Your best picture ballot

For the films of 2018
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Precious Doll
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Precious Doll »

anonymous1980 wrote:I calculated our Best Picture ballots in the way the Academy does it and our winner was The Favourite with Roma as the runner-up.
Thanks for that Anonymous. I thought it would be between those two and BlacKkKlansman.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by anonymous1980 »

I calculated our Best Picture ballots in the way the Academy does it and our winner was The Favourite with Roma as the runner-up.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Heksagon »

I just barely managed to see all the Best Picture nominees before the awards are handed out. I almost wish I hadn't as this is definitely my least favorite line-up since I started regularly following the Oscars in the late 90s. BlacKkKlansman and Roma were the only films I really liked, and neither of them is a great film either. I had high expectations for The Favourite, and I did like some things about it (acting especially) but overall I was disappointed. Maybe my expectations were just too high. The rest of the films, I expected little, and got little.

1. Roma
2. BlacKkKlansman

3. The Favourite
4. Green Book
5. Black Panther
6. Bohemian Rhapsody
7. Vice
8. A Star Is Born
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by anonymous1980 »

01. "Roma"
02. "The Favourite"
03. "BlacKkKlansman"
04. "Black Panther"
05. "A Star is Born"
06. "Green Book"
07. "Vice"
08. "Bohemian Rhapsody"
mlrg
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by mlrg »

Back to topic, here’s mine:

1. The Favorite
2. Roma

3. BlackkKlansman

4. Black Panther

5. Bohemian Rhapsody
6. A Star is Born

7. Green Book
8. Vice
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by ITALIANO »

Sabin wrote:Almost immediately after I wrote what I wrote on this thread, I started to have second thoughts, about what I chose to say and why. I was frustrated but that's no excuse. If there's one place where people should be able to express their opinions exactly as they are it's here. The only truly malicious thing that was said here was by me, so I apologize.
No problem Sabin. Apologies accepted :)
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Re: Your best picture ballot

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Almost immediately after I wrote what I wrote on this thread, I started to have second thoughts, about what I chose to say and why. I was frustrated but that's no excuse. If there's one place where people should be able to express their opinions exactly as they are it's here. The only truly malicious thing that was said here was by me, so I apologize.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Uri »

A man comes to the Rabi and says: “my wife is like this and that and I can’t stand it”, and the Rabbi says: “you’re right”. Then that man’s wife comes and says: “my husband is like this and that and I can’t stand it”, and the Rabbi says: “you’re right”. Then the Rabbi’s wife, who heard it all says: “but they can’t be both right”, and the Rabi thinks and says: “you’re right too”.

There a lot of rage in the world lately and our humble little haven here, which seemed to be mostly immune of it for a long time, is not anymore. (I’m aware I’m romanticizing our rather turbulent shared history here on this board). Only last week I was surprised a mild critical comment I made about Amy Adams triggered a very fierce response from people I highly respect and like. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t fully accept what I had to say (ok, that too). It was the emotional intensity I felt in these responses. My dismissal of the appeal of a film actress none of us is, as far as I know, acquainted with, offended some people personally, or so it looked like. Damien being deeply invested in protecting Bill Condon’s films I could get, but this puzzled me.

Maybe it’s a reflection of the radicalization of any discourse in these times we live in. But I have a stinging feeling there’s something else. We devoted more than two decades here to this rather marginalized field of interest – some would call it trivial – and I believe we, this group of intelligent and interesting people, elevated it and made it a porthole to a wider and at times rather poignant discussion. But let’s face it. The Oscars are dead. We might have been in denial for sometime, but now we seem to move on to the second stage of our collective grief: ANGER. There will be bargaining and depression before the final acceptance, and I wonder If we’ll survive it. We’ll have to wait and see.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Sabin »

1. The Favourite

2. BlacKkKlansman
3. Roma
4. Black Panther
5. Bohemian Rhapsody
6. A Star is Born
7. Green Book
8. Vice

To be honest, 3 - 8 are all in the B- to C/C+ range. I'm not sure if A Star is Born is much better than Green Book. It's certainly the less offensive film but it's so much more boring. There's something offensive about that as well. Just like this thread.

