2012 Oscars Catch-All

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I always kick myself for caring about end of the year awards, gotys, Oscars, etc. but I couldn't help but start a catch-all due to this year's nominees. Here they are.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/24/idUS246839013520120124

I've seen most of the best picture / best actor, etc. films. So far a few things stand out to me.

- No "Take Shelter" in the best picture category. That move was one of my favorites this year and the acting by the two leads was some of the best this year. That it got ignored completely and "The Help" or "Tree of Life" made the list is something I don't understand.

- The score from "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is missing. Once again Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did an outstanding job. Not sure how that was passed over.

- I haven't seen "Albert Nobbs", but I saw a trailer and that seems like mega Oscar-bait.

Anyway, I have other thoughts, but those are the first off the top of the head. It's funny that video game journalists generally do a better job with GOTYs than the Academy of Motion Pictures does with movies.

If you haven't seen most of the Best Picture nominees, keep an eye out for AMC Theater's Best Picture Showcase. They show all ten Best Picture nominees in marathon sessions across the two weekends before the Oscars, five one weekend, five the next. They haven't announced locations and pricing for this year yet, but I think it was $35 per day individually last year, slightly less if you bought passes for both weekends at once. Take a look if 12+ hours of movies sounds like fun to you.

I did it last year and it was a lot of fun. I'll be doing it again this year, so if anyone is around the AMC in Highlands Ranch and wants to go, let me know and we'll sit together and whatnot.

That's really interesting, Clockwork. Thanks. That's not for me, but it's an interesting way to "catch up". On the downside you'd have to sit through some bad movies.

The only nominee I've seen is Moneyball, so even if they're bad, at least they're new to me. I didn't get out to many movies this year.

I´m extremely excited for Rooney Mara and Gary Oldman, although I doubt they´ll take it. Best Actor will probably go to George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, or maybe Brad Pitt.

Best Actress could go to Viola Davis or Michelle Williams (blegh), though I think it´s time Meryl Streep picks up her 3rd oscar. It´s been since the 80´s she hasn´t won anything, and she´s proven once again just how fierce she is.

Other than that, there´s not much to say, I´ve missed so many of these because they haven´t reached Mexico yet. Hope I can catch most by Oscar time.

It's another one of those years where commercial success and the Oscars can't be seen with each other. If you look at 2011's top grossing movies, we have Harry Potter, Transformers, Twilight, the Hangover Part II, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Fast Five, Mission Impossible -Ghost Protocol, Cars 2, Thor, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Captain America and at number 13, our first Oscar nominee, The Help.

I don't even want to tell you what position the next highest nominee came in, though it looks like some of them might have been widely released only recently.

Wow, was Moneyball really that good?

Funkenpants wrote:

It's another one of those years where commercial success and the Oscars can't be seen with each other.

Does the fact that a movie makes money make it good? After all it isn't marketing hype that makes a movie good.

I didn't realize Gary Oldman had never been nominated until now. He's had so many great roles.

Norfair wrote:

Wow, was Moneyball really that good?

Funkenpants wrote:

It's another one of those years where commercial success and the Oscars can't be seen with each other.

Does the fact that a movie makes money make it good? After all it isn't marketing hype that makes a movie good.

Moneyball is quite good, actually. Out of the movies on that list it's probably my favorite. Not best, but favorite. I was welling up for most of the last half of the movie. It's really really moving. Really well done.

I think Hugo and Take Shelter are better, but Moneyball is right in there.

Still pissed about the Drive snubs. Best movie of the year by far imo.

boogle wrote:

Still pissed about the Drive snubs. Best movie of the year by far imo.

I haven't seen Drive yet. I told my wife this morning that rather than see all the nominees (something we usually do) I'm going to see all the snubs. There are quite a few I haven't yet seen that are considered better than what's on the list.

Literally, the only movie I saw on that list was Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Figuratively, I saw 8.

