1. Will a serious movie ever get to blockbuster status again?
Probably not.
I think part of me just rebels at the current definition of blockbuster. There once was a time when not even all the top ten "highest grossing films" of the year would pass $100 million. Now it seems that every weekend has a new film breaking some sort of record. Given the shortened window and the outmoded distribution model, I can't imagine a serious film really making the grade.
2. Whatever happened to the original screenplay?
I sorta disagree. I'll agree, 2007 was a weak year here, though I think I'm Not There or 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days would've been as strong entries as we've seen. And 2006 wasn't great (I actually thought The Queen WAS a tv movie when I heard of it, and Grenada Television in England was a big part of the financial part, if I understand correctly). But I loved the screenplays to Match Point and The Incredibles - I'd certainly rank them above Shakespeare in Love or The Usual Suspects (or The Piano and Pulp Fiction, but that's just me).
That said, I see where you're larger points is coming from. I think it's simply that adaptations are seen as safer from studios especially if they're from known quantities.
What other auteur directors are there to honor?
Spike Lee is the first one that comes to mind, and I think he's been on the strongest streak of his career with The 25th Hour, When the Levees Broke and Inside Man - and he's got a World War II drama coming up that looks baity.
While I wouldn't call him an auteur, it seems like Stephen Daldry is someone the academy could easily give a win to (in the Sidney Pollack mode).
It would definitely be cool if Atom Egoyan got his groove back and won an oscar, but that's unlikely (and I doubt he seems like someone they NEED to honor).
Wier and Scott seem like the likely picks at this point.
Some Questions for Sleepy Season
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OscarGuy
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If Jodie Foster would get back in the directors seat and Penny Marshall would stop making crap, they both have suitable careers for recognizing, but none are even remotely auteurist. I think PT Anderson engendered a lot of love with There Will Be Blood and could easily be back.
But, rainBard's list is pretty good. He pretty much catches many of those names. There's also a possibility that people like Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, Jason Reitman, Jon Favreau might get recognition if they continue making audience pleasers and then actually tackle a big dramatic picture (a la Steven Spielberg).
Then, there are the sometimes forgotten Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to contend with.
You also have some talented foreign directors like Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro who could make a play for it. I can also see a number of the old guard returning again like Eastwood and Jackson.
But, rainBard's list is pretty good. He pretty much catches many of those names. There's also a possibility that people like Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, Jason Reitman, Jon Favreau might get recognition if they continue making audience pleasers and then actually tackle a big dramatic picture (a la Steven Spielberg).
Then, there are the sometimes forgotten Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to contend with.
You also have some talented foreign directors like Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro who could make a play for it. I can also see a number of the old guard returning again like Eastwood and Jackson.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
On the director question:
First one that comes to mind is Terence Malick. But though he has a cult following, it seems unlikely to reach the critical mass required for a "he's due" feeling to pervade Hollywood like it apparently did for Scorsesen Polanski, the Coens (helped that the latter two made films received as well or nearly as well as anything in their careers, and that Scorsese finally had a bona fide commercial hit - if a Malick film were to even come in sniffing distance of $100 million it'd have to be a serious contender, but that seems even less likely than a Lynch film grossing that much.)
Other prior nominees I'd personally like to see win an Oscar, if they're ever able to make a film ranking with their best work again: Peter Bogdanovich, Jane Campion, M. Night Shyamalan, Kenneth Branagh.
You may or may not be aware that a faction of fanboys have been calling for Ridley Scott to get an Oscar soon, taking it up as a cause like the one behind Scorsese in the years before his win. Yeah, I think they're crazy. But there may be support for this kind of an idea in Hollywood.
Peter Weir seems more feasible; his nominations (4 of his last 7 films earned him nominations) don't feel so much like something only that kooky directors' branch can get behind; instead they seem like something the wider voters would have seriously considered, and he might have won by now if there weren't other nominees just a bit better liked in the years he was in the race. I don't know if his next project Shadow Divers is going to be the kind of thing that will turn the Academy's head or not, but it might.
