The Oscars were last night?
Yes, they were, and I only got the news today. I haven’t seen more than a few movies in the last ten years, and the Oscars have become something I would go out of my way to avoid. But until today I didn’t even know they were happening last night.
I used to post some of the fashions, though, just for fun. I don’t even have the urge to do that today. But here’s a link to some of the fashion good, the bad, and the ugly.
I used to post some of the fashions, though, just for fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBzeX57ASZQ
Neo admits her affinity for Joan Rivers.
I was on pins and needles for the 2021 Oscars … to see how bad the ratings would be.
Dropped over 50%. It was glorious!
https://www.outkick.com/oscars-ratings-tank/
Needless to say, it’s being written off to Covid and cord-cutting with no mention of how poor the movies have been and how “woke” the award ceremonies are.
Movie theaters may be one of the most visible victims of the lockdowns. In my area the large mall tore down the old out of business Sears and a couple months before the lockdown started building a huge new theater project on the site. They have kept working on it but now it is apparently in trouble.
Theaters, live music venues, full stadiums all things that will probably never return in their old ways in deep blue states.
Consequently the movie as a shared experience will be gone.
In a linked, but not quite the same way, America as a shared experience is about gone too.
There are some who will wish that it could be brought back and the crazies somehow restored and reintegrated into a common weal.
I don’t think this is either possible or necessarily desireable. The problem will simplly repeat. If you inhabit a common space with them, and are presumed subject to Rawls’ stinking “committment to a shared fate”, then you wind up a slave to their dysfunctions either way: either as servant or as warder.
These perverts did not simply spring up de novo, mutants born of some set of historical accidents. I’m convinced that they were always there, both wheat and tares; the tares repressed by social conventions and the exigencies and strictures of making a living with no safety net. But in essence they always were what they are now free to be.
Large numbers of people have always gone demonstrably crazy the moment they had the delerious physical luxury of doing so.
The trick will be to somehow stand back and let them self destruct without being drowned in the suck too, as they swirl their way down to hell. A hell, which tbey have insistently chosen for themselves. As there is no stopping them for long, why try?
DNW,
Yep, the shared experience is mostly gone. There was a time the people of all races liked (to varying degrees) the same music, movies, and TV shows but that has all been destroyed and now they are hard at work destroying sports which can still be an incredibly unifying thing for a community.
That is just the entertainment sector the same thing is going on in other areas.
Politics absolutely destroys everything every time.
Griffin:
Well, the personal is political to the wokesters, and to the horse they rode in on.
Speech is violence and silence is complicity. Where is my Little Red Book of systemic racism (oppression)?
Theaters, live music venues, full stadiums all things that will probably never return in their old ways in deep blue states.
They’ll return to their old ways within two years, unless we’re in the midst of and economic Depression or Spanish Civil War Redux.
Politics absolutely destroys everything every time.
“Politics” is an abstraction that’s not doing anything at all. The asshole segment of the population insists on importing politics into a dozen different venues where it does not belong and is unable to leave others alone in their commercial and avocational activities. You want this to stop, you have to get rid of the gangrenous characters who do this. That’s the public interest bar, and the judges who collaborate with them. That’s the school administrators. That’s the ‘activists’. That’s the media.
There was a time the people of all races liked (to varying degrees) the same music, movies, and TV shows but that has all been destroyed and now they are hard at work destroying sports which can still be an incredibly unifying thing for a community.
They actually didn’t, though there used to be more mass taste than there is today. However, they were capable of minding their own business and exercising ordinary courtesy.
Art Deco,
Well of course not everyone liked the same things but I would argue that almost everyone was aware of those things as opposed to now where things are so divided that there are things that thrive totally outside of large swaths of the population.
I know one thing: If my screenplay “Frankenstein, Part II” was produced, it would win best picture. Hands down. No contest.
Art+Deco wrote, “They’ll return to their old ways within two years, unless we’re in the midst of and economic Depression or Spanish Civil War Redux.”
Art+Deco, could you please explain your reasoning. Also, do you mean “They’ll [actually] return …,” or “They’ll [proclaim] return…”?
Thanks!
Cornhead wrote, “I know one thing: If my screenplay “Frankenstein, Part II” was produced, it would win best picture. Hands down. No contest.”
The child cries.
FADE OUT.
And, not an eye was dry.
Hollywood (and the SAG) is in danger of becoming irrelevant.
AppleBetty:
Close. The camera pulls back and we see toys for a small child and a chair with the name “Victor” on the back of it.
The setup for Part III.
