2012-01-27
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Steven Soderbergh’s acceptance speech from winning the Oscar for Traffic in 2001. Well worth spending a minute watching. (There’s a better copy which you can’t embed on the official Oscars account.)
2012-01-24
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As seen on the Oscar Nominees page, for Best Animated Feature Film. Spot the difference (or rather, try to).
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Todd Serencha, via perpetua.
I think this might be a more forceful statement of what I was nudging towards. (I’ve seen all three - but none of the Transformers films - and enjoyed them all, but I still take his point. They just happen to be catering to my tastes.)
Also, I have to remember “Oscarbatory” for next year.
Oscar Thoughts
I put some thoughts about the Oscar nominations into a reply to Joshua Nguyen, but here are some more.
- Hugo and The Artist lead the Oscar nominations by count. I suppose that proves that films about film go down well with people who make films.
- … either that, or they like nostalgia about the time when cinema was the new, revolutionary artform.
- Only one Best Picture nominee is set entirely in the present day (The Descendants).
- My Week With Marilyn gets some reasonably well deserved Actor / Actress nods.
- The Tree of Life should get the Cinematography award.
- Cars 2 is the first Pixar film not to be nominated for Best Animated since the award started in 2001.
- Music (Original Song) only has two nominees? Huh. At least there’s no Randy Newman.
- Sound Editing for Drive would be nice.
- Margin Call deserved a little more than Original Screenplay, but that it got that is far better than nothing.
An Oscar Reply
Seriously, though, last year was a parade of remarkable films; that’s not something you would conclude from these nominations.
War Horse???? It’s ET with a horse. Horse runs home.
Midnight in Paris? It’s a postcard extended to two hours.
Moneyball? A baseball movie where the audience’s attention span is the only meaningful antagonist.
Tree of Life: There’s a reason why the best movies tell stories. Visual poetry that’s more than two hours needs to be serialized.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Schtick.
What a disappointing year for film-making.
What about the stuff that didn’t get nominated? More along the lines of Tree of Life as beautiful, heartbreaking films - but ones with more of a narrative - there are Melancholia and Norwegian Wood (although I don’t know if the latter counts for 2011, and it may fall into the Foreign Film ghetto anyway). Drive was a little flawed but definitely interesting and well made. Charlize Theron was unfairly overlooked for Best Leading Actress for Young Adult (although I accept it probably didn’t deserve a Best Film nomination), and although Gary Oldman represents Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the nominations for him and for Best Adapted Screenplay are far from enough recognition for that picture.
Perhaps it’s not so much a disappointing year for films as a(nother) case where you shouldn’t trust the MPAA to be your guide in what to see.
(via joshuanguyen)
