Watching OSCARS online tonight?
- Thread starter TahoeTennis
- Start date
Incognito
Legend
That’s it folks!
Love that Frances and Gary won. Haven’t seen ”The Shape of Water”. I will have to watch it now.
I’ve seen ”The Post”, ”Dunkirk” and ”Call me by Your name”. Of the three ”Call me by your name” was the one I liked most despite Hanks’ and Streep’s brilliance in ”The Post”.
Love that Frances and Gary won. Haven’t seen ”The Shape of Water”. I will have to watch it now.
I’ve seen ”The Post”, ”Dunkirk” and ”Call me by Your name”. Of the three ”Call me by your name” was the one I liked most despite Hanks’ and Streep’s brilliance in ”The Post”.
Incognito
Legend
Lol, I was wondering the same thing. Maybe someone responsible for catering in the movie set.
NonP
Legend
What's the deal with this baldy guy? Did this happen near the end of the ceremony or after?
This year's Oscars weren't as wild as I expected but I did get all the biggies right. Maybe I should become a bookie. Glad Blade Runner 2049 and especially A Fantastic Woman (congrats Chile!) won their categories.
Can't find a clip of the latter's gorgeous ending so here's again Vega herself singing Handel's "Ombra mai fù":
Most of 'em are worthy films, Phantom Thread being the best of the group. Still wish Mudbound and Downsizing made the cut, though.
This year's Oscars weren't as wild as I expected but I did get all the biggies right. Maybe I should become a bookie.
Glad Blade Runner 2049 and especially A Fantastic Woman (congrats Chile!) won their categories.Can't find a clip of the latter's gorgeous ending so here's again Vega herself singing Handel's "Ombra mai fù":
Most of 'em are worthy films, Phantom Thread being the best of the group. Still wish Mudbound and Downsizing made the cut, though.
Moose Malloy
G.O.A.T.
He was one of the producers of Shape of Water, that's why he was holding an Oscar. Shame Del Toro didn't let him speak first, it was obvious they weren't going to let both speak and Del Toro already had his speech earlier.
NonP
Legend
Oh, THAT guy. I wouldn't fault del Toro for being a tad overenthusiastic at the biggest win of his career. Rather blame ABC for refusing to spare a few extra seconds for a less glamorous figure. It's almost barbaric how they cut out what are often the least scripted parts of this annual ritual just to fatten the bottom line. Apart from Oldman's and McDormand's this year's speeches were uniformly brief, and if they can't get the show to close on time despite that then maybe they should stop pretending it will run 3 hours tops and perhaps start it half an hour or so earlier.
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
Boycotted. No Golden Globes or Oscar nominations for Wonder Woman? At all! Snubbery or Snobbery? C'mon ppl, we gotta get past this anti-superhero movie bias. Not that it should have necessarily won in the top categories but, at least, it deserved recognition and consideration. SAG, AFI and others gave it that. Why not Oscar and GG?
(Truth be told, didn't really boycott. Was out and didn't have access).
(Truth be told, didn't really boycott. Was out and didn't have access).
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NonP
Legend
One of the rare times that make me rethink the value of Twitter (which is to say, none whatsoever):
http://popculture.com/tv-shows/2018/03/05/oscars-2018-academy-awards-agnes-varda-red-carpet-outfit/
How could I have missed this last nite? Wonder if she brought along JR with him.
http://popculture.com/tv-shows/2018/03/05/oscars-2018-academy-awards-agnes-varda-red-carpet-outfit/
How could I have missed this last nite? Wonder if she brought along JR with him.
TahoeTennis
Legend
Logan > WW in every shape and form.
Steady Eddy
Legend
Thank goodness there is an Academy Award ceremony every year. Movie stars are doing a public service because they receive no compensation. So they need these awards so at least they get something.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
So you have a problem with the fact that movie stars belong to an industry organised along capitalistic lines?
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
For portrayal of female empowerment???
In the current climate of the acknowledgment of female harassment in the industry, the Academy stills appears to be out of step with their nominations. Not that it should've been given preferential consideration for that reason, but WW should have been given some consideration on its own merits.
Note that the critics, overall, regarded both Logan and WW fairly high. Their MetaScores were nearly identical = 77 & 76, respectively. But your opinion and their opinion aside, WW should have garnered SOME nominations. Even, in the last count, if it lost to Logan or something else.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451279/criticreviews?ref_=tt_ql_op_6
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Steady Eddy
Legend
Not at all. I don't blame the industry for trying to promote itself.
I'm just surprised anyone else cares.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
Given that the Oscars have been around for way over half a century, why would you be surprised that they have become such a (perhaps undeserved) hit with the public?
Steady Eddy
Legend
That's a tough question. It's like Casinos. In my mind, no one would go to Casinos because all of the games they offer are in the Casino's favor.
Yet, still they are packed with people.
In my mind, no one would care about these award shows because the actors don't need awards, it's not very likely the best actors win, and so on. But the news tells who won what, like somehow, it matters.
So...I should be used to the fact that my fellow humans go to Casinos and care about the Academy Awards, even though, at some level, this always surprises me.
Fedinkum
Legend
100% with you. WW's plot and resolution (especially the third act) are pretty average & childish.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
Award shows are not really about rewarding actors anymore. They are part of the huge promotional machine that drives everything. I'm not sure the punters take them as seriously as you suggest.
Whenever I have gone to a casino moreover I've mostly had fun with my group with no expectation of earthly reward, and I expect most go with the same attitude.
It's just Disneyland for grown-ups with alcohol, pretty girls and games of chance.
Whenever I have gone to a casino moreover I've mostly had fun with my group with no expectation of earthly reward, and I expect most go with the same attitude.
It's just Disneyland for grown-ups with alcohol, pretty girls and games of chance.
Dolgopolov85
G.O.A.T.
I was going to post this after reading your post on the first page. Are you on the Oscars Committee?
Kudos, you got every one of the big awards bang on, even supporting actor/actress.
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
In your opinion. Even if so, this should have no bearing on many of the categories that WW could have been nominated for. There are numerous (15+) technical categories it could/should have been considered for: cinematography, production design, visual effects, 2 possible sound categories, make up/hair, original score, stunts, etc.
Many also expected Best Director nomination for Patty Jenkins.
