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mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:17 pm The thing that fascinates me about Beasts of the Southern Wild is that its now Oscar nominated director hasn't made anything since.

My understanding is that he has worked on other things, just not features.

mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:17 pm The thing that fascinates me about Beasts of the Southern Wild is that its now Oscar nominated director hasn't made anything since.

Well he's got a film in post production, but he's probably just been through development hell on multiple projects, but was getting paid through that process for all the films that didn't make it, and since he's also a writer, he may have also been sought to do uncredited rewrites on various projects over the years.

Anyone who willingly gives that guy money deserves to be taken for a ride

tenia wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:48 pm Joke aside, it's a real question I'm wondering myself. I'm quite certain the idea behind these 5 additionnal slots were to make sure good movies usually left out were now selected, but I never had the feeling it actually worked this way.

I think the idea behind it was a lot more cynical than this: the Academy wanted more people to be invested in their horse race, both within the industry and in the community at large (i.e. generating advertising revenue by watching the broadcast). Making room for big popular films (that might otherwise not be nominated) in the headline category does that job, and inoculates them from criticism for being elitist or 'out of step with audiences', and the side-effect of including a handful of small films that might otherwise be overlooked inoculates them from criticism for pandering. At least until they make a transparent, doofus move like announcing a "best popular film" category.

Precious is a really bad film imo, not because it's harrowing, but because I remember it being really misguided.
But again haven't watched in years and since I hate Lee Daniels I don't see myself rewatching it anytime soon.

zedz wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 6:52 pm

tenia wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:48 pm Joke aside, it's a real question I'm wondering myself. I'm quite certain the idea behind these 5 additionnal slots were to make sure good movies usually left out were now selected, but I never had the feeling it actually worked this way.

I think the idea behind it was a lot more cynical than this: the Academy wanted more people to be invested in their horse race, both within the industry and in the community at large (i.e. generating advertising revenue by watching the broadcast). Making room for big popular films (that might otherwise not be nominated) in the headline category does that job, and inoculates them from criticism for being elitist or 'out of step with audiences', and the side-effect of including a handful of small films that might otherwise be overlooked inoculates them from criticism for pandering. At least until they make a transparent, doofus move like announcing a "best popular film" category.

Ironically, the actual Best Picture winners tend to be more and more 'elitist'. SInce the field was expanded, only two winners have grossed $100 million+ in North America. Every winner from Rain Man up to and including Million Dollar Baby either grossed at least $100 million in North America or grossed at least $200 million worldwide even if it didn't achieve the former feat.

dda1996a wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 7:21 pm Precious is a really bad film imo, not because it's harrowing, but because I remember it being really misguided.
But again haven't watched in years and since I hate Lee Daniels I don't see myself rewatching it anytime soon.

Fair enough. I guess I could see how some people would be less forgiving towards what I guess is borderline torture porn than towards the run-of-the-mill forgettable Best Pic nominee. But then quite a few supposedly forgettable middlebrow Oscar bait films turn out to be quite a bit more when you watch them several decades removed, even if they may have seemed like bait at the time (i.e. A Room with a View and Howards End). Maybe the Ivory films are "middlebrow Oscar bait" films that transcend the genre of the "middlebrow Oscar bait" film, since on the surface they have all the makings of such but are quite a bit more complex when you dig deeper. That is if we treat "Awards bait" as a genre with its own conventions that can be subverted and transcended just like horror or the western.

I'm actually interested in watching those Ivory films because they sound interesting enough. I'm all for films that sound like Oscar bait but turn out not to be so, even though they are few.
But to reply to you, I hate Theory of Everything and Incredibly Loud way more.
Also just watched Bohemian Rhapsody, what an awful film. And I love Queen. Can't believe it's nominated for BP...

I suspect the reason Ivory still works, after all he was nominated just last year, is that there's a real dangerous progressive streak to their austere style. Ironically their most successful films are some of their most outre featuring nudity and strong social criticism. A part of Howard's End is that the English had many of the same structures in place as the Nazis. It is just happenstance that they were against them.

Referring to the Merchant Ivory films as "Oscar bait" seems like kind of a low blow, since they have a long and distinguished career that long pre-dates Oscar attention.

The Theory of Everything is a much better example, a movie made with utter indifference towards its subject material that seems to exist only as a strategy to win awards.

Paywalled

Whoops... let's see if I can find it elsewhere and fix the link.

Just try turning on private browsing or a different browser or device and see if that works. The NYT only allows 5 free articles per month, but that’s easily worked around by trying any of the above.

Truly great read.

I like his reading of Driving Miss Daisy as an S+M relationship based around getting off on southern hospitality, but I don't think he understands the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Still, Morris raises some interesting questions about the filmic depiction of transactional friendships between whites and non-whites, and does so without wholly writing off many of his examples (going into the article, I didn't expect I liked Driving Miss Daisy less than Morris!)

EDIT: After some thought, I retract my pre-edit criticism of his Do the Right Thing comments-- they're of a piece with his argument

I would have been interested in a more thorough reading of how BlacKkKlansman fits into the transactional racial dynamic and the trend of isolating black protagonists from their community; as much as I like the movie, it could be interpreted as falling into many of the same potholes Morris identifies in Daisy and Green Book. At the same time, the film's explosive final moments are certainly more provocative than anything in those more conventional films, almost like Lee used just enough of the trappings and rhythms of a racial narrative his audience could be comfortable with to lull them into complacency before punching them in the face. Morris' brief mention of Lee's latest focuses on that finale, but I would have liked to hear what he thought of the rest of the film in the context of the rest of the essay.

BlacKkKlansman is very safe until it isn't and that's what makes it's ending so shocking. It's not jovial in the slightest and it's upfront nature, particularly with the realization that White Supremecy actually hurts society in general (It is of course dedicated to Heather Heyer, a white victim.) and that nasty clip of Trump saying that these chuds are fine people next to Mitch McConnel's wife (Who is of Asian descent.) only adds icing to the cake. I was deeply upset in the theater and for good reason. I was supposed to be.

The more I think about it, the more I like BlacKkKlansman and...none of these other films

None of the other nominated films or none of the others in Morris' essay?

Current Oscar nominees

My only issue with Blackkklansman is that it's ending and what came before it are related, but it's like putting a Claire Denis or Walkabout ending at the end of Foxy Brown. It made me realize even more how weightless I found what came before that bombshell of an ending. I still rather like it but it really does pale in comparison to the power of 25th Hour, He Got Game and Clockers as a whole (Malcolm and Do the Right are obviously on an entire different ballpark).

Cremildo wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 11:18 pmWhy not Cold War?

I suspect Cold War would be a stronger candidate if it hadn't been for the fact that a black-and-white Academy-framed Polish film directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and set in the decade or so after WWII hadn't already won a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Certainly, my Polish friends are being pessimistic for this specific reason (although they were delighted by the other two noms).

True, I used the same argument to predict that The Salesman wouldn't win (A Separation being the earlier example there), but I'm not entirely convinced that the Oscar for the later film wasn't a teensy bit politically motivated - and there's no equivalent with Cold War that I can see.

How was Cold War even nominated for Best Director? I didn't think it had such a strong campaign. Does it mean that most people voted for it or can it be that just a few people voted for it but placed it high on their lists?

As a thread in the lists project subforum can attest, the Directors branch has a long and storied history of getting one random cool pick that doesn’t get into other major categories, like Lynch for Mulholland Drive and Almodovar for Talk to Her