Once the news that Mary Poppins Returns was actually good, it didn’t take long for many of the Oscarati to say with confidence that it was in play for Best Actress and maybe for Best Picture. Yes, it’s that good, some of them said. If you think about what people have been saying, it’s as though no biases exist now and almost that they never have existed. So the question is: Do they? Did they ever?
Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns, along with A Star is Born, is a remake. Or a sequel, as it happens. The original Mary Poppins hit the Oscar race in 1964. None of the first 3 versions of A Star is Born ever really did — the first two garnered quite a few top nominations, but only managed a single win (Best Original Story for the 1937 original). The less said about the Streisand-Kristoferson version, the better. Bradley Cooper’s reboot is being touted as the best and only worthy version. Can it detach itself from the earlier versions and stand on its own? By all accounts, yes, at least so far that seems to be the general perception.
But Mary Poppins Returns, and Black Panther, are films that you have to imagine being named by 200, 300 people as their number one film of the year on a ballot that gives them only five choices. If you imagine Disney executives and Academy Poppins/Panther participants as block voting for their teams – you can imagine them standing behind one of these two but not both, right? Do people believe there’s a chance that both, along with A Star is Born, might get in for Best Picture?
The threat suggestion by the Academy that they might add a popular film category has made people reconsider how they assess and judge popular movies. So much so that some even have the idea that movies like Crazy Rich Asians or Creed II might also have a shot at consideration, breaking with tradition as to what kinds of films are recognized.
What films in Oscar history have gotten in that were remakes or sequels or franchises? To date, no superhero movie has gotten in for anything other than a nod in the screenplay category and for crafts. Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was a remake from a Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs. As for sequels – Return of the King was a sequel to Lord of the Rings, and The Godfather II was technically a sequel to The Godfather. Toy Story 3 got in for Best Picture and won Animated. But in truth, these were continuing stories rather than sequels. Most of us define sequels as films that rely essentially on repeated the same formula to bring audiences back for the kind of high they expected from the first film.
Mary Poppins Returns can be seen as a remake though many people say it’s technically a sequel, or a continuation of the previous story. Rob Marshall himself says it is most definitely a sequel, picking up the story later from when the original takes place.
There is no doubt Black Panther, as good as it is, is a franchise movie out of the Marvel universe and definitely NOT in the Academy’s usual wheelhouse, as such.
A Star is Born is a riff, you might say, on a familiar song, or a cover version that’s much better than the original. But the Academy is still going to have to overcome its familiarity with the trope to love the movie enough to award it the top prizes, as many are expecting it will do.
But the film industry is also backed into a corner this year, as are the critics. They’ve done nothing but complain about Netflix and now that Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece, Roma, is headed for the awards race they will have to confront and reconsider those feelings. People like Steven Spielberg are going to have to overcome his aversion and his dislike of “Netflix movies” if they want to award Cuaron. It is only a matter of time anyway since Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is coming on Netflix next year.
You can’t stop what’s coming.
A quick glance at international box office tells us that a huge number of overseas audiences enjoy Hollywood spectacle, spectacle and more spectacle. They haven’t been keen on A Star is Born. They kind of liked Black Panther but what they really liked was Avengers: Infinity War which has made, no joke, $1,368,084,629 worldwide. It made $678 million here. By contrast, Black Panther earned less worldwide than it did in the US, at $646 million. Avengers: Infinity War made a billion dollars worldwide. That’s astonishing. If Hollywood wants to make money (and it appears that they do) then they’re going to keep churning out movies people worldwide will want to see — and those movies are usually male driven. It helps if they feature mostly white movie stars but male is preferable to female unless the franchise is so appealing it doesn’t matter, like The Force Awakens which made $1,131,561,399 in worldwide sales. People everywhere will pay to get a wild ride, and not so many will necessarily be drawn to films to contemplate the meaning of their lives.
Bigger, branded product is where the future of Hollywood films are headed yet Oscar island has remained, so far at least, immune to this mutation or cultural adaptation. What usually gets in for top nominations are nuts and bolts filmmaking. Films that tell uniquely original or prestige adapted stories that spring from individual imagination. The films this year that fit that bill would be:
If Beale Street Could Talk – 100% Academy’s thing. A meaningful, moving story driven by writing and acting that sends a powerful message.
The Favourite – a costume period piece about royalty in history featuring an ensemble of cheeky, bawdy women, driven by actors, heavy on crafts.
First Man – say what you will about the box office but this is an original, important story made by one of America’s most talented Oscar-winning directors, written by an Oscar-winning screenwriter and released by a major studio.
Green Book – currently awash in a shitstorm, it’s still the kind of film the Academy likes to reward – unless they’re frozen in fear by said shitstorm.
Ben is Back – an original script written and directed for an actor’s showcase with a leading role by a beloved Oscar-winning star about something important – addiction.
Widows – a heist movie that is also struggling at the box office but made by a director whose last film won Best Picture, starring an Oscar winning actress.
Leave no Trace – an intimate story by a director whose last film was Best Picture nominated, about something important and driven by actors and writers.
Bohemian Rhapsody – a classic biopic about a rock n’ roll legend, driven by a bravura performance by Rami Malek, shocking and everyone and making a bundle at the box office. Yes, awash in a bit of a shitstorm but it’s as yet unknown whether said shitstorm will have an impact or not.
First Reformed – made by the Hollywood icon, legend Paul Schrader – 100% driven by ideas and actors. An original story brilliantly told about something important.
BlackKklansman – a story about race in America told from the point of view of one of America’s most important voices and filmmakers, Spike Lee, driven by actors and writers.
Vice – hard-driving political message written by an Oscar-winning screenwriter, driven by an ensemble cast and some of the best actors in the industry.
Can You Ever Forgive Me – a non-traditional biopic about a woman most people would not pay much attention to. Driven by two actors and a clever screenplay.
The Front Runner – written by political journalists, directed by Oscar nominated Jason Reitman and involving a subject that many older Oscar voters are familiar with (hi Warren Beatty!).
8th Grade – the kind of film that would ordinarily be plucked from obscurity and lauded with top nominations. An original story of optimism and hope from a geeky, awkward teenage girl.
And yet — the two frontrunners are going to provide a Sophie’s Choice of sorts for voters:
Roma – one of the best films this year, if not the best. And yet it’s a foreign language film that will win in that category too. But more importantly, it would hand Netflix its first Best Picture win. That means people like Steven Spielberg are going to have to vote for it.
A Star is Born – Bradley Cooper is beloved, the movie made big money, and has become a cultural phenomenon, but the Academy will have to overcome its bias for remakes. Can it?
However this year turns out, it will feel like history has been made one way or the other. It’s worth noting that the Producers Guild will give a lot of people hope that some of these films will get in. But that’s because the Producers Guild has ten slots on their nomination ballot and not five. Expect Black Panther to land there, maybe even Mary Poppins. Whether they make it into the Academy’s five is a different story.
