JCC Oscar Bait 2015

Okay, okay, cool it, I'm not trying to attack you personally or anything. It's a trend is all. I get prickly this time of year when I think about, let's say, the ten best movies I saw in theaters and realize that all of them put together were outgrossed by Age of Ultron in its first two weekends. My point is that people say things that give the impression that, rather than The Danish Girl, they want a movie with the boldness to actually cast trans people in lead roles. But actually, people don't want that movie because it opened in theaters (in Tulsa, Oklahoma, not exactly one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the country; I imagine it was in more theaters than you think it was) and no one went to see it. And I hope you're not being condescending with your whole "indie Sundance darling" thing. It's a great movie, deserves to be a classic, even though it won't be. But my point is that the movies people say don't exist do exist and, well, I go out of my way. People should go out of their way for great art.

That's fair. I think it might be more accurate if I had said that the term loses its pejorative context if the movie is good. And I do still kind of push back against the idea that performers make decisions to make a movie because they want to get an Oscar. Sure, it happens sometimes, but I think it's typically pretty rare, at least in the ones that turn out good.

Well, they're typically heroic parts and DiCaprio's character, in my admittedly very limited understanding of the part, is a very unlikable, psychotic character. And they're typically performances in movies that are of a certain type, literary dramas as opposed to genre pieces (which this one is), more conventional as opposed to experimental (which this one is), from inside the Hollywood establishment rather than outside of it. I mean, I'm not saying he won't get nominated, but I can't recall the last time someone got a lead actor nomination for playing a character this psychopathic in an experimental genre movie. Again, this is based on limited info, just what I've gleaned from a short summary of the premise and viewing the trailer. There are always outliers, like Birdman, for instance. Which got a ton of Oscar love just last year, which I think kind of hurts The Revenant's chances, coming from the same filmmaker. I think a lot of Oscar votes will swing for safer picks this year; last year, they went a little crazy. Just my opinion. And again I highly doubt he took the role as a direct Oscar bid. It looks like a great role, the kind of role any actor would want to play. That's probably the main reason he took the part. Thoughts of an Oscar, which he probably did have at various times, were most likely secondary.

EDIT: That said, DiCaprio didn't just get nominated, but actually had a decent shot at winning, for playing a psychopathic villain in Wolf of Wall Street. So there's a good example of an exception with DiCaprio himself. But he's always been so good at playing villainous characters, much better than he is at playing heroes, tragic or otherwise. So, maybe he has a better shot for The Revenant than another actor might. I mean, this is a thread for spinning wild fantasies, months before the awards, so, you know, don't take anything in here as more than my opinion.

 

Psychopathic in a genre movie? Sounds like someone needs a MIIIIIILKSHAKE!!

 

Good catch. I thought about Day-Lewis because of his nomination for Gangs of New York, but then the supporting categories are always more wide open and I didn't think about There Will Be Blood. And Uma Thurman for Kill Bill; didn't she get a Best Actress nomination one year? I can think of tons of great "non-typical" nominations in the supporting categories. Tommy Lee Jones for the Fugitive, Ian McKellen for Fellowship of the Ring, Alec Guinness for Star Wars, Samuel L. Jackson for Pulp Fiction, etc. That's just the guys I thought of off the top of my head. They definitely throw a lot of performances in the supporting category just because they're atypical even if they're not supporting really.

EDIT: It's also interesting that the whole Oscarbait label is reserved for the more "serious" movies. I mean, they give out Oscars for special effects as well. Does anyone doubt that Age of Ultron was totally Oscarbaiting for special effects? But no one mentions that for some reason. It would be interesting to widen the conversation a bit in those areas. Somebody out there is Oscarbaiting the costumes category I'm sure. Oh, I know, Crimson Peak! Those were some Oscarbait costumes for sure. ******* gorgeous. I mean, it's out there as a movie, but the smaller categories are more open. I hope it wins, really; best costumes I saw all year.

 

Actually Tangerine has an extremely limited release, but that's not really the point. Because someone hasn't seen a low budget, independent film with limited release doesn't mean they can't be upset about Eddie red man playing a woman. Why would you even bring it up? The only similarities are TRANS. A big budget movie that actually casts someone of the correct gender in the role doesn't exist. Blaming that on audiences because no one saw an indie film that also happened to have trans people in it is, quite frankly, stupid.

