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Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 10:45 pm
by Zahveed
What level of irony would it be if, in a few years, they just resorted to online web-casting and there are still no residuals?
Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 9:54 pm
by cam
When will we get the Osacr contest????
Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:55 pm
by kooyah
Once again, I will not be watching the ceremony.
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 5:10 pm
by rolotomasi99
cam wrote:Pitt was perfect as the brainless body in Burn After Reading.
imagine if it had been written so that it was pitt whom clooney wanted to use that scary chair on instead of mcdormand. now that would have been a fucking awesome movie! :p
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:53 pm
by cam
Pitt was perfest as the brainless body in Burn After Reading.
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 10:20 am
by rolotomasi99
criddic3 wrote:oh, trust me. it is true. brad should only do comedies and roles that require him shirtless (but not when he has the body of an 80 year old).
That's a little unfair. Mr. Pitt can actually act. He deserved a nomination last year more so than this year. However, I thought he was good in Benjamin Button.
the only performances of pitt's i have enjoyed are those comedic in nature -- TWELVE MONKEYS, BURN AFTER READING, FIGHT CLUB -- though i will say i was impressed with him in BABEL.
to me, his performance in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON was flat and boring. i still prefer this film as a whole to FORREST GUMP, but something should be said for hanks giving a more empathetic performance (and not going full retard). the nature of both films ask us to follow these men as quite passive characters in their own lives. shit happens all around them and they barely react. they act more as observers of the story than the protagonists.
hanks had the good sense to make gump lovable and colorful, while pitt acted like a tired old man no matter how young he got. poor tilda swinton had to act out both sides of the love affair (my favorite section of the movie) since pitt decided to be as non-emotive as possible.
pitt's performance is certainly not the worst performance nominated this decade, but along with johnny depp in FINDING NEVERLAND it has to be one of the most flat and boring. it made the nearly three hour movie just drag.
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 8:52 am
by flipp525
Sydney Pollack is somewhat of a legend to me (or maybe, in this case, I'm just over-simplifying the term "legend" to mean someone whose work I really find superlative). However, just because Tootsie and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? are two of my personal favorites, doesn't necessarily mean that Pollack should be anywhere near an Oscar this year.
As a tangential aside, both of the aforementioned films hold up incredibly well. As a comedy, Tootsie blows practically every "comedy" coming out today out of the water and also manages to make a real statement on gender politics without being pedantic or mawkish about it. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is as harrowing today as it must've been when it came out in '69 featuring some fantastic performances, and a claustrophobic mise-en-scene that arrests the viewer just like the participants. Jane Fonda has never been better and Susannah York manages to find every color in what initially comes off as a limited palette.
Edited By flipp525 on 1233237174
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 8:40 am
by Uri
--Reza wrote:--Sabin wrote:"How is this Stephen Daldry bullshit possible?"
I second this sentiment.
This is what I wrote the last time Stephen Daldry was nominated, for The Hours:
a few years ago he got that book, How to Direct Movies. The first chapter said: “for your first one, choose a simple story, preferably a coming of age tale”. Here he managed to go through the next five chapters all at once.
He really is an extremely methodical operator, and he directs his movies the same way he constructs his career, by the numbers, and it pays of.
Edited By OscarGuy on 1242843039
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:41 am
by OscarGuy
Add Harvey Weinstein, the Holocaust, Stephen Daldry (whom the Academy seems to like a lot), and the passing of Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. That's how it happens. And, I can even see it winning on sentiment alone. Just to give those two departed "legends" posthumous Oscars.
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:37 am
by Reza
--Sabin wrote:"How is this Stephen Daldry bullshit possible?"
I second this sentiment.
Edited By OscarGuy on 1242843031
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 5:38 am
by Sabin
Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles near Koreatown.
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:52 am
by flipp525
What is "Mid-Wilshire"?
Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:42 pm
by Sabin
That said, Jenkins in Burn After Reading >>> Jenkins in The Visitor. (Hell, I've heard some people say he's even better in Step-Brothers.)
Yes. I completely agree with you. He gives an almost overwhelmingly sympathetic performance in that film. I'm very pleased he was nominated at all but his work in The Visitor could have been done by anyone.
(don't recall why I launched into this, but be prepared)
By the way, I'm in the middle of a move so while I've chimed in here and there about this, I just want to take a moment to say that as a member of this board for a decade now and not as a 28 year old American male, I AM FUCKING PISSED AT THESE OSCARS.
