The Post-Festival Landscape

[Big Magilla]

Golden Globes is set to air on CBS and Parmount Plus on 1/7 - the first time on CBS since 1982 when the network dumped them after giving thier Newcomer of the Year award to Pia Zadora allegedly bought and paid for by her financier husband.

https://variety.com/2023/awards/news/go ... 235795855/

[Sabin]

Greg wrote
Who here isn't?

danfrank wrote
I appreciate the compliment!

You can only apologize for making a research error so many times lol.

But either way, my point stands. Network was almost fifty years ago. I don't see that level of historic enthusiasm. But then again, what do I know?

[danfrank]

danfrank wrote
Yep, and The Godfather, Part 2 received five a couple of years before Network.

Greg wrote
Network got five acting nominations.

You guys are nerds.

I appreciate the compliment!

[Greg]

danfrank wrote
Yep, and The Godfather, Part 2 received five a couple of years before Network.

Greg wrote
Network got five acting nominations.

You guys are nerds.

Who here isn't?

[Sabin]

danfrank wrote
Yep, and The Godfather, Part 2 received five a couple of years before Network.

Greg wrote
Network got five acting nominations.

You guys are nerds.

[danfrank]

. . .
-overly enthusiastic; first film in almost sixty years to get five acting nominations (since Bonnie and Clyde). . .

Network got five acting nominations.

Yep, and The Godfather, Part 2 received five a couple of years before Network.

[Greg]

. . .
-overly enthusiastic; first film in almost sixty years to get five acting nominations (since Bonnie and Clyde). . .

Network got five acting nominations.

[Sabin]

flipp525 wrote
Someone on Twitter who I trust just saw The Color Purple and said that Danielle Brooks could become the frontrunner now for Best Supporting Actress.

What else did they say?

--

I've read over some of the tweets. They ranged in two directions:
-overly enthusiastic; first film in almost sixty years to get five acting nominations (since Bonnie and Clyde).
-more muted; it's a worthwhile but flawed film with at least one great performance and some solid tech/craft elements.

I mean... which sounds closer to the movie that ducked Toronto, Venice, and Telluride?

I've written elsewhere that it seems like when we get a big broadway-style musical, they fall into three different tiers. There's the ones that connect in a big way (Chicago, Moulin Rouge!), there's the ones that are major enough but maybe something's missing or off (Dreamgirls, Les Miserables), and then there are ones that just don't connect at all (Nine). A couple of them straddle the line, like West Side Story. I'm not getting Tier 1 vibes from this thing.

But, y'know, we're also predicting the Oscars here and none of these takes sound bad. This sounds like a movie that will have some fans. In a world with mandatory ten nominations, that could be enough. And it looks like Danielle Brooks is in fact the breakout supporting role over Taraji P. Henson, who I suspected at first might be if only because she has the stronger Oscar narrative.

[Mister Tee]

Much as I'm loathe to be in sync with Jeff Wells on anything, he's correct that the tweet storm following any initial screening is suspect, but you can increase that tenfold when it's a musical involved. Remember how Dreamgirls and Les Miz were going to rampage through the Oscars? There's an almost chemical reaction between these "First!" tweeters and musical movies; their adjectives suddenly turn hyper-hyperbolic.

However, as noted earlier, there has been a remarkable tendency for Oscar voters to go for a supporting actress in this genre, with Zeta-Jones, Hudson, Hathawa, and DeBose winners this millennium (and Cruz getting nominated for a film most hated). So, I guess Brooks has to be considered a strong hopeful.

[OscarGuy]

I've only seen one reaction so far and it was very enthusiastic.

[Big Magilla]

The Color Purple has screened.

Danielle Brooks looks like the real deal, a serious threat to Da'Vine Joy Randolph. Taraji P. Henson is also highly praised as is Fantasia Barrino with reservations. Other than the costumes, though, not much else seems to have impressed the critics.

https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/the- ... ic-musical

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/

[flipp525]

Someone on Twitter who I trust just saw The Color Purple and said that Danielle Brooks could become the frontrunner now for Best Supporting Actress.

[Okri]

This is the best time of the year – where almost anything seems possible.

Sabin, I actually have the opposite thought – we could have a year that we haven’t had since 1989 where the NBR/NY/LA/Nat. best picture and director goes to four different films. If you asked me to bet, I can see Poor Things, Oppenheimer, The Zone of Interest, Past Lives, All of Us Strangers, or even Barbie winning a best picture prize.

Tee, part of the reason why I’m a little less bullish on Past Lives having a strong push outside of Picture/Screenplay is because of that competition. I think director is stacked – with Nolan, Scorsese and Lanthimos in prime positions. So then you’ve got a bunch of previous nominees (Mann, Payne, Gerwig) AND breakthrough/risers (Song, Haigh, Cooper, Glazer) fighting for those two slots. Actress seems to have more available slots (depending on how you feel about Bening and Mulligan, I suppose) so I can imagine Lee making it, but a line-up without her wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I love the score and song, but predicting song is a fool’s errand and the score is not within the composers’ wheelhouse.