Gus Van Sant seems worth mentioning in this context; has he left behind the style of filmmaking that gave him his one Oscar nomination? Reports from the set of Milk are that it was not shot the way his Bela Tarr-inspired films have been. From this unseen position, it seems like as likely an Oscar contender as any other candidate.
Of course, there's no reason to assume that the trend of honoring directors with an established nomination record is going to hold. The Academy could easily go back to the mode of giving the directing Oscar to a first-time nominee, like Cuaron, particularly if he or she is seen as established and due (I don't really buy your classification of Soderbergh prior to 2000 as a non-entity to Oscar; remember he'd been a nominee in the writing category for sex, lies and videotape).
First one that comes to mind is Terence Malick. But though he has a cult following, it seems unlikely to reach the critical mass required for a "he's due" feeling to pervade Hollywood like it apparently did for Scorsesen Polanski, the Coens (helped that the latter two made films received as well or nearly as well as anything in their careers, and that Scorsese finally had a bona fide commercial hit - if a Malick film were to even come in sniffing distance of $100 million it'd have to be a serious contender, but that seems even less likely than a Lynch film grossing that much.)
Other prior nominees I'd personally like to see win an Oscar, if they're ever able to make a film ranking with their best work again: Peter Bogdanovich, Jane Campion, M. Night Shyamalan, Kenneth Branagh.
You may or may not be aware that a faction of fanboys have been calling for Ridley Scott to get an Oscar soon, taking it up as a cause like the one behind Scorsese in the years before his win. Yeah, I think they're crazy. But there may be support for this kind of an idea in Hollywood.
Peter Weir seems more feasible; his nominations (4 of his last 7 films earned him nominations) don't feel so much like something only that kooky directors' branch can get behind; instead they seem like something the wider voters would have seriously considered, and he might have won by now if there weren't other nominees just a bit better liked in the years he was in the race. I don't know if his next project Shadow Divers is going to be the kind of thing that will turn the Academy's head or not, but it might.
Gus Van Sant seems worth mentioning in this context; has he left behind the style of filmmaking that gave him his one Oscar nomination? Reports from the set of Milk are that it was not shot the way his Bela Tarr-inspired films have been. From this unseen position, it seems like as likely an Oscar contender as any other candidate.
Of course, there's no reason to assume that the trend of honoring directors with an established nomination record is going to hold. The Academy could easily go back to the mode of giving the directing Oscar to a first-time nominee, like Cuaron, particularly if he or she is seen as established and due (I don't really buy your classification of Soderbergh prior to 2000 as a non-entity to Oscar; remember he'd been a nominee in the writing category for sex, lies and videotape).
Looking at some of the new talent that has popped up this past year, I think Sarah Polley has it in her to create some daring, interesting work in the years to come, especially if she sticks with adapting rich material she's passionate about. Besides the outstanding short fiction of Alice Munro, which could honestly provide us with scripts for the next decade, it's so rich, I'd love for her to tackle some Lorrie Moore or even an expanded Flannery O'Connor piece.
Ditto Ben Affleck, who created one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in recent memory this past year with Gone Baby Gone.
I'd add Spike Jonze to your shortlist. I think Being John Malkovich and Adaptation were brilliant and daring pieces of filmmaking telling stories I'd never heard before.
Edited By flipp525 on 1214945603
Ditto Ben Affleck, who created one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in recent memory this past year with Gone Baby Gone.
I'd add Spike Jonze to your shortlist. I think Being John Malkovich and Adaptation were brilliant and daring pieces of filmmaking telling stories I'd never heard before.
Edited By flipp525 on 1214945603
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
If Paul Greencrap ever wins an Oscar, I'll blast the Academy with "Dancing Queen" on endless repeat.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
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Mister Tee
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My god, it's sluggish around here. The summer movies are too…summery; the election is four months off. So, what will we talk about? Herein, my attempt to spark a little conversation with some questions that have been passing through my mind:
Will a serious movie ever get to blockbuster status again?