Note that the Critics Choice Movie Awards nominated Wonder Woman for costume design, visual effects and best action movie. SAG nominated it for outstanding action performance/stunts. WW won that award. Alliance of Women Film Journalists saw fit to nominate Patty Jenkins for both best female director and outstanding achievement by a woman in the film industry. Art Directors Guild nominated WW for excellence in production design.
Broadcast Film Critics Association awarded nominations for visual effects, custom design, and best action movie. Cinema Audio Society nomination for outstanding achievement in sound mixing, live-action. WW won the award for excellence in sci-fi/fantasy film from the Costume Designers Guild Awards. Motion Picture Sound Editors nominated WW for outstanding achievement in sound editing, music score for feature film.
A number of other nominations and awards as well from other associations yet the Academy failed to give WW a single/solitary nomination.
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SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
@TahoeTennis
It appears that the reviews from critics and the general public are quite a bit more polarized for Wonder Woman than for Logan even though their average scores are very close. WW received a number of scores from critics that were considerably higher than the top scores for Logan. WW received scores of 88 to 91 from LA Times, New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune and a number of others.
But this was offset by low scores from other MetaCritic reviewers. OTOH, Logan did not garner any scores higher than 80 from Metacritic reviews but did not receive more than a handful of low MetaScores either.
It appears that the reviews from critics and the general public are quite a bit more polarized for Wonder Woman than for Logan even though their average scores are very close. WW received a number of scores from critics that were considerably higher than the top scores for Logan. WW received scores of 88 to 91 from LA Times, New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune and a number of others.
But this was offset by low scores from other MetaCritic reviewers. OTOH, Logan did not garner any scores higher than 80 from Metacritic reviews but did not receive more than a handful of low MetaScores either.
NonP
Legend
I found it quite interesting that many if not most reviewers of the ceremony were dissing Kimmel and the organizers for daring to waste precious time by taking his celeb buds along with him to surprise the nearby crowd for an early screening of A Wrinkle in Time, so I thought I'd see what the audience members' own reaction was like. Well, at least one of 'em seems to have liked it a whole lot better than the killjoys:
https://slate.com/human-interest/20...time-screening-stunt-guest-ibba-armancas.html
(BWT it looks like my suspicion was mostly correct: the audience was indeed told in advance that there would be a mid-screening stoppage, ostensibly for a commercial, but they didn't know they would be swarmed by a gang of Hollywood A-listers handing out free concessions.)
Of course this was just one member and I understand that as something of an insider (apparently she's a director as well as a screenwriter) she may not have been the most representative one, but I strongly suspect her ecstatic reaction was shared by most of the crowd. If so I must say it's rather comical to see the journos wax delirious about McDormand's call for inclusion riders (which they didn't even know about at the time) while doing ABC's bidding by obsessing over the length of the ceremony without paying heed to what the audience might want. Maybe try to listen to what we common folks are saying next time?
Also saw On Body and Soul last nite. Among last year's contenders I wasn't expecting to see a more bizarre love story than Phantom Thread but Ildikó Enyedi's charmer definitely poses a strong challenge. Would've been my pick for Foreign Language Film if not for A Fantastic Woman. Will update my original post on the category shortly.
Even detractors like me care because, like it or not, the Oscars are the biggest advertising campaign in showbiz and as such could be a force for good if we stopped our current mind-numbing obsession with PC-friendly quotas and focused instead on how to prevent the studios' preemptive boycotting of what they think would be box-office bombs and how to extend more opportunities to budding and struggling filmmakers trying to get in. It's hardly a coincidence that the Academy tends to pick better in the less glamorous categories where money isn't as big a factor.
Heh, given how much grousing I level at the industry as well as the critics I doubt they'd let me sit on the committee even if I wanted. I do this mostly for fun, you see.
Also I must correct you slightly there. When I said I got all the biggies right I was talking about the Big 4 only (Picture, Actor, Actress, Directing). I did get Supporting Actor wrong (Dafoe over Rockwell), and though I did narrow down Original Screenplay to Peele or Gerwig I didn't make a call either way. But yes, a pretty good marksmanship overall.
Wonder Woman is one of the three superhero movies I saw last year (along with Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) and the best of the bunch, and if this is what parents take their kids to see these days I'm all for it. I just fail to see how it counts as much of a progress for us adults that we now have a blockbuster franchise for teenage girls as well as teenage boys. It was downright embarrassing to see this movie feted as a groundbreaking cinematic event by presumably grown-up professionals who really should have known better, especially when 2017 saw another WW movie of sorts named Professor Marston and the Wonder Women which unlike its kid-friendly sibling challenges middlebrow morality head-on but was all but ignored by said arbiters of taste, most likely because it dared to underperform at the box office.
Plus some of these awards you say WW got aren't even Oscar categories. Maybe the Academy did a better job weeding out (non-)contenders than you think?
https://slate.com/human-interest/20...time-screening-stunt-guest-ibba-armancas.html
(BWT it looks like my suspicion was mostly correct: the audience was indeed told in advance that there would be a mid-screening stoppage, ostensibly for a commercial, but they didn't know they would be swarmed by a gang of Hollywood A-listers handing out free concessions.)
Of course this was just one member and I understand that as something of an insider (apparently she's a director as well as a screenwriter) she may not have been the most representative one, but I strongly suspect her ecstatic reaction was shared by most of the crowd. If so I must say it's rather comical to see the journos wax delirious about McDormand's call for inclusion riders (which they didn't even know about at the time) while doing ABC's bidding by obsessing over the length of the ceremony without paying heed to what the audience might want. Maybe try to listen to what we common folks are saying next time?
Also saw On Body and Soul last nite. Among last year's contenders I wasn't expecting to see a more bizarre love story than Phantom Thread but Ildikó Enyedi's charmer definitely poses a strong challenge. Would've been my pick for Foreign Language Film if not for A Fantastic Woman. Will update my original post on the category shortly.
Even detractors like me care because, like it or not, the Oscars are the biggest advertising campaign in showbiz and as such could be a force for good if we stopped our current mind-numbing obsession with PC-friendly quotas and focused instead on how to prevent the studios' preemptive boycotting of what they think would be box-office bombs and how to extend more opportunities to budding and struggling filmmakers trying to get in. It's hardly a coincidence that the Academy tends to pick better in the less glamorous categories where money isn't as big a factor.
