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Fiery Angel wrote:So it was a lousy year for movies.

...I'll take this bait. What about the above list makes you feel this way?

Best Supporting Actress is a weird category where it's the three main people, all playing sort-of-mean-moms (Metcalf, Janney, Hunter) and then it's just a no-man's-land. Melissa Leo in Novitiate is in the mix! This really does seem like a nomination could happen with enough pressure from the critics groups.

I do feel the need to point out, despite riding high on the NBR win for the Post just last page, that often times what the critics groups help do is secure nominations they may not get otherwise, but rarely play much in terms of ultimate big winners with maybe one or two exceptions each year. I think the push for Sean Baker, and especially the Mudbound win, is emulating that spirit. I actually could kind of imagine Sean Baker getting a weird nominated-but-FP-isn't-for-best-picture nomination like Bennett Miller did a few years ago, but on the other hand it's really hard to tell how the Director's branch feels about relative newcomers like Peele or Gerwig who almost certainly got the opportunity to make the films on their preexistent stardom.

(I'm still on the "Netflix will be shut out again" bandwagon, but was amused to discover today they don't even have a FYC site for the Oscars!)

It's never a lousy year for movies. It's not even a "well, maybe it was at the multiplex..." because Get Out & Dunkirk were monster hits, but also multiplexes do show Lady Bird & The Beguiled & Logan Lucky and all of these other fantastic movies. Maybe not for long, maybe not to packed houses, maybe not on the best screen, but they're there. You just have to go see them.

mfunk9786 wrote:

Fiery Angel wrote:So it was a lousy year for movies.

...I'll take this bait. What about the above list makes you feel this way?

I should qualify: I agree with Actress (Ronan made Lady Bird bearable), Foreign Language Film and Nonfiction Film, and I haven't seen Phantom Thread yet, but none of the other winners is particularly exciting.

A lot of the films listed there are good, or purported to be good, and are probably all, to a film, absolutely worth seeing. I can certainly attest to Lady Bird, Get Out, and especially The Florida Project being good-to-great films, Faces Places being a masterpiece, and I've heard nothing but positive things about Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, and Girls Trip. Still genuinely curious why that list in particular would elicit that reaction, particularly because I'm not sure that unfamiliarity with films honored is an excuse for calling a year good or bad.

Mudbound is also supposed to be quite good (with its director being fairly underrated).

mfunk9786 wrote:A lot of the films listed there are good, or purported to be good, and are probably all, to a film, absolutely worth seeing. I can certainly attest to Lady Bird, Get Out, and especially The Florida Project being good-to-great films, Faces Places being a masterpiece, and I've heard nothing but positive things about Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, and Girls Trip. Still genuinely curious why that list in particular would elicit that reaction, particularly because I'm not sure that unfamiliarity with films honored is an excuse for calling a year good or bad.

To restate what I said, this list is filled with several mediocre (or worse) films, so it reminded me what a lousy year for movies this has been.

While I do enjoy my generations pessimistic and often nihilistic outlook on things it strikes me as rather silly to declare that this year has been lousy for film. Yes The Emoji Movie has since been banished to the newly discovered hidden tenth level of hell but that doesn't diminish the achievements of the others.

Fiery Angel wrote:

mfunk9786 wrote:A lot of the films listed there are good, or purported to be good, and are probably all, to a film, absolutely worth seeing. I can certainly attest to Lady Bird, Get Out, and especially The Florida Project being good-to-great films, Faces Places being a masterpiece, and I've heard nothing but positive things about Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, and Girls Trip. Still genuinely curious why that list in particular would elicit that reaction, particularly because I'm not sure that unfamiliarity with films honored is an excuse for calling a year good or bad.

To restate what I said, this list is filled with several mediocre (or worse) films, so it reminded me what a lousy year for movies this has been.

I wasn't aware you'd seen the films you didn't list, my apologies. It read as if you were assuming that you wouldn't like them, or didn't think they had earned recognition.

mfunk9786 wrote:

Fiery Angel wrote:

mfunk9786 wrote:A lot of the films listed there are good, or purported to be good, and are probably all, to a film, absolutely worth seeing. I can certainly attest to Lady Bird, Get Out, and especially The Florida Project being good-to-great films, Faces Places being a masterpiece, and I've heard nothing but positive things about Phantom Thread, Call Me By Your Name, and Girls Trip. Still genuinely curious why that list in particular would elicit that reaction, particularly because I'm not sure that unfamiliarity with films honored is an excuse for calling a year good or bad.