Save for BlacKKKlansman, if the Oscar BP race is dominated by any of these movies, and especially at the front of the line, Roma, it will be ratings suicide for an awards that needs a lifeline like a fat kid needs food.
And if they start making their decisions based on what will supposedly give them better ratings it will be suicide for their integrity and they will become generally devalued over time.
Gotham Awards are tonight. I’ll be interested to see what wins Best Pic. I think The Favourite but am hoping for Beale Street.
Moviegoers flocked to see a film of a friendship between a black man and a white man, but most of them chose ”Creed II” ($55 million from 3,350 venues), a sequel, over ”Green Book” ($7.4 million from 1,063 theaters). Variety calls ”Creed II’s” showing a ”knockout,” while ”Green Book” was ”lackluster.”
As for the ”shi*tstorm” behind the latter, the family of Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) has spoken out and called ”Green Book” ”full of lies,” saying that Shirley was NOT estranged from his family and the black community, and had eaten fried chicken before meeting Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen).. Shirley’s niece has tried to contact the producers, but it seems like this brouhaha might’ve been avoidable if someone consulted Shirley’s kin earlier. ( ”Green Book” is co-written by Nick Vallelonga, Tony’s son.)
But a larger issue is ”Green Book” is only symptomatic of how Hollywood often sees race: blacks deal with bigotry all the time, but it only matters when a white protagonist witnesses it and becomes ”woke,” and that racism exists literally in black-and-white terms in the distant past. Thus, we get movies, like this, and ”Driving Miss Daisy,” ”Mississippi Burning,” etc., where prejudice is seen through Caucasian eyes. Blacks serve as supporting characters in their own stories. (Aside from Shirley, are there any black characters of any consequence in ”Green Book” who have more than a few lines? They are background: nameless farmhands, waiters or folks at a motel or fried chicken joint.) Sometimes, history is even subverted: ”Mississippi Burning” used the tragedy of brave civil rights workers who were killed in the 1960s and made the white FBI agents the heroes. African-American leaders, like Julian Bond, blasted it: ”It’s just wrong. These guys were tapping our phones, not looking into the murders.”
”Green Book” takes that same segregated backdrop of the South, and turns it into a ”feel-good,” road buddy picture for mostly white audiences. But dealing with that past is apparently much more fraught for many African-Americans. ”Mississippi Burning” came out 30 years ago, and it inspired Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., to say: “How long will we have to wait before Hollywood finds the courage and the integrity to tell the stories of some of the many thousands of black men, women and children who put their lives on the line for equality?” Except for rarities like Ava DuVernay’s ”Selma” (2014) and Spike Lee’s ”4 Little Girls” (1997) and ”BlacKKKlansman” (2018), the wait mostly continues.
https://shadowandact.com/green-book-is-full-of-lies-dr-don-shirleys-family-speaks-out
I never understand why “white savior narrative” is used for Mississippi Burning, Driving Miss Daisy and not for 12 Years A Slave, for example. But I see the point the writer is trying to make.
Because 12 Years A Slave isn’t told from the perspective of a white guy. The white guy who helps him is in the movie for all of five minutes and he isn’t patted on the back excessively for mustering the courage to send a letter.
Another Oscar-nominated Best Picture about a ”white savior” is ”The Blind Side” (2009), starring Sandra Bullock. In it, she plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a Tennessee woman who takes in Michael Oher, a homeless young black man who becomes a football star. Bullock won the Oscar, Globe, Broadcast Critics, SAG, etc., while Quinton Aaron, who played Oher, didn’t get nominated by any of those major prizes. Meantime, the real-life Oher says he can’t stand the movie. It took liberties with his depiction and downplayed any racism. He says he did not get all his training from Tuohy, and the film damaged his NFL career. Due to the movie, Oher says he doesn’t get enough credit for his own skills.
Maybe because Quinton Aaron isn’t a good actor!? I don’t get the point you’re trying to make in regards to Bullock winning everything.
Or maybe because Bullock won everything because she played the ”white savior,” while Aaron, her co-star, couldn’t even get NOMINATED for any of those same prizes. About the only awards that nominated Aaron were the largely African-American groups: BET Awards, Black Reel & Image Awards. And for the record, the MTV Awards and Teen Choice did nominate him for Best Breakout Star.
Since ”Blind Side,” Aaron’s been a good enough actor to amass more than 25 film and TV credits. And last year he was nominated for Best Actor in a Feature for ”The Second Coming of Christ” at the International Christian Film Festival.
Yet he still hasn’t been nominated for any Emmys/Oscars/Tonys. Because of The Blind Side he’s had an ok career – nothing special though.
Tons of fine working actors have never been nominated for any Emmys/ Oscars/ Tonys. Aaron’s already beaten the odds as a working actor in a field where the unemployment rate is around 90%. Instead of focusing only on Aaron, step back and look at the bigger picture, especially concerning actors of color.
OscarsSoWhite was only a few years ago (2015 and 2016), and at that time, in the 88-year history of the Academy Awards, only 14 blacks had ever won an Oscar for acting. Of course, you can’t win if you don’t even get nominated. I would argue that that’s an indictment of the kinds of roles that Hollywood has offered minority actors AND a result of an awards system (namely, a then-90% white AMPAS) that disadvantages actors of color. It’s why the Academy had made a giant push to invite more women and minorities to diversify its voting membership.
On principle alone, Netflix must not be allowed anywhere near the BP, or any major category.
At least Netflix is FINALLY releasing a few films earlier in the theatre, like Roma, Buster Scruggs and Bird Box. I hope they keep it up.
If they could just do what Amazon does, then it would be a non-issue. Amazon releases their films in cinemas first, they usually make a pretty penny depending on quality / pedigree / buzz and then a few weeks later they put the film in question on Amazon Prime. Everyone’s happy : the theatrical release concept gets to live another day, Amazon makes more money; the streaming service gets high-profile exclusives relatively fast.
Just look at Manchester by the Sea and The Big Sick, both delivered very nice numbers for arthouse fare (79M and 56M worldwide, respectively).
Yup!!
I don’t even get what their problem is with releasing a film in theaters for a couple months and then putting it online. Sarandos must really hate the theater experience.
I agree that the theatrical experience needs to be valued but I don’t think that it’s reasonable to demand that the compromise for Netflix releases between Netflix’s preference which is not having a window between theatrical release and home release at all and the theatre owners’ preference of having the 90 days in between would be that Netflix would drop all their claims to just embrace what everyone else does. They have a reason for doing what they’re doing (money) and if you want them to do more theatrically, you’re going to have to find better arguments and systems that don’t dismiss Netflix’s business model as “wrong” and championing everything they’re trying to avoid
I never said it was wrong, I said it was a business model for film that ignores what made film an industry in the first place : the theatrical experience. Clearly they are more than entitled to decide their films won’t get theatrical releases but then they are vulnerable for legit criticism that if their films aren’t for theatrical release how are they any different than anything for example Hulu puts out.