Reza, Italiano... I don't know what to say at this point. I'm pretty disappointed.
Last edited by Sabin on Fri Feb 08, 2019 10:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Big Magilla »

OscarGuy wrote:Jeffrey Wells is a misogynistic bastard. If Sundance had revoked Trump's press credentials, would anyone but the most sexist, racist, xenophobic jerks be upset about it? Diversity of voice is as important as diversity of output.
I don't disagree, but it wasn't just Wells that was not invited to Sundance this year, it was a whole bunch of "old white guys" because the women running it wanted a larger percentage of women critics. He's just the one making the most noise.

From what I can tell, it's not just older white guys but older white female critics who were disinvited. Looks like ageism as well as sexism, with old white guy Redford trying gamely to stay above the fray.

The irony is that Wells probably had the loudest trumpet for promoting Sundance premiere attractions in the past.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

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Big Magilla wrote: Wells: My guess would be Sundance exec director Keri Putnam, who announced at the festival’s opening press conference that she had noticed “a disturbing blind spot” in the press credential process, which resulted in admitting “mostly white male critics.” Which she and her colleagues then “decided to do something about.”

Veteran critic: “I’ve been reading all your stuff about your predicament and feel that the Robespierre comparison is dead-on. I have no doubt at all that the denial of your pass is a direct result of all this. I also have a suspicion that this is why Redford has basically kicked himself upstairs, so as not to have to address or deal with this stuff. He’s above and beyond at this point.”
That is disturbing but not the first time that has happened. Something similar happened in Toronto in 1995.

It was the world premier of Marleen Gorris' Antonia Line (which would go on to win the best foreign language academy away). Ms. Gorris, one of the most committed feminist filmmaker of her generation barred males from the premier of her film. Only females were allowed to attend. She naturally incensed a number of male credits with her request. We had a movie review show on TV in Australia at the time and when the film was released in locally only the female critic talked about and rated the film. The male film critic remained silent and said nothing. Usually they would discuss a film but there were rare instants were only one critic had seen a particular film. I have no doubt he had seen the film and I'm sure he was just making a valid point. The irony was that the male critic in question, David Stratton, ran the Sydney Film Festival for about a quarter of a century and screened Marleen Gorris' earlier far more radical films at the festival less than 15 years earlier. Her excellent 1981 film A Question of Silence went on to take the audience award. I agree with his stand on the show of saying nothing which pretty much amounts to a very polite 'fuck you Marleen, I'm not going to even mention your film'. Ironically, he sort of did what the female characters on trial for murder in A Question of Silence do.

Then there were all those comments Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock & Mindy Kaling were making about old white male critics because their film Oceans 8 didn't receive the rapturous response they were hoping. Some of there comments were just plain silly and made absolutely no sense. For goodness sake they were remaking something that had already been done to death and was created by men in the past. And the irony was that Oceans 8 was directed by an old white man.

Though men can behave like spoiled children too. Jeffrey Wright throwing a case of wine in David Stratton's face at Venice in 1992 because Stratton had panned Romper Stomper referring to it as a dangerous film that could incite racists; Robert Altman calling Pauline Kael a cunt at Cannes in 1977 because 3 Women didn't win the Palm d'Or 'You can't cut a baby in two' he also screamed; Dan Fogelman taking a leaf out of the Oceans 8 ladies book and blaming old white men for the bad review of his latest film Life Itself (apparently its so so bad that it must be seen).

Worth noting than in the cases of Oceans 8 & Life Itself critics of female gender were none to impressed by those films either.

I appreciate people are frustrated getting films green lit and then disappointed when critics don't like the film but the arts are littered with success stories and stories of failure. And sometimes people make bad films, you can't please all the people all of the time, and time to learn from that experience and move onto a better one. And thats advise for everyone with creative juices to express.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Re: Your best picture ballot

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I've read some of those stories before about Jeffrey Wells and he sounds like a first rate creep.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Sabin »

Big Magilla wrote
A veteran film critic and I were discussing Sundance ’19 and the general wokester atmosphere. At one point I offered my usual-usual, which boils down to (a) “I really and truly believe we are in the midst of a kind of woke McCarthyism,” (b) “The current political-cultural revolution is good and necessary and overdue, but there has also been spillage and over-reach, just as their was during the Robespierre ‘terror’ following the French revolution,” and (c) “My press pass withdrawal was blacklisting, plain and simple, and for what? For having passionate opinions?”
I've been reading Jeffrey Wells for several years now. I still do. He's a talented writer. The fact that he has any form of career is astonishing. One of my best friends is a film critic for a Chicago publication and he's told me that Wells is a joke among film critics. He is the most reviled film critic alive, more so than Armond White. He's just as much a culture critic but substantially worse to be around.

