2021's Oscar Nominees

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

King Richard just felt wrong as a movie, like I'm not big on biopics, but a movie about Serena and Venus would have been much more interesting, and instead, it's about their dad who made a lot of wrongheaded decisions on their behalf.

and it's fucking long

Aranxta Sanchez's 9 minute pee break, in real time

Best prestige film fart of the year tho.

(Leagues better than CODA's.)

I liked King Richard much more than I was expecting. Conversely I was surprised to find WSS so irritating I had to stop after 40 minutes. I've never seen the musical but suspect I wouldn't like it either

finally saw power of the dog last night. sorta convinced it’ll deservingly win

and if not I'll send Peter to talk to you

I was on the fence about it, but nothing else viably in the running (CODA, Belfast) is any good, so by all means, I hope it wins.

finally watched Drive My Car. I really like that film, the story is great and the cinematography is beautiful

didn’t realize the music is by Eiko Ishibashi, whose fine 2018 album The Dreams My Bones Dream in collaboration with Jim O’Rourke placed in our top 77

“Even if you think you know someone well, even if you love that person deeply, you can’t completely look into that person’s heart. You’ll just feel hurt. But if you put in enough effort, you should be able to look into your own heart.”

I'm going to ask my Drive My Car question--two questions--and hide them...they still nags at me. Maybe I missed where all this was made clear. Does Kōji know that Yūsuke walked in on them that day? And if he does, does Yūsuke know that he knows?

I thought that although it was not mentioned directly, Yūsuke made it clear to Kōji that he knew about the affair when they were in discussion in the back of the car, and that Kōji acknowledged it. And his response was astonishing

i found these quotes interesting from hamaguchis wiki:

[i](On the ending of Drive My Car) "Once I talked with a big fan of Drive My Car who said that it really would have been perfect without that ending. (Laugh) Well, I think maybe the reason I ended that way is to make it a bit imperfect." "In terms of the final staging of the play in applause, if I had ended the movie at that point, presumably the audience would want to do a round of applause, and it would almost be like closing of a full circle. But for me that didn't really feel like a satisfying ending. I wanted to do something a bit more disruptive, to leave some sort of break."

(On the ending of Drive My Car) "I have no any plans of making a sequel, but I was just sort of playing around with things at the end there. One other thing I'd like to say is that the title itself also might give a clue to how you can interpret the ending."[i]

thought the ending was perfect

wow, drive my car

I liked that Drive My Car had the lattice of the staging of Uncle Vanya - the agreement to direct the play, the settling in, the international casting, the rehearsals and performance - and then also had the parallel story of infatuation, grief, confrontation and eventual acceptance that was layered over it and that reflected on it

the last scene of the performance of Uncle Vanya shown in Drive My Car was memorable

from AO Scott:

““Uncle Vanya” ends with a middle-aged man and a younger woman coming to realize that they are bound by a love that isn’t romantic or sexual, but in some way spiritual…

You don’t have to know the play to feel the power of the scene. You don’t even have to read the subtitles. A deaf Korean actress, played by the extraordinary Park Yurim, is Sonya, and her final monologue is delivered in Korean Sign Language. Vanya is seated at a table, and Sonya leans over him, her face hovering behind and alongside his as her hands glide and flutter in front of his eyes…

The feeling of two people joined in an experience that surpasses language and transcends physicality has a power that I have rarely encountered in theater or film.”

an excellent prism

the film was also presented in four acts, like Chekhov’s plays

Seen 6/10, and the others wont reach me before Oscar night, so here’s my ranking:

The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Nightmare Alley
CODA

Drive My Car has stuck with me more than I expected. A lot going on in that movie.

Welp, no turning back now. We predict CODA will only win one of its three: https://www.slantmagazine.com/awards/oscar-winner-predictions-2022/

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.