Gravity (2013) (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

They did ask an astronaut. And he loved it.But who cares? You didn't like it. You're not alone. Although the vast majority of critics and audiences have loved it.

 

[Kevin EK]

I very much appreciated Sandra Bullock's performance, and people are correct to note she was acting literally in a vacuum. It's a great performance. But the Academy is going to give the acting award to Cate Blanchett, following the table run that has already been happening at every other awards presentation. I personally much prefer Bullock's performance, but the Academy will pretty much always pick a performance from a character movie over a performance in a VFX movie. I believe the only exceptions to this would be Heath Ledger in 2008 and Tom Hanks in 2004. With Ledger, there was an unstoppable wave of support for posthumously giving him that award. With Hanks, Forrest Gump was a phenomenon that swept many of the Academy categories including his.

The DGA award tonight will almost certainly tell us who will win the Oscar. As we noted, last year was a huge exception as Affleck was nominated by one body but not the other. This time, the categories line up in a nearly identical fashion. For both awards, the only two real contenders are McQueen and Cuaron. And for both, David O. Russell could somehow pick it up if there's a split between the first two. Paul Greengrass, Martin Scorcese and Alexander Payne are happy to even be nominated this year.

 

[Tino]

Cuaron will win tonight. Count on it. And the Oscar too. No doubt in my mind. Winning BP gonna be tough.

 

[Tino]

If anyone other than Cuaron wins, which would be a major upset , then that film will win best picture.

 

[JoeDoakes]

I don t agree , i d love to meet a hobbit by the way lolI guess lord is 100% fiction and gravity not cause space and satilites and meteorsAnd astronautes really excist ...I wouldve appriciated it much more iff the story was believebleIts really over the top and that ennoyed me so much i guess it didnt ennoi you guysAm i really the only one that thinks about it this way ?

Most of the real astronauts who have commented have liked it, but they generally want to see semi-realistic movies about spaceflight that will encourage more human missions. I think you are right that the more you know about space, the more you are apt to be bothered by some of the unrealistic aspects of the story. For one, it seems that the Hubble, the ISS and the Chinese station are all about in the same orbit and all about as close together as my local Walmart is to me. Personally, I often feel more bothered by various Hollywood stories depicting large corporations as wanting to take over the world. Generally, they only want to make money. If corporate executives had been megalomaniacs they would have gone into politics as most of that ilk do. I was all ready to give Bullock the Oscar until I got close to the end of the film, but I think the script may ultimately be to blame.

By the way, does anyone know why the Chinese station's orbit was deteriorating sending the station crashing to earth? It seems that it had begun before Bullock's character even got to it. If the story explained it, I missed it. Thanks!

 

[Tino]

Probably due to space debris damage.

 

[TonyD]

I think there was a mention of Russion experiments with rockets or some thing that exploded and caused all the debris.Btw is this Dga show on tv?

 

[JoeDoakes]

The Chinese station actually seemed to be in one piece when Bullock got to it. Sometimes the orbits of satellites and such do deteriorate and if they are out of energy to maintain orbit, the crash into earth (e.g., Skylab). I gather that if there was an explanation about the Chinese station, it got left on the cutting room floor.

 

[Tino]

Congrats to Cuaron for winning the DGA tonight. Well deserved. Usually that would mean a sure win for Gravity for Best Picture. But as we have seen in recent years, that is not always the case. The last time a film lost best picture after it's nominated director won the DGA and Oscar was Brokeback Mountain. While the Chinese station was in one piece, it was heavily damaged by the debris..caused by the Russians destroying one of their own satellites with a missile. It's orbit degrading was a result of that and being abondoned.

 

[Kevin EK]

I was very happy to hear about Cuaron winning the DGA award tonight. He is now virtually a lock to win the Oscar for Best Director.

I'm still not convinced that Gravity will have much of a chance at Best Picture. My instincts tell me that award will go to 12 Years a Slave, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

The Brokeback Mountain situation was unusual as there was a genuine toss-up in 2005 between Crash and Brokeback. There wasn't a unified sense of how the Academy would act in that case. In 2006, it was Scorcese's year with The Departed. In 2007, it was the Coens' turn with No Country. 2008 was all about Slumdog Millionaire. 2009 was about Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker. 2010 was about Tom Hooper and The King's Speech. 2011 was all about The Artist. 2012 was another unusual year, due to the DGA and the Academy not agreeing about who the nominees should be - I note that this was a year of a 6 movie switch in the lists, something that I don't think had ever occurred in the history of these awards. (And I believe this was due to a giant increase in DGA member voting, especially by ADs and Stage Managers, etc, as 2012 was the first time DGA allowed the studios to send screener DVDs.)