Jeffrey Wells writers "For what? Having passionate opinions?" Let's refresh:

https://thefrisky.com/5-gems-from-jeffr ... est-troll/

On Amy Schumer:
"“Director Judd Apatow is once again introducing a chubby, whipsmart, not conventionally attractive, neurotically bothered female comic to a mass audience—first Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids (’11), then Lena Dunham in HBO’s Girls (’12) and now Amy Schumer, the star and writer of Trainwreck as well as the star of Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer. She’s obviously sharp and clever and funny as far as the woe-is-me, self-deprecating thing goes, but there’s no way she’d be an object of heated romantic interest in the real world.”"

On women:
"“They’ve all been taught that all they need to do is look around and send certain signals and guys all around them will drop to their knees and start panting like dogs. Life would be heavenly and rhapsodic if women had the personality and temperament of dogs — forever loyal, non-judgmental, constantly affectionate. But that’s a loser’s dream.""

And of course his email to James Mangold:
"“I am on my knees, Mr. Mangold, saying thank you, thank you and thank you again for persuading Vinessa Shaw to do her first flat-out, boob-baring nude scene. I was in heaven as Crowe drew her on his notepad. Please tell me there’s somebody on the Yuma team who can slip me some stills of the shooting that day… please. I’m serious. I know you think like I do in this respect, so please … as one good hombre to another … you don’t have to be the guy who passes along the stills. Just tell the still photographer or the editor or whomever caught her as she posed. I’m not a sleazebag either—I don’t pass along stills to the Mr. Skin crowd or my friends. This would be just for my, myself & I.”"

Think about that. Jeffrey Wells emailed a famous director who he met like twice for nude photos of an actress he worked with. The fact that he's had a press pass at all for the past twelve years is astonishing.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by OscarGuy »

Jeffrey Wells is a misogynistic bastard. If Sundance had revoked Trump's press credentials, would anyone but the most sexist, racist, xenophobic jerks be upset about it? Diversity of voice is as important as diversity of output.
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Re: Your best picture ballot

Post by Sabin »

The Original BJ wrote
Here's an article with the much-buzzed-about ad in Variety that I'm referring to.

And to be fair, many of the women interviewed -- one of which I know personally -- make eloquent points that get at the real issue behind lack of opportunity for women in the director's chair. (I just feel like "How come Blockers wasn't nominated for Best Director?" sort of undercuts the argument about there being an abundance of women that could have been in the conversation.)
It's a complicated issue. But I want to take one quote from the article that's worth unpacking:
One woman makes this point:
"“The only standard of judgment for a director's work should be quality, not gender,” said Bull director Bethany Rooney, who co-chairs the DGA Diversity Task Force. “The day will come, hopefully soon, when the gender of the director is irrelevant. But we're not there yet.”"
See, this I don't know about. (And obviously, I'm mostly talking about feature work, not TV work. Truly on TV, quality is the only standard of judgment).

"Quality" is not the only standard for a woman's director's work. I could be wrong but I think women want the same opportunities that men want. They want the opportunity to pay their bills but also tell their stories.

When a movie is too "by a woman," it is more necessary in the market place to provide a different lens of storytelling. Greta Gerwig and Lady Bird, for example. But when The Hurt Locker was cresting towards an Oscar win, I heard more than one complaint from my peers that it was a shame that the first movie directed by a woman was (for lack of a better term) not about a woman's experience. It was too post-feminist. When women are given big movies, it's largely to make sure the storytelling is true to its women characters and experience. And that's a great thing.

Anyway, so, I looked up Bethany Rooney, and found that she's 69 years old. I think her words might more reflect people of her generation and not necessarily the new one.
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