Halfway Through 2016!

[Okri]

I agree with everything BJ says vis-a-vis film, but am more optimistic.

It doesn't help, of course, that the biggest show in theatre is one of the most acclaimed productions of the 21st century and the biggest show on television is one of the most acclaimed as well. Nor does it help that one of the biggest hits of the year, Batman vs Superman, is also a financial failure. It paints a picture of an industry massively confused with itself.

What Mister Tee mentions about television re: jumping the shark is true, but at the same time, a show that doesn't do that - a television show that takes you on a multi-year journey with characters who are richer than virtually anything the big screen can showcase… it’s amazing. And honestly, even if a show fumbles the landing, I rarely feel like I’ve wasted the time. But more than that, television is so refreshingly grown up now, especially compared to the Marvelization of movies. It seems more diverse in its stories and more adult in its storytelling

I have to admit I think that Twain’s adage is pretty apt for this situation. From a strict numbers basis, it’s not as if more people watched Breaking Bad than Birdman. It’s interesting because it seems like a number of networks have figured out how to monetize a show with fewer than two million viewers (F/X, for example) and those shows seem to have a bigger overall impact.

So why am I optimistic? Not quite sure. I’ve made more of an effort to see movies in theatres this year and have been delighted them more often than not (yeah, I still avoid the crud). The festival crop – Berlin, Sundance and Cannes – seemed unusually rich. Maybe not with the group mentioned by Tee, but with a really interesting, varied group of auteurs and breakthroughs. Whenever I do go to the movies, there are enough people in the theatre to convince me that there is an actual audience for these movies (and I avoid crowded theatres). The list of invitees to AMPAS is really encouraging. Two of the companies that contribute to the richness in television have taken bold strokes towards movie making – Amazon and Netflix, of course. And there are those distributors that are pushing films for grown-ups hard – A24 and Broadgreen Pictures spring to mind.

To the subject of the thread, I largely ditto BJ, except I can see Love and Friendship getting a screenplay nomination thanks to the patina of Austen.

[Big Magilla]

It's already come and gone from most the world's cinemas. The U.S. will be one of the last countries to get it. It currently has a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 43 reviewers, but if the British ignored it, chances are U.S. audiences won't be breaking down doors to see this British centric film either. Still, it could earn Streep another Oscar nod if the competition proves less than stellar. She certainly seems a better prospect than Sally Field in the weak tea that was Hello, My Name is Doris.

[Precious Doll]

Florence Foster Jenkins doesn't release until August, so it can't have underperformed yet.

It opened in Australia and the UK months ago and under performed. Given the sort of film that it is it's unlikely to do much better in the U.S when it opens next month.

[OscarGuy]

Florence Foster Jenkins doesn't release until August, so it can't have underperformed yet.

[Big Magilla]

I can't get worked up enough over this year's releases so far to even put together a few sentences let alone an entire article.

As I've said before, I no longer go to the movies outside of awards season unless there's something that I really, really have to see and so far this year there's been none of that. The best film I've seen on Blu-ray is Midnight Special which will likely be overshadowed in year-end awards by director Jeff Nichols' next film, Loving.

Zootopia is a good animated film with important life messages for kids that they should have already learned from their parents and teachers, but I thought it hammered home its message a bit more obviously than it needed to. Dumbo had the same message 75 years ago without the hammer, but subtlety seems to be a lost art in popular movies.

Too bad about Florence Foster Jenkins under-performing. I thought it might be a film Meryl Streep actually deserved a nomination for.

[The Original BJ]

Having said that, just how good it Zoopotia? It's out on Blu Ray and if people think it is worth watching and will more likely than not get an Oscar nod I might be inclined to watch it now.

In Oscar terms, I think it is a near-certain Animated Feature nominee, maybe even a possible winner, depending on how the rest of the contenders deliver.

In "how good is it?" terms, I would say if you were Damien or Italiano, you shouldn't bother -- it's still very much a mainstream American cartoon, and if that gives you hives, this will not be an exception. But if you've enjoyed recent Disney Feature Animation efforts at all, this fits well within the level of what is starting to appear like a new renaissance for the studio -- if I'm splitting hairs, I'd probably say it's not quite as good as Wreck-It Ralph, but a bit better than Frozen and Big Hero 6. And I'd also say it's the best big studio release of 2016 so far. Does that give you a better idea of whether or not it's worth your time?

