comment #1

p.Vice says ...

Look Jeff, I feel your pain but sometimes you just gotta face the music. When I was younger I loved the Oscars... I hosted parties, did ballots and contests, all that bullshit. Now, maybe I'll have the TV on and pay attention to it on and off through the night, but I just don't care. And the reason is exactly what Thompson is talking about here. Notice how she puts the claws in Zodiac (and Into the Wild, another superb film that deserves a Best Pic nom) while talking about just how fun and entertaining Enchanted is. That is your Oscar mentality in a nutshell. Dark, challenging, unconventional don't play. Cute bullshit does. It's not fair, but that's life, and that's the academy awards.

I heartifly encourage you, at the very least, to give up caring about something you have absolutely no say in, and instead focus your attention on excoriating those fucking no-taste morons in the Academy with daily diatribes and hate-fueled screeds. Putting any kind of investment, personal or professional, into hoping against hope that your pet favorites like Zodiac and Things We Lost in the Fire will triumph in the end is a lost cause.

comment #2

GKLondon says ...

In 1985, the musicologist Clive Wearing suffered a brain infection and lost his ability to form new memories, along with every single memory from the proceeding 20 years. The only two things that he has retained any facility with are music and his love for his wife. It is posited that he is able to 'remember' music, as playing music is not 'remebering' in the strict sense, but is entirely an activity of the present. Wearing's love for his wife can also be considered an act of the present. She notes that

"Clive's at-homeness in music and in his love for me are where he transcends amnesia and finds continuum not the linear fusion of moment after moment, nor based on any framework or biological information, but where Clive, and any of us, ARE finally - where we are who we are".

Cinema also shares this, and therefore is understandably a place of furious emotion, which would lead to all manner of heated exchanges between cinema lovers. I love movies, but I sometimes think I love arguing about them more. The next time someone says "Well, that's like, YOUR opinion, man", punch them in the throat.

Oh, and the Oscar's can go fuck themselves. And I reserve the right to tell them to do exactly that. Every. Single. Year.

comment #3

Jay T. says ...

I have to agree with p.Vice -- that's why I can't stand all of this Oscar prediction crap, when in the end who really gives a flying fuck?

comment #4

renorambler says ...

Didn't Silence of the Lambs come out in March? Early Spring?

comment #5

WJ says ...

I love watching movies, especially discovering great ones (like Zodiac). Secretly, I make my own "awards" each year. No one else sees them, but they track my own tastes and preferences.

I suggest you do that, Jeff. Create your own "best of" list or personal awards and post them on your blog at the end of the year. Fuck the Academy - they won't tell me what the best film of **** was. I'll decide that for myself.

comment #6

romeoisbleeding says ...

I don't think I like Anne Thompson. She has no chance of making my end of the year best of anything list. So there. Zodiac is great. We know that. If she wanted to she could change her mind now and help promote it. It is all just utter bullshit. Her writing columns like this is just maddening. She is not helping at all. I don't care if I sound stupid and immature. I love this movie and I can feel passionate about it if I want to. So take that Anne.

comment #7

kingofnails says ...

Something that's always bothered me about Zodiac...Does anyone really believe that boy is Jake G.'s son? I didn't.

Still...a great film.

comment #8

cobhome says ...

Writing a film off for idiotic reasons - unfounded idiotic reasons - makes Thompson look like an idiot - she just lost all her cred - Zodiac is a great film - and if AMPAS fails to honor the achievement of Fincher et.al. - then they are idiots - cause long after something like "Atonement" wins - it will be forgotten - but Zodiac will still be remembered and watched

comment #9

rocco says ...

We're all film fans and want to see the best work rewarded, but really, what is at stake for any of us non-industry people, including Jeff, if one film versus another wins? Do they suddenly pull all the copies off the shelves of the runners-up and issue a recall for all home copies? Does a lack of an oscar make a film any less powerful or meaningful on an individual basis? Do we really need our tastes and opinions legitimized by industry insiders and "low-brow" geriatrics? I don't get it...the oscars serve one purpose: money, none of which you or I will ever see. I would take the whole process more seriously as a true appreciation of art if there were simply a group of pictures recognized for their excellence rather than one christened "the best" after much championing and campaigning. George Clooney's line about all of his fellow nominees donning batsuits captured it perfectly...

...the only reason I could see is that we want films of a certain quality to be recognized and rewarded so that MORE films like it are made...

Is there something else? What am I missing?

comment #10

Caustic712 says ...

I would like to see Zodiac (and all other good films, mind you) get some awards love (preferably Oscar love, as it's the most high profile attention)... not because the award/nomination is such a powerful validation, but because it does sway new (and possibly uninformed) viewers.

I know nominations have convinced me to check out some things I was on the fence about... and sometimes I've been disappointed, and sometimes I've been glad. Like any seal of approval, each consumer has to judge its value independently over time.

Just keeping the name of the film (or director, or actor, etc.) out there helps increase the audience... and rightly or wrongly, it helps make the creative personnel more bankable. In these days when quality often struggles to reach the spotlight, every little bit helps. For example, if JESSE JAMES gets a cinematography or costume design nomination, it's not going to make its team rich... but it's still going to remind a few floating voters to add it to their Netflix queues.

To put it another way, regardless of what the awards themselves represent, you should root for your favorites for the same reason Harvey Weinstein does... there's money in it. If you want Fincher, Anderson, the Coens, etc. to keep doing movies with reasonable budgets -- or for that matter, if you want producers to support quality projects -- then you want them to get some industry spotlight (and not just the adoration of self-styled connoisseurs such as ourselves).

And yes, I know there's a difference between accurately predicting likely nominees and advocating for what they should be (as discussed in another thread)... but I'd rather be reading about what's good than what's acceptable to the most people. Isn't that what keeps us all coming back to this blog in the first place (if only to argue for our own causes)?

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

comment #11

rocco says ...

Thanks, Caustic, for a well-thought response. I agree that we want certain people and types of films to be rewarded and recognized so more can be made...and we ourselves like to be exposed to different quality films via the process and award season...that's a perfectly logical explanation...but that alone doesn't explain the emotion and passion with which some people argue their favorite film(s) be put on pedestal. I'm asking, is that the only reason?

comment #12

Craig Kennedy says ...

People can bitch about the pointlessness of Oscars all they want, believe me I've been there, but the fact is For Your Consideration advertising gets websites like H-E through the rest of the year. The reporting isn't going to go away.

My suggestion: sit back, root for your favorites and enjoy the horse race aspect of it. Everyone knows it's all pretty meaningless in the end (unless you or your movie get a statue), but then so is the Superbowl.

comment #13

K. Bowen says ...

It's time has come and gone? Yeah, right. Check in with me in 20 years. And we'll see if Zodiac's time has come and gone.

That said, I think it needs some end-of-year awards to get the momentum really to kick in.

You know what moment I love in Zodiac that I noticed on my third viewing? (Obviously not. :) ) Everyone loves the use of Hurdy Gurdy Man at the beginning. But I love that at the room at the airport at the end, as the guy is going through the book, those plaintive guitar strains of Hurdy Gurdy Man pick up again. There's something about that moment that sticks in my mind.

comment #14

DavidF says ...

I liked and appreciated but didn't LOVE Zodiac. I'll have to see it again. Because I love Fincher I'd like to see him get a major nom but it does seem unlikely (early release, low box-office, edgy director who is usually ignored). There's always a surprise or two in the nominations so you never know.

And renorambler - Silence of the Lambs came out in February. It is the always-cited exception the rule. But it had a box office haul and level of sustained publicity that does not exist for Zodiac outside of this website...