But how is everything that Hulu puts out inherently different from something that gets a theatrical release?
The difference is just that : the theatrical experience.
Isn’t that just a difference in subjective personal experience for those who happen to see it in theatres rather than something that is defining the creation itself as “different” or “similar” to something else?
Not in my book because if that’s the case then we should just retroactively give HBO a buttload of Oscars for all those feature-quality tv films of theirs that kept winning Emmy-s because they never would have dared to assume they should be up for Oscars instead. They didn’t go for the Oscars because they knew full well that even if the quality is there, they can’t go for big screen awards with films not intended for the big screen. Netflix is basically doing what HBO has been doing for decades – delivering feature-quality films for tv screens – only they have the unrealistic demand that HBO never did : to get big screen awards for films they refuse to put on the big screen.
And the Netflix team knows full well that this is an unrealistic demand, otherwise they wouldn’t have felt the need to secure Buster Scruggs, Roma and Bird Box legit limited releases instead of their usual loophole solution of “let’s show it in one cinema for a week just so it qualifies for Oscars but clearly the room will be empty and nobody will actually see it in a cinema setting cuz we made it available on our service at the same time, too”.
Then why not let all movies (including all TV movies, Netflix movies, and big studio movies) compete for Oscars? We’re looking for the Best Picture of the year, no?
What are “films not intended for the big screen”? Was Mike Nichols thinking: “I’m going to do something that’s inferior to my normal work” when he made Angels in America? Did Steven Soderbergh plan in advance not to make Behind the Candelabra a lesser work just because the film might not be bought by any studio? Did David Lynch say: “I’m returning to Twin Peaks, a world I love dearly, but I’m not going to give this as much energy as I would to my other works even if I spend years making sure that everything works because this isn’t going to get a theatrical release”? If a film is good, it deserves to be on the big screen, no matter whether it winds up there or not and I refuse to believe that any filmmakers’ intent is to have their films be seen on screens where people can’t see enough details, in environments where they can’t hear as much, having experiences that aren’t as immersive.
So I ask again: if there is no intent against having one’s film play on the big screen, what are the differences between HBO movies and theatrically released movies?
Angels in America and Twin Peaks are good examples. If they hadn’t been made for television those probably wouldn’t have been 352 and 866 minutes respectively and wouldn’t have distinct episode breaks and would have been paced very differently. Behind the Candlabbra is probably closer to something that may have fallen through the cracks, but again, having movies that are eligible for both the Emmy and the Oscar is kind of absurd.
But why not have them be eligible just for the Oscars and destroy a very weird Emmy category?
And Twin Peaks: The Return has in my opinion a total of one distinctive “episode-like” closing scene: a certain “What!” uttered at the end of part 16 . That is because Lynch’s way of making the film can be seen throughout: he and Frost wrote one script, shot everything as one and tgen Lynch and Dunham edited it and then decided the amount of parta. So if we can’t divide it into 18 segments that have the beginnings and ends of episodes, that means that the lines between those episoses don’t matter and they’re not episodes anymore
It’s not a coincidence that Lynch conceived musical performances at the Roadhouse as a device on the show and more often than not placed them at the end of episodes. Those mostly wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t a TV show. He also likely wouldn’t have edited most of the episodes to fit an hour long structure if it was a movie.
But it’s not like the Roadhouse scenes were not integral to the show and instead were just fade-outs. Sure, they might have been in different places if the film wasn’t in parts (they’re the kind of thing that feels like they can move around in the structure quite effortlessly) but they’re not something that breaks things into episodes but rather breaking the fall for the movie having to be presented in a particular way due to its length. There is a version of parts 3 and 4 on the Blu-ray version where it just plays through the Roadhouse scene that normally closes part 3 without closing credits and then continues to part 4. This cut feels completely natural, as if there was no episode line and I’m sure that you could do the same with any other Roadhouse scene. And Lynch doesn’t seem afraid to not close with a Roadhouse sequence either: in part 5 there is a Roadhouse scene, after that we get a separate scene with the closing credits. If he felt that he needed to use the Roadhouse scenes to always close out episodes and not have them there because he really wanted to have those scenes, we wouldn’t get those closing credits withCooper looking at the agent statue
And I’ve never gotten the “if it was a movie, not every part would be an hour long” argument. If every part wasn’t an hour long, then it would basically be Lynch saying: “Here are episodes that are seperate from each other, they’re just not equally long” because he’d feel an absolute need to cut at a certain place, no matter how long it is after the previous one.
I would suggest that the idea of there being musical performances at the roadhouse would not have happened at all if this wasn’t a TV show, or at least there wouldn’t be nearly as many performances as there were. Lynch knew he was making TV and clearly thought that because of this he needed to film a bunch of stuff he could edit into individual episodes.
And these are very much episodes. Take the famous episode 8 (spoilers, I guess). That’s an episode which consists of the resolution of the cliffhanger from the last episode, the NIN performance, the explosion/creation of Bob and Laura, then the 1956 “gotta light” material all within 58 minutes. There is no way those particular events fit within a perfect one hour chunk if Lynch wasn’t specifically editing it for a television format. It’s not like he just made an eighteen hour movie and suddenly realized “gee, this flashback and that cliff hanger resolution just happen to fit in a one hour block, guess we’ll make that an episode.”
First up, I wouldn’t describe what happens a cliffhanger and considering for examplethe way the Diane situation was handled from part 4-7 that Lynch didn’t put it there in order to resolve a cliffhanger and that he probably doesn’t care about that.
Secondly, the links between the parts are evident in why they needed to be in that order: the woods scene suddenly makes the supernatural world of the story more weird and difficult for the audience as they realize that they haven’t actually got a clue about how it works. That needs to be followed by the scene at the theatre. And the New Mexico part is a direct consequence of that theatre scene. The NIN scene is there in my opinion to build mood for that moment in the story, not because it’s an episode of a certain kind. And while there’s an easy cutoff point with the Woodsman walking away from the camera, Lynch does build it so that he could in theory have continued right on to part 9 as the opening shot of part 9 is Mr. C walking to the camera, representing a visual link and transition that isn’t normal of how episodes end and the next ones start
I want to continue this conversation but I feel like I also need to note that Twin Peaks: The Return is not the ideal conversation piece as the people who consider it to even have the structure of a movie seem to be a minority. I’m sorry I brought it up (it was meant to be a provocation, which I think it succeeded at but said provocation wasn’t my main point)
Let’s just leave intention out of it entirely. Films released theatrically are eligible for Oscars. Films that aren’t released theatrically are eligible for Emmys. It really should be as simple as that.