I was going to post this after reading your post on the first page. Are you on the Oscars Committee?
Heh, given how much grousing I level at the industry as well as the critics I doubt they'd let me sit on the committee even if I wanted. I do this mostly for fun, you see.
Also I must correct you slightly there. When I said I got all the biggies right I was talking about the Big 4 only (Picture, Actor, Actress, Directing). I did get Supporting Actor wrong (Dafoe over Rockwell), and though I did narrow down Original Screenplay to Peele or Gerwig I didn't make a call either way. But yes, a pretty good marksmanship overall.
Wonder Woman is one of the three superhero movies I saw last year (along with Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) and the best of the bunch, and if this is what parents take their kids to see these days I'm all for it. I just fail to see how it counts as much of a progress for us adults that we now have a blockbuster franchise for teenage girls as well as teenage boys. It was downright embarrassing to see this movie feted as a groundbreaking cinematic event by presumably grown-up professionals who really should have known better, especially when 2017 saw another WW movie of sorts named Professor Marston and the Wonder Women which unlike its kid-friendly sibling challenges middlebrow morality head-on but was all but ignored by said arbiters of taste, most likely because it dared to underperform at the box office.
Plus some of these awards you say WW got aren't even Oscar categories. Maybe the Academy did a better job weeding out (non-)contenders than you think?
In case you haven't noticed, Oscars and award shows alike have become political rallies for the hollywood elites. It's laughable because hollywood culture is the epitome of everything that they are railing against.
With consistent rapid decline in viewership year after year, these shows will be their own extinct dinosaurs in the making.
SystemicAnomaly
Bionic Poster
@NonP
You are correct that some of the awards and nominations that WW received are not Oscar categories. However, a large percentage of them, if not most of them, are closely related to Oscar categories. I just looked it up and I was amazed to discover that stunts and stunt coordinators do not have Oscar categories even though SAG and others do. Unforgivable that the Academy won't consider such categories even though they have been petitioned to include them.
Nonetheless, there are some 15 or 16 technical Oscar categories that WW should have been eligible for. As mentioned previously, those categories include cinematography, production design, costume design, 2 sound categories, visual effects, makeup and hair, and original score.
And a best director nomination for Patty Jenkins was expected by a number of industry insiders. Seems that the Academy does have a bias against popular blockbusters especially if they are of the superhero genre.
You are correct that some of the awards and nominations that WW received are not Oscar categories. However, a large percentage of them, if not most of them, are closely related to Oscar categories. I just looked it up and I was amazed to discover that stunts and stunt coordinators do not have Oscar categories even though SAG and others do. Unforgivable that the Academy won't consider such categories even though they have been petitioned to include them.
Nonetheless, there are some 15 or 16 technical Oscar categories that WW should have been eligible for. As mentioned previously, those categories include cinematography, production design, costume design, 2 sound categories, visual effects, makeup and hair, and original score.
And a best director nomination for Patty Jenkins was expected by a number of industry insiders. Seems that the Academy does have a bias against popular blockbusters especially if they are of the superhero genre.
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NonP
Legend
Let me glide past the technical categories because I don't have the time or the expertise to think carefully about all the possible contenders (though I'm sure I can come up with worthier names than WW). Now as for the Directing noms, you might know this already but WW wasn't Jenkins' first feature that was eligible for an Oscar. That would be Monster which, you may recall, not only notched an Oscar nom but went on to win the category! (Granted it was for Theron's wildly hyped performance, but still.)
So if she wasn't nominated this time around there is a strong possibility it wasn't for lack of recognition, especially given how much lavish PR her latest outing had received. You say that's because of a bias against blockbusters/superhero movies, and I think you're right. Where we differ is on why I think this bias is well justified while you seem to think any sort of bias is bad.
Earlier you mentioned female empowerment as WW's overriding theme which you think it should get credit for. Well, in that case these are a few other films released in 2017 which I think at the very least deserve the same recognition for their feminism, however tenuous it may be:
The Beguiled
Chavela
Downsizing
A Fantastic Woman (yes, I know it's about a transgender woman)
Frantz
Jane
Lady Macbeth
The Lovers
Maudie
Sami Blood
Thelma
A Woman's Life
Wonder Wheel
I'm sure I missed several while doing a cursory run through my list. Now some of these are foreign films, you say? (Which BTW is a bogus demarcation and the very first thing I'd scrap from the Oscars, but I digress.) OK, but then we're still left with at least half a dozen titles. And since we're talking about Directing as opposed to Best Picture I'd probably go with William Oldroyd for Lady Macbeth although I consider Downsizing (and A Woman's Life, if we count foreign films) a superior film and have major reservations about Oldroyd's patriarchal feminism which like the previous year's Elle touts revenge against men as an act of female empowerment with little regard for whether that's what women actually want. And make no mistake, nearly all of the heroines in these films make you question the role of women in society more than a statuesque model in a revealing getup with superhero powers ever could, no matter how life-affirming her message may be (and WW's is really a wonderful message for kids!).
And that's not even considering other contenders that don't push a fashionable PC message per se but still have more to say about ourselves and our society than just about every blockbuster whose raison d'etre is to make money and which thus has to toe a relatively bland middlebrow line to appeal to as many segments of the market as possible. Now every profitable venture by the big studios doesn't have to be this way, as we saw last year from Get Out and Dunkirk whose success strongly suggests that studio executives may not know as much about the public taste as they think they do (even a decidedly middlebrow sleeper hit like The Greatest Showman is yet more argument against their interference), but as long as they think dumbing down the audience with this tiresome stream of superhero blockbusters is the way forward the movie industry will continue to suffer. In fact I'm willing to bet that's the real reason why people have been tuning out the Oscars and the moviegoing experience in general, despite all the predictable moaning by the right-wing crowd who of course blames the out-of-touch stars instead when the real reason for their antipathy is much uglier.
Audiences who are turn off by hollywood’s arrogance and can see right through their hypocrisies must be right wingers with hidden agenda? Geeze please don’t let your celebrity crush cloud your reasoning and judgement there.
Maybe there are people just don’t worship rich, beautiful entertainers who can act and read lines for a living.
