Oscars 2019

Royale with Cheese

Green Book as best film, that's absolutely hilarious. It's a passable but extremely predictable 2 hour buddy flick, as soon as

Viggo Mortensen's character mentioned getting home in time for Christmas you just absolutely knew the film was going to end with Mahershala Ali being invited in for dinner because they were best buds now.

As pointed out above, it does absolutely nothing new or interesting with the racism theme either.

I thought Moonlight was pandering but at least that was your standard Oscar fare where everybody got to act really hard, this is something you else. A jump the shark moment for me.

judeboy101

Hollywood sending a message to Netflix. Roma was a flawless film.

is_that_so

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Green Book as best film, that's absolutely hilarious. It's a passable but extremely predictable 2 hour buddy flick, as soon as

Viggo Mortensen's character mentioned getting home in time for Christmas you just absolutely knew the film was going to end with Mahershala Ali being invited in for dinner because they were best buds now.

As pointed out above, it does absolutely nothing new or interesting with the racism theme either.

I thought Moonlight was pandering but at least that was your standard Oscar fare where everybody got to act really hard, but this is something you else. A jump the shark moment for me.

Not really a great crop overall and but it did tick the right boxes. Favourite was too left field and most of the others just average. Don't get the fuss over Black Panther, I actually preferred the occasionally misfiring Blackklansman.

gmisk

pixelburp wrote: »

On reflection, should Green Book be a surprise? Hollywood - specifically the Oscars - really love a reductionist, manipulative "a white and black person solve racism"; Driving Miss Daisy is nearly 30 years old so at least parallels with people's obsession with nostalgia that a broad remake of a 30 year old film wins the Oscar.

Not a huge surprise.
Driving miss daisy was so middle of the road.
I was wondering what it was up against that year.
Driving miss daisy was appaling.
I had a look what it was up against, I would have taken any of them over that rubbish.

Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poets Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot

is_that_so

judeboy101 wrote: »

Hollywood sending a message to Netflix. Roma was a flawless film.

Struggled to finish it. Too long, too slow and not a wholly interesting story. That said some beautiful photography.

gmisk

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

I thought Moonlight was pandering but at least that was your standard Oscar fare where everybody got to act really hard, this is something you else. A jump the shark moment for me.

I think your thinking of The Meg....

johnny_ultimate

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

A jump the shark moment for me.

It’s the opposite if anything - the Academy has long had an institutional bias towards broad, feelgood but also much derided films about race relations. Green Book sits snugly alongside the likes of Crash in that respect. I’d go as far as say it’s the most wearily predictable, Oscar-baity winner in a good few years - which is disappointing as a few recent years had shown some tentative steps towards more deserving winners (I would in fact suggest Moonlight was one of the most unusual and off-brand Best Picture winners given how different it was stylistically and tonally to what usually triumphs).

sky88

ill never understand how Rami Malek won in such a hallmark movie with a bigger budget

Tipsy McSwagger

sky88 wrote: »

ill never understand how Rami Malek won in such a hallmark movie with a bigger budget

Because Freddie died of AIDS, Oscar loves AIDS.

Elmo

gmisk wrote: »

Not a huge surprise.
Driving miss daisy was so middle of the road.
I was wondering what it was up against that year.
Driving miss daisy was appaling.
I had a look what it was up against, I would have taken any of them over that rubbish.

Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poets Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot

Born on the Fourth of July should have won, maybe My Left Foot and Driving Miss Daisy after that, but Dead Poets Society and Field of Dreams are both as hokey as Miss Daisy. Interestingly all of those movies rely on a heavy dose of nostalgia.

gmisk

Elmo wrote: »

Born on the Fourth of July should have won, maybe My Left Foot and Driving Miss Daisy after that, but Dead Poets Society and Field of Dreams are both as hokey as Miss Daisy. Interestingly all of those movies rely on a heavy dose of nostalgia.

That is probably about right, I havent seen any of them in a long time tbh.
I remember fourth of july was superb though.

kunst nugget

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

Because Freddie died of AIDS, Oscar loves AIDS.

