Amph The 2016 Oscars

Has Sam Smith never heard of Elton John and a little movie called The Lion King?

Edit: leaving his historical ignorance aside -- it is THE WORST BOND SONG EVER.

 

Oscar Ratings: Chris Rock's Return As Host Draws 34M Viewers In 8-Year Low

It doesn't surprise me the ratings dip every year. There's so many other options and plus social media. Meaning, you don't have to sit through a four hour show to know the results as they happen. And if there's something interesting or noteworthy that happens, you can always YouTube it or something. Also, it would appear the general public has not watched all the films nominated for Best Picture and therefore don't have a rooting interest.

 

If Star Wars was nominated in Best Picture (which I think it should have been, dagnabit) no way that would have dipped to the lowest year ever. While it's true that social media and instant news negates the need to watch the show entirely, I still think if something that has super-mass appeal (Mad Max did have mass appeal and made a ton of cake, true, but it was basically the only one) and is up for the big show awards, it wouldn't dip to lowest ratings ever.

 

I thought every Best Picture nominee was better than TFA, even the ones I liked least.

 

yeah, i probably enjoyed tfa more than bridge of spies or brooklyn but no way was it a better film.

 

Yeah, TFA wasn't a best picture nod. IT's a very good movie, that has to many flaws to be considered great.

The Oscars had a good selection of best pictures. That being said if you actually narrow down each thing that makes a movie great piece by piece, Mad Max should have won both Director and Best Picture. Especially Director.

Spotlight was good, but it's another example of how the Academy thinks. They'll always award the social justice piece. Spotlight was a very well directed book report on an important subject. That was all. Revenant is overrated, but should have won if Mad Max wasn't going to get it. Was Awesome seeing Keaton on stage again for another best picture. Almost like John Goodman a few years ago.

Big Cheers for Leo, too.

 

The Revenant did really well at the box office as well. But, yeah, TFA is way down my list of best Oscar eligible movies. I might have liked TFA more than Bridge of Spies, but that's the only BP nominee that I'm even close on. And there were so many other movies that were worthy of BP nomination: Inside Out, Carol, Ex Machina, Tangerine, The End of the Tour, Mistress America, 45 Years, Monkey Kingdom, Sicario, Macbeth, Amy, Straight Outta Compton, Black Mass & Creed.

Then there are the movies that I really loved as what they were, but maybe weren't BP material. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Mr. Holmes, The Shaun the Sheep Movie, Cinderella, Furious 7, The Gift & Pawn Sacrifice.

And then there's TFA. After those.

I'll show myself out.

 

Well, I means, if Brooklyn got a nomination (Which is my go-to for "why the heck did this generally pleasant but fairly unremarkable film get a nomination for Best Picture?") simply on the power of it's emotional resonance, I got way more emotional resonance out of Force Awakens. And if you start comparing pure filmmaking skill on a shot by shot basis (and costume design, music, performance, etc.) of Force Awakens v Brooklyn, I think TFA particularly thwomps it.

I don't mean to be mean to Brooklyn, which is an alright movie and all, but using that as a base comparison for what got considered for "Best Picture".

 

Yeah, that probably came across as a little mean to TFA, which I did give four stars. I really enjoyed it and think it's a must see. I mean, I'd rank it above some other Oscar nominated movies. It's better than Youth or Mustang or Hateful Eight, all of which got some nominations in various categories. And certainly better than a lot of the big blockbusters of the year. Easily better than Ultron or Ant-Man or Jurassic World.

I would quibble with the whole "pure filmmaking skill" thing. I don't think there's a single performance in TFA that's up to Ronan's performance in Brooklyn. The music is certainly not as good in TFA; the music is, frankly, pretty terrible in TFA. But apples and oranges. I mean, shot by shot basis isn't going to get anywhere. Brooklyn does not call for sweeping epic battles; TFA doesn't call for an absolute sense of time and place in the real world. It's one of the reasons the awards shows are typically disasters. It is all relative.

