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Oscar Nominations 2018

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    #26
    Originally posted by Ray de Galles View Post
    Well, it's my genuine reaction to seeing the trailer - which is the only evidence I have to go on regarding the movie thus far.
    I’m not attacking you for having that impression. I’m saying the film is better than that.

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      #27
      I was disappointed with Ianucci’s Stalin, just not funny enough and a fair bit of hamming. Not nominating Blade Runner 2049 for best film is a greater omission.

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        #28
        Originally posted by Gerontophile View Post
        Nominations-wise, I am only seriously interested in one category: Best supporting actress.

        I so want Allison Janney to win it, because West Wing and absolutely fucking everything she has ever been in. But, I so want Laurie Metcalf to win it, because Roseanne, and every other thing I have seen her in (shit hot in the theatres apparently). But, it would be really good to see Lesley Manville win it, because, she is Lesley Manville. Alternatively, Octavia Spencer is rather wonderful.
        My problem with Octavia Spencer is that it appears like all of her "prestige" movie roles are basically a version of the same character. "Sassy", but wise, older woman, usually in a retro movie. The Help, Hidden Figures, Shape Of Water. It's as if Sassy and Black are almost synonyms. I don't think she deserves the nod for Shape Of Water. It's an Octavia By Numbers performance.

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          #29
          Saw The Post last night, so I'm well ahead of my usual awareness of the big awards films.

          Enjoyable (despite the noise coming thru from the IMAX next door- tho I did complain and got freebies), some impressive and dramatic sequences- Streep is good and Spielberg manages to keep the 'big important emotional speech set to music' bits down to probably two.

          In the end I have real problems with liberal politics** as played out in films like this, but I didn't go in expecting different. The asterisk bit is maybe mildly spoilery if you know nothing about the film's subject matter.



          **Thumbnail version: wheelchair vets and antiwar hippies are background figures, literally extras in (small) crowd scenes, to the REAL heroes.
          The brave decisions made by the mole; the journos; the owners of the papers ALL incredibly laudable and important.
          ALL absolutely impossible to imagine without the mass antiwar movement over the previous years.

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            #30
            Saw The Post last night and I'm surprised it's garnered any major Oscar nominations. It's OK and I'm pleased about the clear anti-Trump allegory (not that "liberal Hollywood" sending that message will sway anyone's view) but the acting, script and direction all seem a bit perfunctory.

            Much has been made of the speed with which it was made but unfortunately that shows all too clearly on the screen. It looks like it all needed far more work on it and it sometimes comes across almost as Hanks & Streep in an SNL sketch, the characterisations are so thin. A lot of this is the fault of the screenplay - again, much is made of this being the main writer's debut script but it really shows. The fact that there was a rewrite close to filming by a West Wing alumni seems significant and you have to wonder what Sorkin himself might have done with the story.

            Speaking of whom, of the award-friendly movies I've seen so far this year, 'Molly's Game' is the one I've enjoyed the most so far.
            Last edited by Ray de Galles; 05-02-2018, 12:12.

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              #31
              Oh, you absolutely have to be a Sorkinite to enjoy it - luckily I am.

              It helps that Jessica Chastain is a fantastic actor and, my wife aside, the closest thing there is to a perfect woman.

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                #32
                I'm now up to five on the Best Picture nominations. Working through the ones I really didn't want to see.

                And the most recent two - well, I was right. I didn't want to see them.

                The Phantom Thread is almost every little bit as dreadful as you'd expect a film about Daniel Day Lewis playing a prissy English tailor in the 1950s in a film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 85% of it is just insufferably dull, self-important and annoying. It's dreary. Nothing happens. You hate all the characters. They're all smug and self-important. So if the film. It's not particularly nice to look at. And, apart from the passive aggressive twist at the end, it's hard to see why the film even exists

                The remaining 15% is, actually, utterly hilarious. It is, as far as I can tell, a parody of my parents' breakfast table. In a theatre full of people keeping straight faces, it's weird to break out laughing. The trouble with this is that I'm pretty sure it's not deliberately funny, because I don't think Paul Thomas Anderson ever dined with my parents. I think it's meant to be a serious piece about the creation of art and the delicate feelings of artists. But, even if it is a deliberate comedy about breakfast at my folks' house, that's not enough to sustain it more over two hours. It could, perhaps, have just about made it as a sketch on a BBC Three show.