"well if you're not watching every movie with trans people played by trans people then you're really not giving studios a reason to stop being transmisogynistic"

 

Again, you're building strawmen. The Danish Girl and Tangerine are totally different movies, with different plots, different tones, and very different PR budgets. People who don't want WOMEN CHARACTERS to be played by MEN aren't, by having this desire, making a blood oath to go see every movie starring trans people regardless of its content or availability, they're saying THEY DON'T WANT MEN TO PLAY WOMEN. End of statement. Whether or not they went to see Tangerine does not invalidate that wish. If one of these people never watched any media with trans actors, you might have a point, but you can't just cherry-pick Tangerine to compare to the Danish Girl as the sole determination of whether someone is ~allowed~ to dislike the choice to cast a man in The Danish Girl.

Oh, and I look at what's playing at my local arthouse theater at least a couple times a month if not weekly - Tangerine either never opened there or was only out for a week.

Yeah, let's make a deal. I'll promise I'm not being condescending with my "indie Sundance darling" thing if you promise you're not being pretentious with your "my favorite ten movies made less than Ultron in two weekends" thing. Deal?

I watch plenty of non-mainstream movies, there are good ones and crappy ones, just like there are with big studio movies.

When it comes to actor rather than film nominations, I think it's more important that the actor themself is well-established rather than the movie is from inside the Hollywood establishment. Sometimes a non A-list actor will sneak in, but people like George Clooney, Daniel Day Lewis, Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio could make a movie with literally any director, any genre, any level of conventionality, and get an Oscar nomination for it - as long as the role itself is impressive enough, which The Revenant is. Their mere presence in the movie makes it "inside the Hollywood establishment" to get notice from the Academy.

Also, let's talk about this. I haven't seen all of these movies, but these are my impressions from what I know about them (and in the case of Flight, what I read on Wikipedia )

2012
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln Abraham Lincoln
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook Patrizio "Pat" Solitano, Jr. (not heroic)
Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables Jean Valjean
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master Freddie Quell (not heroic) (maybe psychopathic)
Denzel Washington, Flight William "Whip" Whitaker, Sr. (not heroic)

2013
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club Ron Woodroof
Christian Bale, American Hustle Irving Rosenfeld (not heroic) (morally questionable)
Bruce Dern, Nebraska Woodrow T. "Woody" Grant (not heroic)
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort (not heroic) (pretty crazy if not psychopathic)
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave Solomon Northup

2014
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything Stephen Hawking
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher John du Pont (not heroic) (psychopathic)
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper Chris Kyle (questionable heroism, depending on who you are) (not 'psychopathic' but i mean, how does PTSD relate to your mental health requirements)
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game Alan Turing
Michael Keaton, Birdman Riggan Thomson (not heroic)

Fewer than half of the nominations for the last three years have been heroic, or even sympathetic characters. Most of them have been antiheroes, and/or mentally disturbed or impaired in some way. The Revenant fits all that stuff and has the added benefit of requiring the actor to roll around on the forest floor while bleeding and eat a fish straight out of a freezing Alaska river or whatever, which is all Oscar tempting on its own.

 

Well, that's exactly the reason. People are mad about The Danish Girl because someone who isn't trans is playing a character who is. Tangerine is a brilliant movie that did what people think The Danish Girl should have done. That's enough of a connection, isn't it? Well, and here's another one: Tangerine deserves some Oscar nominations. Katana Rodriguez was Oscar-worthy and the direction certainly was. It's worthy of a Best Picture nomination.

And I'm not blaming audiences for The Danish Girl existing. That would be stupid. I'm saying I wish people would be a lot more experimental and eclectic in their movie watching and if they were sufficiently so to make an impact on the box office, it would impact the kind of movies that get made. That might have an extremely long shot at changing anything, but it has a better shot than sitting on the internet complaining about how crappy movies are. And, on the plus side, you see a lot of really good, interesting movies.

 

Naw dude, you're missing half the anger. It's not just about a cis person playing a trans person, it's also about a cis man playing a woman.

You keep conflating critiques of the casting with complaints about the movie itself, why is that?

I said this above, but it bears repeating. You also see a lot of mediocre and crappy movies.

 

That's enough of a connection, isn't it?

No, it's not.


