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13 Nominations to Rule Them All
PatSmarty was among the onslaught of people who noted that the Oscar Nominations have
been announced and that FotR has 13 of them. Beautiful Mind
and Moulin Rouge also in there too.
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In 1982, E.T. was nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture, but it won just one, for Best Visual Effects.
Being nominated is fine and such, but the real test will be on oscar night.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
What percentage of these films were released in the past 3-4 months? What percentage in the first 3-4 months?
"Besides Crowe, who stars as Nash in ``A Beautiful Mind,'' the best actor nominees were Sean Penn as a retarded father seeking custody of his daughter in ``I Am Sam''; Will Smith as boxer Muhammad Ali in ``Ali''; Denzel Washington as a rakish bad cop in ``Training Day''; and Tom Wilkinson as a vigilante father in ``In the Bedroom.''
A Beautiful Mind: released 13 December 2001
I am Sam: released: 28 December 2001
Ali: released 25 December 2001
Training Day: released 5 October 2001
In the Bedroom: released 19 January 2001
Moulin Rouge: released 16 May 2001
Proof that Americans can't remember what happened in the entertainment industry for very long.
What the heck has happened to /.
/. to recalibrate it's priorities before the readers recalibrate their web browsers.
Now we're getting stories on Oscar NOMINATIONS!
If I want this pap I can visit CNN or any other news outlet.
Meanwhile real news like Google's Linux based search engine appliance passes without even a mention.
It's time for
Why are most of the leading men portraying ... uh, dammaged characters. Besides Ali (who later in real life suffers problems) these seem to all be retarded/schitzo/rakish/problematic characters somehow.
Hollywood loves problematic characters, hates problematic people.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Funny, yet also sad.
Slashdot: "The MPAA is evil!"
Slashdot: "oooh! Look at the awards!"
IAAA (I am an actor), and I can tell you from experience that playing a character with a mental illness is a very challenging role to pull off convincingly. It is not just about "acting retarded" as another reply to this post stated, but rather it is about trying to understand a mental state that you have never experienced directly and then being able to convincingly portray it to an audience in such a way that they can really believe the character is real. I haven't yet had the chance to see "I am Sam" or "A Beautiful Mind" yet, but I don't doubt for a minute that Sean Penn and Russell Crowe deserve their nominations.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Of course, I think he had enough screen time to qualify for best actor, but they'd never nominate an elderly British actor that most people have never heard of. Have to think of the ratings.
Hmm...they did for Gods and Monsters
BEST PICTURE:
Shouldn't. It's a good film but not the best of the year. It's not a complete, self-contained story, and that usually counts for a lot.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ian McKellen
Shouldn't. It's a token nomination: Ian McKellan practically did nothing that was worthy of winning an award. He brings the same class to LOTR that Guinness brought to Star Wars, but his largely-ignored work in other films is so far superior it's almost laughable. Plus, Gandalf's an easy character to play.
BEST DIRECTOR: Peter Jackson
Won't, but should. His work in showing characters of disproportionate size in the same shots is hugely underrated. It takes talent to fit that as seamlessly into a movie as Jackson did.
ART DIRECTION:
Would any other year, but might lose to Moulin Rouge.
CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Should. Had too much nice stuff to look at.
COSTUME DESIGN:
Shouldn't. Fantasy adventure is pretty easy to make neat-looking costumes for.
FILM EDITING:
Shouldn't. LOTR wasn't as clean in some areas as it could have been.
MAKEUP:
Should. The beasties were great.
MUSIC (SCORE):
Dunno. They all sound the same to me. There hasn't been a really fantastic score since The Thin Red Line.
MUSIC (SONG):
If this is for the Enya song, shouldn't. It contributed nothing to the movie except once the credits were rolling. This award is custom made to silly Disney or Pixar movies.
SOUND:
Should? Didn't see Black Hawk Down or Pearl Harbour in one of those arena theatres. Still bombs and machinery crashes are easy -- Jackson had to incorporate unusual sound effects (eg: the Balrog).
VISUAL EFFECTS:
Shouldn't, but probably will. For all the good stuff, there was some sloppy CGI work at times in that film.
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY):
Shouldn't. Much of what made the book great was edited down, and the dialogue was run of the mill push-the-plot-forward stuff (except when it was oh-looky-we're-talking-about-THE-THEME stuff).