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                  #33
                  The other one I saw was Call Me By Your Name. In some ways it's a fairly average coming of age story about a boy exploring his sexuality. Not bad, but not particularly compelling, either. The trouble is (*And I don't think I'm giving much away as a spoiler here*) that the 17 year old boy gets it on with a much older Armie Hammer. And at no point does the film actually suggest that there's anything very charming or witty or attractive about the 17 year old, so you end up wondering if Armie's only attraction to the kid is his youth. Which makes it all a little uncomfortable, when it's not actually meant to be.

                  All the reviews talked about how pretty the filming was, but I wasn't impressed. And the editing seemed to have lots of random cuts of scenes that had nothing to do with anything, and lots of lingering shots on trees.

                  It's not bad. And all the non-primary characters in the film are really well presented and a little different from your typical film like this. But it doesn't really feel like award winning material.

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                    #34
                    I've never enjoyed watching a PTA film, so I went in with low expectations (which were met). It's just not my thing. I can see the film you describe is in the film I watched. It's just that I just wasn't very interested or engaged, and there wasn't really any kind of hook to grab me. I found it to be a very, very boring, very long spite-filled portrayal of male insensitivity...

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                      #35
                      I think both 'Boogie Nights' and 'There Will Be Blood' made money (checking wiki, their US box office was around three times their budget), the former is the only PTA film I've ever been interested in enough to watch.

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                        #36
                        I wrote this on that other thread.

                        I went to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It’s really good though the old people sitting near me didn’t like it. It’s just about characters and how people learn to live with each other under awful circumstances. There isn’t much of an arc or extensive plot. That’s ok. Loads of good actors, including some pretty famous people in small roles.

                        I also saw The Shape of Water, which I really liked. Lots of good performances and it's well-constructed.

                        Of the nominees I've seen, I guess Lady Bird is my favorite, but I've liked all the ones I've seen. Of the four I haven't, Phantom Thread and Call Me By Your Name don't really sound all that interesting to me, but maybe I will see Get Out and Darkest Hour, though I feel like I've already seen the latter film multiple times.

                        I also want to see the Tonya Harding one and the J Paul Getty one.

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                          #37
                          I caught a preview of 'I, Tonya' last week and it's a great watch. Anyone who takes the Supporting Actress Oscar off Allison will have come up with a great performance as she is an absolutely compelling monster of a character (who, rather worryingly, really reminds me of my maternal grandmother at times - not that she was a monster per se).

                          The film suffers a little when she's not around but Margot Robbie's central performance is really strong, though playing a self-confessed redneck makes her similarity to Jaime Pressly even more spooky. Sebastian Stan is impressive as Tonya's husband but I loved Paul Walter Hauser's turn as her "bodyguard" and the clips of the real people they play in the credits only add to my appreciation of them.

                          Interesting to see it got a nomination in the editing category which will be for the skating scenes, I'm still deciding how successful they were.

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                            #38
                            Saw Phantom Thread- really impressed. I was 'yeah, yeah, another oscar nomination' beforehand, but Day-Lewis is brilliant in this, as are several secondary performers, especially Leslie Manville...whose ex-husband (Gary Oldman) I will not be seeing in Darkest Hour, not for Hot pepsi's reason but cos someone who is a retired historian, fascinated by Churchill, was really looking fwd to it etc told me he got to the stage of heckling the screen he found it so offensive in its pro-Imperialist rewriting of history (I think he said the token black character in the completely fictitious tube visit did it for him)so, to quote Burn Hollywood, Burn: "you know how I feel about giving these movies my money..."

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                              #39
                              Continuing my attempt to watch all the nominees for best picture, I watched Darkest Hour last night. It's not 10% of the film Dunkirk was, and my wife said that if she hadn't seen Dunkirk it would have made little sense to her as an American without much knowledge of UK WW2 mythology.

                              I just didn't see the point of the film. It's just a bit more Churchill hagiography, making sure we focus on the only few months when he wasn't completely fucking useless or a total arsehole.

                              The only stuff that was interesting was the interplay between Halifax, Chamberlain and Churchill. You could see how that might have made for the kind of play they might put on in the smaller theatre at the NT. But the whole thing was filmed like a play - not quite as badly as Fences last year, but still, it wasn't really a film at all.