This year is a lot more traditional. The Academy's list of nominees is nearly identical to the DGA list. One of the movies on that list will be the Best Picture winner, and we can instantly remove Nebraska and Wolf of Wall Street on general principle. That leaves 12 Years, Gravity and American Hustle. Given the Academy's history, I just don't see them giving the biggest prize to Gravity. Between the other two movies, 12 Years has appealed to a wider group of people and has the advantage of telling a story of social significance. American Hustle is also a great movie, but has suffered some backlash.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Gravity get Best Picture. I just don't think that this is likely to happen. On the other hand, Best Director now looks fairly assured.

 

[TravisR]

Between the other two movies, 12 Years has appealed to a wider group of people and has the advantage of telling a story of social significance.

If I was going to bet, I'd put my money on a win for 12 Years A Slave but I do wonder if the movie's brutal subject matter will actually keep people from seeing it and thus not vote for it. Whenever I brought that movie up with friends or casual acquaintances who watch a lot of movies, they'd almost always say "Oh I heard that's good but I don't want to see something like that." While asking random people in suburban Pennsylvania hardly counts as a scientific poll, I do wonder if that could be prevalent and push the vote towards Gravity or American Hustle.

 

[Jason_V]

I don t agree , i d love to meet a hobbit by the way lolI guess lord is 100% fiction and gravity not cause space and satilites and meteorsAnd astronautes really excist ...I wouldve appriciated it much more iff the story was believebleIts really over the top and that ennoyed me so much i guess it didnt ennoi you guysAm i really the only one that thinks about it this way ?

Like Mikael said, this is a work of fiction. Why have we gotten to this place where a movie has to be 100% believeable all the time? No movie is going to adhere slavishly to reality unless it's a documentary (and maybe not even then). Enjoy the movie for what it is and try not to have expectations before you go on. You're bound to be disappointed.

 

[lisette_marie]

Ok i understand but its about space and its not about aliens or starwars in space , its about thingsThat are above us and i havent studied astraunomy and i work on earth but i shure would like to know more about it And i thought this movie was going to show me something new but sadly it showed me something impossible Making me wonder and doubt about everything about the movie ...So not every movie has to be realistic ( i love dreaming ) but i expected this one to be more realistic with The effort off such beautifull frames and no aliens in it ... Lol

 

[Jason_V]

If you haven't been in space and haven't studied astronomy, how do you know it's impossible?

If you also want to know more about astronomy or space, then go study it. That's the best thing a movie or TV show can do: open your mind to experience somerthing completely new. A lot of people who watched the original Star Trek in the 1960s and in reruns in the 1970s were prompted to get into science fields because of the show.

They could have said they wanted to know more about space, science and potential space travel, but it was all impossible then, so what's the point. They didn't, though. Same thing here. I also think we're running into expectation vs. reality, the same thing we're talking about in August: Osage County.

 

[Tino]

Ok i understand but its about space and its not about aliens or starwars in space , its about thingsThat are above us and i havent studied astraunomy and i work on earth but i shure would like to know more about it And i thought this movie was going to show me something new but sadly it showed me something impossible Making me wonder and doubt about everything about the movie ...So not every movie has to be realistic ( i love dreaming ) but i expected this one to be more realistic with The effort off such beautifull frames and no aliens in it ... Lol

What was impossible? For the most part, Gravity was very realistic.

 

[Sean Bryan]

My viewings of Gravity were beautifully moving experiences. For me, Gravity is about a mother who lost her child and stopped living her life. She was stuck going through the motions and life, for her, lost it's meaning. When circumstances put her at the center of a tragic disaster her natural instinct for survival kicked in. But as she moved through the ordeal she found that not only did she not want to die, but she wanted to start "living" again. Through the tragedy and challenge of survival she was reborn. That the setting of the story was in space and visually spectacular was an added bonus. This movie isn't a documentary about space travel. It is a piece of entertainment that has a STRONG emotional resonance with the majority of its viewers. If it wins best picture, it won't be because it was an amazing looking "space adventure" that was 100% accurate with all of its physics. It would win because of the story of a mother who lost her reason for living finding that she wanted start living her life again. The exotic setting of surviving a disaster in space certainly enhanced this and is a great part of the tapestry of the film's experience, but it's still secondary to the emotional journey of Ryan Stone and the wonderful job Ms. Bullock did with the role.To those who seem to not get (or care about) that and are hung up on whether or not all of the orbital mechanics were 100% accurate I would say "Mr. Savik, you go right on quoting regulations."

 

[DaveF]

If you haven't been in space and haven't studied astronomy, how do you know it's impossible?

What was impossible? For the most part, Gravity was very realistic.

The orbits and distances traveled are impossible. I think the timescales involved in the deorbits are impossible too. To be pedantic.(I don't care. But I work with people that know this stuff and get tripped up by it. This is my favorite movie from 2013, and the past few years.)

 

[Jason_V]

Thanks Dave. Those are two items I'm okay chalking up to dramatic license.

 

[DaveF]

Absolutely. It is not a science lesson. But nor is it pure fantasy. It is the most wrenching, amazing movie I saw last year.

 

[Tino]

I was giving this some thought and to me Gravity is the best film I've seen in almost 25 years. The last film To affect me this way was Dances With Wolves in 1990.