 'Sopranos' though, by the by.

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  • WOM
    replied
    Sure...and the Sopranos is mostly about Tony. I don't see the issue.

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  • Ray de Galles
    replied
    I see it as more of a genuine two-hander with co-leads. The decision to put forward Mortensen as lead and Ali as supporting actor seems to be geared towards awards politics and not splitting the vote between them in one category. The story is told from Mortenson's perspective and he's in pretty much every scene so he gets the nod.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    Fair enough. But it's clear that the story is mostly about the Mortensen character. Which...etc etc...

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