Regarding best actor…… here’s where I admit my own biases. This early in the Oscar race, I basically feel like I can do whatever I want and not really end up being any more or less right than if I “try” really hard to get it right. For me, the fun in predicting is thinking about as many great achievements getting recognized as I can. That has led me to predict people like Christian Bale for Rescue Dawn and Ken Loach for The Wind that Shakes the Barley, but I had fun doing so. So, if I can rationalize my choice and want it to happen, I get to predict it.

So, why am I dropping Giamatti and DiCaprio. DiCaprio is easy to explain. He’s obviously done well with the Oscars before – his 2019 nomination in particular came from a deep bench but also after he had his “honor his career” victory, which we know can often be the end of someone’s Oscar career (Sarandon, Moore… thus far, anyway) or at least herald a longer than usual gap (Winslet). That said, it feels like Gladstone and De Niro have easier path to more votes then he does (category confusion notwithstanding). I also look at De Niro in The Irishman as an intriguing precedent for DiCaprio to not make it as well. I loved De Niro in the earlier film, don’t get me wrong, but I heard from people who really struggled with him in the first part of the film (the de-aging in particular) and only found him affecting as the film went on. Nothing DiCaprio does matches the power of that phone call, to my eyes, but I think the murkiness of his character and his odd centering in the film makes it a stretch for me to predict.

As for Giamatti, honestly? I want to predict Scott, Domingo and Wright. So that leaves two slots for Murphy, Cooper and Giamatti and I went with the biopic duo.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
okri, I think you may live to regret your backing away from Past Lives. Maybe we travel in very different circles, but everyone I know friggin' adores the movie. I think it's very much still in the game for film, actress, screenplay and director (the latter especially if you're right about Anatomy of a Fall -- which I've not yet seen -- since Triet seemed direct competition for Song in the highly-regarded/high-grossing-considering-language/female director slot). At the very least, I think we need to see how critics' awards shake out before we start consigning one of the year's best-reviewed movies to second-tier status.

Reading this paragraph I realized something I'd forgotten. Last year, one film won all three critic's groups awards for Best Picture. Tár. Everything Everywhere All At Once tied at LAFCA but Tár won all three. That would be a pretty big deal if it didn't happen the year before with Drive My Car. Two sweeps in two years isn't unprecedented. Look at The Hurt Locker and The Social Network. And there have been times when I thought a sweep would happen when it didn't, like with Nomadland or Roma. but the more I think about it I think it's possible Past Lives takes all three critic's trophies this year. Seriously, what's in the running? Scorsese has some fans at NYFCC but I don't get the sense that Killers of the Flower Moon is as beloved as The Irishman. Maybe Oppenheimer? It's not even due to lack of competition. Critics do love that film.

[Mister Tee]

Just reading over this thread, it strikes me it's an odd year: competition in both lead categories is pretty substantial, but, possibly because of the actors' strike (and resultant lack of active campaigning), it doesn't feel like there's been the usual hive-mind coalescing around front-runners. The bloggers are no doubt doing their best to make some narratives happen, but, absent big stars doing the talk show/premiere circuit, I don't think any are taking hold as yet. This may change in these hurried weeks just ahead (I've been picturing studio PR departments frantically calling to see if actors can make a red-carpet...um...Tuesday?), but, for now, I think things are pretty amorphous.

In that vein, I'll comment on a few things you folks have been talking about.

I really think you're underestimating Giamatti. The Holdovers is the warm-and-fuzzy (but-good) candidate of the year, which puts him in a lot different zone from "actor in a comedy" (which may have cost him in Sideways). And, while his character obviously has his customary prickliness, his climactic actions give him nobility points with the audience, which should help. I not only think he's a more likely nominee than folks like Domingo or Scott, I think a win isn't out of the question for him. I can see Cooper, Giamatti, Murphy or Wright all making a run for the trophy this year. (Though I conversely admit that only Murphy and, probably, Cooper, seem utterly assured of nominations.)

I come down on the side of "I liked it" regarding DiCaprio's performance, though I understand people having qualms about it. But I feel like I've gone broke in the past understating his chances at Oscar nominations (I thought he might well miss for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), so I'm reluctant to bet against him here.

(I promise to write more extensively about both those films in their review threads, when I find the time/energy to expound at length.)

okri, I think you may live to regret your backing away from Past Lives. Maybe we travel in very different circles, but everyone I know friggin' adores the movie. I think it's very much still in the game for film, actress, screenplay and director (the latter especially if you're right about Anatomy of a Fall -- which I've not yet seen -- since Triet seemed direct competition for Song in the highly-regarded/high-grossing-considering-language/female director slot). At the very least, I think we need to see how critics' awards shake out before we start consigning one of the year's best-reviewed movies to second-tier status.