Maybe there are people tuning in for entertainment purpose, not a lecture on deep moral values because when it comes to value, Hollywood is as shallow as it gets.
stringertom
Bionic Poster
Apologize to Chris Plummer right now, Kimmel! He won't be 90 until December 2019.
Varda's outfit reminds me of fedr's 7 vases from TRS!
stringertom
Bionic Poster
Sticker shock is what's driven me away. I'm finally within walking distance of a cineplex and I passed by the box office one afternoon while doing a shopping errand and found a senior citizen ticket to see Oldman in "Darkest Hour" would set me back $13. I respect Gary's work a lot, but not $13 enough to see his latest work. And I studied Churchill in college!
NonP
Legend
Before I get to the documentary shorts and the housekeeping later on, let me give a loud shout-out to The Breadwinner, now available on Netflix and which I saw yesterday immediately after stumbling upon the Netflix logo. It's easily superior to Coco and the somewhat baffling audience favorite Loving Vincent, and while I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to declare it the best animated feature of 2017 (I've yet to see The Boss Baby and Ferdinand and don't intend to, and that's not counting their untold foreign-language brethren that I must have missed last year), I can say it's among the year's best, animated or not.
I was rather surprised to find out that Nora Twomey's sole feature-length directing debut is in English only, as I was under the impression that its weak box office must have been due to a preemptive industry boycott based on the unsubstantiated assumption that foreign-language films don't sell. Of course that's not to say the boycott was never in place, as the film's widest domestic release was limited to a measly 43 theaters, but the fact that this challenging but still family-friendly (that is, no vulgarity to be found anywhere) feature was never granted a chance to get off the ground despite star Angelina Jolie's backing (kudos to her for bringing to completion two serious cinematic projects last year - were I a member of the Academy I would've substituted First They Killed My Father, also available on Netflix, for the seductively cynical Loveless in a heartbeat), not to mention its proud feminism which apparently doesn't count much because it happens to concern women forced to wear hijab in far-flung Afghanistan, speaks volumes about the film industry's sheer contempt for its audience as well as its priorities (and quite possibly ours).
Now let me make it clear that I don't make the above observations merely as a digression to take potshots at the industry, as I believe the wonderful conceit of The Breadwinner is also what makes it a hard sell to many of today's critics who seem obsessed with "relevance" or whatever fashionable cause to latch onto. This moving tale of Parvana, a young Afghan girl who is forced to pass herself off as a boy after her father Nurullah is wrongfully arrested for his perceived insult at a member of the Taliban (who's also a former student of his), is above all about the power of stories, especially one that recurs throughout the film about the quest of a boy to gain back the harvest seeds stolen from his town by the Elephant King, as she tells it to pass time and comfort herself and her family, particularly her adorable infant brother Zaki. But it'd be more accurate to say Parvana's tale itself is a tale of mythology, with her as the central character whose haunting emerald eyes (the rest of her family all have blackish ones) and otherworldly alias (when she poses as Nurullah's nephew she uses the name Aatish, meaning "fire") lend this interpretation more legitimacy as she turns the boy of her story into her deceased brother Sulayman (who is strongly implied to have perished after picking up a "toy," most likely a land mine) and the mythological story morphs into her own quest of saving her father from imprisonment as war is about to descend upon her town.
What this turn to mythology loses in realism and "relevance" it gains in emotional heft and honesty - in fact I'd go so far as to describe the film's stirring climax as Dovzhenkoesque (its emotional intensity indeed made me think of the delirious ending of the Russian master's Earth, which I was fortunate to see with live piano accompaniment by Andrew Simpson at the National Gallery of Art last year) - and if such artistic license ends up alienating or dividing critics more attuned to socially conscious projects such as Get Out, Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name, it's their loss, not ours. In fact though the film notched an ostensibly high 94% on Rotten Tomatoes you get the sense the critics' enthusiasm was rather guarded once you start reading their actual words. "For a kids'/family film" is a typical qualifier, so is "not sure about its audience," which I take to mean it's an animated film and as such should know its place rather than aim too high. As you can see this film was doomed from the start: without the Disney/Pixar name for automatic greenlighting by the studio heads as well as the critics it was destined to languish in a handful of arthouses, which generally treat animated films with sympathetic condescension (though apparently not the aforementioned Loving Vincent, which is about the tortured artist and thus couldn't possibly be for "kids"), and it was further isolated into respectful irrelevance when it dared step out of line by carrying on the hallowed tradition of Homer, J(ahwist) and Vyasa, presumably to the exclusion of more timely issues although its subtle yet unmistakable antiwar message couldn't be timelier.
I don't mean to dismiss all the critical reviews of The Breadwinner altogether, and what actually keeps it from being considered a masterpiece in my mind is a lingering suspicion (and it's really nothing more than that on my part, as I've yet to read the book) that it tempered the sexual violence of the acclaimed Deborah Ellis novel it's based on to allow for more family-friendly fare. (The closest the film comes to confronting this issue head-on is when Parvana's mother Fattema ruefully arranges the marriage of her older sister Soraya to a cousin for security.) But it's hard to take even the valid criticism of this film seriously considering that it barely registered on the award circuits while Wonder Woman made the top 10 of several respectable year-end lists. Apparently the fact that one is animated while the other is not makes all the difference, though one could easily argue that the latter's eponymous protagonist as portrayed by a former Miss Israel resembles the stock animated female heroine far more than the finely graded character of Parvana. I wonder if Víctor Erice would've been afforded the same reaction had he made an animated version of his own "children's classic" The Spirit of the Beehive for a, say, relatively unknown Spanish studio today. Could it have attained the same exalted status that it currently (and rightly) enjoys among cinephiles? Perhaps, though I doubt it.
Speaking of which Twomey's previous feature The Secret of Kells was worth seeing for its miraculous animation alone, and she deserves much credit for maintaining her formidable studio standards (less glitzy, but just as magical) while bringing her vastly improved narrative control to The Breadwinner. There's an ineffable beauty about hand-drawn animation that couldn't be replicated by any amount of CGI, and I hope Twomey continues to stand alongside Miyazaki and Ghibli (and now Ponoc, whose first feature Mary and the Witch's Flower was a promising start) in preserving this venerable tradition while never neglecting the power of stories to shape who we are, even when the cynics, including those who should know better, mistake their myopia for realism and tell us otherwise.