I just feel that there needs to be something substantial in the actual product to warrant a move between awards shows and I don’t think that something as random as this can be that. Otherwise we’re punishing films for their release plans
I don’t think it’s “random” or unfair to say that the Oscars, a ceremony created to award theatrically-released films, should be limited to films that are released theatrically. If you don’t want to go through the process of releasing your films in theaters, that’s fine, no one’s saying you can’t have awards, there’s just *different* awards for that.
Two points:
1) The Oscars were created in a time when there was no other type of film than theatrically released filmmaking. Thus it wasn’t created for or against any type of cinema
2) Weren’t the Oscars created to break up the unionizing of people in the industry? The reasons why the Oscars were founded shouldn’t apply to how they act now if those ideas are absurd
It’s not just that. Filming a movie for the theater and filming a movie for television/laptop/whateveryouplayNetflixon is not the same thing. Probably Cuaron or Scorsese don’t care and film a Netflix movie exactly as they would for WB or Universal, but that’s not the point.
But there’s money to be earned from the theatrical window. They get to earn money from selling tickets and then get to earn more money from selling subscriptions after the window closes in three months.
Apparently they’ve found that this niche serves them better
And I’m sure HBO found that airing movies on their network instead of in theaters served them well as well for decades, doesn’t mean they should have been eligible for Oscars.
How did this discussion about money suddenly jump into Oscar eligibility?
Also, as far as eligibility goes, I like to keep things simple: movies are movies and movies should be Oscar eligible. Then there are series and series should be Emmy eligible. That is the only reasonable divide I’ve been able to find because otherwise you’re dividing movies into several awards and lumping the ones you thought didn’t premiere according to the formal rules of the game along with all series of all types, making the Emmys a dump location for everything that doesn’t meet the rules of how a movie should come out to the scene, like a prison for 19th century debutants who are punished for acting crudely at their social debut.
The important/interesting questions, instead of whether movies that are no different from those that are winning should be eligible for the Oscars, are in my opinion: What is a movie? What is a series? What is the structural difference between the two?
And yet the Emmys have had a Best TV Movie category for decades. There has to be a difference between the two.
I don’t think there needs to be. The Emmy category wouldn’t exist if these movies were Oscar eligible and they don’t fit in with the rest of the things that the Emmys have so they have their own category. That seems to me more like the Emmys building a way to award these films despite them not being what they award because the ceremony that should be awarding them isn’t doing so.
Also, I don’t think “things have been like this for years” is an argument for anything when it comes to “how things should be”
The emmys have the category because they award all things TV. They award sitcoms, dramas, talk shows, award shows, commercials even. It makes all the sense in the world that they would also award the movies that are made for TV. Now that they’ve also adopted Netflix and Hulu as part of their domain I see no reason why they shouldn’t continue in the same way with those streaming service’s movies. That’s an award show defined by the medium and so are the Oscars.
But why is the divide “movies” and “tv”, where the line is made between a structural whole and an object or a platform, or “theatrical movies” and “everything else”, which defines Emmys not as awarding something in particular but rather what spills over from the Oscars who accept only what is shown to them properly.
Instead if we divide “movies” and “series”, there would be a structural difference at the heart of it, the divide would be made based on one element, the same element that can be seen no matter where you watch the movie, not on whether it happens to touch the area of TV, which apparently makes a film a pariah in the film community, or whether it doesn’t qualify as a “theatrical movie” which in and of itself demands two things, meaning that “non-theatrical movie”, “theatrical non-movie” and “non-theatrical non-movie” would be the same thing, which they are not.
Well, the Emmys are handed out by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, not the Academy of Serialized Narrative Arts and Sciences. They have a lot of categories for things that air on television but which aren’t in the serialized format like Best Variety Special which usually goes to a stand-up comedy special, should that award be moved to the Oscars because it focuses on a self contained two hour format? How about mini-series, you seem to thing something as obviously TV-like as Twin Peaks is a movie so should the Academy be regularly be giving Oscars to stuff like True Detective and Big Little Lies?
And the Oscars are awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, not by the Academy of Theatrically Released Motion Picture Arts and Sciences so the point goes both ways. The divide was made decades ago and it needs to be modernized and the question is “where do we move it”.
I think that people need to figure out for themselves where the line goes. There are certain script-reasons why I’ve leaned towards saying that Big Little Lies is a series rather than a movie but I could see an argument for it being a movie as well. All I think I can do is champion what I want to be considered film (it’s a complex structure that I’m not sure whether you want the detailed version of, although if you do I’d be happy to write it down)
I think that if films are being “judged” by box office numbers, like Widows and First Man, then all films need to be put under the same scrutiny.
I don’t like the Netflix formula. But with ROMA they are (mostly) following the Amazon formula. It just did a strong 220k during its first 5 days, becoming one of the biggest per theater results from a foreign film of all time. It will still have a relatively consideable theatrical run, since it will be in streaming only at mid-december. So I really hope they finally find a healthy way to be be succesful at the awards race.
I saw GREEN BOOK last night. The film is not nuanced, not complex, reduces racism to something of the past and intimates the real hero of the film is the Caucasian Italian-American Tony Vallelonga, but because the film has its heart in the right place, because there is incredible chemistry between Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali as the world class pianist Don Shirley and because in the Trump era this film is an all too telling reminder of what ugliness persists and has persisted, the film does work on multiple levels, and it is a grand time at the movies. Those who love “My Cousin Vinny” will see a lot of the humor in kind. Yes a few have called it a reverse “Driving Miss Daisy.” Torn between 4.0 and 4.5 of 5.0 but for now I’ll go with 4.0 and see how I feel in coming weeks. The “shitstorm” is undeserved, the film is NOT condescending, and as I say it has its heart in the right place.
A very fair assessment.
Thank you very much Phantom!
I haven’t seen the film yet, but this comment shows that a film can be flawed — artistically, culturally, politically — but can also, in other respects, be a well made and emotionally satisfying film worthy of our interest and deserving of qualified praise.
It’s too easy — and too common these days — to completely write off a film because of some concern over its politics: this happened to some degree with First Man, and Bohemian Rhapsody, and now we see it with the gender issues being raised over ASIB. The political concerns and debates overwhelm the merits. All of those political and cultural concerns may be valid, but the film can still have artistic merit.
Not everything is black and white. In fact, almost nothing is pure black or pure white.
The thing is, I don’t think many of the people who’ve expressed problems with Green Book outright hate it or begrudge people who find enjoyment out of it. The problem is that when a movie like that comes out late in the year with a clear awards campaign behind it that adds stakes to the conversations around it. That’s something they’re inviting, if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen so to speak. And when you’re having conversations about what the BEST movies are, the flaws of something like Green Book are a lot more apparent and need to be highlighted in somewhat dramatic fashion in order to make a dent in the conversation.
