(PHOTO: Courtesy AMPAS™)
What better opportunity for a TOMATO SLAM than OSCAR NOMINATIONS — and the CineGods are on it. Mark’s effusive “Hooray for Blackkklansman and Cold War!” email set things in motion — and that’s right where we pick up…
MARK:
Too much love for Vice.
Hooray Sam Elliot!
Hooray Spike Lee!
Actor and Best Picture seem not incredibly interesting except for Black Panther and its historical importance.
WADE:
The surprises for me are:
Too much love for Vice
Not enough love for A Star is Born
Zero love for Crazy Rich Asians
Everything else was fairly predictable – but those three surprised me.
TIM:
Roma… a movie that played in almost no actual theaters… is going to win the Best Picture award. Netflix… wins.
We are doomed.
We are.
WADE:
I don’t think it will. Foreign films have a notoriously hard uphill climb to win Best Picture. Add that to the Netflix backlash – and the fact that vast numbers of the Academy who nominated Black Panther because they realize the Oscars are doomed if they don’t start reflecting popular taste are genuinely concerned about looking too arty and obscure… nope. Green Book wins it. They want to appear populist, connected to the people… but also PC. Green Book is as safe as it comes. People genuinely love it. I don’t. But I get what people respond to.
Roma would be the death of the Academy. It really would. It would say to average filmgoers, “Hell with you. We hate you and the movies you love.” That’s the last message they want to send.
MARK:
Ugh, Green Book. Also, where’s the Mister Rogers doc?
Burning shut out. No problem with that.
RAY:
Won’t You Be My Neighbor: They think archival docs are a secondary form — and they are wrong.
WADE:
They also think commercially successful docs are sellouts. Hoop Dreams, Buena Vista Social Club, etc. Real documentarians make movies that only two people bother to see. Like Rob Reiner’s plays in Bullets Over Broadway: “Hey, look who’s here! The big Broadway success! I don’t write hits! My plays are art! They’re written specifically to go unproduced!!!!”
RAY:
Morgan won — for 20 Feet From Stardom, which was a historical doc but not really an archival doc (new material actually outweighed archival stuff)
His Welles doc was great too.
Roma: Agree with Wade every inch of that.
WADE:
There’s a lot of resentment that Netflix only screened Roma Monday through Wed. and then pulled it Thursday through Sunday so that anyone wanting to see it on the weekend would have to see it on Netflix. It was a cynical way of getting into theaters just for the nominations, but denying exhibitors any substantial share of theatrical money. It was a theatrical release designed to be a middle finger to the whole concept of theatrical releasing. And don’t think Academy voters didn’t notice. I know several who tried to see it on a Friday night at the Landmark only to discover it had been pulled for the weekend. They weren’t happy.
RAY:
SPIKE: Just 30 years late… But YEAH BOSS.
Surprise to me: No Ethan Hawke.
No surprise to me: All women narrative filmmakers overlooked. Sad, but not surprising from the Academy.
WADE:
And Crazy Rich Asians got NOTHING. Why? Because nobody watched the screener. Because it has the word “Asians” in it. It took a lot of arm-twisting to get Academy voters to realize that black people exist. It’s going to take more arm-twisting to do the same for Asians. And for women, though part of me blames the distributors for doing a poor job of pushing those movies. If Netflix had gotten behind Private Life like they did behind Roma, it would have been nominated. They did a Harvey. They threw it under the bus.
At least Nicole Holofcener got nominated.
TIM:
10 slots for best pics… they fill 8… ignoring Beale Street… at least… and I have these issues. Especially the last one:
….zero nominations for Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade
….zero nominations for Lee Chang-dong’s Burning and Steven Yeun
…. no nomination for Michael B. Jordan for Black Panther… the best thing in it.
WADE:
And zilch for Crazy Rich Asians. So apart from Shoplifters, #OscarNotSoAsian.