I'm pissed. I'll say it. The Dark Knight and WALL*E are damn good movies that are far more indicative of great contemporary filmmaking than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire, and any Stephen Daldry movie. Whatever retirement home Harvey is peddling out screeners in should be handing out Jell-O instead of ballots.
I don't like sounding like a fanboy especially in my relative condemnation of comic book movies as a bastard film genre in need of discontinuation, but I'm very disappointed The Dark Knight wasn't nominated when my 57 year old father said The Reader was a boring, superfluous Holocaust movie and not nearly as good as The Dark Knight - which he and my 59 year old mother saw twice in theaters in the span of a fucking week! Twice! It took me months to see that movie twice!
And because the ballots are a weighted system, I find it astonishing that WALL*E fans could not have put this movie out there than more milquetoast fodder as Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon. This is a movie to be enthusiastic about. Fincher's and Howard's are to pay lip-service for annual nominations for Relative Excellence in the Realm of Milquetoast Hollywood Excess/Oversight/Irrelevance.
I am filled with reserved anger that Sally Hawkins could not find a place in a lineup with Angelina Jolie for Changeling. I understand that some people may not enjoy her character or find her annoying, but ye gods! Was there any performance this year more annoying than Angelina Jolie in Changeling? Is there anything on the planet more annoying than a woman who will not shut up about a child you have never met?!? At least Poppy has the common decency not to procreate.
Every year there are oversights. This year, there are war crimes. To wit:
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY -
All these screenplays suck. I haven't seen The Reader. I have to believe it does too. Incidentally: suck. Outwardly fail in forwarding their stories in a competent fashion due to lack of ambition. The Dark Knight is not a totally successful screenplay but let it be said that it's failings are EXCESS OF AMBITION. It tries to do too much. It tries to tackle too many things. Doubt and Frost/Nixon receive the "Pass the Bong" award for Outward Laziness in Adaptation. Let's assume it'll work just fine. Pack that shit tight, Pete. Roth demonstrates a level of hackery heretofore reserved only for Akiva Goldsman in assuming that the exact structure of Forrest Gump would work here, which is to say that there is no difference between satire and melodrama. If Beaufoy gets off easy, it's that he just simply fails to set-up the romance a little but does a lot of other things pretty decently.
These are badly written movies! This is without a doubt in my mind the worst lineup of screenplays since I started watching this masochistic occasion in 1995. That The Dark Knight wasn't nominated is such an oversight, but in truth I can think of at least fifteen other movies all deserving placement here before any of these movies.
(now realizing I have maxed out my internet time beyond rationale in the midst of a move to Mid-Wilshire...)
No Best Song nomination for "The Wrestler" is such an embarrassment. No nomination for "Little Person", I understand. No High School Musical nomination or Bolt nomination is certainly bad for ratings, but I looked forward to bitching at how horrible these performers were on the night of the show. But failing to nominate "The Wrestler" means that the song branch has just taken it too far. I will say: more than mattering how in context a song is important, it first matters if it is good. There certainly is rationale to suggest that the end credits of WALL*E are a continuation of the film's theme and story, but the song is the worst thing I've ever heard Peter Gabriel do. The only good that will come out of these two Slumdog Millionaire songs performed on-stage is that it will hopefully make the rest of the planet as sick of this Slumdog Millionaire bullshit as I am.
...
I'm basically done now. But yeah, I'm pissed. And it's not because I love The Dark Knight (I don't. I like it a lot.). And it's not because I love WALL*E (though I certainly do). It's that even though I know the Oscars don't matter, it doesn't mean they have to be the Grammys. I would never go to the Grammys to find out what good music is. The Oscars had a perfectly viable opportunity to nominate two very good movies and three mediocre ones and a chance to nominate a great film, two very good ones, and two mediocre ones. Instead, they nominated Milk, three average movies, and a Stephen Daldry movie.
Slumdog Millionaire is Rocky. Imagine Rocky in a lineup of Marathon Man, A Star is Born, Voyage of the Damned, and somehow a Stephen Daldry movie. At least it's fun to complain about what could have won that year instead of "How is this Stephen Daldry bullshit possible?"
...
I'm happy for Melissa Leo, Michael Shannon, and the idea of Richard Jenkins, and I'm happy for their families.
Edited By Sabin on 1233204300
Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:11 pm
by criddic3
oh, trust me. it is true. brad should only do comedies and roles that require him shirtless (but not when he has the body of an 80 year old).
That's a little unfair. Mr. Pitt can actually act. He deserved a nomination last year more so than this year. However, I thought he was good in Benjamin Button.
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:01 pm
by flipp525
So bored of talking about this.
Edited By flipp525 on 1233207671