I was rather surprised to find out that Nora Twomey's sole feature-length directing debut is in English only, as I was under the impression that its weak box office must have been due to a preemptive industry boycott based on the unsubstantiated assumption that foreign-language films don't sell. Of course that's not to say the boycott was never in place, as the film's widest domestic release was limited to a measly 43 theaters, but the fact that this challenging but still family-friendly (that is, no vulgarity to be found anywhere) feature was never granted a chance to get off the ground despite star Angelina Jolie's backing (kudos to her for bringing to completion two serious cinematic projects last year - were I a member of the Academy I would've substituted First They Killed My Father, also available on Netflix, for the seductively cynical Loveless in a heartbeat), not to mention its proud feminism which apparently doesn't count much because it happens to concern women forced to wear hijab in far-flung Afghanistan, speaks volumes about the film industry's sheer contempt for its audience as well as its priorities (and quite possibly ours).
Now let me make it clear that I don't make the above observations merely as a digression to take potshots at the industry, as I believe the wonderful conceit of The Breadwinner is also what makes it a hard sell to many of today's critics who seem obsessed with "relevance" or whatever fashionable cause to latch onto. This moving tale of Parvana, a young Afghan girl who is forced to pass herself off as a boy after her father Nurullah is wrongfully arrested for his perceived insult at a member of the Taliban (who's also a former student of his), is above all about the power of stories, especially one that recurs throughout the film about the quest of a boy to gain back the harvest seeds stolen from his town by the Elephant King, as she tells it to pass time and comfort herself and her family, particularly her adorable infant brother Zaki. But it'd be more accurate to say Parvana's tale itself is a tale of mythology, with her as the central character whose haunting emerald eyes (the rest of her family all have blackish ones) and otherworldly alias (when she poses as Nurullah's nephew she uses the name Aatish, meaning "fire") lend this interpretation more legitimacy as she turns the boy of her story into her deceased brother Sulayman (who is strongly implied to have perished after picking up a "toy," most likely a land mine) and the mythological story morphs into her own quest of saving her father from imprisonment as war is about to descend upon her town.
What this turn to mythology loses in realism and "relevance" it gains in emotional heft and honesty - in fact I'd go so far as to describe the film's stirring climax as Dovzhenkoesque (its emotional intensity indeed made me think of the delirious ending of the Russian master's Earth, which I was fortunate to see with live piano accompaniment by Andrew Simpson at the National Gallery of Art last year) - and if such artistic license ends up alienating or dividing critics more attuned to socially conscious projects such as Get Out, Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name, it's their loss, not ours. In fact though the film notched an ostensibly high 94% on Rotten Tomatoes you get the sense the critics' enthusiasm was rather guarded once you start reading their actual words. "For a kids'/family film" is a typical qualifier, so is "not sure about its audience," which I take to mean it's an animated film and as such should know its place rather than aim too high. As you can see this film was doomed from the start: without the Disney/Pixar name for automatic greenlighting by the studio heads as well as the critics it was destined to languish in a handful of arthouses, which generally treat animated films with sympathetic condescension (though apparently not the aforementioned Loving Vincent, which is about the tortured artist and thus couldn't possibly be for "kids"), and it was further isolated into respectful irrelevance when it dared step out of line by carrying on the hallowed tradition of Homer, J(ahwist) and Vyasa, presumably to the exclusion of more timely issues although its subtle yet unmistakable antiwar message couldn't be timelier.
I don't mean to dismiss all the critical reviews of The Breadwinner altogether, and what actually keeps it from being considered a masterpiece in my mind is a lingering suspicion (and it's really nothing more than that on my part, as I've yet to read the book) that it tempered the sexual violence of the acclaimed Deborah Ellis novel it's based on to allow for more family-friendly fare. (The closest the film comes to confronting this issue head-on is when Parvana's mother Fattema ruefully arranges the marriage of her older sister Soraya to a cousin for security.) But it's hard to take even the valid criticism of this film seriously considering that it barely registered on the award circuits while Wonder Woman made the top 10 of several respectable year-end lists. Apparently the fact that one is animated while the other is not makes all the difference, though one could easily argue that the latter's eponymous protagonist as portrayed by a former Miss Israel resembles the stock animated female heroine far more than the finely graded character of Parvana. I wonder if Víctor Erice would've been afforded the same reaction had he made an animated version of his own "children's classic" The Spirit of the Beehive for a, say, relatively unknown Spanish studio today. Could it have attained the same exalted status that it currently (and rightly) enjoys among cinephiles? Perhaps, though I doubt it.
Speaking of which Twomey's previous feature The Secret of Kells was worth seeing for its miraculous animation alone, and she deserves much credit for maintaining her formidable studio standards (less glitzy, but just as magical) while bringing her vastly improved narrative control to The Breadwinner. There's an ineffable beauty about hand-drawn animation that couldn't be replicated by any amount of CGI, and I hope Twomey continues to stand alongside Miyazaki and Ghibli (and now Ponoc, whose first feature Mary and the Witch's Flower was a promising start) in preserving this venerable tradition while never neglecting the power of stories to shape who we are, even when the cynics, including those who should know better, mistake their myopia for realism and tell us otherwise.
D
Deleted member 293577
Guest
I wholeheartedly agree.
NonP
Legend
Not sure if I should post this here as this thread seems to have run out of gas, but since I'd written most of it anyway I'll just run with it.
Last Thursday as I expected turned out to be the last day this year's short-doc nominees screened in my hood (OTOH the live-action and animated nominees are still playing here and most likely in your own area as well, so check your local listings), and I was fortunate to make it to the theater that day... just in time for the very last 7:45 pm screening, with literally seconds to spare. Talk about a close call.
Let's start with the good: I was glad to see a fairly high number of attendees lining up or already seated, most if not all of them young (I'd say the auditorium was at least half full). Now the bad: though I admit I'm not the most qualified judge as this is one of the few Oscar categories I haven't followed closely in the past, I got the sense that this year's documentary shorts matched their fictional counterparts in trailing their predecessors of recent vintage. Which brings us to the ugly: all the five nominees this year were USA releases, which could be a mere coincidence but I suspect constitutes gross negligence on the Academy's part. The short films are generally among the few Oscar categories where the manufactured and often bogus line between domestic and foreign films begins to blur as it should, but if we're going to show such a blind spot for "our own" then perhaps we should create a separate one for "them" as we already do for the foreign-language features - not only for the viewers who already share my preference to see a greater slice of the world spotlighted by the film industry's biggest pageant, but also for the would-be converts who may harbor similar inclinations but don't know it yet.