The Z Man says it best: ‘Carny Folk’. Actors and Show Business people are a Freak Show and not to be taken seriously. That’s not to say that one cannot be entertained here and there. But to watch a ‘Celebration’ of the achievements of Pedophiles, Serial Sexual Abusers, Cluster-Bs and Pathological Narcissists who mostly want you and yours to die is a waste of time one could spend doing something productive — like learning to read Cuneiform script or how to go about 3D printing Lower Receivers.
I have no idea what movies were nominated, or won. There were movies last year? If entertaining movies were made, perhaps theaters would recover.
And the problem with the fashions is that so few of the women look elegant. On “hit” and “miss” lists, fairly often my opinion and that of the reviewers are opposed.
Looking over the web I find little reflection that Woke advocacy has anything to do with the Oscars’ and other shows’ decline. However, here’s an intriguing quote that must be true because it’s from the NY Times.
________________________________________
After last year’s Oscar ratings were the lowest the awards show had ever seen, only garnering 23.6 million viewers, expectations for the 2021 numbers were low. One Oscars producer admitted to the New York Times last week that the infiltration of woke politics may be turning viewers away from the once-influential show.
“One recent producer of the Oscars, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential metrics, said minute-by-minute post-show ratings analysis indicated that ‘vast swaths’ of people turned off their televisions when celebrities started to opine on politics,” the New York Times reported.
The Oscars’ decline in viewership and eagerness to embrace celebrities spouting off progressive rhetoric from the stage is fueling the awards show’s divorce from the general American public.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/26/increasingly-woke-oscars-hits-all-time-low-tv-ratings-loses-half-of-last-years-audience/
“They’ll return to their old ways within two years, unless we’re in the midst of and economic Depression or Spanish Civil War Redux.”
The two biggest releases this April were Godzilla vs. Kong, $48 million in a five-day opener, and Mortal Kombat, $23 million in three days. In April 2019, Avengers: Endgame opened with $357 million in three days.
Okay, that’s not a fair comparison. Endgame pretty much chased every other major release out of that month, so let’s look at May 2019. John Wick: Chapter 3 opened with $56 million in three days and Godzilla: King of the Monsters opened with $47 million…in THREE DAYS.
Inertia is a hell of a thing. Movies and movie theaters aren’t going to vanish overnight but we just interrupted the collective movie-going habits of a lifetime for an entire year. There’s an entire generation of kids who just spent a whole year of their lives NOT going to the movies.
Some percentage of the previous audience is not returning and some percentage will go to fewer movies than before. Add in that Hollywood just spent a year urinating as hard as it could in the face of half its audience and that the Hollywood business model has become largely dependent on blockbusters who make half-a-billion dollars or more.
There’s always going to be entertainment. There’s no guarantee the entertainment industry is always going to make as much money as it did from the 1970s through 2019.
Mike
This past Thanksgiving my family went to Branson , Missouri. My mother had planned the trip after my father’s death in April because she did not want be at home the first Thanksgiving. The idea was that COVID would be over “ by then”, but it was not, but the extended family went anyway. It was not exactly my cup of tea, but there were live shows and the theme park , Silver Dollar City , was up and running strong. The most people I had seen in one place in months! I have never seen such a concentration of Christmas lights! Main difference from normal was everybody in theme park had to wear mask.
Mike Lindale is getting ready to launch a new Social Media platform called “ Frank”. One of the features is supposed to be Lindale TV , 24/7. Glenn Beck has Blaze Tv. There have been some fairly large Christian movies made in the last ten years by one or more groups. There is a huge market in Christian music. My own area has multiple Christian radio stations. What may be happening is that Conservatives will increasingly end up with their own separate entertainment venues.
“ Conservatives did not leave Hollywood. Hollywood
left the conservatives.”
I have no idea what movies were nominated, or won.
Kate:
I’m mildly curious about “Nomadsland” in which Frances McDormand plays an older woman who has lost her husband and her job, so she takes to the highways and lives out of her vehicle in a challenging journey of self-discovery and community. (I could write for TV Guide!)
It could be a good small indie film, if it doesn’t get too woke. I can like small films, but still to win “Best Picture” award I expect something more solid and major that unquestionably reaches millions of people.
Check the wiki list of Oscar movies, the winner and other nominations. Before 2000 it’s all pretty solid stuff, but the light starts to flicker in the 2000s and since 2010 it’s mostly odd small films, usually with strong political slants, that failed to reach large audiences. It is to weep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture
This would be a good time to once again mention YouTuber. “The Critical Drinker”, as well as Screen Rant’s “Pitch Meetings”
“Independence Day” pitch meeting … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHrjm0iC4ZY
“Before 2000 it’s all pretty solid stuff”
Dubious Oscar nominees go back farther than that. No Ghostbusters in 1984? No Back to the Future or Cocoon in 1985? 1986 nominates Hannah and her Sisters and The Mission instead of Aliens, The Color of Money, or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
Compare that to, say, 2018. Tell me how many of the films people actually saw that year were worth a nomination.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2018/?grossesOption=calendarGrosses
Politics and woke-ism isn’t helping but what’s really killing Hollywood is that it just doesn’t make very good movies anymore.
