Nemiroff: “This is what they should do going forward….just keep it simple and keep it about cinema.”
Cinema? With the exception of All Quiet on the Western Front and The Whale, the ’23 Oscars were almost entirely about identity politics and voters wanting to blend in with the EEAAO wave because it felt safer to do that. Because they didn’t want to labelled (or even self-labelled) as fuddy-duds.
At the 43:00 mark, Sneider says that EEAAO is no classic like Network while Nemiroff (easily one of the scariest pundits counters that it is one of the greatest films of all time.
Sneider (43:07): “I think there will be a little EEAAO backlash in the coming months, simply because it won so many awards. If it had won three awards like CODA or Green Book…but it won seven above-the-line Oscars. I think that’s too many. Is it on the level of a Network? No — this isn’t an all-time, classic timeless movie…c’mon.”
Nemiroff: “Yes, it is!”
Sneider: “No, it’s not.”
Nemiroff: “Yes, it is! Without a doubt! It’s probably gonna [be taught] in film school classes in the future. What is not to love about this film?”
Conclusion: It’s not my natural inclination to define or classify films according to the cultural heritage or ethnicity of their creators — in my eyes good cinema is good cinema. But it does seem to appear that 2023 will gradually become known as The Year of the Resurgence of Older White Male Filmmakers. We all understand that older white males are bad (i.e., inheritors of an evil legacy) and deserving of cultural belittling and dismissal and perhaps even punishment, but Club Diverse can’t win each and every year.
Martin Scorsese, 80
Chris Nolan, 52
Alexander Payne, 62
Ridley Scott, 85
Ben Affleck, 51
Matt Johnson, 36
Bradley Cooper, 49
Michael Mann, 80
To ethnically round out the Best Picture roster, Blitz Bazawule‘s The Color Purple will almost certainly have to be factored in.
Celine Song‘s Past Lives, which premiered at Sundance ’23, could emerge as a strong contender. I don’t see Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie as an awards-level effort but let’s wait and see.
Keep in mind that anyone can guess or strategize their head off but no one knows what’s coming. Not really. The deeply loathed Everything Everywhere All At Once was NOWHERE on anybody’s predictions list this time last year.
Kevin Costner‘s Horizon trilogy won’t start shooting until April (i.e., next month ) so it seems unlikely to become a ’23 release.
Could Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (’02), which stars a balding, overweight, Uriah Heep-like Nicolas Cage as a bizarrely fictionalized version of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, be made today? I saw it again a few nights ago (4K Bluray), and yeah, it’s possible it could be made today, sure. But some characters would have to be un-whited as the film, shockingly and almost incomprehensibly, doesn’t have a single African American or Asian American face….eeeeeeee!!!! And Ron Livingston‘s Marty Bowen, Kaufman’s agent, wouldn’t be allowed to say that he fucked this or that girl in the ass.
22 years ago I reviewed Kaufman’s Adaptation script and called it ‘one of the most inventive and out-there scripts I’ve ever read.’ The main character, I explained, “is Kaufman himself, and that’s a big whoa right there. A screenplay about a screenwriter trying to write the screenplay? But it’s much more than that.
The ‘subject’ of Adaptation is an actual, one-time orchid-worshipper named John LaRoche (Chris Cooper), whose attempted theft of rare flora from a Florida state preserve eight years ago resulted in his being prosecuted by the state and, from that, a New Yorker profile of LaRoche and then a book called “The Orchid Thief” (Ballantine), by staff writer Susan Orlean (so named in the film and played by Meryl Streep).
Adaptation is primarily about Kaufman’s struggle to adapt “The Orchid Thief” into script form, but it’s also about LaRoche and Orlean and the importance of nurturing a devotion in life to something perfect and beautiful. It’s about the striving of mortals to merge themselves with the sublime — Kaufman in his way, LaRoche and Orlean in theirs. Like the screenplay, the movie is half about Kaufman’s situation and half about LaRoche and Orlean’s. But it begins and ends inside Kaufman’s head.
Brian Kopppelman has been around and is seemingly well positioned as far as sussing out the straight dope is concerned. Wiki page: "Co-creator, showrunner and exec producer of Showtime's Billions and Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber...co-writer of Ocean's Thirteen and Rounders, producer (The Illusionist, The Lucky Ones), director (Solitary Man, the ESPN documentary This Is What They Want).