Re: the TV conversation, I agree with a lot of what Mister Tee said in terms of TV still having some limitations vis a vis movies. There are others I'd cite as well -- most television series that span years, even the good ones, eventually settle into thematic territory that starts to feel familiar. And I can say this from some experience, having worked for a good number of years now in television writer's rooms, eventually you just start to run out of stories -- most shows have a limited shelf life of character combinations, narrative structures that work, and themes that feel vital to the show at its core, and yet you have to keep finding ways to stretch all of this out to keep creating more content, in a way that by its vary nature, is lacking in economy. One thing I've also noticed: shows that weren't made to binge-watch (i.e. network television with twenty-plus episodes per season) really do show their seams when consumed in this brave new world of streaming -- when you watch a bunch of those episodes in a row, you can feel the writers spinning their wheels a lot more, catching viewers up on past weeks' storylines, and returning to the same well of story elements over and over. These are issues that wouldn't be as obvious when viewed with more space between episodes, as was intended.

I also find that right now there's just so much television that it's virtually impossible to discuss the medium without ever feeling grossly ill-informed about what's out there. Which is to say, I can pretty much guarantee that anyone interested in serious movies will have seen Spotlight/Carol/Room/The Big Short/Brooklyn/etc. and you can have a conversation with other such folks (as we do on this board) knowing that, at a certain point in the year, most everyone will be caught up on the same stuff. However, there is virtually no television show that everyone watches anymore -- even the big popular phenomena (like, say, Empire) are widely unseen by me and others, so trying to have any sort of cultural discussion about television even among those who consume a lot of it has big challenges, because no one can really keep up outside of critics whose literal job it is to watch and write about tv.

[Precious Doll]

It might be fair to note that, even in recent years where stronger candidates have appeared prior to Fall, those candidates have a way of turning up post-July 4th -- Boyhood the most notable example, but also Blue Jasmine, The Help, The Kids Are All Right and Inception. I've heard positive things about both Captain Fantastic and James Schamus' Indignation, coming this month, plus Meryl Streep will be making her annual bid in August with Florence Foster Jenkins.

Florence Foster Jenkins has already opened and closed in the UK and Australia were it under performed in both markets. Streep is good in the film in which she gives one of her broad but nevertheless touching performances. In a weak year she is a virtual shoe-in.

Though it will be such a shame if Streep gets in ahead of far more deserving performances that have no hope because they are in a foreign language films that wouldn't resonate with Academy voters even if there were in English like Sandra Hüller in Toni Erdmann & Sonia Braga in Aquarius (I'll throw in Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper as well though she only speaks English in what is a French film).

I don't take much notice of what is on the release slate unless it's had a festival screening. I haven't seen most of the films mentioned in this post, don't want to and hope the Academy overlooks them period.

Having said that, just how good it Zoopotia? It's out on Blu Ray and if people think it is worth watching and will more likely than not get an Oscar nod I might be inclined to watch it now.

[Mister Tee]

The beauty of these early year crappy-but-might-get-nominated-for-visual-effects entries is, if they do get nominated, it's a simple matter to Netflix them in January, and if they don't, you've not wasted those two hours of life.

I'm impressed you put in all that effort, BJ. I'd have just said a quick "Zootopia and maybe Finding Dory for animated, Love & Friendship for costumes, The Lobster (and possibly Eye in the Sky) for original screenplay if the field is as moribund as last year's".

It might be fair to note that, even in recent years where stronger candidates have appeared prior to Fall, those candidates have a way of turning up post-July 4th -- Boyhood the most notable example, but also Blue Jasmine, The Help, The Kids Are All Right and Inception. I've heard positive things about both Captain Fantastic and James Schamus' Indignation, coming this month, plus Meryl Streep will be making her annual bid in August with Florence Foster Jenkins.

I'm still dubious this year is going to turn out much, simply because the slate from here to December is woefully thin. Beyond the ever-present hope of pleasant surprises, Oscar races at this point rely on the performance of the A-team: the 20 or so directors (encompassing oldsters like Eastwood, Spielberg & Scorsese, and the large Sundance crowd from the 90s) who, almost by themselves, are maintaining the tradition of mainstream human drama and comedy. This year, a few from the group (the Coens, Spielberg, Linklater, apparently Woody Allen) have already come in with lesser works, and only a few others -- Eastwood, Ang Lee, Scorsese -- have projects ready for release. Which is to say, we don't have Paul Thomas Anderson/Alexander Payne/David Fincher/Danny Boyle/David O. Russell/Spike Jonze etc. to rescue us down the line, so pickings may remain slim.

As to the TV thing: Certainly Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance would be leading the conversation for acting awards were those performances given in films. (Throw in Oscar Isaac in Show Me a Hero, as well, though that might have been 2015 in Oscar terms, even though it's this year for Emmys.)