You or I may think c.$80 million for a Coen brothers movie whose ending weirded out even its partisan is pretty special, but Dave Poland has refused it entry in the blockbuster category -- $100 million being required for that. Which got me to thinking: is it even possible for a seriously-intended movie to cross that barrier anymore? Obviously, not that long ago, we had such animals -- Saving Private Ryan, American Beauty, Traffic all went substantially beyond the century mark. But the last serious films to make it (The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby) barely managed the feat (I don't count The Departed; good as it was, it was marketed as a genre piece). Since then, Brokeback fell short (it might have made it had it not been Crash-ed at the Oscars), and things like There Will Be Blood don't even approach.
Isn't part of the reason the shortened release window? The movies that make the most money now are those that open with gaudy first weekends -- often making 1/3 to 1/2 their final gross in those first three days. Serious movies -- especially those opening in Oscar season -- play a different game: opening at first two theatres, then a dozen, then thirty, finally going wide with nominations, and achieving decent grosses that are expected to hold week-over-week, rather than crash and burn (a la Hulk or even Indiana Jones). The question is, if such films are going into DVD at the same three-month-or-less rate as the disposable films, how will they ever achieve the kind of holdover numbers Hollywood and Dave Poland respect? Have we seen the last of this breed? And what does that mean?
Whatever happened to the original screenplay?
I finally finished off this year's nominees for best original script, and concluded that, given the options, I'd have voted "No". Actually, if pressed, I'd probably have opted for The Savages, but not without significant reservations (both it and Lars seemed to me movies that used especially fine performances to gloss over less than stellar writing). But it strikes me the problem goes deeper: it really hasn't been much of a decade for original screenplays. Things began well enough (for me, anyway) with Almost Famous and the losing Memento. But most of the choices/runners-up since have been flimsy (Juno and Miss Sunshine), foreign (Talk to Her/Y Tu Mama), or more in the service of directorial vision than writing per se (Gosford Park, Lost in Translation, Good Night and Good Luck). The one obvious exception is Eternal Sunshine -- the decade's finest original, by far -- but what would you say is the best script in the 3 1/2 years since? I'd have to swallow hard and offer The Queen, which is 1) only original by the weaselly Academy definition and 2) more like a top-drawer HBO movie than original cinema.
This, it seems to me, represents a dramatic fall-off from the 90s, which were surely as exciting a decade as the category has ever had. Winning scripts were ground-breaking (Thelma and Louise, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, Fargo), or, at least, extraordinary pieces of craft (Shakespeare in Love, The Usual Suspects). And look at the list of losers -- Unforgiven, Husbands and Wives, Lone Star, Being John Malkovich (Happiness and Groundhog Day couldn't even get nominations). I'd gladly take even some of the lightweight losers -- Four Weddings and a Funeral, Jerry Maguire -- over the last two years' choices. What's behind this depreciation? Is it symptomatic of the fall of Weinstein, the marginalization of indies? Or is it just a blip, with new and exciting scripts on their way?
What other auteur directors are there to honor?
As I see it, there have been four fairly distinct eras in the history of the best director award. The first, running from the founding of the Academy to, essentially, 1969, was the studio era. During these years, studio fare of course dominated the category (and the Oscars in general), and, despite the blackballing of visionaries (Welles etc.) and some latter-day auteurist favorites (Hawks, Hitchcock), and, perhaps, the over-rewarding middle-roaders like Stevens, Wyler and Zinnemann, the Academy managed to come up with prizes for plenty of directors who maintain respect even in retrospect -- Borzage, Capra, Ford, McCarey, Wilder, Huston, Mankiewicz, Lean, Minnelli, Cukor, Reed. They not only honored these directors, they saw to it that most got multiple nominations; many of them didn't win until their second or third times out in the competition.