Michael B. Jordan is a bizarre oversight as is Eighth Grade. Also nothing for Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace or Paul Schrader’s film apart from screenplay. List goes on. I think they really were inclined against indies this year. Everything screams that they wanted to honor big films. There’s no serious overlap with the Spirit Awards this year. Still — I don’t see the ratings improving. There will be repercussions for that.
MARK:
Regarding Michael B. Jordon, I don’t think the Academy considers acting in a superhero movie “real” acting. Or directing a superhero movie “real” directing. It took Logan for the academy to recognize the genre in a writing category and Logan was a one-time only deal. Maybe Mamet can write a movie about two superheroes stuck in a room arguing about political correctness in academia.
I get the popularity of Crazy Rich Asians and I applaud its financial success and was taken by its cultural specificity, but I don’t think it’s an awardable film. It’s not THAT funny or THAT great. And the Academy is not going to nominate an actress named after bottled water.
WADE:
Crazy Rich Asians is absolutely that great. Performances, totally worth nominating. Art direction and costumes — easily the best of the year. Of ANY movie. Michelle Yeoh should have been nominated. And she should have had Amy Adams’ slot. I mean seriously… I love Amy Adams, but she played herself in a Liz Cheney wig. That wasn’t a performance. She’s so much better than that. And of course they’re voting on how it’ll make them look. The awards are on the verge of becoming irrelevant.
MARK:
Eighth Grade seems like a Spirit Award thing. Burnham’s not there yet. At best, I bet the academy is taking a “wait and see” approach to him. Debra Granik clearly deserves her spot at the table and that oversight was sad. She just may not be flashy enough or she doesn’t do enough glad-handing. I heart her.
RAY:
Eighth Grade is easily in my top 3 for 2018. But Netflix is doing what they do. They buy a Rembrandt (a Great Work by an Acknowledged Master) and promote it to the moon. And remember: Exhibitors HAVE NEVER HAD A VOICE IN THE ACADEMY. The closest they came was when (former MPAA President Jack) Valenti was alive. He had a voice by dint of sheer personal charisma. All these ex-governmental non-entities they replaced him with have no real feel for that world, and they don’t defend it well or properly. So you can screw the exhibitors. but as long as you keep hiring people who work in the production trades they’ll forgive you for it.
MARK:
Regarding Bradley Cooper, the directing branch might have figured since he’s a first timer, the “real” visual force behind A Star is Born was (cinematographer Matthew) Libitique. Or they’re not ready to accept an A-list actor/carpetbagger who hasn’t paid his 2nd Unit dues busting into their ranks. Boo — no Ethan Hawke, but I’m glad Schrader gets a victory lap for First Reformed. Folks need to be reminded that guys like him used to not only make movies, but very popular studio movies. As in recent years, I’m worried the Academy is voting based on how it’ll make the organization look, as opposed to real considerations like which screener their maid liked and which nominated actress they’d like to ****. And I say that only in terms of Green Book winning Best Picture. Black Panther earned everything it got. Green Book, lame.
RAY:
I have to admit I am also not team Amy Adams on this one. She appears to be in that sweet spot where they just nominate her if she’s backlit and in focus. What used to be the Julianne Moore spot.
WADE:
Wow, is that ever true. The Julianne Moore spot to be sure. And I seriously love Amy Adams, but that’s a ridiculous nomination. On the plus side, it’s really a shoe-in now for Regina King. And man, does she deserve this. There has been no harder working actress in Hollywood over the past thirty years…
TIM:
Which has little to do with her. It’s the cards she’s been dealt. She’s the James Brown of working actors… actresses. Which is the new nature of things. I’m a little amazed that we are witnessing it… the fundamental metamorphosis of the movie business. Yep. It’s happening.