But it didn't show any of his struggles with the disease. That part where tells them all that he has AIDS before Live Aid? Pure bullshít - he didn't get diagnosed with the disease until 1987. Also, any movie about Freddie Mercury that doesn't have a party scene with a dwarf walking around with a tray of cocaine on his head is an abject failure in my eyes.

gmisk

kunst nugget wrote: »

But it didn't show any of his struggles with the disease. That part where tells them all that he has AIDS before Live Aid? Pure bullshít - he didn't get diagnosed with the disease until 1987. Also, any movie about Freddie Mercury that doesn't have a party scene with a dwarf walking around with a tray of cocaine on his head is an abject failure in my eyes.

The timeline was all over the place in that film, the live aid concert was the thing that really saved it for me.

It was produced by Brian May and Roger Taylor so I was kind of expecting a sanitized version, which is what it was.

Elmo

kunst nugget wrote: »

Also, any movie about Freddie Mercury that doesn't have a party scene with a dwarf walking around with a tray of cocaine on his head is an abject failure in my eyes.

You couldn't do that nowadays!

yerwanthere123

I'm thrilled for Green Book! Very rare that my favourite movie wins the best picture gong. The salty reaction from the Twitter brigade makes it even better :cool:

Sad Professor

That the Academy loved Green Book is not a surprise at all. That it won despite a lot of negative campaigning against it for not conforming to modern woke/pc notions of race is a big surprise. My Twitter timeline is currently full of people wailing about it being a racist white saviour movie. I think it won in part because Roma/The Favourite split the arthouse vote.

I'm glad tbh. If Roma had won it would be getting attacked for erasing the voice of indigenous women etc etc. I'd much rather people were crapping on Green Book.

yerwanthere123

Twitter is a cesspit. It's sad what its become.

Ardent

Wow Rami Malek best actor, that's laughable! Almost as bad as Sandra Bullock for the Blind Side.

is_that_so

Sad Professor wrote: »

That the Academy loved Green Book is not a surprise at all. That it won despite a lot of negative campaigning against it for not conforming to modern woke/pc notions of race is a big surprise. My Twitter timeline is currently full of people wailing about it being a racist white saviour movie. I think it won in part because Roma/The Favourite split the arthouse vote.

I'm glad tbh. If Roma had won it would be getting attacked for erasing the voice of indigenous women etc etc. I'd much rather people were crapping on Green Book.

It's likely to have been other companies pushing their films at work too. Every year this happens. A film generates good reviews, looks set up to compete or take the top prize and people go looking for a thread to unravel. Outside of the identity stuff it is a more watchable film than most of the rest.

Dades

Delighted for Green Book. It shouldn't be a mark against a movie that it is enjoyable, and not just stamping a message into your skull for two hours.

Nothing against Remi Malek, but he won out against a better portrayal of a musician in a better movie about one, with Bradley Cooper. I can't understand the Oscar love for Bohemian Rhapsody.

gmisk

Dades wrote: »

Delighted for Green Book. It shouldn't be a mark against a movie that it is enjoyable, and not just stamping a message into your skull for two hours.

Nothing against Remi Malek, but he won out against a better portrayal of a musician in a better movie about one, with Bradley Cooper. I can't understand the Oscar love for Bohemian Rhapsody.

I thought Bradley Cooper was much better personally.
What happened to a star is born it seemed to have a huge amount of buzz but it just disappeared (bar best song).
I also loved Sam Elliott in that film as well.

kunst nugget

Sad Professor wrote: »

That the Academy loved Green Book is not a surprise at all. That it won despite a lot of negative campaigning against it for not conforming to modern woke/pc notions of race is a big surprise. My Twitter timeline is currently full of people wailing about it being a racist white saviour movie. I think it won in part because Roma/The Favourite split the arthouse vote.

I'm always surprised by the positive reactions to Black Panther when it always seemed to me to pander to racial stereotypes. This article says it in a much more eloquent way than I ever could.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/02/26/black-panther-offers-a-regressive-neocolonial-vision-of-africa/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.33082442f354

Based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name from the fictional African state of Wakanda, the most technologically advanced nation in the world but which apparently prefers to hide its light under the bushel of Third World country status, it has been praised for its depiction of an Africa not defined by colonization or by its relationship with Europe. Wakanda does not pose as a backdrop for white struggles and passions. “It breaks with the spirit of derision that has always saturated Hollywood films about Africa,” gushes Brent Staples in the New York Times.