I know that the Oscars mean like zero in terms of actual worth, but it would be nice to see Hugo snag some awards, and Tinker Tailor too.

I wish they had a 'best debut'-type award, so that Attack the Block could score some nomination.

El-Taco-the-Rogue wrote:

I know that the Oscars mean like zero in terms of actual worth, but it would be nice to see Hugo snag some awards, and Tinker Tailor too.

I wish they had a 'best debut'-type award, so that Attack the Block could score some nomination.

This is probably for a different thread, but it's funny that when the Spike VGA Awards took place there was a lot of handwringing over why video games couldn't have "their own Oscars".

Ironic, then, that the Oscars are always so flawed. Like Funken said, they rarely represent commercial success. And they often bite hard on "Oscar-bait" over movies that are much much better.

Pretty upset that 50/50 didn't get a single nomination.

I just saw The Artist today, and it was quite good. I just think that the films about film-making bit plus the silent film schtick is pushing it to critical levels it might not deserve.

The only movie I've seen that I don't think deserves much of the acclaim is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It was just drab, I dunno.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Pretty upset that 50/50 didn't get a single nomination.

I just saw The Artist today, and it was quite good. I just think that the films about film-making bit plus the silent film schtick is pushing it to critical levels it might not deserve.

The only movie I've seen that I don't think deserves much of the acclaim is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It was just drab, I dunno.

"The Help", "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and "War Horse" are all skeptical to me. I'm shocked that they're on the list in place of "Drive", "Shame" or "Take Shelter".

ClockworkHouse wrote:

The only nominee I've seen is Moneyball, so even if they're bad, at least they're new to me. I didn't get out to many movies this year.

Same here. In fact it was the only movie released in 2011 that I've seen so far, and that was this past Friday on DirectTV PPV.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Pretty upset that 50/50 didn't get a single nomination.

I just saw The Artist today, and it was quite good. I just think that the films about film-making bit plus the silent film schtick is pushing it to critical levels it might not deserve.

The only movie I've seen that I don't think deserves much of the acclaim is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It was just drab, I dunno.

I was irked walking out of that film, but I came to see that as almost the point.

Spoiler:

It seemed like the film's overall 'message' was that the life of a spy wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as people might think, and in fact it's suppressive, and leads to alienation. Like, over the course of the film you see each of the principal characters losing all of the meaningful relationships they had with other people (Smiley with his wife and mentor, Benedict Cumberbatch with his lover, Mark Strong with his best friend and so on). In fact, the only character who seems able to escape it is Ricki Tarr, the young kid who states that he wants to get out before ending up like the older intelligence agents. And at the end the revelation of who the spy is doesn't matter to you at all, because throughout the film you've had almost zero opportunities to learn more about the character or see him develop in any meaningful ways, so it doesn't provide any satisfaction to the audience or characters.

I'd say I liked the film in retrospect, but only after thinking on it for a while.

DSGamer wrote:

Ironic, then, that the Oscars are always so flawed. Like Funken said, they rarely represent commercial success.

When I was a kid in the 1970s there were a lot of movies that could mix artistic seriousness with commercial success. Commercial domination by blockbusters has grown, but I don't think it's ever been as bad as the past 5-10 years or so. The blockbusters have a global market, and for an American movie to compete across national boundaries the story needs to be simple and the motivations clear. The Help, for example, did little business overseas. Transformers 3? About $770 million, twice as much as domestic box office.

Also keep in mind that the VGAs have a much, much broader array of categories, essentially breaking gaming down into ever genre and handing out awards. If they were limited to their "Best Game of the Year" picks, you'd see a lot more people complaining that the best games of the year were snubbed. Conversely, if there were Oscars for Best Action Movie, Best Romance, Best Drama, Best Comedy, and so forth, you'd see a lot fewer complaints that popular films were left out in favor of blatant Oscar-bait like War Horse. Besides, the broadening of the Best Picture category has allowed them to include some more populist movies, as with Inception last year or The Help this year.