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Sorta makes me wonder whether too any people's sense of self-worth gets bolstered somehow if LOTR wins an Oscar or two - i.e. if you all like LOTR you must all like me....
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Mental illness doesn't necessarily mean retarded.
Hello Clarice.
Of those, I reckon it'll go like this:
1. Best Picture - No way. The Academy is a bunch of rich old farts that wouldn't know high fantasy if it leaped up and bit them in their collective white asses. It'll go to "A Beautiful Mind", because the Academy loves actors portraying mentally ill people.
2. Supporting Actor - McKellen takes it. Ben Kingsley's already got his Oscar (IIRC, for Gandhi), and c'mon, not even the Academy would be so twisted as to give it to Jon Voight.
3. Director - Toss up. Since Jackson's a semi-unknown who isn't American, they'll either give it to him by a landslide or ignore him totally. I reckon it'll go to Jackson, though.
4. Screenplay - They'll say "No originality in LoTR" or something and give it to A Beautiful Mind.
5. Art direction - Moulin Rouge. Deserves it, too.
6. Cinematography - A nice safe category that no-one gives a fuck about, so it'll go to LoTR.
7. Sound - Who cares? But it'll probably go to Pearl Harbor or other such dreck.
8. Original score - God knows, but I sure hope it ain't A.I.
9. Pearl Harbor or Vanilla Sky.
10. Costume - Moulin Rouge, again deservedly.
11. Film editing - Black Hawk Down, because it's Ridley Scott, and we can't be unpatriotic or anything, can we? Fuck Ridley Scott.
12. Makeup - LoTR, definitely, just for the Uruk-Hai.
13. Visual effects - LoTR, again because no-one cares about this category.
OK, I know I'm in the minority, but I loved A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. If you hated anything about it, or hated the ending, or whatever, I encourage you to see it again once the DVD comes out and look past the obvious. A great site devoted to analysis of the film is Mysteries of AI. There's a ton of information on the site (although, he doesn't have it totally done at this point).
Re: if you hated the ending... ask yourself if Monica was real or not.
As for the Oscars, I was really disappointed with Osmont not getting a best actor nomination. I thought he was fantastic. I didn't really expect a best picture nomination, because it was so dark and so many people didn't get it ("what's with the aliens??" ARGH!)
I think this is one of those pictures that will only be appreciated in 20 years after people start taking it apart.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
what a fuckwit
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I would agree with Wateshay in that playing someone handicapped - even someone who is temporarily handicapped (by drunkeness say) is a difficult thing to do. You have to maintain consistency throughout AND (in the case of drunkeness of some mental afflictions where the sufferer would be considered "High Function") you have to play it as though you were trying to be "normal"/sober. Don't real life drunks spend most of their time trying to show how undrunk/sober they are? A badly acted drunk ignores that human tendancy and falls down and loudly hiccups alot. An individual human with some social awareness will try to minimize their differences (usually - unless they are an COBOL coder ;-) this ongoing attempt is what the actor has to capture.
IMO Dustin Hoffman did not do this (as the character did not call for it) in "Rainman" as the character was not afflicted with a condition that would/could allow him to care how he was percieved by others. He did have to be meticulously consistent throughout though, which I thought he did - though whether that merits an Oscar is another question.
For an interesting take on a handicapped person who is definitely "not nice" check out "Proof" from 1991. Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from "The Matrix") plays a blind person who believes that no one is telling him the truth, he tries to document this belief with photographs. Russel Crowe plays a friend in one of his early film appearances. Hit the imdb for more info. ( www.imdb.com generally or specifically (for "Proof")):
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102721 )
All that being said - Hollywood will continue to crank out manipulative junk because we will go and see it. The Oscars are set up to advertise the manipulative junk that Hollywood produces. No one wants to see movies about normal people in normal situations - so it should be no surprise that this sort of thing is getting and will continue to get nominations.
In this light I am more impressed by an actor who is willing to switch from Hero to Villain rather than "normal" to "non-normal"(Ben Kingsley from Ghandi to his role in "Sexy Beast" which incidentally has gotten him an Oscar nomination - though I have to agree that it is not a "normal" person he is playing!)
Some actors either refuse to play a villain, or their agents won't allow it (or they never get a good villain script... I'd like to see Tom Hanks play a villain, but I doubt that the "star machine" will let him now. If Ronald Regean had played the right villain (and done it well) he might never have made it to the oval office.