However, the truth is, the movie is little more than a marvel of marketing. Far from offering a “redemptive counter-mythology,” as Jelani Cobb writes in the New Yorker, the movie trots out many of the same destructive myths about Africans that circulate the globe. At heart, it is a movie about a divided, tribalized continent, discovered by a white man who wants nothing more than to take its mineral resources, a continent run by a wealthy, power-hungry, feuding and feudalist elite, where a nation with the most advanced tech and weapons in the world nonetheless has no thinkers to develop systems of transitioning rulership that do not involve lethal combat or coup d’etat.

Franz Von Peppercorn

gmisk wrote: »

Not a huge surprise.
Driving miss daisy was so middle of the road.
I was wondering what it was up against that year.
Driving miss daisy was appaling.
I had a look what it was up against, I would have taken any of them over that rubbish.

Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poets Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot

All of those pretty well known and watched today.

gmisk

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

All of those pretty well known and watched today.

True, I dare say they still stand up a lot better than Driving Miss Daisy.

kunst nugget

gmisk wrote: »

The timeline was all over the place in that film, the live aid concert was the thing that really saved it for me.

It was produced by Brian May and Roger Taylor so I was kind of expecting a sanitized version, which is what it was.

The Live Aid section was just a well choreographed impersonation and nothing else. I watched the real thing on Youtube straight after and its night and day in terms of the charsima that oozes off of Mercury during the performance. Malek's performance had none of that charisma at all.

cian68

Dades wrote: »

Delighted for Green Book. It shouldn't be a mark against a movie that it is enjoyable, and not just stamping a message into your skull for two hours.

I thought it absolutely tried to hammer home a message for two hours and that message was fairly trite.

is_that_so

cian68 wrote: »

I thought it absolutely tried to hammer home a message for two hours and that message was fairly trite.

It was a story based on a trip that took place in the 1960s. Hard to avoid the social commentary.

Elmo

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

All of those pretty well known and watched today.

gmisk wrote: »

True, I dare say they still stand up a lot better than Driving Miss Daisy.

Dead Poets and Field of Dreams?

I hated Dead Poets Society with a passion, what an insufferable film.

Not that I've seen Miss Daisy in a while.

kunst nugget

gmisk wrote: »

True, I dare say they still stand up a lot better than Driving Miss Daisy.

I'd watch all of them before I'd ever consider watching Driving Miss Daisy again.

Elmo

kunst nugget wrote: »

I'd watch all of them before I'd ever consider watching Driving Miss Daisy again.

Poor Miss Daisy, what did she ever do but be a small minded racist in southern united states of america,

Franz Von Peppercorn

Dades wrote: »

Delighted for Green Book. It shouldn't be a mark against a movie that it is enjoyable, and not just stamping a message into your skull for two hours.

Nothing against Remi Malek, but he won out against a better portrayal of a musician in a better movie about one, with Bradley Cooper. I can't understand the Oscar love for Bohemian Rhapsody.

Is Bradley disliked. Or Gaga?

Both performances were great. Just watched it this weekend in fact.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Elmo wrote: »

Dead Poets and Field of Dreams?

I hated Dead Poets Society with a passion, what an insufferable film.

Not that I've seen Miss Daisy in a while.

Yeh. DPS is a bit twee. Field of dreams has its charms though.

is_that_so

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Yeh. DPS is a bit twee. Field of dreams has its charms though.

It still occasionally shows up on a Sunday afternoon. Perfect for that!

Tipsy McSwagger

I will only start repecting the Oscars again when an animated film wins best picture. I’m still unhappy Wall-e didn’t win 11 years ago. You could also make claims for any of the Toy Story films, Studio Ghibli output, The Iron Giant and especially Beauty & the Beast.

gmisk

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

I will only start repecting the Oscars again when an animated film wins best picture. I’m still unhappy Wall-e didn’t win 11 years ago. You could also make claims for any of the Toy Story films, Studio Ghibli output, The Iron Giant and especially Beauty & the Beast.

Spiderman into the spiderverse was definitely one of the best films of 2018 for me. Hard to believe Wall-E didnt even get a nomination.

pixelburp

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

I will only start repecting the Oscars again when an animated film wins best picture. I’m still unhappy Wall-e didn’t win 11 years ago. You could also make claims for any of the Toy Story films, Studio Ghibli output, The Iron Giant and especially Beauty & the Beast.