This set-up changed dramatically in 1970, when a new era kicked in: the post-studio/pre-conglomerate period. During this time -- which stretched over 20 years -- winners were by and large first-time nominees (two-thirds of those between 1970 and 1991), often scoring for their first, name-making successes. And they often had rather undistinguished careers on the whole. For every Fosse/Coppola/Allen/Demme, there was a Schaffner/Friedkin/Avildsen, or an actor on holiday. Even many of those directors who won on their second or third tries were not major artists, but journeymen -- George Roy Hill, Sydney Pollack -- while, to the despair of some of us, Kubrick and Altman went unrewarded (and Mazursky, DePalma, Kaufman and Gilliam failed to score even nominations, other than as writers). The very idea of the Oscar rewarding the best, dubious in all circumstances, came to seem utterly false in this category.
The decade following, '92 to '01, was schizophrenic. There were still up-from-nowhere winners -- Minghella, Mendes, Soderbergh (the latter of course famous in indie circles, but a complete non-entity in Oscar terms). In other years, however, the Academy found a way to honor its perennial money-makers, giving prizes to Eastwood, Spielberg, Zemeckis, Cameron and Howard. The very thought of the last three winning makes me ill, but the first two were far more in line with the pre-1970 tradition -- of honoring the most famous and gifted directors of the era.
Then, unexpectedly, the dam broke. Instead of going by rote for Rob Marshall as part of a Chicago best picture sweep, or opting to sentimentally reward Martin Scorsese for less than his best work, voters in '02 surprised us by choosing long-time-deserving Roman Polanski. This inaugurated a six-year winning streak for directors with solid resumes and multiple nominations -- Jackson, Eastwood (a repeater, but coming off a losing nomination), Ang Lee, Scorsese, the Coens. All tolled, as strong a string of winners as the Oscars have ever seen -- and, finally, recognition on an annual basis of the best talent working in films.
The question: who is there to follow in this blazed path? Who among those who've had nominations in the past do you see as worthy to continue the tradition? Altman and Kubrick are gone; Lynch seems too bizarre to enter Oscar territory except by total accident. Cuaron would be my easy choice, but he's yet to score his first nod, so he misses the criteria. I guess if I had to pick, I'd say Paul Thomas Anderson and Paul Greengrass are my two candidates for the honor in the years just ahead. Who would anyone else like to see?
Will a serious movie ever get to blockbuster status again?
You or I may think c.$80 million for a Coen brothers movie whose ending weirded out even its partisan is pretty special, but Dave Poland has refused it entry in the blockbuster category -- $100 million being required for that. Which got me to thinking: is it even possible for a seriously-intended movie to cross that barrier anymore? Obviously, not that long ago, we had such animals -- Saving Private Ryan, American Beauty, Traffic all went substantially beyond the century mark. But the last serious films to make it (The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby) barely managed the feat (I don't count The Departed; good as it was, it was marketed as a genre piece). Since then, Brokeback fell short (it might have made it had it not been Crash-ed at the Oscars), and things like There Will Be Blood don't even approach.
Isn't part of the reason the shortened release window? The movies that make the most money now are those that open with gaudy first weekends -- often making 1/3 to 1/2 their final gross in those first three days. Serious movies -- especially those opening in Oscar season -- play a different game: opening at first two theatres, then a dozen, then thirty, finally going wide with nominations, and achieving decent grosses that are expected to hold week-over-week, rather than crash and burn (a la Hulk or even Indiana Jones). The question is, if such films are going into DVD at the same three-month-or-less rate as the disposable films, how will they ever achieve the kind of holdover numbers Hollywood and Dave Poland respect? Have we seen the last of this breed? And what does that mean?
Whatever happened to the original screenplay?
I finally finished off this year's nominees for best original script, and concluded that, given the options, I'd have voted "No". Actually, if pressed, I'd probably have opted for The Savages, but not without significant reservations (both it and Lars seemed to me movies that used especially fine performances to gloss over less than stellar writing). But it strikes me the problem goes deeper: it really hasn't been much of a decade for original screenplays. Things began well enough (for me, anyway) with Almost Famous and the losing Memento. But most of the choices/runners-up since have been flimsy (Juno and Miss Sunshine), foreign (Talk to Her/Y Tu Mama), or more in the service of directorial vision than writing per se (Gosford Park, Lost in Translation, Good Night and Good Luck). The one obvious exception is Eternal Sunshine -- the decade's finest original, by far -- but what would you say is the best script in the 3 1/2 years since? I'd have to swallow hard and offer The Queen, which is 1) only original by the weaselly Academy definition and 2) more like a top-drawer HBO movie than original cinema.
