2021 Oscar Nominations And Discussion Thread. (1 Viewer)

[SixOfTheRichest]

It wasn't as people can consider you trolling, since you have no interest in the Oscars this year. Yet, you keep on posting in this thread with your disparaging remarks about today's films. This thread is about celebrating this past year's best films which you have no interest in seeing which is fine with the rest of us and has been duly noted. It's time to move on!

I only asked because the poster went through and disliked 8 of my posts within a 2 minute time frame. I don't believe they even bothered to read them properly. I don't think it was fine with them.

I am content to leave the thread if it is causing precious umbrage with my subjective opinion, that wasn't my intention as I began, just to comment. I also did flow on from other comments and answered what others have asked of me also.

Enjoy the ceremony!

 

[Robert Crawford]

I only asked because the poster went through and disliked 8 of my posts within a 2 minute time frame. I don't believe they even bothered to read them properly. I don't think it was fine with them.

I am content to leave the thread if it is causing precious umbrage with my subjective opinion, that wasn't my intention as I began, just to comment. I also did flow on from other comments and answered what others have asked of me also.

Enjoy the ceremony!

It's not "dislike", but instead "disagree" which that poster did with several of your posts yesterday morning. This morning, he disagreed with two more of your posts and then actually posted two replies to those posts. Anyhow, this discussion is about this year's Oscar nominations and not the film preferences from prior film eras.

 

[SixOfTheRichest]

It's not "dislike", but instead "disagree" which that poster did with several of your posts yesterday morning. This morning, he disagreed with two more of your posts and then actually posted two replies to those posts. Anyhow, this discussion is about this year's Oscar nominations and not the film preferences from prior film eras.

I say semantics, but yes, I do agree that the thread is ultimately about this years nominees and for those that care to celebrate the Oscars and ceremony.

 

[MartinP.]

Daz...I think people often get caught up in the "movies used to be better" idea because over the years the better ones are remembered and the bad ones aren't. I remember elders in the 1960's talking about how much better the films "used to be". I thought of this yesterday when I was reading something about a place in Los Angeles that several films had used as a location and they were mostly all rock-band type movies and some drug culture movies from the 1960's that I don't even know about. Herman's Hermits did a movie called "Hold On!" (?) Jack Nicholson was in a film called Psych Out?

As for your notion that you wouldn't be interested in a lot of the movies made nowadays...I've said this to others before, but I'm lucky that I have a couple "guild" friends that are in positions of being able to see movie screenings and I'm often invited as a guest. I always go even if I don't really think I have an interest in any specific film because I like the social interactions and related things, even if I don't think I'll like a film. Over the years I have to say that there are so many movies that I have liked that I never would've seen if I'd had to make the choice to pay for them to see in a theatre and many that I would have chosen to pay for that I hated. In that category this year, although in the streaming realm, I read about two films and saw trailers for that I thought both of them would be pretty torturous or something I wouldn't at all be interested in. They were "Pieces of a Woman" and "The Father". One I was right about, for myself I was not at all into Pieces of a Woman. But The Father surprised and engaged me in ways I never thought possible. All I'm saying is try not to characterize a group of anything (like millenial movies) as being all one thing.

 

[TravisR]

Daz...I think people often get caught up in the "movies used to be better" idea because over the years the better ones are remembered and the bad ones aren't. I remember elders in the 1960's talking about how much better the films "used to be".

Exactly. Whatever point someone sees as a great time for filmmaking was also seen as a garbage dump by someone else.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

No one era has the monopoly on stinkers or greats. It’s just that we’re much more likely to remember the existence of a stinker from last week or last year than we are to remember one from before we’re born.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Here's a recent article from Deadline about what the Oscar telecast is expected to look like this year with regard to COVID rules and protocols.

Here’s What You Need To Know About The Evolving Oscarcast

Here's What You Need To Know About Oscarcast Rules And Changes

deadline.com

 

[Keith Cobby]

I think what has been different over the past two decades is that DC/Marvel/Star Wars are smothering the industry. Obviously this is where the money is, although none of these have received many awards. So now we have nominations going to the most obscure films which hardly anybody watches. There used to be a greater variety of family films and not the the huge number of reboots/retreads etc. I blame the word 'franchise'!