They'd have to shutter 'Best Animated Feature' for that to happen, and that's unlikely, especially as AFAIK, that category was started in response to Disney's repeated failures to capture a 'Best Picture' during its so-called 'Renaissance' period and the open attempts to garner awards kudos through Pocahontas / Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Fysh

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

I will only start repecting the Oscars again when an animated film wins best picture. I’m still unhappy Wall-e didn’t win 11 years ago. You could also make claims for any of the Toy Story films, Studio Ghibli output, The Iron Giant and especially Beauty & the Beast.

Tbh a number of the categories seem so arbitrary as to be meaningless to me - like segregating animated or foreign films into their own categories, or separating "best performance" awards by gender.

The big frustration for me is the way that the animated film award may as well just have Disney stamped onto it. Big Hero 6 was good, but the Academy can away and shyte if they think it was anywhere near as good as either Song Of The Sea or Tale Of The Princess Kaguya, for example. Or Zootopia over The Red Turtle or Kubo & The Two Strings. Or, IMO, Coco over The Breadwinner. I haven't seen Into The Spiderverse yet but suspect I'll feel the same way about it in relation to Isle Of Dogs, too.

But then, they don't seem to know what they mean for some awards - in the same way that "Best Picture" sometimes means broad appeal and sometimes means excellent filmmaking (and sometimes both, and sometimes neither), "Best animated feature" at least half the time has a silent "for kids, because what selfrespecting adult watches cartoons?" hanging off the end...

johnny_ultimate

Fysh wrote: »

I haven't seen Into The Spiderverse yet but suspect I'll feel the same way about it in relation to Isle Of Dogs, too.

Honestly they had an exceptional animated line-up this year so I don't think it's as jarring as other years have been. I preferred Isle of Dogs personally, but Spiderverse is a genuinely exceptional film and a winner I'd find hard to take any issue with - in fact, delighted a film so stylistically audacious was deservedly rewarded. I'd have been very pleased to see Mirai win either (even though it's one of the weaker Hosoda films) and Incredibles 2 would have been a good contender in a year that didn't have a clearly superior animated superhero film.

But you're right: the whole sub-category business is arbitrary. Like when foreign films only manage to break into the Best Picture category once a decade or so - proof that they can make the cut, but bizarrely don't more often. There's never any year when a host of foreign films aren't among the year's best - hell, it's hardly like Roma or the four other films in the foreign language category were the only great foreign language films from last year. The cynic in me would suggest there's still an institutional aversion in the Academy to both foreign and animated films - a lot of the membership probably just don't watch the ****ing things.

kunst nugget

Fysh wrote: »

I haven't seen Into The Spiderverse yet but suspect I'll feel the same way about it in relation to Isle Of Dogs, too.

I thought Isle of Dogs was a load of poo myself - granted I was wrecked when I was watching it so I might have to force myself to watch it again to properly make my mind up about it.



Into the Spiderverse was a fantastic spectacle and the way animation echo the printing techniques used in comic books through it's use of dot patterns and stripes was a beautiful touch. The story was a fair bit cliche ridden but I honestly didn't really care because I found it such a blast.

is_that_so

Fysh wrote: »

Tbh a number of the categories seem so arbitrary as to be meaningless to me - like segregating animated or foreign films into their own categories, or separating "best performance" awards by gender.

Best foreign film goes back to the very start of the Academy although it became annual from 1956 on. Not sure what your point is on gender. The aim of the Academy is to reward people, nowadays as many as they can and there is no way any awards body which does separate into gender would consider that.

Elmo

Wasn't Beauty and The Beast the reason for the Animation category, some years feel like they are just grasping at straws, it lost to Science of the Lambs.

Best Picture
The Silence of the Lambs – Edward Saxon, Kenneth Utt and Ron Bozman, producersdouble-dagger
Beauty and the Beast – Don Hahn, producer
Bugsy – Mark Johnson, Barry Levinson and Warren Beatty, producers
JFK – A. Kitman Ho and Oliver Stone, producers
The Prince of Tides – Barbra Streisand and Andrew S. Karsch, producers

Double-Dagger's been around for a while :pac:

Spider verse was great.

kunst nugget

I can see a wave of sanitised pop pap being made in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody that will erase all the problematic parts of the rock stars they portray.

'Hmm, should we show that time the band ripped the clothes off that female journalist and were only stopped when the manager restrained them or that time the guitarist stuck that fourteen year old in his mansion to avoid statutory rape charges... hmm, tricky. I know! We'll just show a playful montage of them making Stairway to Heaven!!! Mud Shark? Never heard of him...'