Mike
what’s really killing Hollywood is that it just doesn’t make very good movies anymore.
MBunge:
Which is what I thought I said.
Plus, the absence of one film in a year doesn’t mean the others weren’t pretty solid, even if, heaven forefend, they don’t meet your exacting standards.
“Hannah” and “The Mission” aren’t among my favorite movies, but I saw them and they were … pretty solid. They certainly were better than the 2017 winner about a cleaning lady having sex with a fish alien.
I don’t think you read my comments very carefully.
“a cleaning lady having sex with a fish alien”
*perks up*
Perhaps there *is* hope after all…
This would be a good time to once again mention YouTuber. “The Critical Drinker”…
DNW:
Hear, hear to the Critical Drinker, whom I have also been enjoying!
One point TCD makes repeatedly is how slapdash today’s films are written. Character development and sensible plotting go right out the window in favor of spectacle, surprises and virtue signaling.
His takedown of “Prometheus,” a senselessly horrible film and blot on Ridley Scott’s career, was epic on precisely these charges.
“Nomadland” was the only film I wanted to see and indeed it was. It was free on Hulu. The story was supposed to be about poor, downtrodden, left behind, homeless Americans. I did not see that at all. I saw a film about freedom, liberty, American history in action like Davy Crocket, Daniel Boone, the mountain men, and beaver trappers. People content to live a mobile life, free of permanence, bills, and the trappings of stuff we find essential to our modern lives. And, happy to work periodically for Amazon at good wages was as political as the film got.
The story drifted somewhat, but it is a story about drifting, so I didn’t mind the lack of plot and character development. If the Chinese director was trying to demonstrate the carelessness of the American system then she may have hit the mark, but with a complete lack of understanding. Wandering the country with no sense of place and tenuous family connections may be anathema to the average Chinese, it is, however, very much a part of the American psyche. From a child running away to join the circus, advice of an old man to a young man to go west, to highly educated and trained adults determined to go where no one has gone before – that is very much America.
One of the best.
The complete lack of logic and understandable motivation in movies, has to be a symptom of something seriously wrong, either with the writers, or the target audience, or both.
“Don’t put your hand in there!!!”
“Oh, Ok.” as he puts his hand in there … or bends down to kiss the “cute” slithering acid spitting alien slime snake.
Everybody is probably familiar with the term idiot plot.
It is a plot where none of the complications or actions would occur if the characters involved were capable of listening to explanations or capable of coherent thinking.
Most movies nowadays seem to have idiot plots, unlike in the past where they were the province of screwball comedies and romances.
To paraphrase Pitch Meeting:
exec: “Why do they do that?”
script writer: “Unclear!”
exec: “Why don’t they just solve the problem by …”
script writer: “Because the movie is not over yet!”
}}} said minute-by-minute post-show ratings analysis indicated that ‘vast swaths’ of people turned off their televisions when celebrities started to opine on politics,” the New York Times reported.
Three words:
No Shit Shamrock
}}} Dubious Oscar nominees go back farther than that. No Ghostbusters in 1984? No Back to the Future or Cocoon in 1985? 1986 nominates Hannah and her Sisters and The Mission instead of Aliens, The Color of Money, or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
They’ve rarely given any attention to comedies or action pix.
In general, popularity is only relevant in the case of dramas.
}}} Check the wiki list of Oscar movies, the winner and other nominations. Before 2000 it’s all pretty solid stuff, but the light starts to flicker in the 2000s and since 2010 it’s mostly odd small films, usually with strong political slants, that failed to reach large audiences. It is to weep.
I’d say that’s a decent assessment. The quality of the winner is generally unreliable. They’ve often picked what I think is far from the best picture, but they’ve usually managed to pick one that I thought deserved serious consideration.
The 90s was an exceptionally good decade, in that the winner each year was either the obvious choice, or it was at least a reasonable one. 1997 (’98 Oscars) was the best year, in that the winners for each category were spot on, with the exception of Best Actress, which Paltrow (Shakespeare In Love) was easily weaker than both Cate Blanchett and Fernanda Montenegro (did not see Streep or Watson’s movies).
94 was a good example, in that, while Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption were both better than Forrest Gump, FG was at least a major technical achievement. It has not withstood the test of time anywhere near as well as the other two, but it was at least a significantly decent choice at the time.
96 was another “weak choice” year, with Fargo the better choice, but I gather making The English Patient into a coherent movie was considered a major achievement.
