Everything Everywhere All At Once

Okay getting some Oscar noms was always going to be kinda neat if it happened...LEADING them? In double digits? Cool.

probably bcz they entered the speed force

Very happy for this film and its creators

The Daniels just made everyone of the #DGA nominated directors and the entire audience do a theatre warmup. This is a first, and a delight! #dgaawards pic.twitter.com/op3il6bts0

— Paris Barclay (@Harparbar) February 18, 2023

The backlash is nearly here.

there's been grumbling all year on the internet. probably in this thread!

Backlash, what backlash:

Between winning the top honors at the Directors Guild Awards last weekend and the Producers and Screen Actors Guild awards this weekend...

I still don't love it, but I agree that it would be an interesting Best Picture winner.

in case i wasn't already convinced that EEAAO would be one of the most fun & formally unbound Best Picture winners ever — an ecstatic nail in the coffin of the Oscar movies that have ossified Hollywood for so long — it's making all the right people utterly shit their brains out. pic.twitter.com/4GN3zFOZ0o

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) February 26, 2023

who is he quoting?

Jeff Wells

All I know about this film is that my sister hated it and I mean HATED it.

Where would the movie realm be right now if Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert had never dreamt and maneuvered their way into a certain A24 orbit that has strangely transformed itself into a Millennial consciousness brand that is darkening many more brows than just my own?

Hard to say but boy, my heart is not only bleeding right now but staining the wood floors and certainly the carpets. And for some reason a lyric from a mediocre Jimmy Webb song is filling my head…”I don’t think that I can take it ‘cause it took so long to bake it, and we’ll never have that recipe again.” The bad guys are winning!

There are few events presently unfolding on the global stage that deliver more in the way of moral clarity than Ukrainians fighting tooth and nail against the rank evil of Vladimir Putin. If you can’t or won’t put aside peripheral matters and grasp which side is with the angels in this conflict, I don’t know what to say to you. Except that a certain moral fiber or awareness is clearly missing deep down — that your sense of humanity is minus an essential component.

Either you understand that Everything Everywhere All At Once represents not just an aesthetic pestilence but a terrible forced banality…a film that’s a good deal less about verse-jumping and spiritual dreamscapes and a lot more about pulp Marvelism and the relentless drumbeat of identity politics (Asian + queer), or you don’t. Or you do get this and you don’t care, in which case we’re all fucked anyway.

We all understand, sadly, that a certain either-or mindset, born of a certain malevolent social-media logic, has settled into award-season consciousness.

Last year at this time a fundamental shift of allegiance among the Academy middle-grounders happened…a moment when it became clear that a weird 1920s western about repressed queer desire and a refusal to bathe and an anthrax murder scenario just couldn’t be the Best Picture standard bearer, and that a generally decent but underwhelming family fable about singing, destiny and deafness had to replace it…my God, what a totally myopic, solitary confinement prison–cell choice that was!

But it happened, sadly, and what were we left with at the end? Nothing…nothing but a feeling of being surrounded and enveloped by mediocre minds (i.e., the degraded identity-politics principles that flooded the delta when SAG became SAG-AFTRA).

And this year and right now, we’re back in that same dank prison cell with a choice between a multiversian IRS audit-meets-queer politics Marvel film that has stymied and suffocated people of taste and perspective in every corner of the globe and certainly among the storied 45-plus community…a choice between a film by the makers of a metaphysical fart movie called Swiss Army Man and a smart, crafty, populist-pleasure machine that saved the film industry’s ass (in the view of no less a personage than Steven Spielberg).

God help us but the SAG-AFTRA philistines have apparently decided to choose, for the fifth time since the 2017 Oscar ceremony, identity politics symbolism over other considerations…again. Moonlight, Parasite, Nomadland, CODA, EEAAO.

Talk about The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant or The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Or, you know, anything using the word bitter.

Friendo: An Academy voting member passed this along: “One could state with absolute clarity that this year’s Oscar race is a spiritual tug–of–war for the Academy’s soul. Choose quality or choose woke. And it looks like the proverbial ‘they’ are going to choose No Academy for Older White Men and Their Wives.

“Henceforth we will be swimming in a sea of mediocrities at the Oscars from now on. The Salieris of the film world have now officially taken over. Let the virtue-signaling continue. It’s appalling. I can’t believe they’re going to give a BP Oscar to these pseudo-artiste clowns who made a film about a farting corpse. Jesus wept.”

And that friend’s name…was Mel Gibson. I’m Paul Harvey.

I honestly can’t tell what the other film Wells is positing as an alternate choice. Top Gun: Maverick? Avatar 2?

Assumed it was Spielberg's?

Nah, the Spielberg reference is clearly not to his own film. (And _The Fablemans_ wasn’t a massive blockbuster.)

