Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

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Precious Doll
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by Precious Doll »

Uri wrote:
Precious Doll wrote: I remember reading that on one of the flights back to the US from Frances Spike Lee was looking pretty despondent and Sally Field who was a member of the jury went up to him and rubbed his shoulder and said 'I tried, I really tried'.
She does have a very certain way with words, very certain, our Sally, doesn't she?
She sure does. Gotta love her though.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by Uri »

Precious Doll wrote: I remember reading that on one of the flights back to the US from Frances Spike Lee was looking pretty despondent and Sally Field who was a member of the jury went up to him and rubbed his shoulder and said 'I tried, I really tried'.
She does have a very certain way with words, very certain, our Sally, doesn't she?
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

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taki15 wrote:
Mister Tee wrote: BlackkKlansman is the movie I've been waiting all season to spring a surprise, and now the only time left for it to do that is tomorrow night. The one surprise it did pull was a negative one, falling short at WGA. Because I rate it likely to win adapted screenplay, it will remain in the hunt right up to the final envelope tear. But it's beginning to feel like the one we look back on and wonder why it didn't do better.
I already wonder about that. If you really want to send a message about racism in Trump's America then why not vote for a critically acclaimed movie by a widely respected veteran director (who was also the victim of one of Academy's most infamous snubs) instead of a mediocre comic book adaptation?
Or why not vote Lee for director since Cuaron has already won the award and is about to win a couple more today.
I agree. But I think because Spike has never been one to hold back and express his views over the decades that he has probably rubbed some up the wrong way.

Some might say that post Do the Right Thing Spike has had a 'chip on his shoulders' so to speak and I can't really blame him. As much as I like Driving Miss Daisy, the Academy snub of Do the Right Thing in the Picture & Director categories remains unforgiveable nearly 30 years later. However, its not just the Academy's under-recognition of DTWT, there was also the Cannes fiasco.

Do the Right Thing received great reviews at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. It was expected to pick up a prize or two, maybe even the Palm d'or. Instead, the jury lead by Wim Wenders went for Sex, Lies and Videotape, which not only won the Palm d'or but actor for James Spader. Today SL&V is really only remembered as Steven Soderbergh's launching pad into cinema - a respectable enough film but I don't think time has been kind to it.

I remember reading that on one of the flights back to the US from Frances Spike Lee was looking pretty despondent and Sally Field who was a member of the jury went up to him and rubbed his shoulder and said 'I tried, I really tried'. I take from that that Sally Field clearly supported the film at Cannes but the jury decisions can get pretty heated and I believe that the jury head may ultimately have the most sway. Sex, Lies and Videotape is very much a film one can see Wim Wenders responding to. I also recall Spike Lee making comments about Wenders that were rather inflammatory in wake of his loss at Cannes. These antidotes in relation to Cannes would be little known but Spike has as I said above always been one to speak his mind and that can come with a price.

Anyway, I'm predicting a Best Picture win for BlacKkKlansman but as Mister Tee has said its a pretty open race and there are a number of possibilities.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

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Mister Tee wrote: BlackkKlansman is the movie I've been waiting all season to spring a surprise, and now the only time left for it to do that is tomorrow night. The one surprise it did pull was a negative one, falling short at WGA. Because I rate it likely to win adapted screenplay, it will remain in the hunt right up to the final envelope tear. But it's beginning to feel like the one we look back on and wonder why it didn't do better.
I already wonder about that. If you really want to send a message about racism in Trump's America then why not vote for a critically acclaimed movie by a widely respected veteran director (who was also the victim of one of Academy's most infamous snubs) instead of a mediocre comic book adaptation?
Or why not vote Lee for director since Cuaron has already won the award and is about to win a couple more today.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by Uri »

Mister Tee wrote: Roma is a reach across a chasm. Not just the black-and-white/subtitled/Netflix thing. This is a deep-art film -- a story told so indirectly it hardly seems to have a narrative at all. Not to start any debate about the relative merits of the films, but this is like The Tree of Life winning best picture -- a choice so far from the norms of the category it seems to have come from another dimension.
I'm not a fan of Roma and I was not, and I mean NOT, a fan of The Tree of Life. But the latter was Art - very flowed, highly misguided, infuriating at times, but Art with a capital A, a brainchild of a creator who sincerely wanted to spread his own personal Gospel. Roma is "Art". A meticulously fabricated piece which aims to please and draw attention to its self-declared brilliance. Two different species altogether, hence the totally different levels of acceptance.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by Mister Tee »

So, there are two things at work here:

1) The preferential ballot. This has been with us since 2009, but the effects only seem to have fully kicked in a few years later. Note: the 2011 Oscars marked my 50th year watching; in those 50 years, 42 times I saw the best director winner go on to take best picture. In the six years since, that's only happened twice. There's clearly different math afoot now.