Didn’t a black director already come out against Spike Lee and BlackkKlansman? This stuff will pass for Green Book. I’m not too worried.
Fantastic response here Toots in every sense and yes a flawed film should always be held up in an all-encompassing way, which in this case is a movie wildly entertaining with a very big heart. The truth is you come out feeling good, and only chronicle the issues as an afterthought.
This has always been my view as well. I loved many, many flawed movies…
And you created a new account just to say this.
A new account with 127 comments ? Unlikely.
A. I’ve talked to samjuliano on here for years. He’s not a newcomer.
B. Even if he were, who cares??? What possible relevance would that be?? Is a newcomer disentitled from engaging in a debate/discussion about a film? Every newcomer has a “first” post.
Thank you Toots!!! Much appreciated.
Pete Missell I am not sure if you are addressing me or Rodrigo, but if me I have had an account here for many years and have placed hundreds of comments since around 2002 or so.
Your Disqus account says 131 comments
Pete, I went under a different name “Sam Juliano” instead of the “sammyjuliano” that you see now with the 131 comments. Rule changes have been made when the site went with a different system. There are many hundreds prior dating back many years. But I do have to ask you this friendly question. Even if this were my first comment ever, why would you feel it was insignificant to discuss a seemingly now controversial film on a thread that introduces a number of films including this one that are in the hunt? Wouldn’t one point of this post be to encourage that?
I’m not sure what’s going on here.
I know this: Sam Juliano and I have been friends through this site for over 11 years. He’s been a regular contributor to the site since before I came along, way back when it was still called OscarWatch.
Sam has done me many kind personal favors over the years in my quest to find rare films. I’m forever grateful for all his efforts.
Sam runs his own brilliant site called Wonders In the Dark. He tirelessly covers movies, theater, music, books there — and has done for nearly two decades.
Sam used to visit us here much more often. I wish we saw more of him.
I think that some people have relatively new Disqus accounts, but that alone is not reason enough to doubt their creditials.
Ryan, my longtime and generous friend thank you many times over for this beautiful and generous comment. I am moved and floored by it, and be rest assured that I have resolved to be far more visible through this current Oscar season and well beyond. I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for you and Sasha dating back many years. I deeply appreciate that!
I loved the film. And Viggo and Mahershala have never been better.
Great to hear that Rodrigo!!!!
I’m not sure I understand your take on “continuing stories” and sequel… it seems like a stretch the way you differentiate between the two. I agree that regardless, the Academy is a little disdainful of any sort of sequels.
I am hopeful the Academy embraces “The Favourite” with its trio of smart actresses, sharp wit, and original take on a period piece.
I am hopeful the Academy turns its nose up at traditional biopics. For the better part of twenty years, too often, the Oscar was awarded to many dull films. The King’s Speech (Actor? Perhaps. Picture? No.), Argo, A Beautiful Mind, Ray, Walk the Line, The Iron Lady, The Blind Side, The Theory of Everything, The Dallas Buyer’s Club… and so many more. It’d be one thing if these kudos were uncommon occurrences, but they happen EVERY year now, and at the expense original characters or original stories. Please save Best Picture for the truly incredible biopics (Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List). Or the acting Oscars for outstanding performances (like Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry” or Scott in “Patton”).
“None of the first 3 versions of A Star is Born ever really did — the first two garnered quite a few top nominations, but only managed a single win (Best Original Story for the 1937 original). The less said
about the Streisand-Kristoferson version, the better.”
Huh? You may not like it as a film, but the ’76 STAR IS BORN earned Four Oscar Nominations and did win for song. And, it killed it at Golden Globes that year winning Picture, Actor and Actress in addition to its music.
Oh, and the ’76 STAR earned over $340M at the box office adjusted for inflation. It’s highly doubtful that the current edition will get very close to that ($190M last time I checked).
Domestic + Foreign receipts puts the current “Star” at over $350 million. Nearly all of the the ’76 version was due to Streisand, who was a superstar at the time, earning money at the box office and the record stores. Both versions are money-makers for sure.
I’m not so big on the current “A Star is Born” – it’s the best one, but also the one in which the main actress’s role has taken the backseat to the main actor’s role. I’m also not fond of the lack of other actresses having speaking parts in the film.
Gaga perhaps deserves a nomination, but if she wins, her performance will be ridiculed for a long time. It will not hold up against the nominations and you’d end up with “Gaga won over SuchandSuch… ?!” for years. Think Gwyneth Paltrow or Judy Holliday or Louise Rainer.
Maybe Sasha was not alive yet, or just doesn’t know that much about the Streisand version, but yes, the Streisand version got 4 oscar nods and 1 win, as well as cleaning up at the Golden Globes with 5 wins, and along with Rocky, was the biggest Box-Office hit of 1976. It was an Absolute SMASH for Streisand and Kristoferson. and with an Adjusted for inflation account, it will probably end up being THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ASIB of all, at least financially. Streisand was in TOP form and is of course one of the Greatest Singer/Entertainers of all time. She has made the top 10 box office Draws 10 times, putting her in a tie with Doris Day, Betty Grable, and Julia Roberts, as the biggest female Box office stars of ALL-Time.
Sasha is talking about Oscar nominations here, not other nominations. And she is mainly talking about top awards, the so-called above the line nominations.
The 1976 version had one significant nomination, for cinematography, and even then it got no above the line nominations. Indeed, the very fact that it did so well at the Globes and then got no top nominations at the Oscars show how much Oscar rejected it (and rejected Streisand, of course, as well — a big part of it).
Aye, exactly Toots!!!
The 1976 version is horrible, imo. Yes it made a shitload of money and there’s Barbra singing but it’s such a baaaaad movie. My favourite is still the 1937, followed by 1954.
The one thing Bradley Cooper mishandled in his ASIB is the ending. I wish he’d had the braveness to change the ending…
Opinions on it’s artistic merits aside, the point is that you can’t dismiss it as either an Oscar player or as a financial success.
Everything would be fine if they just expanded the ballot to 10 slots again?
Black Panther? Absolutely.
Leave No Trace. Sure.
Mary Poppins Returns / Eighth Grade / First Reformed? Why not.
The few years we had it, it seemed the most effective way to include both worthy underdog indies & significant genre films. Seems like it would be the perfect solution to include all the good stuff this year, including “popular” films. But alas.
(Seriously, though, can’t they just reintroduce it, and for those Academy voters who can’t think of more than 5 films they liked in a year – who are these people – they can just fill in five, or six, or two, and leave the rest blank? Or am I misunderstanding how accounting works?)
I’m sad that there hasn’t been any study on the impact of 10 slots vs. 5, I may just look at it myself when I have some time. But I have a hypothesis that it is mostly impactless, and the diversity of those two (!) lineups was mostly chance.