But that's not to dismiss the five nominees as middling entertainment. On the contrary they all dealt with serious subjects that steered clear of cheap demagoguery even in this age of BLM and #MeToo, which tells me the Academy at least did some homework. Below is a capsule review of each film (note that Traffic Stop and Heroin(e) are now available on HBO and Netflix respectively, hence the brackets).
Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 - It's easy to see why this took home the Oscar: an inspiring tale of an artist (Mindy Alper) who has channeled a lifelong history of mental illness and family alienation into her distinctive art which eventually gains recognition against all odds, punctuated by her coming to grips with the death of her abusive father and reconciliation with her mother whom she claims to speak with on the phone daily. Such is the hopeful spirit of this film that I'm sorry to say its failure to explore beyond the confines of the artist's admittedly compelling personal history made it for me the weakest of the nominees.
Traffic Stop [HBO] - The remarkable thing about this short is how its subject - Breaion King, a 26-year-old African-American female schoolteacher from Austin, TX, whose sadly unsurprising brush with the police for a routine traffic violation thrusts her into an unwelcome national limelight - confounds the usual tropes about structural racism (not only is the protagonist a woman but she also happens to be a self-made member of the middle class with plans for a doctorate) without being no less mighty a weapon against it. Yet as a work of cinema it is rather threadbare. There must be dozens of PBS shows that have tackled the same issues as effectively, and the fact that HBO bankrolled this production was probably a sign of what was to be expected as well as what could have been.
Heroin(e) [Netflix] - You might have heard that Huntington, West Virginia, has been called the overdose capital of America where the OD rate is 10 times the national average, and as a portrait of the town's exhausting and exhaustive efforts to fight the opioid epidemic - spearheaded by the tireless Jan Rader (who is installed as the first female chief of the Huntington Fire Department over the course of the film) and the affable Judge Patricia Keller - this documentary hits the right marks in its brief duration. But if director Elaine McMillion Sheldon wanted to shine a light on the epidemic itself, her film is seriously compromised by its refusal or failure to consider the ample research indicating that only a vanishingly small percentage of people (as little as 1 percent) who take prescribed pain medication show signs of opioid misuse (a broader umbrella than addiction). Viewers interested in a more thorough investigation that shows the personal and socioeconomic roots of this critical subject are advised to look elsewhere.
Knife Skills - Another uplifting story with its heart in the right place, this time that of Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute in Cleveland whose mission to provide second chances to men and women recently released from prison, no doubt informed by restaurateur Brandon Chrostowski's own background (he's an ex-con himself), makes it impossible not to root for them. The Edwins eatery's aim to become the best traditional French restaurant in America is quixotic in the best sense, though I question the wisdom of trying to help these oft-shunned members of society through the avenue of haute cuisine and especially within such a compressed time frame (they're asked to learn all their necessary skills in six weeks!) and would've liked to find out more about the course of their post-Edwins journey, which may or may not correspond with the institute's ultimate purpose.
Edith+Eddie - I've saved the best for last. As a Virginian who used to live (and still do) less than a 30-minute drive from the protagonists' former Alexandria home I'm ashamed to admit I'd never heard of this extraordinary couple, reportedly America's then oldest interracial newlyweds, and watching the palpable pain they're forced to endure and eventually succumb to as they're torn asunder by a heartless bureaucracy (Eddie dies shortly after their breakup) is as heartbreaking as it is infuriating. And while director Laura Checkoway is careful not to address the potential racial subtext directly, the image of Edith's independent guardian Jessica Niesen, a local white attorney, directing her client in a routine fashion as she facilitates her legally mandated transfer to Florida despite (according to the film) having never met the couple beforehand speaks for itself.
Of course there's always more than one side to any contentious story, and I refer those who'd like to find out more about this one to Judith Graham's evenhanded report for Kaiser Health News. Having said that I must add Ms. Graham betrays her own bias when she speaks of "the other story of Edith+Eddie," as if there were only two possible versions of this sad episode. It's not surprising that KHN, "an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation" according to the official website, would still be inclined to portray a favorable picture of assisted living facilities, a major component of today's health care system, and it seems to me a classic case of missing the forest for the trees at best to criticize Checkoway's film as misleading when it accomplishes her stated goal of focusing on the love story while confirming her preconception (or, yes, bias if you insist) about how the system dehumanizes and fails to serve the very people it's supposed to help. The truth of the matter is that in dealing with such thorny issues as end-of-life care, ageism, racism and family resentment you're bound to gravitate towards an agenda which, no matter how carefully considered, will fall short of covering all the angles, and if Checkoway's film is wanting in certain respects that's not necessarily a failing on her part as long as she acknowledges what her agenda is, which she has in her response to Graham.
Rather if there's one major fault to be found with Checkoway's film, though it could hardly be called that, it's the likely coincidence that its spiritual predecessor, Leo McCarey's unsung 1937 masterpiece Make Way for Tomorrow, is quite possibly the single greatest cinematic exploration of the cruelties society inflicts upon the elderly. (Its only rival is Ozu's now canonical Tokyo Story, which happens to be loosely based on McCarey's original, and while I'd normally be happy to see a foreign arthouse film being far more widely acknowledged than a Hollywood movie my allegiance in this case lies with the latter.) So I urge you to give Edith+Eddie a shot, but don't forget about McCarey's sublime weepie (that's not a contradiction in terms!).
Last Thursday as I expected turned out to be the last day this year's short-doc nominees screened in my hood (OTOH the live-action and animated nominees are still playing here and most likely in your own area as well, so check your local listings), and I was fortunate to make it to the theater that day... just in time for the very last 7:45 pm screening, with literally seconds to spare. Talk about a close call.