But I think people claim to understand the effect of this preferential voting way more than they actually do. A lot of people are touting Green Book this year, on the premise that it goes down easier than anything else. But did Moonlight go down easier than La La Land? There's something more at work than simply "less complicated". And then there are all these assumptions of people voting strategically -- i.e., placing rivals that might win as far down the ballot as possible. I think we'd need a ton of study to see if that really works in such a voting format. It might just work to the advantage of another, non-strategizing candidate.

Bottom line: we're way too early in the years of preferential voting for best picture to draw full conclusions about what sort of films are helped by it and which are hurt. But we have seen enough to know it can create chaotic outcomes. In a time when the four acting awards have too often been drowsily predictable, the best picture category has offered surprises on multiple occasions.

2) This year's batch. However chaotic the preferential ballot may make things in a normal year, how much more havoc might it wreak in a year when not a single nominee feels within a mile of being a standard best picture winner? When the precursors have been all over Dodge. When even I'd have trouble settling on a winner. It's a wonder predictions aren't even more widespread than they are.

However...I'm not inclined to think all rules go out the window. Black Panther has 7 nominations, but not one of them except best picture is of any consequence. It's omitted by writers, directors, editors and actors. Yes, it has a SAG win; so did Hidden Figures. I'd be shocked were this to win.

Bohemian Rhapsody also has no directing or writing. It does have that key acting nod, and editing. But a couple of sound nominations bring it to a measly 5 nominations. That's not a winner's profile.

A Star is Born turned back into a pumpkin sometime back in January, and now it's like people forget it's even nominated. Cooper's directing omission barely registered on the Affleck scale. The film will take its Best Song door prize and go home...maybe to wonder how it all went wrong.

Vice has all the requisite nominations, but has too much hatred coming at it to have any chance. It's widely see as inferior to McKay's previous nominee, and isn't taken seriously enough to get many number one votes.

Green Book is the only no-director nominee I think has a whiff of a chance at winning, and that's primarily because of its win at PGA. Sasha Stone keeps touting that because "they use preferential, too". But she doesn't give enough attention to the composition of PGA -- it's the old-white-man-est of the Guilds by far, and I think it's clear that's the most appreciative audience Green Book has. The shocking WGA loss was a real body blow to the film's Oscar scenario -- it was literally the first step in Driving Miss Daisy's journey (NBR, Comedy Globe, director snub, PGA) it failed to match (well, that and the whole leading the field with 9 nominations thing). I'm not ruling the film out, but I'm less scared of it now. Unless it wins original screenplay.

BlackkKlansman is the movie I've been waiting all season to spring a surprise, and now the only time left for it to do that is tomorrow night. The one surprise it did pull was a negative one, falling short at WGA. Because I rate it likely to win adapted screenplay, it will remain in the hunt right up to the final envelope tear. But it's beginning to feel like the one we look back on and wonder why it didn't do better.

It's a bizarre situation I find myself in: I -- the one who's spent most of our years together saying DGA X 2 is the way to go -- am here wondering why so many people are all in on Roma. Do others find the film more Academy-friendly than I? Look, there've been films I never thought could win best picture that have gone on to do so -- MIdnight Cowboy, Annie Hall, No Country for Old Men. But these films were, in the end, only a slight stretch for voters. Roma is a reach across a chasm. Not just the black-and-white/subtitled/Netflix thing. This is a deep-art film -- a story told so indirectly it hardly seems to have a narrative at all. Not to start any debate about the relative merits of the films, but this is like The Tree of Life winning best picture -- a choice so far from the norms of the category it seems to have come from another dimension.

