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Thread: OSCARS 2022 Nominations and Winners

  1. #16
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    Martin Scorsese has championed The Power of The Dog as great cinema.
    I know Jane Campion from The Piano, and I have no problem with her.
    The clips I’ve seen of TPOTD showed promise, but I don’t really know what it’s about.

    Coda seems like a must-see.
    I can’t believe Will Smith beat DENZEL…it seems ludicrous to me.
    I don’t like Chris Rock either. His style of comedy is abrasive and toxic.
    He also knows he can push it with his jokes and I’m glad he’s not pressing charges.
    Everybody saw what happened. Even the crowd at the Dolby theatre thought it was “A Bit”.
    It was only when Will started cursing and yelling that the mood changed.

    I liked this years show, slap and all. Haha
    Last edited by Johann; 03-28-2022 at 11:18 AM.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  2. #17
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    Well, I hope you get to see some of these worthy candidates for awards, including the best international feature nominees.

    Before you wonder at Will's win over Denzel, see those films. Denzel is in a somewhat dubious production of Shakespeare's Macbeth; Will, in a rousing tale of the father of the two greatest tennis players of all time, Venus and Serena Williams. It's a better film, I think, and Will gives a terrific performance as a helicopter dad who goes a bit too far but gets fabulous results. (It helps that the sisters both love tennis and want to be stars.)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-28-2022 at 12:35 PM.

  3. #18
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    I want to see all films that get noticed/praise but I am a little limited.
    Luckily I have a good friend who sees everything and buys the blu-rays…

    The Batman is a hit that I have very little interest in. The trailer looked dark, boring and with characterizations that don’t appeal to me at all. I’m all for new versions of Batman, just not this one.

    I’m really excited for Ridley Scott’s NAPOLEON with Joaquin Phoenix.
    He looks great in costume.
    As for the Williams sisters movie, why not a movie about them exclusively? Why a whole movie on their dad?
    And I heard that Will is overacting throughout the whole movie!
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  4. #19
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    King Richard is a movie about parenting. Selena & Venus are very present in the movie and so is their mother. It's about the dad but without the girls there would be no story. And all three actresses are great too. You could not have a movie about the sisters exclusively. The point is that they became great tennis players first and foremost because of the encouragement and coaching of both of their parents. Great athletes don't spring from nowhere. But they almost did, since they grew up initially in a sort of Los Angeles ghetto.

    Hope you do get to see the best new stuff by whatever means necessary.

    I wanted to see The Batman more than usual because I like Robert Pattinson.

    Joaquin Phoenix looks good in the costume, I agree. But I have a problem with a movie about French history where everybody speaks English. Ridley Scott's going for broke. His younger brother committed suicide and he is 84.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-28-2022 at 01:38 PM.

  5. #20
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    Fair enough.
    The sisters story may be better served this way. (No tennis 🎾 pun intended)
    Trailers are a good gauge for me. If a trailer doesn’t have “the pull”, I’m loathe to give a movie a chance.
    With The Batman I cheated and read scores of reviews- the film is a polarizer.
    I found out that the Riddler turns himself in, destroying Batman’s “detective work”…and that rubs me the wrong way.
    If you’re going to make a police procedural detective Batman film, then wow us with it. Don’t have wonky twists. Don’t jerk the audience’s chain too much. Don’t have Alfred solve your riddles for you.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  6. #21
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    I think King Richard is a great story, well "served."

    I'm not into the comic book stories from one to the other so the plot details of The Batman didn't matter to me much, but you are probably quite right to question those story elements. I watched it for the visuals, which are beautiful and the cinematographer just won an Oscar for Dune. I filter movies by trailers myself lately I admit. I also read lots of reviews, both before and after. Sometimes they are more interesting than the movies they're about. Also the French reivews (excerpted on the French site AlloCiné) - great. The French love cinema, they are intellectual, and the result is interesting reviews. Not a coincidence that the Nouvelle Vague grew largely out of directors who started out as film critics on Cahiers du Cinéma.

    Just watched a couple of interviews with the great Jean-Pierre Melville, not exactly Nouvelle Vague but an inspiration to them, who reminds you that back then, the way to learn how to make movie was to watch them and the only way was to go to the movies and stay from morning till the small hours watching one movie after another - on the big screen, sitting up close.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-28-2022 at 01:50 PM.

  7. #22
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    Re: NAPOLEON

    Ridley is indeed 84, and I don’t know why he would tackle Napoleon at this juncture.
    I wonder if he’s got a Kubrick complex and wants to make the film Stanley couldn’t.
    His biblical epic EXODUS: Gods and Kings blew me away.
    My expectations are high, and I think they will be met for Napoleon.
    Last night Ridley was the butt of jokes (G.I. Jane/The Last Duel) but he’s no fucking joke to me.
    He can do anything he wants. He’s earned the right. His resume isn’t perfect, but man it’s still impressive.
    I’m happy he’s still working and at a high level- see the polish in Prometheus.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  8. #23
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    JOAQUIN PHOENIX AS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE - RIDLEY SCOTT FILM

    Ridley's profile (like Napoleon's?) is imperfect but impressive indeed. I didn't see his Last Duel (Metacritic 67%, but it would have been interesting to see it and I could have seen it on the big screen).
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-28-2022 at 02:14 PM.

  9. #24
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    There he is…thanks for the pic.

