Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

I think it is because directors go for easier options and what they may personally relate to. This has long been the case with filmmakers.

Take the Cost-Gavras film Missing. The American father and wife of the missing man are central to the story whilst the Chilean characters are little more the background people. Two Americans were killed in the Coup of 1973, however thousands of Chileans were also killed and they just receives lip service. I'm not trying to attack Costa-Gavras or Missing, which was for me the best film of 1982 but it is a valid point that white Westerners are usually put to the forefront of a story (no matter where in the world it is happening) and the locals get shafted.

I won’t refrain.

It’s my opinion. Your commentary is absolute nonsense to me. And I ask you why don’t you criticize Haneke for filming upperclass Parisian couple instead of lowclass rural couple.

Thank you, BJ. And although it did hurt, I will go on creating pottery round here.

We probably should refrain from calling other people's posts dumb.

Uri's pots is as dumb as raising the question of why Haneke filmed Amour centered his film on an upperclass old french couple that live in the center of Paris instead af a lowclass rural old couple

Uri wrote:

Big Magilla wrote:Telling the stories of other tragedies associated with the tsunami were outside the scope of the film.

It’s the Schiendler List mentality, isn’t it? When choosing to tell a story about a devastating catastrophe, it’s wiser to go for the one particular true story in which nobody dies. And whitewash the protagonists’ blemishes (or at least their complexion).

Uri please let it go. You are obviously getting off the wrong side of your bed on a daily basis lately. Lol.

Big Magilla wrote:Telling the stories of other tragedies associated with the tsunami were outside the scope of the film.

It’s the Schiendler List mentality, isn’t it? When choosing to tell a story about a devastating catastrophe, it’s wiser to go for the one particular true story in which nobody dies. And whitewash the protagonists’ blemishes (or at least their complexion).

I haven't seen it. Maybe the criticisms are accurate, but maybe people are reading too much into it.

There have been lots of movies and documentaries made about the tsunami, most of them Thai films that don't reach the U.S.

This one is based on the experiences of a real life Spanish family living in Japan. It is a Spanish film made in English with the principal characters changed to Brits to capture the more lucrative English language speaking markets. The real life wife and mother, Maria Belon, is a huge Naomi Watts fan and was delighted to have Watts playing her. Most of the extras in the film are survivors of the tsunami. All tickets sold at the London premiere went to benefit the tsunami fund. Telling the stories of other tragedies associated with the tsunami were outside the scope of the film.

I live within just a few miles in several directions from the devastation brought by Superstorm Sandy. Every day I meet someone affected either directly or indirectly by the storm. I mentioned in another thread that I met a woman the other day who was stranded in her car with her two young children for two days while her husband was at home with her two older boys in their flooded home. What I didn't mention was that the woman didn't take the younger children to her car until the storm was already under way and things were looking bad. Her husband stayed to protect the house from what looked like certain damage. The woman has had two hip replacements and was unable to walk all the way to her car. The two older boys, 20 and 21, had to carry her part of the way. They got lost on their way home and her husband had to go looking for them as the storm got worse. I'm sure she can relate to Naomi Watts' situation in the film as can many others.

As they used to say at the end of the old Naked City TV show (1958-1963), "there are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them." They said it at the end of the 1948 film, too, only then there were only seven million stories.

The Original BJ wrote:She countered that she liked the fact that the rich white people were portrayed as heroes, because so often wealthy whites are vilified in popular culture (?!?!?!?!?!)

Did you respond with, "You mean like The Blind Side?" Or, did you think that to yourself?

Uri wrote:

Big Magilla wrote:At this point Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Emmanuelle Rive seem to be the only contenders no one has anything bad to say about.

Honey, you haven’t heard yet what I have to say about Silver Lining Textbook or Playbook or whatever the La Lawrence film was called.

I stand corrected. I didn't like it either, but Lawrence and Chastain are Hollywood's current golden girls - nothing's going to keep them from their 2nd nominations this year.