And I'm speaking as one who loves some things about Roma. And it does seems that the film is unexpectedly connecting for some people, in odd ways. A woman friend came to watch it on my Netflix, and told me she "hated it", because "nothing happened". Then, a few days later, she called and told me she hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. So, maybe what's great about the movie is enough to make people wade past the things that trouble them.

But I'm thinking there's an easier way out for people. There's a film that's broadly popular with the Academy (to the tune of 10 nominations), that I suspect will come bearing a best screenplay win and a few other trophies, and might just be the Chariots of Fire to slip between the Reds/On Golden Pond battle that Roma/Green Book are supposedly waging. I'm thinking The Favourite can pull it out.

Though The Favourite wasn't nominated by the DGA. It'd be the first film to win best picture without that credit since...Driving Miss Daisy. Ain't that a laugh?

Of course, I don't know any more than the rest of you of what will be in that final envelope. But that's how I break it down.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

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FilmFan720 wrote:
Big Magilla wrote: Roma has two things going against it. It will easily win the Best Foreign Film award. No film has ever won both. Z is the only film that was ever nominated for both in the past. I just don't think they love it enough to make it the first.
Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Amour all did it, too. No BP nominee has ever lost Best Foreign Language Film.
I knew I should have double-checked that. :oops:
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by FilmFan720 »

Big Magilla wrote: Roma has two things going against it. It will easily win the Best Foreign Film award. No film has ever won both. Z is the only film that was ever nominated for both in the past. I just don't think they love it enough to make it the first.
Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Amour all did it, too. No BP nominee has ever lost Best Foreign Language Film.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by Big Magilla »

I agree. This is the first time ever that I have no real idea what will win.

I also agree that Vice and A Star Is Born are out.

Vice probably has more detractors than lovers within and without the Academy. The notion that the fourth (fifth, if you count What Price Hollywood?) version of A Star Is Born would ever have enough support to support to win the big one was a flawed idea from the get-go.

Roma has two things going against it. It will easily win the Best Foreign Film award. No film has ever won both. Z is the only film that was ever nominated for both in the past. I just don't think they love it enough to make it the first. The other is, of course, the anti-Netflix sentiment which is very strong within the Academy. Even if it takes first place on the most ballots, I don't think it will get 50% plus one to win under the preferential vote system. A film with less votes that is strong enough to get enough second and maybe third place votes to push it over the 50% plus one barrier seems to me to have the advantage. The question is, which film will that be?

That film can be any one of the remaining five. Green Book may get the second most first place votes, but will it get enough second and third place votes from votes cast from the other non-Roma voters? Will either BlackKkKlansman or The Favourite get enough second place votes from all the non-Roma voters to prevail? They seem to be in a stronger position than either Black Panther or Bohemian Rhapsody to do so, but this has been such a crazy, topsy-turvy year that I wouldn't be at all surprised if the least likely nominee, the allegedly directed by itself Bohemian Rhapsody takes it.
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Categories One-by-One: Best Picture

Post by anonymous1980 »

The nominees:

Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice


I hope it's okay for me to jump the gun and just post about the big one since this is an especially difficult category. In previous years, if there isn't one overwhelming favorite, we can narrow it down to two sometimes three. But this year, the ONLY nominee I can, with confidence, completely rule out is Vice. Though it has enough fans within the Academy to secure it a Best Picture nomination and seven other nominations, I think it has just as many detractors who will rank it in the bottom or near the bottom of their list.

I guess we could also sort of rule out A Star is Born. The film that was once thought of as a huge frontrunner now has to be content with the fact that it will most likely only win Song.

The rest, I can see them possibly winning but they also have major impediments. Black Panther has the anti-superhero/blockbuster bias and the fact it has no acting, writing or directing nominations. BlacKkKlansman hasn't won a lot prizes. It couldn't even win an Adapted Screenplay award at the WGA. The Favourite has no DGA nomination. Green Book has no Directing nomination and the charges of being too Driving Miss Daisy and the charges of inaccuracy will also hinder it. Bohemian Rhapsody has no Directing or Writing nomination, the Bryan Singer ick factor and of course charges of historical inaccuracy. Roma has the very real anti-Netflix bias.

So whichever wins this year will most likely be a statistical anomaly of some sort. I can't remember a year like this in all my years of Oscar watching.
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