OSCARS - Acadamy Awards !! - do we even care???

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I actually don't mind that he won. He was very charming in the film. Just think it's asinine the film ever got so much attention. Well not even attention actually, but prestige. It's really no different at all from those OSS films which I'm sure nobody (perhaps rightly) still gives two shits about.
 
corianderstem said:
Eh. I didn't see what the fuss was about for Moneyball or Tree of Life. (Although I liked Moneyball. I just don't see what was so great about it.)

I am happy I watched Moneyball after Tree of Life, so I could let Brad Pitt the regular guy wipe away the memory of Brad Pitt the asshole dad.
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Brad Pitt was the only quality of Tree of Life that kept my attention. Yeah, he was saddled with a tough character to empathize with, but for me he succeeded.

Crystal's got French jokes!
 
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I do like Meryl. She seems very down to earth and is usually good for a laugh when she gets up to talk.

And she's living up to that already. Ha!
 
I must be crazy, as I don't think Streep's ever been any good really. But I don't care a great deal about actors. Or maybe it's just because she's never in interesting movies, so fuck her.

Also, I happen to think Mara looks fantastic tonight, :shrug:
 
It's just cool to me that the Academy can separate individual performances from the rest of the cast. That was a challenge in this case.

Plus, Meryl Streep. Yes, she's good at acting.
 
The stuff I've heard about Rooney's performance is what's making me want to see the movie. I didn't want to at first because I'd seen the Swedish version and had no desire to watch the brutal stuff again. But I heard she's amazing in it.

Well, and there's Daniel Craig, which doesn't hurt.
 
She really is great in it. Craig is something of a revelation, even though he's basically playing a similar role as he always tends to. Nuanced the shit out of that shit. Also Fincher's version is really more a film about process and information than a film about a mystery or a rape or murder, or even characters. Meaning it's surely different enough from the Swedish version once you really dig in to it to be worth checking out. And I found the brutal stuff to be really tastefully rendered.
 
the best pictures noms
without any other wins are weird

so it was really only a two horse race with Hugo and The Artist.
 
corianderstem said:
The stuff I've heard about Rooney's performance is what's making me want to see the movie. I didn't want to at first because I'd seen the Swedish version and had no desire to watch the brutal stuff again. But I heard she's amazing in it.

Well, and there's Daniel Craig, which doesn't hurt.
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She is great in it and I thought Craig was a better Blomqvist.
 
Lancemc said:
She really is great in it. Craig is something of a revelation, even though he's basically playing a similar role as he always tends to. Nuanced the shit out of that shit. Also Fincher's version is really more a film about process and information than a film about a mystery or a rape or murder, or even characters. Meaning it's surely different enough from the Swedish version once you really dig in to it to be worth checking out. And I found the brutal stuff to be really tastefully rendered.
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Cool, thanks. I'll definitely check it out when it's on DVD.

trojanchick99 said:
She is great in it and I thought Craig was a better Blomqvist.
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That must not be too hard; the guy in the Swedish version was so very dull.
 
I was in LA over the holidays and saw the ridiculous huge newspaper ads they take out jockeying for the Academy's attention.

I guess Weinstein's got the panache.
 
Lancemc said:
I must be crazy, as I don't think Streep's ever been any good really. But I don't care a great deal about actors. Or maybe it's just because she's never in interesting movies, so fuck her.

Also, I happen to think Mara looks fantastic tonight, :shrug:
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I feel the same way. I think Meryl is a great talent and she's charming when she gives speeches or interviews. But unlike other great actresses like Kidman, Winslet, Blanchett, she rarely seems to seek out talented directors to actually make interesting films. Which tells me she's more interested in gimmicky performances where she can tackle another accent than producing great art.

Fuck, the only film she's done in the last 10 years that's even worth thinking about is Adaptation. Maybe Prairie Home Companion but that's pushing it. And what's weird is that she was championing some really interesting indie/foreign films and their lead actresses in her Golden Globes speech. I know she's older but I'm sure there are people who would love to work with her on something smaller and edgier.
 
Lancemc said:
Glad that Artist guy got himself a nice statue for poorly recreating things that were great 60 years ago.
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A friend on another site who's a big cinephile including silent films wrote an impressive defense of the film, focusing particularly on the first scene:

For instance, what about the way in which the first scene is staged makes you TRULY realize what it means that you’re gonna watch a silent film?

Think about it for a few seconds: you know this film is silent, so you enter the theatre assuming it without much thought. But then the movie starts and you HEAR what you’re WATCHING: an orchestra playing music in a theatre. From that very moment the film is already toying with your perception in a skilled way, because it will work anyways: if you’re an alert viewer, you’ll start wondering soon if you’re really watching a silent film or not, because you’re hearing what you’re watching. But even if you haven’t noticed this, you’ll soon do: in the movie within the movie, the words “The End” appear, and the orchestra stops playing (you see them stop, and you hear them stop). You see the tense faces expecting the audience’s reaction and YOU are expecting that reaction. There’s no way to stop yourself from expecting to HEAR the clapping, because you’ve been hearing the orchestra. You’ve been programmed to expect applause after an orchestra stops playing and the filmmaker is toying with that, having made you watch and hear an orchestra at the same time. So, even if you in that moment rationalize and anticipate that you won’t hear the applause because you remember you’re watching a silent film, your body unconsciously expects the sound of clapping. Then you DON’T hear it but just watch it in the faces of Dujardin and his workmates. In that very moment it’s when it really sinks in you the fact that you’re watching a silent film, when your body has been physically and unconsciously guided to expect a certain sound and you don’t hear it.

That whole set up, that whole opening, is brilliant. The filmmakers aren’t just filming a story without a sound: they’ve come up with a way to start that story that will make physically, startlingly aware of what it will mean to watch a silent film. And it doesn’t feel artificial, but completely integral to the film given that the context is entirely plausible for a story about a silent film star (it’s so integral to the plot that some don’t even realize what brilliant, witty visual storytelling it is). The movie, the supposedly conventional story that is just any story but told without sound, doesn’t open with any scene, the story opens with a scene conceived in visual ways so to make you physically aware of what it really means to watch a silent film here and now, when our body is programmed to expect certain things when watching a movie. They’re saying “yeah, you knew this movie was silent when you entered the theatre… but now you’re really gonna feel and be aware of what it means, you’ll be aware of how much you’re programmed to expect sound in movies, and you’re gonna really feel what it was to be used to express yourself (for Dujardin) in silent terms. From that moment you understand all the weight sound or lack of it will have in our story and in our protagonist.

So, really, from the first scene the film is not just taking out the sound and filming in black and white. From the first scene there’s a thoroughly thought-out movie in which the fact that it’s silent is nt just a random stylistic choice, but a condition you have to be physically aware of so to better understand the world the protagonist’s been inhabiting.


Some good points. It's not worthy of a Best Picture win, but it was still creatively mounted. And I could name like five BP winners in the last ten years that are less deserving, so there's that.
 
I was pretty meh about Oscars and the whole awards season this year; maybe a good thing after last year when The King's Speech steamrolled over The Social Network and I wanted to throw something at TV. Angelina Jolie's arms were scary. Really loved Christopher Plummer's acceptance speech. Pretty happy for Meryl Streep even though the movie itself was very average. I actually had no idea that one of the Flight of the Conchords guys was nominated; I was like holy crap Bret McKenzie just won an Oscar :D Most of the humour fell flat to me but then I was rather severely underslept. Thank god they got rid of those cloying introductions by five different people for the acting categories.
 
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