For an interesting take on the whole "Oscar" thing dig up a copy of Danny Peary's book "The Alternate Oscars" which details year by year from 1927 to 1992 or so (and is blessed somewhat with hindsight) the award winners and what didn't win or didn't even get nominated and should have (IHO). He manages to remove much of the hype and politics of the day (substituting his own of course - but still a fresh and interesting view). The book is OOP, but a good library can get you a copy on interlibrary loan.
In the end though the only Oscars really worth checking out are what I think of as the "foundation" ones for Cinematography, and best adapted, and original screenplays. Without those things every Oscar that follows would be much much more difficult. Those awards also tend to have a bit less hype, and thus a bit less political crap, attached to them.
Why recommend a book to a stranger just because you enjoyed it? You don't have a financial stake in the book, after all. Why tune into your local sports team when it is playing for the championship, especially if you haven't been doing so during the down times? For that matter, why post your pearls of social criticism to Slashdot? Surely by now you've given up on making the masses as enlightened as yourself.
The answer, I think, is that people are social animals. We like to share information, we like participate in a greater social whole, and we like having that greater whole validate our viewpoints. Fandom is just one facet of this.
Basing your self esteem entirely upon the the whim of the Academy, or upon the results of a game where surely chance plays a considerable part is clearly not a good idea. However, that's not what most people are doing. They're just participating in a pleasant diversion, a kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bet. If "we" win, then I feel good for a few hours or days. If "we" lose, I have a few minutes of cathartic disappointment and move on to the rest of my daily life.
While I probably participate in fandom less than most people I know, I don't feel any contempt for it. I find it perfectly understandable and harmless. What I don't really have a good handle on is what the Germans call Schadenfreude -- the pleasure that comes from raining on somebody else's parade.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Please do so. Be sure to include:
Satine's tuberculosis, how she was not infomed that she was dying at first, and why.
The other show girl's jealousy of Satine rising above her station.
The way in which the details of the play were used to forshadow the events in the movie.
The underlying struggle between practicality (represented by the Duke and flashbacks to Christian's father) and wild fancy (depicted by the "Children of the Revolution").
I would very much like to see you pull it off.
On the other hand, could it possibly be that the movie actually had a point, but you just missed it?
Put it this way: did you feel any suspense about the relationship and how the movie would end, or did you just watch the spectacle?
Of course not! You are told the very beginning of the movie. One of the first lines in the film is "the woman I loved is dead".
When you watched "The Sound of Music", did you really think that they might not escape the Nazis? That the movie would end with the von Trapp familly being captured, tortured, poisoned, and burried in mass graves at Auschwitz?
I knew how "Ghandi", "Titanic", and "Das Boot" were going to end, too (Ghandi blows up; Titanic sinks; the Germans lose the war).
Sometimes the ending is not what is important about a movie. Moulin Rogue was not an M. Night Shyamalan film.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The reason why E.T.: The Extraterrestrial didn't win the Best Movie Oscar was the fact late in 1982 a movie came out that did match the type of movie AMPAS members really like: Gandhi.
Gandhi was both an epic and socially-conscious movie (both of which AMPAS members really like), and Ben Kingsley's performance as Mahatma Gandhi was really good (he definitely looked the part).
Also, the total overkill of marketing for E.T. really turned off too many AMPAS members, too.
Screenplay - They'll say "No originality in LoTR" or something and give it to A Beautiful Mind.
Sure it's not original - it's an adapted screenplay. It was one of the most difficult adaptations of a book to movie form ever done and it was handled superbly. It is better than most people who love the book dared to hope.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
IANAA, but both my parents were. I did, however, work in a mental hospital.
It's absolutely true that it is extremely difficult to play a mentally ill person. However, it does not therefore follow that actors who do a bad job of it automatically deserve awards. Writing an operating system is hard, too, but that doesn't mean XP is good.
The only reasonably accurate portrayal of the behavior of psychotics I have ever seen on film was Ophelia in Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet. The character in Pi didn't act like a psychotic, but the film did evoke a reasonable image of mania.
Patch Adams was probably the worst offender in this regard. Absolutely none of the characters were even remotely right, with the possible exception of the catatonic guy in the wheelchair. Crazy People did get the concept of schizophrenic insight (which is real and very common), but that was in the writing, not the acting.