Most of the other years of the 1990s, the winner was spot on the best picture.
1999 was, by the way, far and away the best year ever for movies.
One of the stupidest things they did, of course, was the push for “diversity” by expanding the nominee list from the reasonable 5 to the unreasonable 9. In addition to the politics, it meant that many of the nominees weren’t even movies most people had ever been interested in seeing, much less seen. I’ve always been a high movie goer, and only saw 3 of the 9 in 2019 — which is about the same number (of 5) I saw most years up until about 2004. And that’s more than a lot of years.
More woke stupidity. People don’t care about the Oscars partly because of the politics, but also because who the fuck wants to see or even know about most of these obscure woke movies?
P.S., one guarantee for getting a nom and possible win is to make the movie about Hollywood. La-La-Land, The Artist, etc., shoe-ins for consideration.
All awards galas are an incestuous closed loop: people in the business who are dependent upon the business bestowing praise and gifts upon people in the business. This is true for everything from the Kiwanis Club to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, it’s just that the Kiwanis Club doesn’t do theirs for three hours on national TV and displays substantially greater rationality about whom it is recognizing for what.
Under some circumstances, such incest can be enjoyable, either as a participant or recipient, or spectator; the problem is, Hollywood doesn’t want mere observers, it wants jealous voyeurs. It has been assumed there is greater similarity between the producers and the consumers than actually exists.
The Z Man says it best: ‘Carny Folk’. Actors and Show Business people are a Freak Show and not to be taken seriously.
Try putting a name in a sentence like that and see if it makes sense. As in “Jimmy Stewart was a freak show and not to be taken seriously”.
It’s been a long time since there were Jimmy Stewarts in Hollywood movies.
Bill Maher summarized nominees for best picture, as follows:
“Nomadland – That’s the one about the woman who winds up living in her van after her husband dies of cancer. In ‘Judas and the Black Messiah,’ the FBI kills the leader of the Black Panthers, and in ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ the FBI kills the leader of the Black Panthers again. ‘Promising Young Woman’ has Carey Mulligan avenging a murderous rapist, but then he kills her too. ‘The Sound Of Metal’ is about a musician going deaf. ‘The Father’ is about an octogenarian descending into dementia. And ‘Minari’ is the story of dirt-poor Korean immigrants in Arkansas who put all their food in a barn, but then grandma has a stroke and burns it down. Now enjoy the show!”
Indigo-Red wrote, “‘Nomadland’ was the only film I wanted to see and indeed it was.”
Thanks. I’ll be sure to see it. You can download the screenplay here:
https://deadline.com/2021/02/nomadland-screenplay-read-chloe-zhao-script-movie-adaptation-1234689532/
Also, The Father
https://deadline.com/2021/02/the-father-screenplay-read-florian-zeller-christopher-hampton-script-1234690928/
And, Mank
https://deadline.com/2021/02/mank-screenplay-read-jack-fincher-script-netflix-movie-david-fincher-1234696675/
I’m getting these by searching for “screenplay” and film title on duckduckgo.com
I like the sound of the Korean one. Sounds pretty upbeat and cheerful by Korean Drama standards. Makes a difference from being raped and starved and burned to death in the 6′ deep snow by the Japanese and then forced to polish GI boots and other appurtenances in order to feed senile Grandma who walks around carrying the world on her back. Or something like that. Intense lot, those Koreans. I guess they chill out in a temperate Arcadia like Arkansas. Wonder if they made it big in Cattle Futures in the end?
Only movies I saw were Chernobyl and 1917.
It’s been a long time since there were Jimmy Stewarts in Hollywood movies.
Kevin Bacon, Michael J Fox, Jason Alexander, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno – all long married, all married just once, and all but Leno have children.
Thanks, all, for the lists and reviews. I’m not sorry I didn’t see most of this. As huxley says, “Character development and sensible plotting go right out the window in favor of spectacle, surprises and virtue signaling.” And depression. Why bother?
I’ll watch comment chains here at Neo because I’m sure if a really good movie which is entertaining and not likely to give me nightmares comes out, y’all will let me know.
OBloodyHell @ 1:19am,
Several friends raved to the wife and I about “Forrest Gump” so we went to see it. I generally love going to a theater to watch a movie or play and am willing to suffer through about anything but, about 45 minutes in, I turned to my wife and asked, “Can we leave?” She agreed, and we talked about it a bit more and chose to stay. We had heard such positive things from enough people we decided to stay on the assumption it must get better. It never got better.
Like you, I’ve heard some other folks mention they watched it recently and it hasn’t aged well. I think they are just watching it now with open eyes. It was never very good.
