2021's Oscar Nominees

Saw Jackass 4 in an empty theater yesterday - even the best movies can’t fill seats rn

Introducing this year’s #Oscars hosts: Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes will emcee the Academy Awards. https://t.co/KugEfMo0a3 pic.twitter.com/e30Ar2AnkL

— Variety (@Variety) February 14, 2022

Meanwhile...

Am I doing this right https://t.co/CHqoOnQMR3 pic.twitter.com/FQbZJGQhdT

— Justin Chang (@JustinCChang) February 14, 2022

Wanda Sykes seems like a good choice for co-host.

I'm happy with Regina Hall in the mix. I'd be happier still if she already had Oscar nominations for Support the Girls and Scary Movie.

I watched over half of Belfast yesterday. It's the worst BP nom I've seen since Crash. Branagh can't write or direct.

CODA is feel-good pap. I liked the lead actress, and I wasn't terribly bored or annoyed, but this thing does not miss a single expected plot beat: there's the tough-as-nails coach who turns out to want what's best, the boyfriend who enacts a betrayal that exists only to be forgiven, the mid-film crisis (which goes curiously unresolved), the audition that begins disastrously before being turned around, and on and on and on. The boomer-sanctified soundtrack--Joni, Marvin-feels about three decades out of date, as well.

It's terrible. I saw it mid August during a fallow period, was amazed anyone remembered it years end.

I really loved Licorice Pizza, Power of the Dog and Drive My Car. Nightmare Alley was p good too

I can't see myself watching Coda (sappy), King Richard (sappy), Don't Look Up (discourse-poisoned), Dune (long nerd shit) or West Side Story (reboot)

WSS the best of that batch by far

yeah, I'm sure it's fine, but there's already a great West Side Story that I can watch anytime!

When we watched CODA, for the first third or so we just could not stop giggling at all the cliches, but by the end it won us over. Never transcended, mind, but we liked it fine.

Yeah, CODA might not be the worst of the nominees, but it's my least favorite or at least tied with Belfast.

Branagh made Jamie Dornan a sexy dad, so there's that.

in CODA regarding expected plot beats: "the audition that begins disastrously before being turned around"

that is one of my favorite moments. her teacher purposely flubs the piano part to get her to stop and look around at him so he can silently remind her that she is great and needs to have more confidence

Tony Kotsur deserves the Oscar imo - his very vivid ASL expressions in the hilarious visit to the doctor’s office, his holding his hands over his daughter’s throat in an effort to feel her singing so he can understand her, the goodbye

*Troy not Tony

I guess I sorta liked Don't Look Up--or at least I was able to just go along with it once I stopped expecting it to be any good, which was pretty early on (probably the first Blanchett/Perry appearance). It is useless as satire for all of the reasons that have already been stated, though it plays straight enough, at times, that I wonder if the Academy thinks it is nominating it in the tradition of Dr. Strangelove and Network, or of Airport and The Towering Inferno (it feels more, to me, like a descendent of all-star comedy duds like 1941 and Mars Attacks! anyhow). But I dunno--I liked Leo's uncharacteristically mousy performance (as full of actorly ticks as any of his other performances, but a nice break from those particular ticks nonetheless), Ron Perlman's John Wayne/G.I. Joe parody, Ariana Grande's "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well" ballad, and the audacity/stupidity of the (first) mid-credits sequence. I also found the whole dinner table sequence unexpectedly graceful and moving, especially appearing, as it does, after two hours of sledgehammer comedy.

Putting it alongside Airport among Oscar players is probably astute. I like both better than the average Film Twitterer.

Oscars: Several Awards Won’t Be Telecast Live This Year (Exclusive) https://t.co/qPBYwPWr3Y

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 22, 2022

Long overdue. Because long.

Sound twins got screwed twice -- combined into one award last year and that award removed from live broadcast this year.

