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This year Academy Awards' nominations:
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius
The Descendants – Jim Burke, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Scott Rudin
The Help – Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan
Hugo – Graham King, Martin Scorsese and Johnny Depp
Midnight in Paris – Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum
Moneyball – Michael De Luca, Rachel Horowitz and Brad Pitt
The Tree of Life – to be determined[8]
War Horse – Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy
I haven't heard of any of these. And I hate that
Comments
>The Help
I've only heard of The Artist (which is that silent film) and War Horse (mostly because the novel is by a British author and the play ran for ages in London). I wish I could get round to seeing more films.
I've heard of about half of them. The Help is the only one that actively enrages me because I find it a teensy bit offensive to imply the American Black Civil Rights Movement wasn't started by black people who wanted equality but by a petty rich white girl trying to get back at her mom.
The only one I've seen of those is Midnight in Paris, which was quite good.
I've heard of War Horse. It sounds interesting. I might check it out.
I've also heard of The Artist, which to me kinda sounds like a movie constructed from the ground up to win Best Picture, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it win.
^Wow, really? Ew.
Midnight in Paris was fantastic. I actually think it should win.
God, I barely went to the movies at all this year... =(
Yeah, Midnight in Paris is one I'd root for even if I had seen any of the other ones. Probably >.>
I'm only checking the synopses on wikipedia right now, and...
...there are no words for how much i'm laughing at how cliché this is
Well, that's because the summary up to that point hasn't even mentioned the premise.
Honestly, 2011 wasn't that great a year for film...
ah, come on, I mean
>Woody Allen
>Romantic Comedy
>Small group of American tourists visiting Europe
>Screenwriter
>Realizes that his relationship might not be stable.
I mean, it's almost as if Woody Allen had picked all of his movies and decided to just make a list of common elements and make a movie around it. Of course, I don't intend to judge the movie because of this, and it seems that it actually strays from Woody Allen's MO by trying to do something different than Vicky Christina Barcelona (Or, as I call it, "Two hours of wankery about spain and a batshit insane Penelope Cruz")
Yeah, the start of it is set up to look like a cliche-fest, but then the protagonist either starts time travelling or goes insane due to his unstable relationship, depending on how you interpret it.
And beyond that...well, spoilers.
So is this one of those years where we bitch about the Oscars being populist bullshit awarding overhyped summer blockbusters that pander to the lowest common denominator, or are we going to bitch about how out of touch the Oscars are with the common man and how they always nominate artsy movies that no one actually saw?
No, this is the year where we bitch about my theater chain sucking ass and not letting me watch any of these movies so I could form an opinion on the nominees.
My mom liked Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Myrm - The problem with modern cinema is exactly that it's getting so there are only big, dumb blockbusters and obscure arty films; what you're talking about is a symptom of that. There used to be such a thing as the intelligent Hollywood film, but it's getting harder and harder to find.
Agreed. This whole dichotomy between smart movies and spectacle films is just freaking annoying. Especially because there are movies that manage to balance both aspects and still be succesful at being an spectacle film with a degree of intelligence (See: Chris Nolan's entire work)
Also, the first Rambo.
Most people haven't actually seen it and don't understand, but the first Rambo film is actually a pretty decent reflection on PTSD.
I would have been more happy had Drive, A Spearation, or Melancholia been nominated for Best Picture. Cave of Forgotten Dreams not being up for Best Documentary Feature is also fairly disappointing. Still, I'll be happy if The Artist, Hugo, or The Tree of Life wins.
^^ Was the first Rambo released in the past two decades? If it wasn't, then irrelevant. >
I'd like to see War Horse and Hugo, though. And maybe Moneyball.
You should probably see Hugo first, and then the other two. They're pretty average, in my opinion. But Hugo (and The Artist) both capture the magic of earlier eras of movies absolutely spectacularly.
This is why I prefer non-American movies. Not only the US has great actors, screenwriters and directors, and despite the generally small budget, they usually put the last coin to good use. Also, being filmed by small studios means that they are free from the corporate meddling. Unfortunately, not many English speakers are used to subtitles.
Malk, you would not believe how well that GIF goes with the UNATCO theme from Deus Ex.
As for the awards, yeah, I stopped treating them as anything more than a joke a while ago.
War Horse was pretty okay. Sappy as hell, but without being completely predictable.
See, this attitude bothers me. While it's understandanble to disagree with the academy, they're still some of the most influential men in the business. And while it's true that most of the time, there's a degree of, shall we say, economical preferences, the fact is that they're not exactly bad at what they do and they only choose based on taste. Attributing any degree of objectivity to those awards (Or calling them a joke when all they are is a bunch of hollywood honchos telling you what they they liked this year) is...well, pretty silly.
You said it yourself. They're pretty much a niche opinion in themselves. Obviously there's some degree of objective merit -- bad movies don't win -- but the fact that there's anything such as "award bait" that can reliably draw the attention of such people is telling.
You know the cliche of an excellent actor playing the role of a mentally handicapped character in a drama film? And how it's pretty much used to bait awards and all that? Pretty telling indicator of the issue.
Plus the whole "economical preferences" thing.
In short, there's an absolutely massive degree of bias. An institution that exists to hand out awards based on artistic and narrative merit can't afford to be biased if they want to be fair. And the more they show their biases, the more they feed the standards for the next round of awards. It's like a rich Hollywood guy feedback loop.
Well, yeah, but let's face it, the Acedemy has stopped being being the Academy for a long time now. It's one of those things that honestly doesn't matter and hardly affects the industry, as more and more people don't buy into the Oscar's excesses (Because voting for things you like above things you dislike is clearly harmful and an excess, rite)
Admittedly, it seems like the academy engages a lot in the "I liked it, thus it's good" fallacy. but the awards are no longer relevant in any level beyond simply denoting what was artistic relevant this year. As a hierachircal system, they pretty much suck and have always sucked, as it's based around a democratic system of sorts when art can't be measured by the votes of any collective. Hell, art can't even be measured, period.
So, while I can see why someone would dismiss it as a objective measuring stick, I just find it obnoxious to dismiss entirely simply because they didn't choose the films you liked/thought were good, as it's simply dismissing the opinion of many people who also care about film and probably had their reasons to vote for what they liked.
And you know what's funny?
Just about all of the controversy regarding the Academy Awards would vanish if people cared about awards that aren't Best Picture.
Nah, I think that best picture is still their most relevant award, and the whole "Let's give another a lesser award in order to justify our best picture choice" thing is pretty dishonest, as it's based around pleasing a public that will always be jaded with the academy simply because they have different preferences.
On the subject of awards that aren't Best Picture, my sister showed me The Magnificent Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, one of the nominees for Best Animated Short. I really enjoyed it.