Also, you're basically complaining that high art (let's pretend that all of your examples are, in fact, high art) isn't as consumed as lowest common denominator pop art, which is silly, since those pop art kinds of movies are specifically generated to reach the widest audience possible (to include filming in locations such as China or South Korea for the explicit reason of increasing Chinese and South Korean audiences), or at least have some kind of backing from a studio to produce some kind of "arthouse" buzz around them when they are disguised as some kind of higher art. Like it or not, exposure counts for a lot.

 

Fair enough. I mean, you're allowed to think and say what you want, sure. I mean, you can dislike the choice of Redmayne; you don't need my permission to do so. But it feels like an issue of trans rights and I think anyone who supports trans rights should see Tangerine. I think people who don't should see it also. I think everyone should see it. I also didn't cherry pick it. It's one of the best movies of the year.

Deal. I honestly wasn't. I mean, I saw movies this year. I have a list (of course I do) of the ones I thought were the absolute best.

Absolutely; I've seen a couple of the worst movies I've seen in my entire life at my local arthouse. Oh, hilariously, now that I think about it, maybe the very worst is The Great Beauty. Which won an Oscar. That's got to mean something. And I'm on record as loving Mad Max, Kingsman, even Age of Ultron. I don't want to draw some artificial line and then declare that everything on this side is good and everything on that side is bad. Probably seemed like I was, since I got so sidetracked onto the smaller movies, but I'm really not. EDIT: I should say that in my experience the good to crappy ratio is better with smaller movies than it is with big budget movies.

Yeah, fair enough. I mean . . . I'm trying to say this without sounding snarky or sarcastic; it seems to always sound that way when people admit they were wrong on the internet. But, yeah, you've proved your point there. You're right.

EDIT:

Well, mainly because that's kind of the only thing I'm hearing about the movie. Are a lot of people saying the movie is really awesome except for the casting of the main character? A critique of the main character of the movie is kind of a critique of the movie as a whole, isn't it?

People are complaining about a movie doing something wrong; I brought up a movie that did that exact thing right. How is that not enough of a connection?

Anyway, I'm bowing out and going to bed. Fun discussion though. Haven't gotten this caught up in a discussion on here for a while. If it seemed like I was slapping anyone personally, sorry, didn't mean to do so. Anyway, on the whole, I'd say you guys are more right than I was. So, you know, good discussion. Oh, but, we totally have to revisit this after the movie actually comes out and we can see how it stands on its own terms and/or apart from Redmayne. And now Diggy is furious.

 

Yeah, the Redmayne thing is because he's a man. Different times of course, but I don't think Felicity Huffman got any blow-back for Transamerica. At least any complaints didn't go mainstream.

 

Well, Transamerica had a Dolly Parton song; it is impossible to criticize any movie that has a Dolly Parton song.

 

tbh i'm not really sure why a cis man playing a trans woman is such a big deal when the film revolves around the character's transition. like... how else are they supposed to portray the before stuff?

(that said the danish girl does look boring and oscar bait-y af)

 

The Revenant will be up for Oscars given that it's consistent with the usual quality that both the director and Leo typically put out. I have faith that it'll get noms.

Do you think TFA will be up for (or might win) some of the other awards like cinematography/special effects/sound/score etc?

 

It's being released before Christmas (which is usually the Oscar cut - off), so yeah, it'll likely be eligible for some Oscars.

 

In regards to The Force Awakens, it's an interesting strategy. They are intentionally eschewing early buzz-building festivals and awards circuit things -- basically anything that announces before 17-Dec -- so that the film's plot cannot be spoiled.

I don't think there was much of a chance of anything like a best picture nod anyways, and certainly best visual / audio categories are locks for noms most likely, but I at least admire their commitment to the process for fans, rather than producers...

 

I like Oscar bait movies. Some of them are my favorite movies and some are not. That's just a guide or an indicator that "Hey, here are some movies you might have missed!" I don't mind those indicators.

 

This is true, but it's about prestige and higher box office through exposure. Disney need neither with TFA.

 

I would agree...there is nothing bad about a good film, regardless of the subject matter. I should mention that I had heard that the the release dates are usually determined by the studios, and not necessarily by the director, the cast, or the technical crew. So, while the fall / early winter is generally considered "Oscar season", a film made may not have been made with the Oscars in mind.

 

Me?

 

Are you awarding the Worst European JCC User award before 17-Dec or something?

 

I heard that The Force Awakens already has an Oscar.

And he's an X-Wing pilot, amirite?!

 

seems like these oscar bat movies are becoming more and more transparent and, like, nakedly topical. it's so ****ing boring and...gross.