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HE to Happy Larry: Your observations are “inspiring” in a certain light. Life will sometimes surprise. Unsung or less-than-stellar talents sometimes luck into unexpected rewards. And as truly grotesque as The Whale was and is in certain respects, Brendan Fraser‘s fat-suit performance was as respectable and even touching as this sort of thing gets. (Especially the white-light death scene.)
But Everything Everywhere All At Once will forever be regarded as an irksome (do I hear infuriating?) curio…a film that even the director’s own mother didn’t get and couldn’t understand the adulation for.
Did you honestly come out of that film full of “holy moley eureka” enthusiasm for Ke Huy Quan‘s performance? He was more or less fine (said his lines with urgency and proficiency, hit his marks) but he won because of (a) the comeback narrative + (b) the Asian identity pride thing + (c) because he brought big emotion to his Golden Globes acceptance speech.
Jamie Lee Curtis‘s IRS bitch performance was broad and coarse and rather absurd, like a character out of The Wizard of Oz….I felt intensely irritated by her acting (and her clownish makeup) start to finish.
Michelle Yeoh‘s athleticism and commitment to the dismayed, stressed-out character she played was also fine but again, her Oscar was about (a) Asian representation and (b) breaking the glass ceiling =plus (c) Cate Blanchett already has two Oscars.
Do you honestly think that EEAAO will be watched and re-watched by future film enthusiasts? That it will be cited by future film historians as a ground-breaker or seminal influencer? There’s a community of film Catholics who are sadly burdened with a sense of taste, and among this fraternity EEAAO is not just disliked but deeply loathed. In my humble judgment it is one of the absolute worst films to ever take the Best Picture Oscar….hands down, no question. The Movie Godz have taken note and are actually fuming as we speak.
Is there some way that we could all gather round and shame Quentin Tarantino for writing a line of Pulp Fiction dialogue in which John Travolta's "Vincent Vega" says "what a gyp"?
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Dead Reckoning (’47), a noirish hriller in which Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott costarred, stinks. I caught it once and probably never will again. Scott, a femme fatale type with a smoky voice, never appeared in a really good film, not even during her mid to late ’40s heyday. You could argue that her most appealing performance was in Loving You (’57), and in that she was a second-banana to Elvis Presley.
I would plunk down whatever for this real-life, utterly convincing Disney-made Star Wars lightsaber, and I’m speaking as someonme who totally abandoned the mythology after The Phantom Menace came out, or roughly 24 years ago. What will Disney charge? Minimally $750, I would think, and possibly a grand. Maybe $1500.
All my adult life I've been in love with Joni Mitchell's "Free Man in Paris." But what I've especially loved all those years has been based on a misunderstanding, and right now I feel sick about this.
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Dr. Todd Grande: “At a ceremony filled with many people who are insincere, hypocritical and obsequious, it was refreshing to see somebody with a sharp sense of humor and who was generally disgusted with grandiose and extravagant displays of wealth and power. Ashley Graham should thank Hugh Grant for the education [that he provided]. Graham’s reaction of feigning comprehension as well as her tedious questions actually supported Grant’s original characterization of the Academy Awards as ‘Vanity Fair.’ She ended proving his point, which should represent her only successful endeavor during that interview.
“Grant’s witty and annoyed behavior was a metaphorical slap that far exceeded the dramatic value provided by Will Smith….Hugh Grant accomplished more without using violence. He reminded people that sometimes small talk can be so small [that] it should not be tolerated.”
Apparent fact: When Hugh Grant said that Sunday night’s Oscar congregation was like “‘Vanity Fair‘”, Ashley Graham thought he was referring to Vanity Fair‘s website/magazine or the VF after-party. God help her, but the poor woman had apparently never heard of William Makepeace Thackeray.
Graham undoubtedly knows who Thackeray is now, of course, and will almost certainly never again be at a loss for words when the subject of his novel, “Vanity Fair”, comes up.
Grande again: “‘Vanity Fair’ expresses a desolate view of the human condition…the term is generally used to describe the frivolous behavior of wealthy people and condemns shallowness…Hugh Grant‘s comment was not meant as a compliment to the Oscars. [Grant’s] reference to a 19th Century English novel might have been a bit esoteric for a lighthearted, superficial, feel-good interview before an awards ceremony…[which leads to the question] why did Grant presume that Graham” — a superficial, under-educated Millennial know-nothing — “would be familiar with the reference to Thackeray’s novel? Unfortunately a general lack of interest in the arts is fairly common these days. Grant was somewhat rude, yes, but at the same time he was authentic.”
