Amph 2017 Oscars

All these years and you still take the bait?
*shakes head

 

You're always taking the piss, aren't you?

 

I try. others do the same to me. It's the JCC circle of something.

 

These are my picks for this year. It's hard not to see La La Land cleaning up big time. I'm predicting it'll win 11 total, tying Ben-Hur, Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

https://romancinema.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/academy-awards-2017-picks/

 

But, unlike those other three, it'll be rather obscure within the next couple of years. That's the recent trend in Best Picture winners.

 

I wouldn't bet on it. If it wins, it will end up being the highest grossing Best Picture winner since LOTR: ROTK.

Which of the recent Best Picture winners would you count as obscure?

 

I don't think it's so much obscure as forgettable. The Artist and The King's Speech are examples from this decade. Compare those, Birdman, and Argo to most of the BP winners in the 1990s and 2000s. Not a whole lot of staying power.

Maybe that's just my perception. I dunno.

 

Different strokes for different folks. La La Land might be deceptively simple on the surface, but I think it has a lot to say beyond the "follow your dreams" thematic trajectory.

 

when was the last time, or ever that you saw Shakespeare in Love on tv?

most of these movies that i see anymore just are totally overrated. Argo, nice film....Best Picture of a year?! Birdman, i forgot until yesterday that it even won. I remember even some of the critics said the performances were better than the whole. i think back to The Godfather or To Kill a Mockingbird or Lawrence of Arabia or Ben Hur , which i just watched two months ago, and these movies they awarding don't even compare.

 

ewoksimon My post wasn't meant to reflect my opinion on those films necessarily, but even now do people remember The King's Speech or The Artist as compared to Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Titanic, Gladiator, No Country for Old Men, and others (I'm not counting RotK because of course people remember LotR)? I am a bit skeptical that La La Land would change that trend.

 

I won't dispute that the Academy has made some mediocre or even awful choices for Best Picture in the past. These awards are more a product of campaigns playing to the tastes of a group of 6,000 industry professionals, not the general moviegoing public. La La Land wasn't even my favorite film of the year, but I still think it would be pretty deserving of Best Picture, given its thematic depth and how the craftsmanship elevates the narrative.

 

Alright, time to see whether All The Social Justice or Hollywood ******** wins "Best" Picture.

 

The Artist, sure. But A King's Speech is still legitimately great and I'll watch it most times it's on. Certainly more than Birdman and I've never seen Argo (though that's just happenstance; I still want to).

 

Even though it made significantly less money than most of the other nominees, Moonlight would absolutely be another worthy winner this year. Whether or not enough people saw it isn't a fault of the film, though. I suspect its reputation will grow in the years to come.

 

Argo was good but felt more like a tv movie , Birdman was just a chore , I found myself just looking for the invisible cuts as something to do while sitting thru it .

the only one I've seen this year is Hacksaw Ridge , and I can't see that winning .

 

I've heard nothing but good things about Moonlight, though I've seen none of the nominees this year.

 

It seems like TV and streaming (increasingly the same thing) are where most of the great artistic works are being made now in cinema. I think we've been in an age of safety in filmmaking, where studios have wanted to play things safe for the most part, as seen in the massive number of reboots, sequels, and prequels. Audiences are partly responsible for this as well-- we collectively keep going to those movies.

 

Moonlight should win on a quality basis. Arrival and Hell or High Water I would put just behind it, and those winning would be unusual in terms of genre. But I think it's probably going to be La La Land as part of a sweep.

EDIT: Major releases in cinema are more creatively bankrupt than ever, I would say-- adaptations and sequels are things Hollywood has always done, but it has gotten worse with massive budgets, cinematic universes, a global audience, and playing it very safe. However, I would not say that film has completely lost its artistic merit to television. Those three movies I named are good examples, and some recent fairly big-budget flicks such as Fury Road show that it's possible to have mass appeal without being stupid.

 

I didn't mean to imply that it has completely lost artistic merit to television. Adaptations and sequels have always been around, but note that it took 20 years for a sequel to Independence Day, which would probably have had a greenlit sequel in weeks now, if not sooner. There have always been studios and executives playing it safe, but never more than today, where it seems to be almost mandatory. I agree that some big films have been strong while also being appealing. These seem uncommon, though. A big part of that goes back to audiences, I think. People want to feel safe (collectively speaking), and Hollywood reflects this.

 

I get the sense that the 90s were a decade of experimentation and new voices in movies, not seen since the 70s.

 

i don't know, there's always been sequels. i was watching TCM last night where they mentioned Summer of 42' had a sequel. i never knew that. American Graffiti had a sequel. there were movie series decades ago like The Thin Man. maybe people are just more conscious of it now.

 

I think the difference is that sequels would be dismissed as obvious money milking ploys in the past, were often put together haphazardly and would then go to limited release or straight to home video, whereas now franchises are planned as trilogies from the start with massive marketing pushes behind them, and we increasingly go to see them, which makes them viable. The problem is not that Hollywood tries to sell us crap. It always has. The problem is that we buy it more than we used to. Maybe because the increased ease of creating visual spectacle with CG has made us mistake 'impressive' production values for quality storytelling.