Since the change from 10 to 5, there have been zero animated Best Picture nominees and one Best Picture nominee with a North America gross less than $10 M (Amour).
I’m aware of the anecdotical evidence pointing to more nomination slots causing more diverse lineups, but with such a low sample size and no convincing explanation, it remains only anecdotical.
It’s true, it’s not enough of a sample to be sure of anything – not that it is, not that it isn’t. But, that aside, what is the main reasoning behind your theory that this isn’t the reason? (I’m just curious.)
Well, simply put, the nomination process. Two things:
1. The 6-10 slots do not play a role in the surplus reallocation (they only would if at least 5 films got nominated in the first round by the magic number, which is unlikely, and even then only for voters who have selected 5 of exactly those films as 1-5, so it’s a very small effect)
2. The 6-10 slots only come into play if the original 5-slot ballot would be voided, so all of the films on there got eliminated early, or got already nominated in the first 5 rounds. In other words, the only time slot 6 matters is if the voter didn’t choose a nominee in the first 5 slots, in fact only chose “hopeless” films, AND chose a film at least somewhat close to a nomination for the 6th slot. Slot 10 matters if the voter didn’t choose a nominee or a film close to the nomination in the first 9 slots, AND chose a film close to being nominated for the 10th slot. This, to my eye, seems very unlikely to happen en masse.
What we also see is, if the hypothesis is correct about more slots = more diverse lineup, these genre/animated/etc. films need to be close to the nomination line each year (or else they wouldn’t stand a chance no matter how many slots). But in that case, I suspect having fixed 10 nominees instead of like 8 has a dramatically larger effect than the number of slots.
We could do an example with the Statsgasm method: evaluate critics’ top 10 lists with 5 and with 10 slots, and see the difference. I might try it if I have some time, but that probably won’t be soon.
Since I can’t always unnerstan all the math…
…and I’m for sure not gonna be the one who collects a bunch of critics top 10 picks and equates their choices with the movies that filmmakers would choose…
…we can maybe just compare the slate of films nominated by the PGA to the Best Picture nominees.
As the years go by we can begin to spot the type of films that the PGA honors that the Oscars fail to acknowledge.
I already see a difference.
Let’s not forget that another part of the reason the current Academy system of preferential balloting seems so homogenized…
…is because the accountants deliberately built in stopgaps (like % threshholds that had to be met) and this was done (I strongly suspect) as a safeguard that the AMPAS Elders requested in order to prevent people from finding out that approximately 10% of the Academy thought The Blind Side was the best movie of the year.
So they have intentionally hobbled the nominations process to ensure that nothing too weird or offkey or daring ever gets nominated.
This blocks the worst groaners. It also blocks the most visionary gems.
Which is quite fucked up.
I can stomach a Blind Side once in a while if we can please have a Carol nominated for BP now and then too — instead of leaving 2 or 3 empty holes unfilled in a potential of 10 nominees.
Its effing embarrassing and disgraceful that they leave vacant BP slots and try to pretend that they can only think of 8 movies good enough to nominate…
…when any one of us here at AD can easily rattle off lists of 15 or 20 amazing movies every damn year.
*(I use the term Elder above in the sense of Board of Director types. Not elderly. Since, yikes, let’s not even ponder what a steaming load of shite the Oscars would honor if only the most elderly 50% of voters got the winners they want.)
I would refrain from using the PGA as a direct comparison, since the voting body is different. It may well be that the difference in the voting body explains the difference in the lineups, much more than the difference in the nomination method.
I’m not quite sure which % thresholds you are referring to that could stop The Blind Side with 10% of the vote from getting nominated. The elimination threshold really only affects films that don’t really have a chance anyway (clearly not the case with The Blind Side and similar films) because they didn’t get enough votes to become a “serious” contender for a nomination.
Also, about the number of nominees: I don’t see why they couldn’t do fixed 10 nominees with 5 slots. It’s really a shame that they arbitrarily reduced the number of nominees at the same time as slots.
EDIT: I realised you probably mean the threshold to become a nominee in the new “5-10 nominees” system. You’re perfectly right.
I’m only saying that the PGA is more similar to the Academy for comparison sake than a comparison made by evaluating critics top 10 lists.
And yes, as you say in your edit, the % threshhold enforced by the clumsy accounting procedure is why we get 7 or 8 or 9 nominees instead of 10.
The most irritating thing to me about the new system is the way it arbitrarily chops off the number of nominees just because some of the top 10 don’t reach a nonsensical threshhold.
Makes no effing difference to me whether or not “they stand a chance to win.”
(As if Philomena ever had a chance when it squeaked in as the 9th and final nominee that year?)
I’m still happy for Philomena’s nomination at number 9. Still pissed that Inside Llewyn Davis got screwed out of being number 10 the same year.
Why does a movie with only 5.1% support get into the Oscar history books but 4.9% support is a failure not worth naming?
(I’m not sure 5% is the cutoff. But why have a cutoff at all?)
Besides, eliminating and culling affects perceptions. Relatively speaking.
Culling out ‘seemingly weak’ nominees is how we ended up killing a dozen variously awful GOP nominees so that Republicans were left with nothing but a sheer catastrophe to vote for.
Excellent case! You’ve convinced me. So, most probably, the reason is a combination of these animated/genre movies being just below the nomination line (in 9th or 10th place) a lot, and those two years happening to have more such strong contenders than others. (Or the traditional contenders in those years being weaker, perhaps.) Sounds about right.
Preach. The 10-slot nomination ballot was fantastic. Yes, it brought The Blind Side into the Best Picture lineup, but who cares… let’s focus on the positives: Winter’s Bone, Up, Toy Story 3, District 9, The Kids Are Alright…
“Seriously, though, can’t they just reintroduce it, and for those Academy voters who can’t think of more than 5 films they liked in a year – who are these people – they can just fill in five, or six, or two, and leave the rest blank?”
This.
Oddly, I’m still predicting Black Panther for the win. I don’t know how it’ll happen, but I just *feel* that it’s going to happen. The only other time I’ve felt this way was with Spotlight.
This year is nuts though. Exciting, but nuts.
I’m sure Sasha will do a full box office article when all the films are released and are either making money or not, but right now, things aren’t looking all that great. First thing is first, let’s get The Front Runner out of the way. Not that this film was ever considered a contender but after its first week in semi-wide release it has only made 1 million dollars. Yes, that’s right. In fact, The Favourite made almost as much money in 4 theaters this weekend as The Front Runner did in 807!!!! And speaking of The Favourite, yes it did set the record for “per theater average” but again, that was just for 4 theaters. Let’s not forget Suspiria was the previous record holder of the highest PTA, and yet it ended up only expanding to 311 theaters and didn’t even make 3 million dollars! So right now we still don’t know what The Favourite will really do. It might all depend on it’s rollout schedule.
