oblig Oscars post

[hesychasm]

I was looking forward to going to an Oscar party tonight and cleaning up with my winning bracket, haha, but we're having to flake out at the last minute. :-(

GoldDerby.com is where I go for expert predictions. My thoughts on the Best Picture nominees below:

Argo - 27% of votes, 27/10 odds

Comments

[jeviltwin]

Almost went to see Life of Pi or Amour today, but then ended up spending a whole bunch of money, in under an hour, buying stuff like drain unclogger and tampons and think I'll just wait 'til later in the week. ;-)

On CBS Sunday Morning today, Edelstein talked about JLaw and how, like, she was fine and everything, but was it an Oscar winning performance in an Oscar caliber movie? No. And I liked SLP a lot while totally thinking, this is not an Oscar movie. Which, there's nothing wrong with that! (Sunday Morning also had an interview with Linda Hunt, which reminded me of how many, many times I've seen Kindergarten Cop. I have made peace with my low standards. *g*) But I'm not exactly sure why the film is picking up this kind of swag other than, as Edelstein also pointed out, the Oscars are mostly about who campaigns most effectively. Sigh.

(I do still love JLaw herself, though this is weighted in large part by the fact that she's from here. She is our ditzy ham. ::cough:: And also my hope that at some point she'll be old/mature enough to want to be seen as less...doofusy, you know?)

Bonus points for Jennifer Ehle and Jessica Chastain sharing scenes where they talk about work.

YES YES YES. The scene where...that horrible thing happens (to keep this comment on the safer side of spoilers) was so much more horrible for how lived in and realistic their relationship felt.

Chastain's character was, if I understand it, a composite character to some degree, and the 'lone voice of dogged reason' side of her was probably the least surprising thing about her. Which, to my mind, makes it that much more impressive how complicated and unique the character felt to me. The riskiest thing a woman's role can probably be in an American movie is unlikeable, and the character isn't wholly unlikeable, but she's not Miss Congeniality, that's for damn sure. She's worth knowing anyway, and I really love that the movie made that clear. Would be very pleased for Chastain to win.

(Also, for a movie that was not in any normal sense of the word fun -- the torture scenes are, well, as awful as I want a movie to be, frankly -- it was kind of a hoot how many random actors they crammed in. How's it hanging, Coach Taylor, Andy Dwyer, Captain Jack, and Henry Francis?)

Speaking of Foxx and CBS Sunday Morning: he's awesome, right?

Beasts blew my freaking mind. I didn't sleep well for two nights because of it. I mean, for 2012 there's no getting around that the bastion of artistic perfection The Avengers *g* has my heart forever, but Beasts floored me. I get where the criticisms are coming from, I really do; and maybe thinking of a movie as a bubble universe is cheating; but to me it's one of those movies that looks like one thing when you see the trailer or only hear the talking head idea of it, and you think you know what's going to happen, how the story's going to go, and very little of that idea of it is accurate. It's so much better than I could've possibly imagined, and I still have a hard time believing Wallis and Henry were actors acting characters someone had to invent, you know?

The Master was freaking weird and chewy, and ohhh I liked it. I'm as sad about Amy Adams not winning BSA as I am anything.

I've seen all the animated noms except the one I'd arguably be most likely to have seen: Frankenweenie. I just never got around to it despite the lead character looking like baby!Loki. OTOH, I've only seen one of the foreign noms, but it was magnificent: A Royal Affair. Really wish I'd schlepped it over to Louisville to see it on a big screen because it is sumptuous and heartbreaking.

[hesychasm]

TL;DR precursor: ahahah, I will never get tired of word-vom'ing with you. ;)

OMG can I talk about Jamie Foxx for a second, b/c I just watched that video and fallen in love all over again. He's recycled a lot of the same stories and lines in his various interviews (which is fine, most actors do). But in my first link above, he's speaking to Oprah, and he tells her a story I hadn't heard before about a particular incidence of racism he experienced in Texas in the 1980s, and then he says this horrifying thing about how he managed to get through it because his grandmother told him to be "like the furniture" whenever stuff like that happened. And just...look how far he's come from that. He's got a more diverse array of talents in his pinky finger than most people combined (piano! singing! comedy! drama! high school football captain for god's sake!), but he still remembers his roots, vividly, and he has so much respect for other black entertainers and actors, and so you get this sense that HE DOESN'T EVEN THINK HE'S ALL THAT in comparison to them, and yet he so, so is. And I just want to sit down with him and let him tell me his thoughts about his life and his career for hours and hours. And also ask him what he really thinks about Django.

I think I'll be cool with JLaw again once the media hype dies down. I do like that she's another one who's true to her roots (there's a really cute news segment I'm too lazy to look up about how she's still very close to a guy with Down syndrome she grew up with). And she seems extremely level-headed about her career -- no Lohan flameout likely! But yeah, she's also still very young and seems to really like playing up her doofus qualities. *facepalm*

I did really like her in SLP, and I think all of the actors turned in very showy performances (which I felt were Oscar bait, actually) but agree with you it just didn't feel like an "important" enough movie to be getting all these accolades. Harvey Weinstein campaigning like a bulldog again, I guess. But like I said, I do need to see it again.

That Scene in Zero Dark Thirty, ITA with you about its impact! I understand, from interviews and articles, that there is a particular CIA operative who largely formed the basis for the character (and I suppose Claire Danes' character on Homeland) and she sounds like a real pill -- WaPo feature here. But of course, it's a Hollywood movie and there must have been a lot more than just this one agent responsible for events. I think the movie made that clear, too, though, with that scene where another agent was the one who found the crucial piece of evidence buried in files.

ITA with everything you said about Beasts, as well. I actually had no idea what to expect going in, and in fact I haven't read much criticism about it -- it's one of those movies where I'm just resigned to the fact that people will bring in different things to their viewing experience and take different things away.

I am not normally drawn to animated movies, actually; I tend to get dragged to them and then find myself loving them in spite of myself. Case in point: Wreck-It Ralph, which for my money is one of the best I've seen, ever. Haven't seen any of the others except for Brave, which sadly I rather hated. :-/ (Boils down to: main character was so unsympathetic and horrible to her mother, IMO.)