 

[JoeStemme]

Usually, I've seen just about all the nominees by now, but...........2020.

I have caught up with all five Documentary nominees. My ranking:

5. My Octopus Teacher
4. Mole Agent
3. Crip Camp
2. Time
1. Collective (also nominated for Internation Film)

 

[MartinP.]

Keith's post above makes these points.

1.) DC/Marvel/Star Wars are smothering the industry.
2.) None of these ^ have received many awards.
3.) We have nominations going to the most obscure films which hardly anybody watches.
4.) There used to be a greater variety of family films.
5.) I blame the word 'franchise'!

Jake: I have to ask what you are disagreeing with in particular? You may disagree to the degree of accuracy to each of those statements, but they seem pretty accurate in a general sense. IMO.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I frankly believe that tentpole films have kept the theatrical exhibition industry afloat for the past decade by providing the kind of spectacle that most people can’t reproduce at home. If the industry’s bread and butter was primarily the kind of midbudget films that play equally well regardless of venue, the kind of content that audiences are gravitating towards as long form television, I think exhibition might have already faced the same fate that brick & mortar suppliers of products that no longer need to be purchased in person have already faced.

I have no doubt that some people would always prefer theatrical exhibition vs home viewing for any/all content. Just as some shoppers prefer going to a store no matter what. But without tentpoles, theaters could very well have been in a spot like Macy’s, or J.C. Penney’s, or Sears, where the size of that audience isn’t large or consistent enough to sustain the type of footprint those businesses had.

 

[Josh Dial]

Keith's post above makes these points.

1.) DC/Marvel/Star Wars are smothering the industry.
2.) None of these ^ have received many awards.
3.) We have nominations going to the most obscure films which hardly anybody watches.
4.) There used to be a greater variety of family films.
5.) I blame the word 'franchise'!

Jake: I have to ask what you are disagreeing with in particular? You may disagree to the degree of accuracy to each of those statements, but they seem pretty accurate in a general sense. IMO.

1) Don't agree.
2) Doesn't matter.
3) Don't agree.
4) Don't agree.
5) Blame what you wish.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Jake: I have to ask what you are disagreeing with in particular? You may disagree to the degree of accuracy to each of those statements, but they seem pretty accurate in a general sense. IMO.

Sure. I disagree that Marvel and Star Wars films are smothering the industry, and I disagree that franchises are a bad thing.

I do agree that nominations are going to much smaller films which a significant portion of the audience is not seeing.

 

[MartinP.]

Keith's post above makes these points.

1.) DC/Marvel/Star Wars are smothering the industry.
2.) None of these ^ have received many awards.
3.) We have nominations going to the most obscure films which hardly anybody watches.
4.) There used to be a greater variety of family films.
5.) I blame the word 'franchise'!

1) Don't agree.
2) Doesn't matter.
3) Don't agree.
4) Don't agree.
5) Blame what you wish.

1. Obviously people that like the prevalence of super-hero sci-fi stuff won't agree. Most of your last posts are on threads devoted to: Loki, Star Trek, WandaVision and The Falcon & the Winter Soldier. There is an audience for movies NOT about those things. Or at least not as many of them.

2. This is a thread about the Academy Awards, a group who says they are interested in people watching their show and taking them more seriously. So it matters in this conversation.

3. The general audience has been watching fewer and fewer of the Oscar nominated films.
Audiences used to see a lot of the movies up for the major awards.
Let's look at the Top Ten box office for 2019...
Avengers: Endgame
The Lion King
Toy Story
Frozen II
Captain Marvel
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
Spider-Man: Far from Home
Aladdin
Joker
It Chapter Two

AND 50 YEARS AGO:
Love Story (7 nominations/BP nominee)
Airport (10 nominations/BP nominee)
M*A*S*H (5 nominations/BP nominee)
Patton (10 nominations/BP Winner)
The Aristocats
Woodstock (3 nominations/Doc. Feature winner)
Little Big Man (1 nomination)
Ryan's Daughter (4 nominations)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (5 nominations)
...
Five Easy Pieces (at #14, 4 nominations, BP nominee)

4. I'm not even sure what a "family film" is anymore.

5. Like I said--see #1.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Here’s a sincere question: why shouldn’t Avengers: Endgame have been worthy of some kind of awards recognition?