    The Last Duel got mild reviews but talk about a trailer with pull!
    It looks fantastic, with the great Adam Driver who’s just a steamroller.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    I also read lots of reviews, both before and after. Sometimes they are more interesting than the movies they're about. Also the French reivews (excerpted on the French site AlloCiné) - great. The French love cinema, they are intellectual, and the result is interesting reviews. Not a coincidence that the Nouvelle Vague grew largely out of directors who started out as film critics on Cahiers du Cinéma.
    Agree.
    The best directors are film lovers. They instinctively know what works and what doesn’t.
    Kubrick became a director after seeing scores and scores of movies in New York and saying to himself “I can do better than what I’m seeing!”
    The French are arguably the most passionate film lovers- that New Wave is proof.
    Bergman noticed a new language brought to cinema when he saw Ivan’s Childhood by Andrei Tarkovsky.
    Scorsese- a totally obsessed cinephile/historian.
    Kurosawa- loved John Ford
    The lists are endless.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  11. #26
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    Yes! The French have a higher percentage of cinephiles than anywhere else in the world. Though small, their film industry is top quality and its products sometimes are more accessible to us than the excellent Asian ones.

    The kind of historical movie where everyone regardless of origins speaks modern English has become passé, I feel, but Ridley keeps on making them. The Last Duel is one: medieval Frenchmen speaking modern English. It's on HBO I find and I'm taking a look at it.

    Ridley's filmography is somewhat hit or miss; you seem to like the grand ones like Exodus that aren't the critical successes as we can see from a Vulture website list of his work from worst to best complied by AV Club's Scott Tobias.

    The top six according to this are: 1. Alien (1979), 2. Blade Runner (1982), 3. The Duellists (1977), 4. Thelma & Louise (1991), 5. The Martian (2015), and 6. The Counselor (2013). I'm curious to see The Duelists and The Counselor, which I haven't, and maybe rewatch Alien.

    I do like Adam Driver in just about anything. Matt Damon is starting to seem a little worn out sometimes. He was great in The Martian, perhaps not so good in The Last Duel (The Duelists is Scott's better "Duel" film).
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-29-2022 at 12:09 AM.

  12. #27
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    Peter Greenaway (one of my favourite directors) singled out Ridley Scott in a recent interview.
    He admires Blade Runner and Gladiator as fantastic visual productions.
    His filmography is hit and miss, and that is where the criticism lies, that he’s not consistent enough.
    To me the strengths of his best work outweigh the lesser work.
    He’s very cinematic, very visual, and you want that from a director. It’s the execution of his stories (acting, plot) where he gets tripped up. Case in point: Legend with Tom Cruise. Visually amazing but a little weak story wise.
    He’s a cult director to me, not a blockbuster man.
    Since Gladiator’s huge success he’s made big movies, and I don’t begrudge him that. The bigger the better!
    He dedicated Exodus to his deceased brother Tony, a good director in his own right. His suicide was confusing to me.

    Napoleon has got my attention. I have real excitement for it. Joaquin is so hot right now, and he could potentially win another Oscar for it. I hear you on the English. This won’t be a true foreign film as it should be.
    It will be a blockbuster- style historical epic.
    It will be “Hollywood”
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  13. #28
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    RIDLEY SCOTT'S THE LAST DUEL (2021).

    Well, much of the dialogue seems to me in principle tone deaf; I can't help remembering that in the late 14th century when this true story occurs, apart from the fact that these people in reality would be speaking medieval French, there was nothing remotely like modern English. The Rashomon-like three-part storytelling is laborious, making the 2 1/2-hour movie over-long, and the rape part is too similar in each part to make much difference. Various critics have suggested just the third part, from the lady's POV, written by Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money, Please Give, Enough Said; Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who're in the cast, wrote the first two parts), would have been good enough by itself for a leaner, swifter, more clean emotional thrust.

    But wait a minute: lots of this is good, and at least looks great. Where Ridley shines is in the purely physical, violent bits, and the final, complete sequence of the medieval duel-to-the-death starting out with lances and horseback and ending with hand-to-hand hacking with swords, long blades, and halberds, in its extreme brutality and the rich Pasolini-like crowd watching, is shockingly convincing, visceral, and real. The contemporary relevance is in the basis of the duel: a woman's (Jodie Comer's) accusation of rape which results in the King ordaining a duel between her husband (Matt Damon) and the accused men (Adam Driver), his former good friend who has become an enemy. It turns out that if her husband loses, she will be considered guilty and will be locked in an iron halter and burned to death, orphaning her newborn son. High stakes. Good story. There's enough talent and money involved for a work of traditional Hollywood, though outmoded, to still shine.

    Ridley's weakness with story shows here not in the story being weak; it's a great story - but in the three-version presentation not quite justifying itself, and winding up making us a little tired of the story - till that great visceral final duel. I'm not sure there is a clear visual style, or any style at all, but it's still as you say, "very cinematic, very visual." Uneven though Ridley is, I agree he's done some wonderful stuff. I remember what an immense impression Thelma & Louise made the first time, and as for Blade Runner, it's part of the canon of the greatest movies of all time. (I think Tony Scott's suicide was confusing to everybody.)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 03-29-2022 at 01:23 AM.

  14. #29
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    Bravo.
    Thanks for that report.
    I’d heard that what made the movie great was the duel itself, that it was exciting and visceral.
    It’s on my list of must-sees.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  15. #30
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    I confirm that.

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