These last few posts are incredibly amusing. We can say all we want about the films and performances in contention but the Academy operates at a totally different level. Or haven't we noticed that yet after years of being here on this board?

Big Magilla wrote:At this point Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Emmanuelle Rive seem to be the only contenders no one has anything bad to say about.

Honey, you haven’t heard yet what I have to say about Silver Lining Textbook or Playbook or whatever the La Lawrence film was called.

Another front-runner getting some heat is Marion Cotillard. Here's Owen Glierman (EW)'s rather dismissive review of Rust and Bone:

"We've all seen the technique by which an actor is made to look like a person with an amputated limb. In the French drama Rust and Bone, director Jacques Audiard takes this queasy, eye-popping stunt and pushes it to a newly disturbing and authentic-looking prominence. Marion Cotillard, from La Vie en Rose and The Dark Knight Rises, plays a killerwhale trainer and performer at a marine park who becomes the victim of a horrific attack in which one of the whales bites off both her legs just above the knee. Her despair, rehabilitation, and slow rediscovery of herself take place in communion with an ultimate-fighting bruiser (Matthias Schoenaerts) who's a thuggishly sensitive screwup. Cotillard, with stringy long hair and a coal fire of severity in her eyes, has what it takes to play a woman who feels that she's lost everything. But she's forced to flail and mood-swing from scene to scene. In an insult to the disabled, there is never much to her but her hellacious injury."

At this point Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Emmanuelle Rive seem to be the only contenders no one has anything bad to say about. We'll probably end up with Cotillard and Watts taking the final two slots, but don't count out the grand dames - Mirren in Hitchcock; Dench in Marigold and Smith in Quartet , two of whom could still fill those slots.

I am apparently watching different movies than everyone here. It sounds to me like a lot of people went in with their minds made up about what the film was about and what it would mean. I went in clear of mind and found a challenging movie about struggling through a natural disaster. Whether I agree or disagree with the outcome does not change how well constructed the film is, emotionally moving at times and that opening sequence is one of the finest crafted openings ever. You guys can have your frustration at white dominance all you want, it isn't what stood out to me. Yes, the film could have ended there at the hospital and I would have been fine with it. I don't necessarily think the plane scene is necessary, but if you are staying true to a previously written source material, then dropping it would have been a significant cheat. I don't agree with them changing the nationality of the family, but again, the color of their skin and the language they speak are immaterial to the film, IMO.

That's all I'm going to say on the subject.

The Original BJ wrote:I basically agree with everything Uri says about this movie, and will add that it's pretty unsettling how such a tragic occurrence as this is presented as almost a horror show fun house, full of "gotcha" moments meant to goose the audience as one grueling thing after another happens to Naomi Watts's character.

I had a debate with a (well-off, white, conservative) relative over Christmas about this movie, which basically crystallizes my feelings about it. She couldn't understand why I didn't like it, and I told her that I was really troubled by the fact that, of all the stories one could tell about a tsunami that destroyed the lives of so many poor East Asians, it's a little obtuse to focus on the rich white tourists. She countered that she liked the fact that the rich white people were portrayed as heroes, because so often wealthy whites are vilified in popular culture (?!?!?!?!?!), and would I have wanted the movie to do that? I said, of course not, but there's not even ONE major character who is non-white in the movie! She stated that when people go to the movies, they like to see characters they can relate to, so it wouldn't make economic sense for the filmmakers to have other types of characters (i.e. non-white) as protagonists. Then I said I was troubled by even the minor, mystical other Asians depicted in the movie, and appalled by what was presented to me as a happy ending: the insurance guy from Switzerland shows up to fly the protagonists off to safety, while so many left behind are suffering so much more. She said most people like happy endings in movies, and didn't think it was the movie's place to dwell on the tragedies that didn't turn out as well as the heroes' story did.

This conversation, to me, reflects the mentality to which I feel this movie was designed to serve.

Shit, it's The Blindside all over again!