MARK:
The culture isn’t receptive to or nostalgic for anything that happened before Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” or, if you’re lucky, before Saturday Night Fever. That’s one reason I’ve always loved baseball. Fans embrace comparing Ken Griffey Jr. to Babe Ruth and Clayton Kershaw to Sandy Koufax. It’s a generational continuum that MLB and the fans love. Movies, thanks to corporate IP/quarterly dividend culture, caters to young fans who only want the shiny, new and hip and reject stuff their parents liked. Hardly a new phenomenon but now it’s really steering the culture in the wrong direction. So the Academy is in a tough spot. Embrace the old and they’re stodgy and boring. Embrace the new and they’re trying to be hip and young. The answer must be in the middle. And the trillions of new Academy members don’t address that. It only corrects a decades-long injustice. It’s doubly annoying when you consider the only ratings guarantee left on TV is live programming. That’s how out of touch and listless the Oscars are right now: they’re live but their numbers are falling.
WADE:
Here’s part of the problem we’re facing with the digital revolution — it has made everything available everywhere all the time. The value that accompanies the scarcity of information is gone. And the rat race of keeping up with everything that’s new, combined with the volume of “new” that pours out every second, every minute, is exhausting everyone. We’re all on this digital hamster wheel and we don’t know how to get off. I think people WANT to value what is old and nostalgic. But there’s no opportunity to do it. Because how can you find time to watch an old movie or listen to a classic album when there are 85 new movies and 146 new albums to catch up on to keep up with the culture? Can’t fall behind!!!!
This is why I think people feel unmoored in life. No job has longevity, no job pays well, everything costs too much… and we’re spending all our time and money just keeping our heads above the cultural water. There has to be a settling point. I know the Academy believes their big museum will do something, but one museum in one city does not a global culture change.
The STUDIOS with libraries — notably Warner and Disney — will have to figure out how to monetize their classic IP better. Put it back on the radar. Make it matter. Which it will, eventually. There’s a reason kids love their grandparents. Just remember how much MORE product is there than when we grew up and how much easier it is to see. Scarcity correlates to value. Absence of scarcity — you take things for granted. We grew up with three networks, a few theaters and only 50 years of cinematic product behind us. VHS and then DVD and now streaming is resulting in a thousand fold increase in volume of product — and we’re now as far past Jaws as Jaws was past the earliest pre-code talkies.
RAY:
Who cares about the Oscars’ ratings? Who cares about the awards themselves? Aside from a kind of water cooler culture/horse race thing, is there any real reason to give a damn what the Academy thinks about movie art? I never have. I used to have to be backstage at them every year, “covering” (so easy to do with a psuedo event), and even then I barely watched them. It was like being a hostage. Or Geppetto in the belly of the whale. The whole world with its eyes fixed on a shiny object comprised of swag bags, microphones and cleavage. And me sitting there, wondering if anybody else could see how the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes. Even if the nakedness had a forest of Armani tags hanging from it.
MARK:
As I get older I care about the Oscars less, but as movies lose their cultural relevancy I care about the Oscars more because they put the form culturally front and center. It literally forces people, for one brief shining moment, to know that Moonlight, Lady Bird and Spotlight exist and matter.
WADE:
It used to force them. When there were three networks, no such thing as VHS and nothing else to do on a Monday night. Now it’s just one thing among billions that people can choose to ignore or not. As I used to tell my students — the Oscars aren’t meaningful in terms of what movies are good, but they are useful as a barometer and a snapshot of what film industry professionals value among their own at a given point in time. It gives you a valuable look into their zeitgeist, their mindset, their tastes and how, or whether, those things are influenced by outside forces. I look at it more from the perspective of a social scientist or historian. And I think they are extremely valuable in that regard.
But as I just noted to a friend — they have never been good at awarding what’s great or enduring. The year that Marty won Best Picture… not nominated was East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle and Bad Day at Black Rock as well as David Lean’s Summertime — all of them better and more enduring than the five nominated Best Pictures: Marty, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, The Rose Tattoo, Picnic and Mister Roberts.
That was over 60 years ago.