I find a similar thing with the Star Wars series (of which I’ve only seen one, the first one, or the fourth one or whatever number it is in George Lucas’ ridiculous, arbitrary numbering). I have friends who keep going to each new release expecting to be blown away and they always, always come back complaining about the plot. The plot in the first one (or fourth one, or seventh one or whatever Lucas calls it now) was absurdly predictable and mundane, why do they keep expecting it to change?
Abercrombie @ 1:57am,
I think your point is played out most obviously at the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” It’s all just arbitrary. Unlike a sport, where you can match actual statistics, music is simply a matter of taste. Yet I have seen people get into heated arguments because such and such a group was admitted to “the Hall,” or such and such a group was not admitted. It’s just some random people getting together every year and sticking their fingers into the air. It means absolutely nothing. It’s not like baseball or football where every year all the rock groups compete against each other in head to head competition.
I did like Nomadland. Pretty much all white cast. Depicts wandering disenfranchised white people. Austere and gorgeous Western settings.
And made by a Chinese immigrant woman!
Who would have thought it would win best picture.
Then there’s Anthony Hopkins’ win. Another white winning, with Francis McDormand.
Maybe something happening here … the Left’s domination over our culture has seemed so complete but maybe their obvious uncool-ness and even lack of real physical attractiveness (hard to find many truly beautiful actresses or dresses in Neo’s link) will be at long last the start of their demise.
Golly … I thought my husband and I were the only two on the planet who found Forest Gump excruciating.
Rufus T. Firefly @ 0945 –
That it’s the “Academy of Arts and Sciences” tells one everything there is to know; there is little more subjective than “art.” And, knowing that Hollywood is a viper pit I always wonder about the impact of what with whom doing which and when has on the “awards.” Unless it’s a reliable, identifiable and repeatable metric it’s just “the feelz.” Which is fine, to each their own, it’s just a game I choose to ignore.
As for R&R, or any other form of art, as far as I can tell, it’s all pretty much the same; I even have some doubts about who eventually lands in Cooperstown and Canton but since I follow neither it’s less than none of my business.
A friend said “About Schmidt” was hilarious…..
“Forrest Gump” was tough because such challenged people get to me. But the movie itself was okay.
Last three I’ve seen were “15:17 To Paris”, “American Sniper”, and “Thirteen Hours”.
My idea of the theater is “Camelot” or “West Side Story”.
Wokery is easily detectable.
My wife and I try to keep up with NCIS, Bull, SEAL Team, Bluebloods, and some others. The writing is generally tight and the characters act as they would as they’ve developed all along.
Easy hour, minus endless ads for medicine.
There is nothing quite so good and real as a movie in which the protagonists are buffetted by unexpected events, struggle against them, frantically deal with compounding and additionally menacing complications, and eventually … are overwhelmed and destroyed by an indifferent universe and unjust humanity.
Proving, again, and as many times as is necessary, that human life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
And that’s how you know it is real art, and a portrayal of
life as it is, as opposed to some pollyannaish tale of noble individual struggle and development, redemptive love, and an at least spiritual success.
Something we need to remind ourselves of regularly, and make sure the kids learn, take to heart, and never forget.
You cannot blame people for being callous and manipulative hedonists and gratuitous exploiters of others. You can only depict existence as it is: as pointless trauma ending in death; and seek for youself distraction for a time inside the swarm – until you too are filtered out to the edge and are picked off and destroyed.
All the really smart and most highly regarded bags of appetite in our meaningless world know that that is what they are, and how the world is. They accept it. They live it. They come to love it.
That is why so much of our social life works so well and people are so honest and happy.
Richard Aubrey,
I have not seen, “Camelot,” but almost certainly will one day. I am also a big fan of musicals, including “West Side Story” which folks often pan.
You can alway tell when a writer has his thumb on the scale.
I cannot watch a movie like that more than once … if even once, if it purports to be instructive or edifying in some way.
But then I cannot abide idiot plots or fantasy at all. So maybe that is just me.
I’m amazed at some of the hand-waving I’m reading about the Oscar ratings.
“Oh, ratings for everything on TV are going down.” “People are getting everything online.” “Streaming services are where the viewers are.”
The show lost over 50% of its audience in a single year. The 2021 show was down over 70% from 2017. Were the internet and streaming services just invented in the last four years?
For comparison, let’s look at another high profile event that has seen its ratings falter. The World Series in 2019 averaged 13.9 million viewers. That’s a huge drop from the 44 million that watched in 1978. But you know how many people watched the World Series in 2009? 13.1 million. In 1999, it was 23.7 million.
Whatever is going on with the Oscars and other award shows, it’s NOT just a case of normal viewer attrition.
Mike
I’m curious to know if anyone here has seen a minor comedy movie from the 1960’s starring George C Scott, called The Flim Flam Man.
Honest impressions if you remember it well enough to formulate any.