It's certainly nice to know that the kind of excitement we once had for movies does still exist, in the television realm (and has, really, since The Sopranos became a big deal). But I for one vastly prefer the film format -- knowing that I'm going to sit down and immerse myself for somewhere from 90 to, in extreme cases, 200 minutes, but that when I leave the theatre I will have had a complete, sealed-off experience. I'm driven crazy by current television not just because it requires so many hours of attention (13 hours for the average HBO/Showtime season), but because you can devote 3, 4, 5 seasons and then have the thing go splat on you down the stretch -- as many thought Lost did; Six Feet Under went well astray in its next-to-last season (though I thought it recovered afterward); you no doubt have your own "dammit, they lost me" experience. A movie that doesn't work is a one-night failure; a TV show that goes off the rails -- an event so common the medium minted its own cliche, "jumping the shark" -- retroactively invalidates essentially weeks of your life. This brave new world, where TV is drama king, has pitfalls that aren't enough discussed by critics who don't seem to appreciate them.

[The Original BJ]

I would imagine the dreadful reviews for all of these movies (NOT ONE OF WHICH I HAVE SEEN, THANK YOU CRITICS!) make their chances at even tech nominations virtually nil.

The question is, if there are any surprise nominations from these films, would you have the will not to see the films?

Let's ponder the thought of crossing that treacherous bridge at a later date.

Sabin, my feelings about movies lately seem to parallel how my rational Republican relatives feel about the presidential race -- trying their best to convince themselves of the worth of the party they have always supported, at least on principle, while recoiling at the horror show it has become in actuality.

[Greg]

In the Documentary Feature category, Weiner has generated quite a bit of buzz, and seems like the kind of popular/politically timely movie that hits this category’s sweet spot.

Doesn't the Documentary branch tend to prefer some gravitas for their nominees? Isn't the amount of gravitas limited by the focal character being a politician known mostly for posting pictures of his genitals online?

[Greg]

I would imagine the dreadful reviews for all of these movies (NOT ONE OF WHICH I HAVE SEEN, THANK YOU CRITICS!) make their chances at even tech nominations virtually nil.

The question is, if there are any surprise nominations from these films, would you have the will not to see the films?

[Sabin]

2016 is the year it finally happened for me. Going to the movies feels like going to a theme park. It feels pointless comparing one rollercoaster against another. They're all the same. The movies have finally become an premium exhibition platform for $300 million rollercoasters. Outside of angels like A24, it feels like there's no middle class for movies. Everything is either VOD or the 1%.

[The Original BJ]

When I first sat down to write this post -- about which films from the first half of the year might receive Oscar nominations -- my initial thought was “Um……………”

I’m with Sabin and Mister Tee in being pretty down on movies lately. It’s very possible that this lull is just a part of the off-season, and the year-end efforts will be much more to my liking (as many were last year). And yet, I can’t help but feel like this problem is getting worse and worse every year, that the vast majority of the movie year has now become the “off-season,” as nearly every mainstream movie worth seeing is crammed into November and December, for viewing in New York and Los Angeles mostly for critics to discuss among themselves within a very small bubble. I’ve even started to think about this in personal career terms as well -- do I want to struggle trying to get grownup movies off the ground that no one will likely ever see? Or make a ton of money working on one of the ever-increasing number of acclaimed, zeitgeist-y television shows that grip the popular culture? Gee, how does one choose?

Put another way, if The People vs. O.J. Simpson had been a theatrical release rather than a TV miniseries, wouldn’t it be the strongest candidate for major Oscar attention we’ve seen this year? I realize that, yes, if it had screened in theaters it would have been two hours, and what made it special was the ground it covered in ten, so it’s not an entirely fair comparison. But these kinds of examples exist across the media spectrum -- even in terms of blockbuster/fantasy genres, have any of cinema’s big spectacles of 2016 held a candle to the excitement Game of Thrones has been generating on a weekly basis?

But, we’re here to talk about movies, not television, and so here’s my rundown of what I see as the few films that might find their way into the Oscar conversation at the end of the year.

Mostly because they have their own category, I view the animated efforts as being the most likely to make Oscar impact. Zootopia and Finding Dory have both been greeted with enthusiastic reviews and big box office, a combo that has propelled virtually everything without a LEGO tie-in to an Animated Feature nomination. Of the two, I definitely preferred Zootopia, for the freshness of its universe, the cleverness of its plotting, and the resonant social commentary; Finding Dory, while funny and touching, is basically a structural replica of the first film. I doubt either movie has much legs (or fins) beyond that category though -- Disney Feature Animation hasn’t had much success breaking into the screenplay categories the way Pixar has, and Dory pretty clearly isn’t more-than-a-sequel the way the later Toy Story efforts were. Among tinier efforts, the eye-popping photorealistic animation of Piper, the Pixar effort that accompanies Finding Dory, seems likely to make that film a strong candidate in the Animated Short category. (I realize there was a third King Fu Panda movie that performed decently at the box office, but at this point the people who nominated the first two films have forgotten that series even exists, right?)

