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Cremildo wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:23 pm WGA nominations

The exclusion of First Reformed for the sake of Green Book, Vice, and A Quiet Place is absurd to the point of comical.

Do the voting members of the WGA vote based on liking scripts they think they could/would write themselves?

The whiteboard in A Quiet Place > the diary in First Reformed

You can't rip pages out of a whiteboard!

Creature

- Blind
- Attacks sound
- Armor
- How many in area??

My hands shake as I write these lines.

I'm wondering if Paul's Facebook posts had anything to do with him being dropped seemingly everywhere. I mean Viggo Mortenson dropping the N word at a panel didn't make Green Book any less of a contender. I just don't understand. Perhaps the brain worms are at it again.

Maybe Schrader genuinely doesn't give a shit about the Oscars, and/or A24 has really dropped the ball this year in terms of campaigning their films.

Also, and this is important, it just didn't make Oscar money. With that gross oscar success was always going to be a long shot. Even for Original Screenplay which is a category more low gross friendly you have to go to 2010 to find anything that grossed in the same range (Another Year also grossed less than 5 mil).

Big Ben wrote: Tue Jan 08, 2019 4:26 pmThe Awards are actually important to me for one reason. Winners usually finally get dumped into my local theater months after everyone else has seen them. I agree about the validity of award shows being questionable but strictly speaking I cannot say they're all bad.

Plus at some level everyone here loves the drama surrounding the show itself even though some of you will deny it.

I only watch the Oscars for the dresses! (And Helen Mirren in ever wackier situations)

On tenia's comments, Can You Ever Forgive Me? appears to not be out in cinemas in the UK until the beginning of February, although that has not stopped it from being nominated for adapted screenplay and Richard E. Grant's supporting performance for this years BAFTAs! (interesting to note Peterloo's complete absence from the BAFTA nominations, though great to see Apostasy nominated in the British Debut Film category)

I found A Quiet Place so dumb it's pleasing to see people ranting on this element, looking at how well it has otherwise been received.

colinr0380 wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 8:12 am (interesting to note Peterloo's complete absence from the BAFTA nominations, though great to see Apostasy nominated in the British Debut Film category)

I don't think the BAFTAs have ever been that keen on Mike Leigh and the film flopped at the box office. Don't know what the critical reception was like but it was one of my favourite films of the year.

I'm rather dismayed that Rupert Everett's passion project The Happy Prince failed to get a single nomination. I really did expect a Best Actor or Best British Film but zilch.

The critical reception of Peterloo was pretty lukewarm, as I recall, and a quick glance at its current 65% on Rotten Tomatoes would appear to back that up.

New piece in Vulture: Paul Schrader on his Oscar hopes (spoilers for First Reformed within the interview)

Paul Schrader wrote:You’ve never been nominated for an Oscar. That’s kind of strange.
You know, you can’t really dwell on that. I remember saying to Marty [Scorsese] at one point — ‘cause he was all obsessed with that — I said, “If your priority is to get an Oscar, you need a new priority.”

I guess that explains some of his output. I caught Gangs of New York the other day, and a good chunk of it sure feels that way...

knives wrote: Tue Jan 08, 2019 11:46 pm Also, and this is important, it just didn't make Oscar money. With that gross oscar success was always going to be a long shot. Even for Original Screenplay which is a category more low gross friendly you have to go to 2010 to find anything that grossed in the same range (Another Year also grossed less than 5 mil).

Yeah, due to this and just the nature of the film itself, I initially had no expectations of any sort of awards recognition for First Reformed. I guess its dominance amongst critical circles gave me some false hope. The WGA nominations are utterly confounding to me but I haven't paid a lot of attention to them in the past, maybe they're always this hopeless.

Even if you don't love Roma and have some bones to pick with Netflix, you do have to love how they're kind of challenging/bypassing the gross-driven paradigm--even if Cuaron's cache is mostly to thank in terms of the recognition. Will be fascinating to see what happens with some of Netflix's upcoming high-profile films, like the Scorsese.

mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 5:01 pm New piece in Vulture: Paul Schrader on his Oscar hopes (spoilers for First Reformed within the interview)

Paul Schrader wrote:You’ve never been nominated for an Oscar. That’s kind of strange.
You know, you can’t really dwell on that. I remember saying to Marty [Scorsese] at one point — ‘cause he was all obsessed with that — I said, “If your priority is to get an Oscar, you need a new priority.”

Some great Pauline Kael anecdotes in that interview as well, in Schrader’s inimitable voice.

Just catching up with the BAFTAs, which thankfully are much more predictive of the Academy than the Golden Globes, and have a better set of nominations than several of the Guilds (especially DGA). Shout out to Beast, one of my favorite sleepers of 2018, for the Outstanding British Film nomination.

BlackkKlansman – Spike Lee
Cold War – Pawel Pawlikowski
The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos
Roma – Alfonso Cuaron
A Star Is Born – Bradley Cooper

Would be very happy if these ended up being the Oscar noms. More than one pundit was predicting Pawlikowski as a dark horse for Best Director Oscar nom and I thought they were nuts, but now...

I just don't get all the love for Bradley Cooper for a competently-made, dreadfully overlong remake. I guess $400 million worldwide helps.

It was one of the more impressively competent first features in a while, I get it. Cold War was a very pretty arthouse film, but if one of those is getting nominated, why not First Reformed, which looked even better (and arguably was even better)? And despite my feeling that the film looked pretty bad and that the direction sort of detracted from the overall product because of his more tiresome tendencies, I'd much rather see Lanthimos than most in this category.

But the real shame is that Barry Jenkins knocked a soulful film that's brimming with gorgeous Demme homage out of the park a year after Demme's death, and it has just landed with an utter thud, being completely ignored. I know he lost Best Director last time, but I figured he'd easily made his case for being one of the mainstays of that category for years to come.

Looks like the Academy Awards will go without a host this year, which is probably for the best anyway. If they can cycle through a few big names presenting different segments every half-hour or so and get the show wrapped up in under three hours, maybe this'll be the new normal.

They should use this model going forward, there is absolutely no reason to bog the show down with a host in this day and age

Homosexuals hate themselves, therefore they must project that hate unto everyone else.

Who says modern discourse is dead?

I thought we had moved on from the Paul Schrader interview

mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 5:01 pm New piece in Vulture: Paul Schrader on his Oscar hopes (spoilers for First Reformed within the interview)

Paul Schrader wrote:You’ve never been nominated for an Oscar. That’s kind of strange.
You know, you can’t really dwell on that. I remember saying to Marty [Scorsese] at one point — ‘cause he was all obsessed with that — I said, “If your priority is to get an Oscar, you need a new priority.”

What a great interview gifted to a very slow-on-the-take interviewer.

Film Twitter has just found an anti-Muslim tweet from the screenwriter of Green Book from a few years ago. This is going to be a complete mess.