                              My wife commented that it was vaguely interesting because it was about the power of language, rather than of the military - that everything really was focused on rhetoric. But I think that gives it way too much credit.

                              Don't bother watching it unless you're teaching English History to kids, and you only want them to have a Rees-Moggian outlook on the world.

                              Also, I don't actually think Gary Oldman is that good in it. If he gets the acting Oscar, he'll win it for the make up, not for his parodic mumbly-posh Chuchill impression.

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                                #40
                                And have finally watched them all.

                                The Post is very watchable, but it's nothing special. I never liked Meryl Streep, but she's got worse as she's got older. Tom Hanks is the opposite - he's been improving and improving over the last 2 decades.

                                Lady Bird is a hugely charming and enjoyable movie. All of its substance is in the subtleties, but there's more to it than it initially looks like.

                                And Three Billboards, which has already been discussed on these pages, is a really very, very good film. As long as you don't expect it to be a comedy. Probably my favourite of the 9.

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                                  #41
                                  Strong line-up this year.

                                  I saw Phantom Thread on the weekend and found it very unusual and absorbing.

                                  I thought James Franco would have been in with a shout for Best Actor for The Disaster Artist, but I expect he was left out for other reasons.

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                                    #42


                                    Three billboards outside Lettermullan.
                                    Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 28-02-2018, 11:08.

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                                      #43
                                      Is Ladybird good craic? Saoirse Ronan strikes me as good fun, but i've never actually watched any of her movies because the subject of the movies didn't appeal, as they would seem to have homeopathic levels of craic. (A bit like my attitude towards Meryl Streep) For instance I had no interest in watching a film about Irish people emigrating to New York in the 50's. I know too many of these people, and indeed am related to too many of these people to want to watch it. The Vengeful Ghost of a murdered child? Some Posh bird during wartime?

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                                        #44
                                        Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                        Is Ladybird good craic? Saoirse Ronan strikes me as good fun, but i've never actually watched any of her movies because the subject of the movies didn't appeal, as they would seem to have homeopathic levels of craic. (A bit like my attitude towards Meryl Streep) For instance I had no interest in watching a film about Irish people emigrating to New York in the 50's. I know too many of these people, and indeed am related to too many of these people to want to watch it. The Vengeful Ghost of a murdered child? Some Posh bird during wartime?
                                        She's great in The Grand Budapest Hotel, which despite not being a big Wes Anderson fan, I enjoyed immensely.

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                                          #45
                                          Hmm, I liked the royal tennebaums, but the darjeeling express just annoyed me. That and Ralph Fiennes gives me English Patient flashbacks. I came out of that movie thinking that the men of 1916 had a point.

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                                            #46
                                            Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                            Is Ladybird good craic? Saoirse Ronan strikes me as good fun, but i've never actually watched any of her movies because the subject of the movies didn't appeal, as they would seem to have homeopathic levels of craic. (A bit like my attitude towards Meryl Streep) For instance I had no interest in watching a film about Irish people emigrating to New York in the 50's. I know too many of these people, and indeed am related to too many of these people to want to watch it. The Vengeful Ghost of a murdered child? Some Posh bird during wartime?
                                            Brooklyn was utterly turgid. You missed nothing. But Lady Bird is actually quite fun.

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                                              #47
                                              "Staring Daniel Day Lewis."

                                              The four words most likely to guarantee I'll never watch the film.

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                                                #48
                                                Originally posted by hobbes View Post
                                                "Staring Daniel Day Lewis."

                                                The four words most likely to guarantee I'll never watch the film.
                                                Last of the Mohicans was amazing.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                                  Hmm, I liked the royal tennebaums, but the darjeeling express just annoyed me. That and Ralph Fiennes gives me English Patient flashbacks. I came out of that movie thinking that the men of 1916 had a point.
                                                  Watch Grand Budapest but. I can’t stand “Raif” normally, but he’s just fantastic in this. Brilliant comic timing. Had something in my eye at the end.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by hobbes View Post
                                                    "Staring Daniel Day Lewis."

                                                    The four words most likely to guarantee I'll never watch the film.
                                                    Being The Best Actor In the World seems to give you license to overreact like an eejit. What the fuck was he doing in There Will Be Blood? At least his cartoon turn in Gangs of New York was no less fucked than the rest of that hot mess of a film.

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