hahahahahahahaha
I love you
also, 2 + 2 = 5
http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/2+2+5+the+Lukewarm+/2oNy5o
I have seen two of the best picture nominations, and I loved them both. Also, they nominated “The Illusionist” for animated film, which is pretty awesome, though I have not seen it yet.
The academy does not spend the entire year watching all the films that come out. I hardly think they could fairly try to include films from all around the world.
The best picture nominees have more substance than we’ve seen in a few years.
Anything but “Inception”.
“The best picture nominees have more substance than we’ve seen in a few years.”
Really? The 2008 ones were arguably better and I don’t see a film on the list as good as The Hurt Locker but whatever, it’s the Oscars.
Incidentally, I don’t think I know anyone who has seen 127 Hours yet I somehow know the “spoiler”. Does anyone here care to defend it?
-But it’s one of those “she’s due” nominations, Matt.-
Yeah, it is. But “she’s due” because she’s chosen to act more or less exclusively in obvious Oscar bait going back at least as far as American Beauty. She’s probably going to get the de facto lifetime achievement award for this film even though her performance is at best maybe the third of fourth best in that film alone.
“The 2008 ones were arguably better and I don’t see a film on the list as good as The Hurt Locker but whatever, it’s the Oscars.”
C’mon Ari, you friend Tom Hooper did make something to be talked about, even I liked it ;)
“I don’t think I know anyone who has seen 127 Hours yet I somehow know the “spoiler”. Does anyone here care to defend it?”
If I say it’s worse than Slumdog, will it make me an objective viewer?
(although Franco is kind of swell)
Rocky: Jacques Tati FTW!
I’m a bit disappointed Ryan Gosling didn’t get recognized for his work in Blue Valentine. He was great, and Michelle Williams arguably wouldn’t have been as good as she was without his work. And Lesley Manville was completely robbed of a nom for her stunning work in Another Year. Also a bit disappointed about Black Swan‘s lack of sound nominations, as I don’t think there was another film this year that used sound as effectively as that film did…
…except for 127 Hours . I don’t think the film really earned the emotional reaction it was clearly going for at the end, but “that scene” was one of those moments when everything comes together to create a close-to-perfect filmic experience. Even if you closed your eyes, the sound design made sure you still felt it. James Franco did not have it easy and did an admirable job. It’s currently one of my 10 best of the year, but there are a lot of films I haven’t seen yet (Dogtooth, Enter the Void, and Winter’s Bone among them), and it will likely fall off after I see them.
i saw 127 hours in Turin last november, bad movie and James Franco overacted as well. Wors than Slumdog for sure, the ouverture is unbearable and fake
Not that the Oscars matter, but I’m shocked Ryan Gosling wasn’t nominated.
I’m surprised that we didn’t see a nomination or two for “Get Low”, for either Robert Duvall or Sissy Spacek. Even Bill Murray was solid in that film. It should’ve also been nominated for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume Design, when you get right down to it.
And Disney’s “Tangled” should’ve been nominated for Best Animated Film. It was a surprisingly fresh animated movie that didn’t have any of the characters saying things like: “Yo, dude!” And I actually kind of enjoyed the musical numbers. Nice to see it at least was nominated for Best Song.
I would’ve also have liked to see “13 Assassins” and “The Big Picture (L’homme qui voulait vivre sa vie)” nominated for Best Foreign Film. They blew me away when I saw them at TIFF 2010. And if you see “13 Assassins” in a theatre, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it shouldn’t just take home the Oscars for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. I have never been rocked off my ass to the sound effects in a film like I was with that one (or at least in many, many years), and that includes seeing “Inception” in a theatre. And Romain Duris from “The Big Picture” was amazing and his performance very compelling in that film. He’s one to keep an eye on. If you took out the requisite foreign actor in the Best Actor category this year, that being Javier Bardem, then I’d replace it with him.
No nomination for Ryan Gosling or Carey Mulligan? :(
Nothing would make me happier than to see Jacki Weaver pull a Marcia Gay Harden this year.
To be honest, I was surprised both Nolan and Garfield were overlooked. I guess the directors just REALLY have it in for him (Nolan).
“C’mon Ari, you friend Tom Hooper did make something to be talked about, even I liked it ;)”
I actually would have been happier if it was The Damned United, a better film than The King’s Speech, which, yeah, was solid and well-acted but way too by-the-books. But, yeah, I guess one of the better nominees. Looks like The Weinsteins still have their Oscar “magic” even though they couldn’t get a nom for Gosling.
Ryan Reynolds should of been nominated for Buried.
“As much as I enjoyed The King’s Speech it is just an entertainment. There is nothing really memorable about it other than some witty dialogue and charming acting. I felt the same about Easy A. To me they are equal in what they brought to the table but add English accents and a film gets brilliant all of the sudden.”
This is actually very discriminatory and I’m not even a fan of Tom Hooper (yet?)
Where do all these Nolan and Fincher fanboys come from? Where is the brilliance in Social Network? Most of the nominations are pretty conventional films with nothing extra-ordinary about them. I find it shocking when comparisons like Shakespeare in Love take place.