I understand that Tintin couldn't be nominated for Best Animated Feature because of its use of mo-cap in place of 'actual' animation. I guess that means it doesn't stand to get any real nomination. The film itself isn't particularly good, but I feel like it's a shame that the technological milestone it seems to represent will go unrecognised.

I, for one, am shocked to see the Academy failing to recognise something perhaps deserving it. This MUST be the first time such a thing has happened.

This year we have a Belgian nominee for best foreign movie, namely Rundskop (Bullhead). It's not the favorite, there's competition from Iran.

I thought the writing wasn't brilliant, as the scenario meandered helplessly between the personal story of the main character and a portrait of the hormone mafia in general. But the protagonist is played astronomically well by Matthias Schoenaerts, really a world class performance worthy of standing next to De Niro's Raging Bull.

I'm still boycotting The Descendants for not being about The Descendents.

wordsmythe wrote:

I'm still boycotting The Descendants for not being about The Descendents.

I have no idea of whether it's good, but when I heard that it was about a family patriarch on a big plantation in Hawaii I didn't exactly go, "Yay, finally a drama that speaks to me about my life. I MUST GO SEE IT."

(It didn't help that I'm all kinds of meh about Clooney).

Funkenpants wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I'm still boycotting The Descendants for not being about The Descendents.

I have no idea of whether it's good, but when I heard that it was about a family patriarch on a big plantation in Hawaii I didn't exactly go, "Yay, finally a drama that speaks to me about my life. I MUST GO SEE IT."

Hey, the 1% are every bit as human as the corporations they own. Maybe even moreso.

Funkenpants wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I'm still boycotting The Descendants for not being about The Descendents.

I have no idea of whether it's good, but when I heard that it was about a family patriarch on a big plantation in Hawaii I didn't exactly go, "Yay, finally a drama that speaks to me about my life. I MUST GO SEE IT."

(It didn't help that I'm all kinds of meh about Clooney).

You seem surprised that Alexander Payne, the writer/director of About Schmidt and Sideways, makes movies about well-off men having personal crises.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Funkenpants wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I'm still boycotting The Descendants for not being about The Descendents.

I have no idea of whether it's good, but when I heard that it was about a family patriarch on a big plantation in Hawaii I didn't exactly go, "Yay, finally a drama that speaks to me about my life. I MUST GO SEE IT."

(It didn't help that I'm all kinds of meh about Clooney).

You seem surprised that Alexander Payne, the writer/director of About Schmidt and Sideways, makes movies about well-off men having personal crises.

Heh. This is part of it. Definitely. But it's a good film overall. It definitely fits in that category of a film about a very specific slice of life. It's not saying anything profound. It's just a better way to kill time than most films, honestly.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You seem surprised that Alexander Payne, the writer/director of About Schmidt and Sideways, makes movies about well-off men having personal crises.

I didn't know who made Descendants, but now that you mention it, neither of those two movies interested me. They're probably good, but there is just so much available to watch that I skip many serious movies unless they have something that draws me in.

You can skip them. They're not good. In fact, seeing that Payne was attached made me uninterested in The Descendants when I first saw the trailer because I disliked his other movies so much. I found them to be very focused on the self-pity of middle-aged, upper-middle class white guys. I don't expect that The Descendants will be much different.

Take Shelter does feel overlooked. That's one that stuck with me.

LOVED Beginners, if you ever get a chance see it.

Liked Descendants and Moneyball a lot. They don't feel best picture-y but are vastly more interesting and adult than The Artist, which feels almost criminally overrated at this point. A well made curio but it offers almost no spin on the actual films its cribbing from.

I'm catching up on Iron Lady, My Week With Marilyn and Warrior today, as I'm voting in the SAG awards for the first time this year (yay!).

I have a screener of The Help but man I just can't bring myself to watch it.

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