To restate what I said, this list is filled with several mediocre (or worse) films, so it reminded me what a lousy year for movies this has been.

I wasn't aware you'd seen the films you didn't list, my apologies. It read as if you were assuming that you wouldn't like them, or didn't think they had earned recognition.

No problem. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about that. The only one on that list I haven't seen is Phantom Thread.

domino harvey wrote:John Waters' ever-unpredictable Top 10 list

One of my favorite parts of this time of year, thanks for posting.

mfunk9786 wrote:

domino harvey wrote:John Waters' ever-unpredictable Top 10 list

One of my favorite parts of this time of year, thanks for posting.

His snippet about Tom of Finland is incredible.

The LA Film Critics' Awards have been announced.

Best Film: Call Me By Your Name (runner-up: The Florida Project)
Best Director: Luca Guadagnino, Call Me By Your Name and Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water (tie)
Best Actor: Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name (runner-up: James Franco, The Disaster Artist)
Best Actress: Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water (runner-up: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards)
Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project (runner-up: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards)
Best Supporting Actress: Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird (runner-up: Mary J. Blige, Mudbound)
Best Screenplay: Jordan Peele, Get Out (runner-up: Martin McDonogh, Three Billboards)
Best Cinematography: Dan Laustsen, The Shape of Water (runner-up: Roger Deakins, Blade Runner)
Best Score: Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread (runner-up: Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water)
Best Production Design: Dennis Gassner, Blade Runner (runner-up: Paul Austerberry, The Shape of Water)
Best Editing: Lee Smith, Dunkirk (runner-up: Tatiana Riegel, I, Tonya)
Best Foreign Language Film: BPM and Loveless (tie)
Best Documentary: Faces Places (runner-up: Jane)
Best Animated Film: The Breadwinner (runner-up: Coco)
Experimental Film Award: Purge This Land
New Generation Award: Greta Gerwig

Nice to see Willem Dafoe getting some love after all this time. He certainly hasn't always been in the best films but I've also at least enjoyed him. But shit that Deakins snub.

Oscars are on March 4th at 8 PM, so I guess they shifted everything up by an hour this year. Starting to feel mighty far away from the year being honored at this point.

I love David Ehrlich's annual top-ten videos because they're so well edited they make me get excited/sentimental about movies that are not actually that special (Okja, The Beguiled, The Big Sick, etc.)

mfunk9786 wrote:Oscars are on March 4th at 8 PM, so I guess they shifted everything up by an hour this year. Starting to feel mighty far away from the year being honored at this point.

For most of their history, they were in late-March or early-April (as late as April 18 in 1966). It was only beginning with the ceremony in 2004 that the Academy decided to hold them in February.

Wikipedia wrote:In light of the record low viewership from the preceding year's ceremony, the Academy sought to make several changes and hire a new producer for the upcoming show. AMPAS announced that unlike previous years where the ceremony typically was held in either late March or early April, the festivities would be held in late February. AMPAS director of communications John Pavlik explained that the purpose of moving the telecast a month earlier was "to bolster the ceremony's sagging television ratings and protect the Oscar's status as the nation's pre-eminent awards event." Despite several Academy officials denying such reasons, some industry insiders speculated that the earlier Oscar date was also implemented to mitigate the intense campaigning and lobbying during Oscar season put forth by film studios. This marked the first time since the 14th ceremony that the awards were held outside the aforementioned time frame.

Every four years the Olympics make Awards Season one or two weeks longer stretching into March.

it'd be nice if they could move the oscars up to the week between the superbowl and the grammys (or even before the superbowl). even late february is too far away from the actual movie-year in question.

...why? The economics are designed to get people into theaters when there's nothing else playing, and then almost exactly once the ceremony happens everything's available on home video to catch up on. Awards seasons is good! Make it last as long as possible.

movielocke wrote:it'd be nice if they could move the oscars up to the week between the superbowl and the grammys (or even before the superbowl). even late february is too far away from the actual movie-year in question.

That's fine if you're in New York or LA but most major awards contenders don't get wide releases until late December or January

Cahiers du cinema’s usually entertaining list:

1) TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN
2) JEANNETTE: THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC
3) CERTAIN WOMEN
4) GET OUT
5) THE DAY AFTER
6) LOVER FOR A DAY
7) GOOD TIME
8) SPLIT
9) JACKIE
10) BILLY LYNN'S HALFTIME WALK

The amount of animosity towards Twin Peaks being on top ten lists on Twitter was...well...worse than it normally is. It's shown up on multiple lists and people have shown no sign of not wanting the people who listed it to not die covered with pus filled boils all over.