Let's start with the good: I was glad to see a fairly high number of attendees lining up or already seated, most if not all of them young (I'd say the auditorium was at least half full). Now the bad: though I admit I'm not the most qualified judge as this is one of the few Oscar categories I haven't followed closely in the past, I got the sense that this year's documentary shorts matched their fictional counterparts in trailing their predecessors of recent vintage. Which brings us to the ugly: all the five nominees this year were USA releases, which could be a mere coincidence but I suspect constitutes gross negligence on the Academy's part. The short films are generally among the few Oscar categories where the manufactured and often bogus line between domestic and foreign films begins to blur as it should, but if we're going to show such a blind spot for "our own" then perhaps we should create a separate one for "them" as we already do for the foreign-language features - not only for the viewers who already share my preference to see a greater slice of the world spotlighted by the film industry's biggest pageant, but also for the would-be converts who may harbor similar inclinations but don't know it yet.
But that's not to dismiss the five nominees as middling entertainment. On the contrary they all dealt with serious subjects that steered clear of cheap demagoguery even in this age of BLM and #MeToo, which tells me the Academy at least did some homework. Below is a capsule review of each film (note that Traffic Stop and Heroin(e) are now available on HBO and Netflix respectively, hence the brackets).
Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 - It's easy to see why this took home the Oscar: an inspiring tale of an artist (Mindy Alper) who has channeled a lifelong history of mental illness and family alienation into her distinctive art which eventually gains recognition against all odds, punctuated by her coming to grips with the death of her abusive father and reconciliation with her mother whom she claims to speak with on the phone daily. Such is the hopeful spirit of this film that I'm sorry to say its failure to explore beyond the confines of the artist's admittedly compelling personal history made it for me the weakest of the nominees.
Traffic Stop [HBO] - The remarkable thing about this short is how its subject - Breaion King, a 26-year-old African-American female schoolteacher from Austin, TX, whose sadly unsurprising brush with the police for a routine traffic violation thrusts her into an unwelcome national limelight - confounds the usual tropes about structural racism (not only is the protagonist a woman but she also happens to be a self-made member of the middle class with plans for a doctorate) without being no less mighty a weapon against it. Yet as a work of cinema it is rather threadbare. There must be dozens of PBS shows that have tackled the same issues as effectively, and the fact that HBO bankrolled this production was probably a sign of what was to be expected as well as what could have been.
Heroin(e) [Netflix] - You might have heard that Huntington, West Virginia, has been called the overdose capital of America where the OD rate is 10 times the national average, and as a portrait of the town's exhausting and exhaustive efforts to fight the opioid epidemic - spearheaded by the tireless Jan Rader (who is installed as the first female chief of the Huntington Fire Department over the course of the film) and the affable Judge Patricia Keller - this documentary hits the right marks in its brief duration. But if director Elaine McMillion Sheldon wanted to shine a light on the epidemic itself, her film is seriously compromised by its refusal or failure to consider the ample research indicating that only a vanishingly small percentage of people (as little as 1 percent) who take prescribed pain medication show signs of opioid misuse (a broader umbrella than addiction). Viewers interested in a more thorough investigation that shows the personal and socioeconomic roots of this critical subject are advised to look elsewhere.
Knife Skills - Another uplifting story with its heart in the right place, this time that of Edwins Leadership & Restaurant Institute in Cleveland whose mission to provide second chances to men and women recently released from prison, no doubt informed by restaurateur Brandon Chrostowski's own background (he's an ex-con himself), makes it impossible not to root for them. The Edwins eatery's aim to become the best traditional French restaurant in America is quixotic in the best sense, though I question the wisdom of trying to help these oft-shunned members of society through the avenue of haute cuisine and especially within such a compressed time frame (they're asked to learn all their necessary skills in six weeks!) and would've liked to find out more about the course of their post-Edwins journey, which may or may not correspond with the institute's ultimate purpose.
Edith+Eddie - I've saved the best for last. As a Virginian who used to live (and still do) less than a 30-minute drive from the protagonists' former Alexandria home I'm ashamed to admit I'd never heard of this extraordinary couple, reportedly America's then oldest interracial newlyweds, and watching the palpable pain they're forced to endure and eventually succumb to as they're torn asunder by a heartless bureaucracy (Eddie dies shortly after their breakup) is as heartbreaking as it is infuriating. And while director Laura Checkoway is careful not to address the potential racial subtext directly, the image of Edith's independent guardian Jessica Niesen, a local white attorney, directing her client in a routine fashion as she facilitates her legally mandated transfer to Florida despite (according to the film) having never met the couple beforehand speaks for itself.
Of course there's always more than one side to any contentious story, and I refer those who'd like to find out more about this one to Judith Graham's evenhanded report for Kaiser Health News. Having said that I must add Ms. Graham betrays her own bias when she speaks of "the other story of Edith+Eddie," as if there were only two possible versions of this sad episode. It's not surprising that KHN, "an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation" according to the official website, would still be inclined to portray a favorable picture of assisted living facilities, a major component of today's health care system, and it seems to me a classic case of missing the forest for the trees at best to criticize Checkoway's film as misleading when it accomplishes her stated goal of focusing on the love story while confirming her preconception (or, yes, bias if you insist) about how the system dehumanizes and fails to serve the very people it's supposed to help. The truth of the matter is that in dealing with such thorny issues as end-of-life care, ageism, racism and family resentment you're bound to gravitate towards an agenda which, no matter how carefully considered, will fall short of covering all the angles, and if Checkoway's film is wanting in certain respects that's not necessarily a failing on her part as long as she acknowledges what her agenda is, which she has in her response to Graham.
Rather if there's one major fault to be found with Checkoway's film, though it could hardly be called that, it's the likely coincidence that its spiritual predecessor, Leo McCarey's unsung 1937 masterpiece Make Way for Tomorrow, is quite possibly the single greatest cinematic exploration of the cruelties society inflicts upon the elderly. (Its only rival is Ozu's now canonical Tokyo Story, which happens to be loosely based on McCarey's original, and while I'd normally be happy to see a foreign arthouse film being far more widely acknowledged than a Hollywood movie my allegiance in this case lies with the latter.) So I urge you to give Edith+Eddie a shot, but don't forget about McCarey's sublime weepie (that's not a contradiction in terms!).
NonP
Legend
And now the housekeeping....
So my post was chock-full of criticism of Hollywood and the film industry at large but that's the part that got your goat? I hate to break it to you but that says more about you than it does about me.