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won Best Picture, and I would argue that Endgame is a better, more cohesive picture which took more than ten years worth of characters and narrative threads from a variety of different films and tied them together towards a notable conclusion. The film was enjoyed by audiences worldwide, broke box office records, and featured new technical innovations allowing a kind of storytelling with a scale and scope that is basically without precedence in motion picture entertainment. Return of the King set a precedent for recognizing franchise films, sequels where the previous installment didn’t win best picture, and fantasy stories. Black Panther already got Marvel a nomination in the prior year. There’s precedence for recognizing a film like Endgame.

I’m not saying Endgame should automatically have been nominated, nor am I saying that it making the most money makes it the best film. But, to my eyes, it was a well made film that attracted a wide audience, and the Academy didn’t feel that it was even worth mentioning as part of the conversation. And when you get that kind of disconnect between what audiences want to see in theaters vs what the Academy thinks people should see in theaters, and it keeps happening again and again, that’s a recipe for declining relevance to an audience that looks at what the Academy picks and realizes it might as well be in Martian or something. Jaws was nominated for Best Picture, Star Wars was, Raiders of the Lost Ark was. None of those films won or were considered likely winners at the time, but it shows to me that the Academy once was actually interested in the whole range of films being made and not just a very particular niche of the total output.

 

[MartinP.]

Lord of the Rings was based on literature, so AMPAS thought it had a better pedigree, I guess. Plus, 2003 wasn't necessarily a stellar year for Picture nominees. When Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark came out those movies were pretty unique and exceptional at the time. Star Wars is now ubiquitous and hardly unique. Same with Star Trek. And the Marvel and other superhero / villain movies are not few and far between. And there's iterations of them as TV series. Not to mention theme park rides. The movies all seem to make hoards of money, too, regardless if they're good or bad, like it's an addiction. I remember a comedian in the 90's talking about the Batman movies (that each had a new Batman) and he said, "You know those Batman movies? The ones they keep making that everyone goes to see, but nobody likes?"

 

[Mike Frezon]

I predict the lowest rated Oscar telecast ever, followed by much hand-wringing and shock from the Academy the following day.

I've been selected to host this year.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I've been selected to host this year.

Now that I’d tune in for!

 

[Jake Lipson]

Here’s a sincere question: why shouldn’t Avengers: Endgame have been worthy of some kind of awards recognition?

Let me say right off the top that I totally agree with your assessment.

However, I think the fact that Endgame tied together so many other movies made it difficult for Academy voters to understand. Even though Black Panther is part of the MCU, the storytelling in it is fairly standalone. Sure, if you're watching it as part of the larger narrative there are things in it that will work better, but if you don't care about the whole MCU, the essential beats of Black Panther still make sense.

We have seen that except for Black Panther, the Academy voters have avoided the MCU. If they decided to look at Endgame for consideration, they would not feel the weight of its significance. It doesn't have enough space in the narrative to worry about the uninitiated, so Marvel correctly made the decision to assume that by the time you get to movie #22 in a series that has spanned 11 years, you've seen the other films. So voters literally wouldn't be able to understand most of what it is doing.

Although The Return of the King was the only one to win Best Picture, the other Lord of the Rings films were both nominated for it, as well as many other awards. That means the Academy members saw those movies. So when they got to the third one, they understood what was going on and what was so special about that achievement. They simply could not connect to Endgame on its own without paying attention to the previous films. That made it easier for them to ignore. I'm not saying that's the right thing. I'm just saying I think that's what happened.

Lord of the Rings was based on literature, so AMPAS thought it had a better pedigree, I guess. Plus, 2003 wasn't necessarily a stellar year for Picture nominees.

Harry Potter was also based on literature and it did not win a single award for any of its original eight films.

The Return of the King was the film that the Academy liked in 2003. The fact that it swept every single award for which it was nominated demonstrates that the Academy was serious about honoring its achievement. If it won Best Picture by default because there wasn't much else, it wouldn't have been able to sweep all the other categories as well.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Now that I’d tune in for!

You and my mom.