For instance, I was worried about Green Book after a poor performance in limited release last week, but now that its in over a thousand theaters, it has made 7 million dollars. This isn’t outstanding by any means, but it’s not horrible. Especially considering it earned an A+ CinemaScore rating so the people that are going to see it, are liking it quite a bit. I expect good word of mouth, and further theater expansion, to keep this one making steady money up to the end of the year and then also get a bump come Awards nominations announcements time. But other indies are ending their runs with less than I’m sure their studios expected. Can You Ever Forgive Me is reducing its theater count after making only 6 million, A Beautiful Boy is doing the same after making 7 million and Old Man and the Gun has made only 10 million so far. Boy Erased was just expanded to 660 theaters but has only made 4 million so far, and I don’t think Ben Is Back will make anymore than it will either. These numbers easily make BlackkKlansman’s 48 million dollar haul or The Hate U Give’s 28 million look like Avatar.
Again, box office isn’t the end all be all when it comes to awards potential, but like Sasha will tell you, it sure doesn’t hurt.
Catching up with unreleased festival fair. Having a tough time filling out my ballot. Unfortunately I won’t be able to see Roma theatrically. SMH.
‘Mary Poppins’ (1964, Robert Stevenson) should have won Best Picture, so I really hope the sequel does NOT. As cute as it may be, there is no way it could even come close to the perfection of the original film.
1964 was a tough year. My Fair Lady was a terrific movie and in most years would’ve been an excellent choice….but over Mary Poppins and Dr. Strangelove?
Totally! I love those three films, but as much as I enjoy ‘My Fair Lady’, there are also cringeworthy moments I could find fault with in it. ‘Dr. Strangelove’ would have been the edgiest choice I guess, a more important and relevant film for political reasons, but I adore ‘Mary Poppins’, a true marvel, and not just because it is probably the first live-action film I have ever seen. It was a true artistic and technical achievement. Everything in it is top-notch, from the lovely décors to the inventive music, the spirited acting and the heart-warming story.
All in all I consider the 60’s to be a golden era in American cinema, so many wonderful films were made back then.
Those three movies are great nominees and have stood the test of time.
Strangelove and Poppins are truly original films which have spawned knockoffs and lookalikes. My Fair Lady has incredible production values, sharp performances, and iconic scenes.
It’s not easy, but I agree that Strangelove and Poppins are superior films.
I was just thinking of ’64 two nights ago and diligently hashed out a Top 10:
1. Gertrud (Carl Theodore Dreyer)
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)
3. The Gospel According to Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
4. Woman of the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
5. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
6. Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni)
7. Charulata (Satyajit Ray)
8. Seven Days in May (John Frankeheimer)
9. The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller)
10. The Night of the Iguana (John Huston)
…my train of thought led me to the conclusion that the Oscars are a sham, evidenced by the fact that none of these motion pictures, the very best made in 1964, ultimately won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
In your train of thought, definitely. Then again, you are following a forum about a sham, which leads me to another train of thought.
I do like ‘The Umbrellas of Cherboug’ (Jacques Demy) but it was only eligible for Best Foreign Language film the same year as ‘Mary Poppins’ and then was eligible in the main categories the following year, since it was initially released in 1964 in its home country of France and in 1965 in the US.
Since we are talking film awards eligibility, please note ‘Call Me By Your Name’ (Lucas Guadagnino, 2017) will NOT be eligible for Les Césars, at least not in the main categories, though it is arguably a very serious contender for Best Foreign Film.
Oops I almost forgot the most important thing: ‘Gertrud’ (Carl Theodore Dreyer) looks awesome and I am adding it to my watchlist, but again it was only released in 1965 in the US and even in Denmark, only France released it a few weeks earlier just to mess with us.
Did you actively root against The Godfather, Part 2, as well? Asking for a British friend.
The Godfather Part II is one of the Best Picture wins that I am more indifferent to than most. I love the first film, though.
Understandable, considering The Conversation deserved BP over GF2.
The Conversation is one of my all-time top 100 favourites – but while we’re on the subject, I may as well confess that I also enjoy The Towering Inferno enough to keep it in my collection.
Ok, you must wear the Cone of Shame today for that transgression.
Hehehe, that sounds terrifying
Lol! Not a big fan of ‘The Godfather’ 1 or 2.
My Top 3 among 1974 Oscar-eligible US releases that I have seen so far would be ‘Day for Night’ (François Truffaut), ‘Young Frankenstein’ (Mel Brooks) and ‘The Great Gatsby’ (Jack Clayton). I was disappointed by ‘The Towering Inferno’ (John Guillermin) and I do not remember ‘Chinatown’ (Roman Polanski) that well, but I was not particularly bowled over by it.
Are you British? I am French, but I have a fetish for cozy english cottages in the woods, since I watched ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ (Simon Curtis, 2017) and its sequel Disney’s ‘Christopher Robin’ (Marc Forster, 2018).
You are my hero. Finally someone who appreciates Clayton’s version of Gatsby, by far the truest and best version of it ever made. No, I’m American. I was being ironic in saying I was asking for a British friend (i.e. Mary Poppins).
The problem for “A star is born” might be – rather than being a remake – that it´s an cinematic lightweight. Cultural phenomenon – maybe, Box Office champ – definitely, but the Academy likes to award films that also have an important message. “Birdman” (which I didn´t like, by the way) was about a broadway director and actor struggling between stardom and high art. That´s something the Academy obviously loves to identify with. Some clichéd run-of-the-mill fame feature about the superficial popmusic industry? I don´t know…
So… the academy was okay with Birdman’s theme of not wanting to sacrifice talent for commercial appeal, but they won’t be okay with the same exact message in ASIB? Because it’s about the music industry instead? Okay.
Birdman is about a “true artist” achieving greatness (at least in the opinions of many, I personally find it too nihilistic to be that) whereas A Star Is Born is about someone who fails and someone who loses someone she genuinely loved. That put together with how Birdman really can be seen to take its vision of great artistry as its main agenda whereas A Star Is Born is a character piece that’s using those things to study characters (who are too poorly-written for that to work in my opinion). The differences are notable
Birdman for all of its nihilism was a technical achievement
To me ASIB is a superficial portrait of the popstar system. It tries to look more relevant than it is. But besides: I totally respect everyone with a different opinion. I´m really fine with everyone who is more into this film and sees more substance in it.
Or we could look at what “The Artist” did: it told this lightweight story in a lightweight way. The problem with A Star is Born is that it tries to look more serious than it is.
It´s like the pop industry itself: dazzling but dull.
I think at the end of the day the problem with ASIB is that the source material is weak and there is only so much you can do when the story you are remaking is weak. The current players give it their all, admirably so, and the film sure has moments when it works really well, but boy when it doesn’t it REALLY doesn’t.