The brilliance of The Social Network comes from its relevance. We have become socially dependent on the internet, blogging, texting etc. The fact that one of biggest source of this comes from a socially numb genius is quite hilarious and ironic. This film represents where we are in society and where we are headed. If there was any film that should be placed in a time capsule it is this film. As a film, The Social Network reminds me very much of Citizen Kane. Mark Zuckerberg essentially is a 21st Century Charles Foster Kane. His power and his success couldn’t overcome his arrogance that drove a wedge between him and everyone who once stood by him. Zuckerberg couldn’t appreciate the loyalty that surrounded him and was a key to his success and it did with Kane. Love the last line in the film when Rashida Jones says “You really aren’t an Ass hole, you’re just trying really hard to be one.” The Social Network is a classic powered by great writing, directing and acting.
Oscar nominations: meh, as usual. Still, I find it kind of hilarious that Dogtooth gets a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination. I mean, I love that film and it’s awesome it will get more attention, but boy oh boy are the voters in for a surprise when they watch that one…they do realise that this is an incredibly sexually explicit twisted film which draws comparisons to the Josef Fritzl case except tries to play all that child imprisonment thing for black comedy? Not exactly their usual fare, hehe…I’m fairly certain that the vast majority of people who voted that into the awards category did so without actually watching the thing…
I just find it odd that for a bunch of people who supposedly love cinema so much, you all seem to hate a lot of cinema.
Sorry, Drew bud, but this is really not an effective argument. I mean, most of the restaurants in the US are of the McDonald’s and TGIF ilk, so does that mean a discriminating food critic hates food because he/she craps on McDonald’s? Sometimes, when you love something, you only want the cream of the crop.
And I’ll give you a perfect example of why the Oscars are an absolute piece of shit. Do you know what happened to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives? It never even got a circulating screening copy for the Academy members and there was exactly one-time screening for it to qualify as a nominee for the best foreign language picture. It got a late evening showing after another film. Guess what happened? There were literally two people at the screening, both of whom walked out before the 30 minute mark. A documented story from an insider friend in LA. This is the crappy reality of the Oscars. It’s an incestuous back-patting ceremony for assholes. No ARTIST takes that shit seriously, sorry.
Oscars are shit, merde, scheisse, merda…in any language.
“Sometimes, when you love something, you only want the cream of the crop.”
But, Blue K, as bad as it is to assume that the Oscars are genuine rewards for the “very best” and not a self-congratulatory asshole fest, isn’t it just a reactionary position to assume that the Oscars are all entirely worthless and that everything gets nominated is de facto cinematic equivalent of “fast food”? Anyway, that’s an old argument around here … Personally, I wish I could get over paying attention to the Oscars but I end up watching them every year.
In the long run who cares? Pretty much most of what Oscar honors is never what is beloved later on.
What do you mean, Brad? Shakespeare in Love isn’t the best film ever?
Blue K, If said food critic talked about McDonald’s more than any other restaurant, I would say yes that food critic seems to, if not hate food, have a very negative attitude towards food.
My problem isn’t that you all hate The Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit, Blue Valentine, and all the other “Hollywood shit” it’s that you talk incessantly about those films and SEE them.
I don’t understand why you guys see movies you’ll know you hate just so you can complain about them.
Hell, it makes more sense to me to see Den say he’s only seen two, but knows they all suck, as silly as that statement may seem, than to see people watch Hollywood film after Hollywood film when they basically never like any of them.
It’s the whole idea of talking about what you think is wrong with cinema instead of what you think is right. It’s a very negative way to look at something you supposedly enjoy.
And yes the Oscars are a joke, so why do all get so worked up about them?
Ari, yeah, I’m being reactionary to a degree, but what happened with Uncle Boonmee just pisses me off. The majority of these Academy assholes couldn’t give a rat’s ass about art.
I’m happy for Kidman! She’s back!
Drew, first of all, “you all” aspect of your posts should probably be dropped. When you assume that somehow that there’s some imaginary group of posters at the site who all think alike… well…you know what I mean about such lumping in and generalizations.
So I can’t answer for “us all”, but I will answer for myself. First, it’s simply my response to the thread—there’s no “getting worked up” about it. But more importantly, it’s a response to your implication that people who have a generally harsh view of most of what Hollywood offers are somehow “haters” of cinema. That is just a strange argument.
How could a film like Uncle Boonmee play next to the other Oscar noms, even in the Foreign category? They only pick those pictures which are state-sanctioned and have wide, national appeal in their host countries, which Joe definitely does not. The Academy has to produce an ideological legacy that connects back to Classic Hollywood. An experimental work like Boonmee (even though I haven’t seen it, I’m guessing that it will be akin to Syndromes and a Century in form) cannot fit the mold that they already have set out. It’s the same reason why major newspapers and the TV media have to keep talking about the same subjects. There’s this academic term for it: “institutional memory” or something like that.
“I don’t understand why you guys see movies you’ll know you hate just so you can complain about them.”
This is a good question. Generally, I go because of the possibility that I may be wrong or so that I can then say that I actually hated the film in order to talk about it (better than hating on a film one hasn’t seen, no?). Actually, as skeptical as I was about The Social Network (having really hated Fincher’s last film), I thought it was surprisingly pretty good, if unspectacular enough to understand its backlash. It will win because it’s Fincher’s “turn” to win. Of the ten films, I’ve seen seven of them (minus Toy Story 3, Black Swan, and 127 Hours). Only one really impressed me but the seven are passable by my standards, even Inception and True Grit, films that were totally unremarkable to me. Now Black Swan, based on what I’ve read, I think I will dislike but I guess I can try to be as open-minded as possible.
Two Plus Two
I think “the English Patient” or" Dances with Wolves" should win. Why confine those films to past years?