I just ragged on fantasy, and thumb on the scale … but then that popped into my mind leaving me to wonder if it too, in a somewhat less flamboyant and pretentious way might not fall into that category.
I have to admit that I am so captivated by atmospherics, locales, “sets” or settings, and cinematography, that sometimes I don’t even analyze the plot, but just go along for the ride.
Huh. Guess I am not really cut out to be a critic.
DNW; OBloodyHell; Jeanne; Richard Aubrey; Rufus T. Firefly:
I rented a cassette of Forrest Gump right after it was first released, having heard it was so very good. I couldn’t stand it. Don’t think I watched any of it after the first 45 minutes or so. I thought it was a stupid movie as well as an annoying one. I just didn’t get it at all.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Star Wars never impressed me. The year that the first Star Wars came out, a family friend got her first job out of college with George Lucas. The Hollywood atmosphere turned her off, so she quit the place and found success elsewhere.
I stopped going to movie theaters about 20 years ago. I have some movie DVDs, but I’ve viewed very few of them. Give me a good book.
OBloodyHell
1999 was, by the way, far and away the best year ever for movies.
Perhaps in the last 30 years, but for the last 100 years, I’d vote for 1939. For starters, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach. 1939 in film.
One year I spent all of $30 for an all-you-want-to-view showings at an independent film festival. The quality of movies made on shoestring budgets impressed me. You don’t need $100 million to make a good movie. Some good movies cost $100,000.
Rufus – if you haven’t already see it, give Guys and Dolls a try. Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons are a fabulous pairing. And there’s also Frank Sinatra. It was made in 1955 and Brando was thin and could really dance! He also does a good job on the wonderful song “Luck Be a Lady Tonight”.
Rufus – Never made it through a Star Wars movie either. I did enjoy excellent naps though.
Indigo-Red,
Same here. I didn’t interpret Zhao’s nomads as victims or sad. When Francis McDormand has the chance to be welcomed into the very sweet and financially secure family of one of the nomads she meets … she rejects it and instead embarks on a rapturous journey through gorgeous settings in the West. I think that is felt also when she visits the abandoned house she shared with her husband. She lingers in front of the window over the kitchen sink that presents an endless expanse of open desert. She mentions how they loved that view and the sense of infinite potential journey it presents. Wonderful movie.
Jeanne,
You absolutely nailed it. I like a lot of musicals for a lot of reasons, but “Guys and Dolls” is my favorite. And, even though that film version gets criticism, I love it! You probably know Sinatra wanted the Masterson role and kept “Luck be a Lady Tonight” in his act up until his retirement. And Sinatra was one of the most vocal critics of the film. He thought Brando was a terrible singer. Called him, “mumbles,” and claimed the director was always making Sinatra give him lessons on the set. I believe the father of Alan Alda (from Mash) first made the Masterson role famous on Broadway.
My father is a very Runyonesque character and even though I like the play in, and of itself, it reminds me so much of him and the characters he hung out with, often barging in with them late at night after an evening at the horse track… It’s very nostalgic for me. The antagonist (although he turns out to be not so bad) Big Jule, is even from my own, little neighborhood in Chicago (where there are two horse tracks, by the way).
Interesting the number of commenters who didn’t ‘get’ Forrest Gump. Self included.
‘I thought it was a stupid movie as well as an annoying one.’
Perfect!
Now do ‘Dances With Wolves’…
“Forrest Gump” was a Hollywood-ization of Woody Allen’s “Zelig.” And an ordinary common man’s re-imagined story of bad/good luck of self-importance. The latter redeems the former, for me.
I, by contrast, I walked out on the artlessness of “The Artist” — if only because it fired me up to watch so many other good and great films it shamelessly ripped off. I wasted no time to reacquaint myself with them.
@DNW:
Very well put! Would Sir be preferring his hemlock shaken or stirred?
I take it you’re not a Cormac McCarthy fan then? Truth be told, nether am I.
}}} She agreed, and we talked about it a bit more and chose to stay. We had heard such positive things from enough people we decided to stay on the assumption it must get better. It never got better.
Like you, I’ve heard some other folks mention they watched it recently and it hasn’t aged well. I think they are just watching it now with open eyes. It was never very good.
Rufus, it was ok, and had some fun qualities to it. But they were somewhat in-jokes of the time, too, so, they aged poorly (i.e., most people then, the idea that Gump was the source of the smiley face and “shit happens” was mildly amusing). Nowadays, those entire concepts are like “23 Skiddoo” and “Pennsylvania 6-5000”. You can know of them, but no one cares any longer, they were popular memes of their time, and that time is long gone. So Forrest’s interaction with them becomes, “so what?”