I'm interested to see what happens with the Dirt and how much they've kept in that movie because Motley Crue come across as absolute scumbags in that book.

Elmo

kunst nugget wrote: »

I can see a wave of sanitised pop pap being made in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody that will erase all the problematic parts of the rock stars they portray.

Upcoming Elton John biopic, looks cringy.

gmisk

kunst nugget wrote: »

I can see a wave of sanitised pop pap being made in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody that will erase all the problematic parts of the rock stars they portray.

'Hmm, should we show that time the band ripped the clothes off that female journalist and were only stopped when the manager restrained them or that time the guitarist stuck that fourteen year old in his mansion to avoid statutory rape charges... hmm, tricky. I know! We'll just show a playful montage of them making Stairway to Heaven!!! Mud Shark? Never heard of him...'

I'm interested to see what happens with the Dirt and how much they've kept in that movie because Motley Crue come across as absolute scumbags in that book.

The trailer for this film looks utterly.....abysmal, it has been in the works for a long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NOp5ROn1HE

The fact it is coming to netflix isnt always a good sign either....

McDermotX

Spike Lee making an arse of himself, again, which is some feat in itself.

kunst nugget

gmisk wrote: »

The trailer for this film looks utterly.....abysmal, it has been in the works for a long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NOp5ROn1HE

The fact it is coming to netflix isnt always a good sign either....

'Hey guys, let's make a film about Motley Crue based on their book, The Dirt!!! It'll be wild! All that messed up drinking and the drugs and all those groupies!!! I know, it's going to be great, I just gave them a fortune for the rights! Roooock on! We're going for maximum sex, drugs and... wait a minute, what's that hashtag that's trending... metoo? What's that abo.. oh, shít, abort! ABORT!!!'

gmisk

Elmo wrote: »

Upcoming Elton John biopic, looks cringy.

It looks bad.
Plus Dexter Fletcher is directing who took over the reigns of Bohemian Rhapsody after Singer was kicked off it.

NIMAN

Do people still care about the Oscars?

conorhal

Sad Professor wrote: »

That the Academy loved Green Book is not a surprise at all. That it won despite a lot of negative campaigning against it for not conforming to modern woke/pc notions of race is a big surprise. My Twitter timeline is currently full of people wailing about it being a racist white saviour movie. I think it won in part because Roma/The Favourite split the arthouse vote.

I'm glad tbh. If Roma had won it would be getting attacked for erasing the voice of indigenous women etc etc. I'd much rather people were crapping on Green Book.

Twitter is a toxic waste dump and should be ignored.

Everybody understands the formula for an Oscar winning picture these days. If you're not hitting the checklist you've only yourself to blame for a failure to bank some gold.
1) Somebody with an unrecognised talent has to overcome something to become lauded for being exceptional.
2) Have a movie star deliver a 'transformative performance'. (stick a big prosthetic nose on them).
3) At the end of the movie the main character must deliver a rousing and inspiring speech to really hammer home whatever simplistic message lies at the emotional core of the movie.
4) Bonus points if it's period piece.
5) Bonus Bonus points if the movie offers the opportunity for everybody loudly applauding to wear some sort of ribbon to support a cause while doing so.
6) Bonus Bonus Bonus points- Make the movie about 'the business', Hollywood loves a circle-jerk.
7) MAKE F'ING MONEY! Nothing succeeds in Hollywood quite like success.

7 has become a real problem for the Oscars, over the last decade as mid-budget movies get squeezed out of theatres in favour of blockbusters.
The primary reason that viewing numbers have been sliding is because the audience has no horse in the race to back because the general public probably hasn’t seen more than one of those nominated films, and if they have that film was probably Bohemian Rhapsody. So it’s no surprise that turned out to be a big winner.

pixelburp

Elmo wrote: »

Wasn't Beauty and The Beast the reason for the Animation category, some years feel like they are just grasping at straws, it lost to Science of the Lambs.

Double-Dagger's been around for a while :pac:

Spider verse was great.

Best Animation didn't come in officially until 2001 (fun fact, Shrek 1 was the first winner), but yeah I believe it was an intentional strategy by Disney to create a 'Best Picture' film; IIRC, Hunchback of Notre Dame was a more brazen attempt by the studio to make a 'serious' piece, as that particular film was quite dark and complex (talking gargoyles notwithstanding).