Besides I have an irrefutable response to your rant about right-wingers' unwillingness to worship entertainers: Donald J. Trump, a completely empty suit if there ever was one who still went on to occupy the most powerful position in the world precisely because of said worship (that's as charitable as I'll be about the whole farce). Of course one could mention other examples like Clint Eastwood and Ted Nugent. The fact of the matter is that right-wingers dislike entitled entertainers speaking their mind only when it conflicts with their worldview, and the fact that Hollywood happens to lean liberal and still exerts an outsize influence makes it a perfect scapegoat for them.
I believe I've told you this before but I don't consume cinema solely as entertainment, and while most of Hollywood does tend to lack substance these days there have been many exceptions, one of which I just highlighted (if from as far back as 1937).
Also you neglected to address my main point about the real reason why people may be tuning out. I personally know at least two cinephiles who've stopped patronizing commercial theater chains altogether so they won't have to put up with the nonsense of being bombarded with endless blockbusters and superhero movies. I doubt I'd ever go that far myself because I do enjoy an occasional popcorn flick and am too cheap to forgo the loyalty programs, but if money weren't a factor I might well join in the boycott as a matter of principle.
And the constant stream of juvenile entertainment has an effect on casual moviegoers as well in that they may temper their expectations accordingly and be discouraged from trying out more adventurous fare. In fact I'm convinced that the recent critical enthusiasm with the likes of Wonder Woman and Black Panther wouldn't have come about even in today's political climate if not for the infantalization of audience that has already taken place. That is, critics with few exceptions are going with the flow rather than the other way around, and we're all the poorer for it.
Oh c'mon Tom, that's barely over the cost of a Chipotle meal! (Though I will say $13 even after a senior discount does seem rather high.) That's what I tell my buds when they complain about how pricey movie admission is these days. If you refuse to set foot in a movie theater because of the price you're basically saying you value the communal experience of watching a (hopefully good) movie on the big screen less than a moderately priced dinner, and I hope most of us find going to the movies more rewarding than that!
Speaking of which, you probably know about it already but MoviePass currently has a sweet offer for first-time subscribers:
https://www.moviepass.com/
(They say it's $7.95 per month but there's a one-time $9.95 processing fee, so more like $8.78 per month if you sign up for a year. Still a great deal, though.)
I've had it for about half a year now and it really is hard to beat price-wise. The only catch is that you need to check in via your app when you're actually at the theater, so make sure your local theaters show up on the site's map before you sign up. (They recently removed 10 high-traffic AMC theaters from their app and the one closest to me happened to be one of 'em, grrrrrr....
)
The one thing that keeps me from endorsing The Florida Project wholeheartedly is that the film as a whole fails to reach the apex of its well-nigh perfect ending. But is it really inferior to Darkest Hour, The Post, Three Billboards or Dunkirk? Its staying power in indie theaters (believe it was playing well into the new year) suggests otherwise.
So my post was chock-full of criticism of Hollywood and the film industry at large but that's the part that got your goat? I hate to break it to you but that says more about you than it does about me.
Besides I have an irrefutable response to your rant about right-wingers' unwillingness to worship entertainers: Donald J. Trump, a completely empty suit if there ever was one who still went on to occupy the most powerful position in the world precisely because of said worship (that's as charitable as I'll be about the whole farce). Of course one could mention other examples like Clint Eastwood and Ted Nugent. The fact of the matter is that right-wingers dislike entitled entertainers speaking their mind only when it conflicts with their worldview, and the fact that Hollywood happens to lean liberal and still exerts an outsize influence makes it a perfect scapegoat for them.
I believe I've told you this before but I don't consume cinema solely as entertainment, and while most of Hollywood does tend to lack substance these days there have been many exceptions, one of which I just highlighted (if from as far back as 1937).
Also you neglected to address my main point about the real reason why people may be tuning out. I personally know at least two cinephiles who've stopped patronizing commercial theater chains altogether so they won't have to put up with the nonsense of being bombarded with endless blockbusters and superhero movies. I doubt I'd ever go that far myself because I do enjoy an occasional popcorn flick and am too cheap to forgo the loyalty programs, but if money weren't a factor I might well join in the boycott as a matter of principle.
And the constant stream of juvenile entertainment has an effect on casual moviegoers as well in that they may temper their expectations accordingly and be discouraged from trying out more adventurous fare. In fact I'm convinced that the recent critical enthusiasm with the likes of Wonder Woman and Black Panther wouldn't have come about even in today's political climate if not for the infantalization of audience that has already taken place. That is, critics with few exceptions are going with the flow rather than the other way around, and we're all the poorer for it.
Oh c'mon Tom, that's barely over the cost of a Chipotle meal! (Though I will say $13 even after a senior discount does seem rather high.) That's what I tell my buds when they complain about how pricey movie admission is these days. If you refuse to set foot in a movie theater because of the price you're basically saying you value the communal experience of watching a (hopefully good) movie on the big screen less than a moderately priced dinner, and I hope most of us find going to the movies more rewarding than that!
Speaking of which, you probably know about it already but MoviePass currently has a sweet offer for first-time subscribers:
https://www.moviepass.com/
(They say it's $7.95 per month but there's a one-time $9.95 processing fee, so more like $8.78 per month if you sign up for a year. Still a great deal, though.)
I've had it for about half a year now and it really is hard to beat price-wise. The only catch is that you need to check in via your app when you're actually at the theater, so make sure your local theaters show up on the site's map before you sign up. (They recently removed 10 high-traffic AMC theaters from their app and the one closest to me happened to be one of 'em, grrrrrr....
)The one thing that keeps me from endorsing The Florida Project wholeheartedly is that the film as a whole fails to reach the apex of its well-nigh perfect ending. But is it really inferior to Darkest Hour, The Post, Three Billboards or Dunkirk? Its staying power in indie theaters (believe it was playing well into the new year) suggests otherwise.
Yes it sure does.
I’m in the camp that does not take hollywood seriously as it is just a business like any other business which is to provide a service/product to customers and make money. In exchange they sell the idea of entertainment/art from the beginning of time that is to have fun and brief escape from our daily mundane life.
But Hollywood has turned into another one-sided news media outlet. The last thing I want to have a discussion with you about an entertainer/movie is which side we are on the issue.
Don’t we have enough of that already from all sides?
Who died and made hollywood our moral compass?