This, it seems to me, represents a dramatic fall-off from the 90s, which were surely as exciting a decade as the category has ever had. Winning scripts were ground-breaking (Thelma and Louise, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, Fargo), or, at least, extraordinary pieces of craft (Shakespeare in Love, The Usual Suspects). And look at the list of losers -- Unforgiven, Husbands and Wives, Lone Star, Being John Malkovich (Happiness and Groundhog Day couldn't even get nominations). I'd gladly take even some of the lightweight losers -- Four Weddings and a Funeral, Jerry Maguire -- over the last two years' choices. What's behind this depreciation? Is it symptomatic of the fall of Weinstein, the marginalization of indies? Or is it just a blip, with new and exciting scripts on their way?
What other auteur directors are there to honor?
As I see it, there have been four fairly distinct eras in the history of the best director award. The first, running from the founding of the Academy to, essentially, 1969, was the studio era. During these years, studio fare of course dominated the category (and the Oscars in general), and, despite the blackballing of visionaries (Welles etc.) and some latter-day auteurist favorites (Hawks, Hitchcock), and, perhaps, the over-rewarding middle-roaders like Stevens, Wyler and Zinnemann, the Academy managed to come up with prizes for plenty of directors who maintain respect even in retrospect -- Borzage, Capra, Ford, McCarey, Wilder, Huston, Mankiewicz, Lean, Minnelli, Cukor, Reed. They not only honored these directors, they saw to it that most got multiple nominations; many of them didn't win until their second or third times out in the competition.
This set-up changed dramatically in 1970, when a new era kicked in: the post-studio/pre-conglomerate period. During this time -- which stretched over 20 years -- winners were by and large first-time nominees (two-thirds of those between 1970 and 1991), often scoring for their first, name-making successes. And they often had rather undistinguished careers on the whole. For every Fosse/Coppola/Allen/Demme, there was a Schaffner/Friedkin/Avildsen, or an actor on holiday. Even many of those directors who won on their second or third tries were not major artists, but journeymen -- George Roy Hill, Sydney Pollack -- while, to the despair of some of us, Kubrick and Altman went unrewarded (and Mazursky, DePalma, Kaufman and Gilliam failed to score even nominations, other than as writers). The very idea of the Oscar rewarding the best, dubious in all circumstances, came to seem utterly false in this category.
The decade following, '92 to '01, was schizophrenic. There were still up-from-nowhere winners -- Minghella, Mendes, Soderbergh (the latter of course famous in indie circles, but a complete non-entity in Oscar terms). In other years, however, the Academy found a way to honor its perennial money-makers, giving prizes to Eastwood, Spielberg, Zemeckis, Cameron and Howard. The very thought of the last three winning makes me ill, but the first two were far more in line with the pre-1970 tradition -- of honoring the most famous and gifted directors of the era.
Then, unexpectedly, the dam broke. Instead of going by rote for Rob Marshall as part of a Chicago best picture sweep, or opting to sentimentally reward Martin Scorsese for less than his best work, voters in '02 surprised us by choosing long-time-deserving Roman Polanski. This inaugurated a six-year winning streak for directors with solid resumes and multiple nominations -- Jackson, Eastwood (a repeater, but coming off a losing nomination), Ang Lee, Scorsese, the Coens. All tolled, as strong a string of winners as the Oscars have ever seen -- and, finally, recognition on an annual basis of the best talent working in films.
The question: who is there to follow in this blazed path? Who among those who've had nominations in the past do you see as worthy to continue the tradition? Altman and Kubrick are gone; Lynch seems too bizarre to enter Oscar territory except by total accident. Cuaron would be my easy choice, but he's yet to score his first nod, so he misses the criteria. I guess if I had to pick, I'd say Paul Thomas Anderson and Paul Greengrass are my two candidates for the honor in the years just ahead. Who would anyone else like to see?