I think at the end of the day, the problem with ASIB is that its a giod movie but not really an Oscar Best Picture film. Looking at the winner the past recent years, can we really say ASIB has a chance with TSoW, Moonlight, 12YAS, Birdman, Spotlight and Argo, or even with Gravity, LLL, Boyhood, etc.?
If it had a better script, preferably a gutsier one unafraid to fix the most glaring issues of the original story instead of just blindly copying them into the new adaptation, it could have been BP material. But without a great script, to me, no film should get near a BP win.
But they also gave the award to The Artist and Argo.
Besides that I truly love “The Artist” very much… 😉 …it´s beyond doubt that the Academy honored many films we might not consider cinematic heavy weights, so I agree with you.
But let´s not forget: The Artist is a charming hommage to a golden Hollywood era, ASIB is about the popmusic business.
That’s definitely one of its biggest problems…
I would highly question the notion that ASIB is a “cultural phenomenon”. Frankly I think it tailed off pretty hard after a highly front loaded and hyped opening.
Well, it’s not showing The Greatest Showman psychotic holds … but it HAS only dropped between 25-30% from weekend to weekend since its release, which is pretty incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_v6HztMeU4
Are you delusional? Tailed off hard? It picked up and made tens of millions week after week. It’s approaching 200 million at the box office, it is still in the top 10, the soundtrack album has been number one around the world and more than 1000 memes have been created on this movie. Pete, you are really dreaming.
I would have never used “cultural phenomenon” for A Star Is Born. That was Get Out last year. A Star Is Born has movie star appeal, and pop star appeal. Lady Gaga is one of the most famous and popular pop stars in the world, at her film debut. Of course millions of fans went to see her. Then, something obviously struck chords, but “cultural phenomenon” is a huuuuge stretch. It’s a box office hit.
Word.
Whatever happens with Black Panther and Mary Poppins Returns … the chance for both to score 6+ nominations (even without BP) is very high. That’s interesting for non-BP-nommed films, in and of itself.
In the older days of the Oscars, the Academy had no problem giving Best Picture to a remake or a “re-imagining” of an older property — Ben-Hur, Hamlet, My Fair Lady, West Side Story (basically just a musical Romeo & Juliet), Mutiny On The Bounty (not the first filmed version of the Bounty story).
Sasha’s comment about the box office makes me again wonder if we’re focusing on Black Panther and missing the possibility of Infinity War getting a surprise Best Picture nomination. It checks more boxes as maybe the culmination of Marvel’s films.
Speaking of Widows, Sasha did you watch it yet? I’m really curious about what you thought about it. I’m sad its not doing better in the oscar race or the box office right now cause I loved it so much!
loved it, too, particularly the Debicki and Kaluuya performances
“You can’t stop what’s coming.”
I hate that attitude. It’s like looking at the climate change reports and going “well, it’s to hard to fix this, guess we should just pollute even more to bring about our doom faster.” The stakes for this are obviously smaller but keeping the theatrical experience alive is worth fighting for, and to just shrug and go, “this must be the future” is some bullshit.
It’s a quote from No Country For Old Men that Sasha likes to use. But I like it too and it’s apt in a lot of cases.
In a perfect world the BP race would be down to If Beale Street Could Talk, The Favourite, Roma. Films with flawless writing, directing, acting, craftsmanship.
Side note : I haven’t seen Vice and Mary Poppins Returns.
Haven’t seen Roma yet but if it’s anywhere near as good as they say I’ll probably be rooting for those three. The year is weird because there isn’t really a contender I loved that’s struggling like The Florida Project or Jackie this year… though I probably didn’t realize either of those were struggling at this point in those years.
Jackie really should have been a top contender in picture, director, screenplay, a shame those nominations didn’t happen. I don’t think Pablo Larrain got even remotely enough credit for pulling off the “biopic of an iconic woman” concept with flying colours. Not many could, generally speaking these films tend to flop with critics (Grace of Monaco, Diana. Amelia, The Iron Lady, Queen of the Desert, Victoria & Abdul). As far as I’m concerned Jackie was the first one to do it REALLY well since The Queen (2006).
‘Jackie’ depressed people. It’s as simple as that. It was like attending a slow-motion funeral service for someone I didn’t know.
Adored Jackie too but would like to add La Môme as one of the best biopics. The way Dahan filmed it like a cinematic collage tell sonmuh about the life of Piaf herself. Of course Marie Antoinette tops this list of biopics if it could be considered as one though I see it more of a historical drama. How Coppola filmed it with her trademark style is sublime as it is personal.
*sonmuh = so much
(jeez… I hate typing on my phone)
For me that film I love that’s struggling is Hereditary. I get that it’s a niche of a niche, but this is incredibly crafted and superbly acted in a way few films are.
same 5 picks for possible BP winner, being The Favourite and Vice the least probable IMO due to the subject matter involved. Really think The mule and Vox Lux might surprise. At this point i can see a battle between Roma, Mary Poppins and If Beale street could talk for the big prize.
The Favourite did really well in its box office debut. I hope it keeps up. I’m watching If Beale Street next Thursday and Roma next Sunday. So excited!
Indeed, best PTA of the year ! It really is a crowdpleaser of sort in that arthouse kind of way, at least the audience I saw it with a few weeks ago, roared with laughter several times throughout. It is always nice to see a REALLY well-made film getting embraced.
Yeah well Suspiria has the PTA record too and then that film stalled at 311 theaters and made under 3 million dollars total. Not saying that’s gonna happen to The Favourite, but just brining it to light. On the other hand, The Favourite almost made as much in 4 theaters as the Front Eunner did this weekend in 807 theaters!
Suspiria couldn’t rely on three more months of 1. expansions 2. lucrative Holiday business 3. precursor press 4. Oscar press. Not saying The Favourite will be a smash hit but it will definitely make money.
Seen all three of those films and while I think they are all quite good, I wouldn’t call any of them unequivocally flawless.
So I’m curious, what are the flawed aspects ? For example with The Favourite what is the scene / performance / technical aspect you didn’t like ?
For me, the only thing that took me out of Roma was a sequence with a movie that’s oddly like Cuaron’s previous work. Other than that, it’s great.
I’m still stunned at the Bohemian Rhapsody international numbers. So basically it will finish in the 600M range worldwide ? Without any movie stars ? Without critical approval ? Damn, Queen really is a huge draw still.
It’s pure escapism. Well acted. Great music. Sit back and watch entertainment. It’s just not factually accurate, at all (haha).
It is amazing what I see here. It simply appeals to (almost) all audiences. It’s probably been made at the perfect time. Next year’s Elton John bio could be good or not, but it won’t have 20% of this impact.
In no way, shape or form is Mary Poppins Returns a remake. Those are Kellyanne Conway alternative facts. Having read all 8 books, it’s a continuation of the series.