It’s hard to find much of anything that seems like a decent above-the-line contender, but I’ll offer up The Lobster as a possible nominee in Original Screenplay. It seems like the kind of weird, offbeat entry the writers like, and it’s become something of a word-of-mouth independent hit. I also imagine it will be the kind of movie people keep talking about throughout the year, which will likely give it a bird-in-the-hand benefit once it hits home viewing formats.

As for acting possibilities, the best I could find is Sally Field in Hello My Name is Doris, but that just doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that gets past a Golden Globe Comedy Actress bid. I’d bet all 20 of Oscar’s acting nominees remain ahead of us.

There are a handful of films from writers who have been nominated in the past, but none of them look to me like significant Oscar vehicles. Everybody Wants Some!! has its charms, but I imagine it will feel WAY too college/bro-y for the Academy. The Old Hollywood milieu of Hail, Caesar! may appeal more to industry insiders than it did to the public, but its reception was fairly mixed, and it plays more like a series of sketches than a fully cohesive script. Love and Friendship could definitely receive credit for crafting a narrative out of an epistolary novel, as well as for its witty dialogue (though Stillman admits most of that was Austen’s), but the Adapted Screenplay race is typically dominated by Best Picture candidates, and this feels a bit featherweight compared to what typically places. Costume Design -- a category more friendly to films outside the major races -- might be a more possible get.

The BFG just barely makes into this first half conversation, but truth be told, I found it pretty tedious -- too much gooey Spielberg sentiment when Wes Anderson deadpan would have been a better fit for the material. But Spielberg films almost always get at least some nominations, and I’d rate Visual Effects the strongest possibility, with Production Design and a default-to-Williams Original Score bid candidates as well.

Looking at further down ballot options, the Original Song category is always an enormous crapshoot, but I could see a couple early entrants placing: Hail Caesar!’s “No Dames,” the sailor dance number from Dreamgirls composer Henry Krieger, Zootopia’s “Try Everything,” given this category’s fondness for Disney animation, and probably most likely, something from Sing Street, as John Carney’s last two contemporary musicals have scored here.

I found The Jungle Book an almost completely pointless remake, but there’s no denying the wow of the visual effects, from the photorealistic animals to the shot-on-an-L.A.-soundstage backgrounds. I’d rate this one of the stronger tech contenders so far.

Captain America: Civil War is definitely one of the more positively received hits of the year, but as we’ve often discussed, Marvel efforts haven’t performed as well as they might have come Oscar season. Statistically, Captain America films have a 50/50 shot at a Visual Effects nomination. If you include Avengers films as part of that group (and as many have said, this feels more like the third Avengers movie than the third Captain America), the odds are still…50/50. I’d rate this film’s odds about the same: the big airport fight sequence is pretty smashingly designed, but there just might be an increasing been-there-done-that vibe to these movies that could box it out completely.

As for the year’s other big Marvel hit, Deadpool over performed expectations to a degree that often yields “successful summer movie nominations,” but I can’t come up with many categories where it seems likely to place. Makeup would seem like its strongest possibility, but that’s never a branch that operates under much rhyme or reason. The Witch is in a similar spot, at least in arthouse terms -- it was definitely one of the spring’s buzzy titles, but unlike A24’s last spring genre hit, Ex Machina, there don’t seem to be many categories where it could land either.

Then there’s a whole list of presumably godawful big budget sequels to films whose earlier franchise entries were nominated for or even won Oscars: The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Independence Day: Resurgence, X-Men: Apocalypse, and depending on how you define the term “franchise,” Batman v Superman and The Legend of Tarzan. I would imagine the dreadful reviews for all of these movies (NOT ONE OF WHICH I HAVE SEEN, THANK YOU CRITICS!) make their chances at even tech nominations virtually nil. (And it even feels laughable to be bringing it up, but My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 isn’t going to replicate its predecessor’s screenplay citation either.)

In the Documentary Feature category, Weiner has generated quite a bit of buzz, and seems like the kind of popular/politically timely movie that hits this category’s sweet spot. De Palma has also been a hot topic of conversation (though perhaps that’s just in the circles I travel in), although movie-themed documentaries haven’t had much recent success in this category, certainly not compared to music-themed ones. And, to bring things full circle, perhaps the Oscars will get their own long-form O.J. Simpson trial candidate, in O.J.: Made in America, assuming the nearly eight hour film is still ruled eligible.

For a post that began with me feeling like I had nothing to write, I sure did manage to pontificate a lot. What do you guys think? Are there any major contenders I missed that you think might be a part of the conversation? Are movies actually becoming worse and worse these days, or is that just me?