Jeffrey Wells=Movie Lefsetz

Although maybe I misread the brackets bit as I'm guessing he's quoting Spielberg talking about another film? xp

It's TG Maverick:

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/steven-spielberg-tom-cruise-saved-hollywood

Jeffrey Wells=Movie Lefsetz

Oh yeah he’s terrible. I honestly expected that Ukraine paragraph to be about how poor Vlad is just misunderstood

wow that whole thing is many magnitudes worse than what ehrlich quoted. i am not tuned in enough to know much about wells but sounds like this is basically his m.o.

putin's name in gossip-rag bold like he's rumored to be in talks to helm something is v funny

This was fine. Not my thing but totally fine, in the end. Stephanie Hsu not too surprisingly the MVP for me.

And Jeffrey Wells and Sasha Stone are in some kind of race to the bottom rn

Wells has been sort of an anti-woke wannabe edgelord reactionary for decades at this point.

This movie is Not My Thing x 10. It's like a movie made to impress people that have not seen a movie for 20 years. Though of course people legit love it, so who am I to say, etc.

Don't miss James Hong's SAG awards acceptance speech

FOUND IT. Here is #JamesHong's full #SAGAwards speech. he was all LET ME DO MY TIGHT 5! this guy knows! part 1...@allatoncemovie pic.twitter.com/rs6xgws7eB

— Jenny Yang (@jennyyangtv) February 27, 2023

Now that rules.

Yeah, that was fun. His list of credits is insane--IMDB lists 456. The Clark Gable movie he mentioned as his first role was Soldier of Fortune (1955). The same year, he was in Blood Alley with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall.

#tbt to one of my very first roles, acting with Lauren Bacall in "Blood Alley" in 1955 pic.twitter.com/lCyeibGdfz

— James Hong (@IAmJamesHong) August 24, 2017

Well worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DJjaB-xuY

Good profile I thought

https://www.vulture.com/article/daniels-daniel-kwan-daniel-scheinert-oscars-everything-everywhere-all-at-once.html

And this was fun too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/02/28/jamie-lee-curtis-oscar-nomination/

Still think Hsu should win it but I won’t be surprised or disappointed if it’s Jamie Lee.

Both my editor and I are absolutely perplexed how Hsu is the least likely of the four to actually win an Oscar when she's so clearly the MVP

bc acting oscars often reward lifetime achievement instead of actually good performances?

dunno seems pretty obvious to me

Except when they don't (e.g. Lauren Bacall, Sylvester Stallone, Ruby Dee, Mickey Rourke).

that nepo baby article really broke JLC's brain. every time she talks now she opens with NOT BAD FOR A NEPO BABY!!! lol

Hahah this is VERY true.

Hsu deserves it, but at least she's young and she'll have more chances. Also, counting her as a "supporting" actress is a bit of an award shenanigan anyway

Hsu is memorable, but Jamie Lee Curtis has been a film icon for my entire adult life, with many memorable roles starting with Halloween, and at age 64 this is her first nomination

I love Jamie Lee Curtis, and she's been an enjoyable part of some fabulous films, but I can't think of a single one of them that would be award worthy. Maybe A Fish Called Wanda, but would you have moved her in ahead of any Best Actress nominee from the class of 88? I wouldn't.

Deirdre in EEAAO was a good role. Joy/Jobu in EEAAO was a STUNNING role. My heart is with Stephanie Hsu, even though she'll have more chances in the future for her work to get noticed. (Also, really liked Kerry Condon, but I'd be surprised if she has an Oscar chance, BAFTA award notwithstanding.)

Freaky Friday maybe. I would've nominated her for Wanda.

would you have moved her in ahead of any Best Actress nominee from the class of 88?

i haven't seen anna and the cher and holly hunter performances are both v good but sure i'd be happy to sub in JLC's flawlessly timed screwball for glenn close as a rubber monster or meryl streep being Utterly Transformed

oh wait that's not how years work

on nepotism - love Lena Horne's comment during her '81 one woman show Lady & Her Music re allegations that she was only cast as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz, cos her son-in law Sydney Lumet was directing it "nepotism, nepotism, nepotism - if you got it - use it"

its how world works - everyone uses whatever links they have to get ahead (and obv lena horne wasn't cast in The Wiz just coz of her son-in-law) but there are so many more serious issues for ppl to think about (esp in Hollywood)

of course deeply amused by all the people falling over themselves denying they had no easy access/step-up - just acknowledge it

that said there is no excuse for, say, brooklyn beckham

oh wait that's not how years work

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 1, 2023 4:03 PM bookmarkflaglink

clicked forward to the 1989 oscars to start all over again and imagine my surprise there at meeting glenn close and meryl streep

she'll have more chances in the future for her work to get noticed

I would've nominated her for Wanda.

And it's worth remembering Kline got his Oscar for supporting actor there.

Anyway less than a week to go until it hopefully wins everything (I can dream), and this is the most detailed interview with Hsu I've read yet:

https://ew.com/movies/stephanie-hsu-profile-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/

The Daniels did the opening for tonight's Colbert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23sRimLcTBk

awesome

Still need to read that multiverse book mookieproof recommended.

― Came Here to Roll the Microscope (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, April 5, 2022 1:38 PM (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

which book Mookie?

i'm not really into this movie, representation politics can be kinda ridiculous, and i love JLC, but if JLC ends up being the only one to win from a movie with a predominantly asian/asian-american cast, that will not be a good look.