But, more than anything, it was the technical feat of putting Gump “footage” into actual footage, that made it so notable. Nowadays, that’s not that impressive an effect, but at the time, “Whoa!!”
I do concur with most that Shawshank is probably the best movie that year, though Pulp Fiction is certainly an impressive movie, too. I believe both are still quite exceptional.
P.S., how many realize/recall that “Forrest Jr.” is Haley Joel Osment?
P.P.S., personally, I’ve always been greatly offended by the denial of the right of fatherhood that Forrest Gump explicitly and implicitly condones.
}}} I always wonder about the impact of what with whom doing which and when has on the “awards.”
LOLZ.
Well, you know for a fact that the late Lauren Bacall pissed off someone with serious power majorly, when she did a movie (“The Mirror Has Two Faces“) that put her up for a “lifetime achievement” sort of Supporting Actress award in 1997, and they snubbed her by giving it to Juliette Binoche…. (I was really really surprised by this, she seemed a shoe-in)
By 2010 that person must have died, since they finally did give her an actual “lifetime achievement” honorary award.
}}} OBloodyHell
1999 was, by the way, far and away the best year ever for movies.
Perhaps in the last 30 years, but for the last 100 years, I’d vote for 1939. For starters, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach. 1939 in film.
There were many good years, and it is, of course, subjective, but:
—–
Fight Club
The Matrix
Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels
The Sixth Sense
American Beauty
Cider House Rules
Also:
—–
Toy Story 2
10 Things I Hate About You
Go
Run Lola Run
The Red Violin
Dogma
American Pie
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Galaxy Quest
Cruel Intentions
The Green Mile
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Some others with big fans (not all of which I particularly like, myself):
—–
Boys Don’t Cry
Girl, Interrupted
Election
Being John Malkovitch
The Blair Witch Project
I stand by my assertion… 😉
}}} The Flim Flam Man.
I do remember it, but not that well. Positively, but have no idea if I’d have the same opinion today.
In a similar vein, I recall “Harry In Your Pocket” from about the same time, with James Coburn, which details the operations of a gang of professional pickpockets.
1 — If you want to learn more about film, I cannot recommend the series by CineFix enough —
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVtL1edhT8qqY-j2JIndMzg
They have an array of “top 10 lists” which they use to illustrate different things, like “closing shots”, “brilliant moments”, “title sequences”, “establishing shots”, things like this, which revolve around techniques, and can teach you to be more aware of them — plus also it may offer some appealing new options for movies which you might never have considered.
An example (pay also attention to the sidebar, which lists a number of their offerings in this vein)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8A4ivmCCk4&list=PL1AXWu-gGX6KlR11eYsOo_VudqUSWwlph
2 — As to musicals, I love good ones, but there are some which are highly regarded which I consider fairly atrocious, including (unfortunately) “West Side Story”. I reject both it AND “My Fair Lady” for much the same reason. You have, in this case, two of the greatest works of two of the greatest playwrights of the English Language (Shakespeare and G.B.Shaw, respectively) and have some ham-handed lowlife trying to shoehorn music numbers into their pacing and cadences. Just doesn’t work. Top that off by general star-based miscasting — not an awful lot of actual Hispanics on WSS, even in the background, and there was not a single good casting in MFL, especially the two leads — Harrison clearly did not comprehend Henry Higgins, playing him as a cold fish, rather than someone who has redirected his passions into an endeavor, while Hepburn, FFS — the woman could fall into a septic tank and climb out and no one was going to take her for a guttersnipe. The one they SHOULD have cast — Julie Andrews, who’d played the role on Broadway, was rejected because she wasn’t yet well known, pre-Sound of Music. But she had much more of that “clean her up, and she could shine” look that Wendy Hiller had in the 30s “Pygmalion”.
In general, musicals should be based on original stories, not adapted from some play or another, esp. not ones done by masters like Shakespeare and Shaw. It’s like colorizing Hitchcock, the people doing it are far too untalented to do it justice.
Of the old-style musicals, I’d go with The Music Man. For something post-Fosse, I’d go with Cabaret, or All That Jazz. Fame was ok. I remember Can’t Stop The Music as fun at the time, but it hasn’t aged well at all. They really haven’t done much since then that was very good on film. Chicago was a big disappointment, as was A Chorus Line.
Rufus. I saw the movie “Camelot” when I was in Basic in 69. Came to the post theater. Loved it, but at that time, I’d probably have loved a soap opera. Naw.
About the old musicals: I’ve said this before, but I find the presence of stars offputting. No matter how well Frank Sinatra sings a song in a musical, he’s FRANK SINATRA, not the character.
It’s one thing in a John Wayne movie; He plays John Wayne characters and that character fits into the plot.