But I just liked Brooklyn more than most around here. I thought Hornby's script was really sharp and it's a very evocative treatment of the sense of home versus the sense of rootlessness. It's the kind of movie people say they don't make anymore, a sharply written character-based drama. And it's an achievement in the sense that it makes something really powerful out of something as simple as the struggle of a young immigrant woman. It's an example of the kind of movie that we're starting to get more and more of, a movie that focuses on the interior life of a woman and treats the interior life of a normal woman with real importance and seriousness. I think about Short Term 12, Room, Suffragette, I'll See You In My Dreams, etc. It's still a movie we don't see often enough: totally centered on the interior identity and life experiences of a woman. From her perspective, about her life, about her choices, about her feelings and, ultimately, about her complete and total self-determination.

Of course, TFA has some of those same elements, though it's obviously about a woman struggling to change the course of the galaxy (*sigh*) rather than just find her identity and place in the world. Different tones of resonance.

 

I'll take Brooklyn over TFA any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

 

Yeah this is why ultimately award shows and flat-out "ranking" art is meaningless because it all comes down to how it affects the individual viewer itself. Everyone is right, nobody is wrong. I mean, we still do it cuz we're humans and we're wired to rank, catalog, and rate, well, everything. I will say, personally, I got way more emotional empathy outta following Rey in Force Awakens than the main character of Brooklyn (I'd ague that Ford, Ridley and Driver in Force Awakens are putting in great performances that I'd happily "rank" up there with any of the Oscar acting nominees this year) The female leads in TFA/Brooklyn are similar in the regard that their lives are flip-turned-upside down and have to recognize their inner strength and move past things that are holding them back. Hell, both of them just want to go home but destiny (either literally by the Force or falling in love with someone across the sea) is pulling them apart. Rey's inner life struggle just happens to involve, like, lightsabers and Wookies and stuff. Which I am totally okay with.

 

I agree with your general point, but occasionally people are just wrong. You know, like Fifty Shades of Grey for Best Picture or something. I mean, that's just wrong.

 

It'd be wrong to everyone on the planet but let's say someone made a deal with the devil and the person who wrote 50 Shades suddenly was in charge of the Oscars and gave every damn one to 50 Shades of Grey. Well, they'd be right for them, I guess.

 

Oscars 2016 Review: Academy Award Awards - Leo Wins, Chris Rock Hosts!

 

Just saw it, and ultimately I'm glad spotlight won. The church being ****heads is something that should get all the publicity it can.

But I'm glad Leo won.

And I'm in love with Alicia vikander

 

Leo finally won his Oscar.

Good for him.

 

I didn't realize the Oscars were the kind of thing people watched 5 days after the fact. Everything interesting that happened is already all over the internet.

 

it's the kind of thing i'm watching infinity days after the fact.

 

This is partly a) me working away for the last week without access to taped show and b) being geeky enough to watch the taped replay upon my return from said work even thought I knew about Leo and spotlight

 

I also hate the oscars after the whole crash/brokeback thing which I'll never forgive but I still stupidly get involved

Glad mad max won a lot tho

 

Gal's quite pretty and a hellova thespian too, who doesn't love her?

 

I just saw Son of Saul, the Best Foreign Film winner, and it is a brutal experience. It brings a new twist to the Holocaust movie by being set "behind the scenes" as it were at Auschwitz. The main character is a sonderkommando, a "special prisoner" who does the dirty work that the German soldiers won't do. We get to see the ceaseless frantic activity of the people burning the bodies, cleaning the gas chamber, shoveling coal for the ovens, etc. It's an unrelentingly grim movie and there are a couple of scenes in particular that were just almost overwhelming to me. I think the highest praise I can give the movie is also the strongest warning I can give a potential viewer: it feels like a documentary. There's no music, a shaky, hand-held camera, very long takes, little dialogue, a frantic pace, a square 35mm frame, very minimal acting . . . put this together with the "how a death camp actually works" subject matter and it feels incredibly real. It's a masterpiece, but a harrowing one. I give it straight up four stars, but know your limits.