Get rid of every last thing but the handing out of the Oscars. Starting with the two Twitter Oscars.

it still always amazes me how many people are uninterested in the actual "oscars" part of the oscars, the only actual unique thing about the oscars

the nominated songs are mostly bad and the performances of them are cringey and take up a lot of time. I'd rather watch the acceptance speeches for the shorts and tech awards

Eliminating editing, sound, and production design is bad--so much else they could cut.

That in fact is why editing is important

my favorite moments in the broadcast are alway when they show clips from the nominated films before announcing the awards, there should be more of that

I just finished watching them all and here's how I rank them, using Jonathan Rosenbaum's ranking system:

Masterpiece: The Power of the Dog

A must see: Dune, Licorice Pizza

Worth seeing: Drive My Car, West Side Story, Nightmare Alley

Has redeeming facet: King Richard, CODA

Belfast

Don't Look Up is in "has redeeming facet" too.

Oscar acting nominations seem to come down to choices between metamorphic performances and internalized ones. A lot of biographical films feature very extroverted chameleonic performances and they are the ones that win the awards (Renee Zellweger (Judy), Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), Nicole Kidman (The Hours), Sean Penn (Milk), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Charlize Theron (Monster) etc etc etc etc etc)

With internalized roles the actors have to express something about their own lives and experiences and register their underlying emotions through the character. Those are more interesting to me

coda: adorable, moves and speaks in cliché, evaporates from the mind instantly

also has no business being in this crew

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

I've kept quiet about WSS awaiting a second viewing. Well, it got a second viewing: a very okay musical.

There’s nothing wrong with it, but I didn’t love it.

a certain squishy male lead though

Off-screen baggage aside, he’s so inert in the role that he sucks the energy out of everyone else’s performances. Release the Faist / DeBose cut!

I had trouble accepting Zegler thanks to this twerp.

wss succeeds wildly despite the antipresence of ansel egon or whatever, the splendor of the filmmaking, the sweep of the camera, it’s more than enough. i don’t think he takes away anything from the excellence of the other performances also

Those pans are beautiful and eloquent, and I admire Spielberg's commitment to romanticism so many decades later.

I loved WSS, but can't disagree with Elgort being a cipher. his annoying accent, his vacant eyes, and the fact that at times he seems as if he's in another film.

Faist was amazing, one of the most tragic Riff Raffs I've seen. loved DeBose and Zegler as well. really the only person I didn't love was Elgort.

was a bit weird writing Doc out of the musical and having him be dead and giving Rita Moreno the part of his late wife, but it worked I guess.

the way they repurposed "Cool" was beyond stupid though, and adding a backstory of Tony going to prison and repeating it over and over got annoying. but I enjoyed myself.

lmao at Ansel Egon, I like that better

Tony IS, though, often the least interesting character on stage even in the best productions, which is why you don't want to cast him with someone who is a charisma vaccuum

i haven't seen the new WSS but richard beymer and natalie wood are both pretty bad in the original, so it seems like upgrading just one of those performances is still a net positive

a vacuum needing humanizing if you will

Were it not for the presence of Ryusuke Fucking Hamaguchi in this race, I would be throwing my support behind Spielberg in support of, yes, the "commitment to romanticism" alongside old school craft and film language, etc.

Also, if CODA pulls off this coup, it'll be the nothing-est best picture winner since Out of Africa.

The father from CODA will get the award that should go to Kodi Smit-McPhee, but I can't see the film winning BP.

voted for drive my car, a film i can't stop thinking about. eiko ishibashi wuz robbed

2008 was the slate that made us all irate.

1975

Barry Lyndon
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Nashville

Personally, there's probably more there for me than the last decade of BP nominees.

I've heard 1975 held up as the best BP lineup ever, and it is hard to disagree.

It's got two all-time top 10 movies, so it scarcely matters that I run pretty cool on the other three.

Cuckoo's Nest (the winner) might actually be my least favorite of the five, and that is about the strongest thing that I can say against that film.

Well, 2021 may not be the worst year, but I think it's going to be the most forgettable.

There are 4 or 5 decent choices. I think Drive My Car will be remembered as the rare foreign film that got a worthy nomination.