The old movies of musicals were usually cast with people new to me. Mary Martin wasn’t out of place in South Pacific because I’d never heard of her or Ezio Pinza.
My faves, though, are the old standbys performed by a good high school drama department. There is immense talent and an unstudied artlessness. The performers don’t get in the way of the meanings.
It’s a race to the bottom, but I just may have disliked, “American Beauty” as much as I disliked, “Forrest Gump.”
There were a lot of basic things wrong with “American Beauty.” It wasn’t a fairly well written script, but, for some reason folks overlooked the flaws. When that movie was having its run I felt like the Dr. Bennell character in, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It was as if there was a second movie with the same title that I saw while everyone else saw some other version that was apparently good. I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut when it was brought up in conversation.
It was all so predictable. The people we meet in the first 30 minutes who look like “good” Americans are all going to turn out to be a mess and the people we meet who are doing things “good” Americans view as bad will turn out to be good. I literally figured out the military guy was going to be gay within the first 30 seconds of him being on screen. Annette Bening’s character was so two dimensional I’m surprised she didn’t disappear when filmed from the side. It was as if the screenwriter hadn’t even read his own script. There is a scene where the Annette Bening character is yelling at the Kevin Spacey character for not making enough money but the movie has already showed us he cleverly negotiated a great settlement from his former employer while also taking a job at a fast food place. He was currently earning more than he had been AND was being a heckuva mensch by taking a humiliating job to bridge the gap. Knowing Bening’s character knew all this her tirade makes no sense.
It was a lame, pedestrian script but it trashed middle America so critics loved it.
Rufus T. Firefly:
That was my experience with “Fargo.” Hated it. It really creeped me out – the people, the violence, everything. It was supposed to be a comedy? I felt no desire to laugh at anything, and I usually am not so out of step with comedies. Just about everyone I knew loved it and found it very funny.
On the other hand, I thought “Midnight Run” was tremendously funny. I don’t think most people I know even saw it.
Ha. I had to stop and think for a moment. “Who’s Cormac McCarthy again?” The first thought that went through my mind was that he was one of those Irish American writers who regale us with tales of puke drunk uncles and molesting fathers in Mid-century Boston or wherever. Dust to dust, Angela to Ashes.
And to hell with those little weak men and their psychic wounds and scab picking neuroses. But that was not himself, as they say.
So I typed to search and … “No Country for Old Men.”
Oh yeah, you are right. And so was I about “thumbs on the scale”.
If I need to feel the vertiginous thrill of annihilation, I’ll just read passages from The Genealogy of Morals, again instead.
I more or less quit reading fiction years ago. And when I now read an historical account of a celebrated author from the Golden Era of Hollywood, reduced to screen writing, and then retiring to a flat in Manhattan to bleed from the esophagus as Cirrhosis finishes him off, I want to say. “Gee, I kind of wish I had been there to give the nihilist son of a bitch a swift kick in the ass as a send off.”
No real pity. It’s kind of like trying to work up sympathy after hearing of that insufferable smart ass in high school who you learned died of an overdose or AIDS. Shrug. If one were not so naive at the time, then one might have figured out what was going on with the jerk in the first place; as he was excused from gym class and the mass showers – which he would have seen as the only good part of the course.
Literature: The last authors that naturally spring to my mind are John Gardner, Walker Percy, and William Golding. So it shows how out of touch I am.
But, considering the incest fascinated crew that came out of the 1970’s I don’t figure I am missing that much. Others can enjoy those gilded turds.
Yeah, the moron sits on the front porch as his mother is being banged for the rent. So endearing, or poignant, or funny, or indicative, or something. Maybe funny?
Almost as funny as Steve Martin running around shouting about blow jobs. Or that neighborhood retard escaping his house and showing up in front of you and your friends while masticating spiders, then opening his mouth and inviting you to look.
These guys are just a barrel of laughs …
“In a similar vein, I recall “Harry In Your Pocket” from about the same time, with James Coburn, which details the operations of a gang of professional pickpockets.”
I saw that one. Walter Pidgeon! Trish Van Devere (wife of George C. Scott)! Michael Sarrazin! Great waterfront scenes of Seattle and Vancouver.
RufusT:
Glad you also like the film version of Guys & Dolls. It’s one of those imperfect movies that somehow delights. Yes … I absolutely sensed Sinatra’s frustration as the superior singer and, of course, he went on to memorialize Luck be A Lady to leave no doubt in our minds who could sing it best.
But somehow Brando’s performance steals my heart. He keeps his balance and projects a man truly and unexpectedly in love and so the song bursts from him a little uncertainly but truly heartfelt.
I love the whole cast. The Big Boss is just wonderful. You capture it all so well.
Your dad sounds like my father-in-law. Miss those guys.