Letter to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Dear Hollywood Foreign Press Association,
Hi, this is Greg O'Neill again. I have only just a few recommendations for the 2023 film and entertainment year. Here are some films that I feel that you would be wise to nominate in various categories:
1. Oppenheimer- Best Picture Drama, Best Director Christopher Nolan, Best Actor - Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor, Robert Downey Jr., Best Actress, Emily Blunt, Best Supporting Actress, Florence Pugh, Best Original Score, and Best Screenplay. This film got right to the heart of the complexity of the Atomic Bomb, World War II, and the Nuclear Arms Race. It is worth noting that J. Robert Oppenheimer was first and foremost a scientist, and a man contracted by the American government to do their bidding. That being said, he had some personal stake in beating Germany to getting the Atomic bomb finished, and finidng enough enriched uranium to complete the task. This film asks us to understand a person we've come to associate with the deaths of thousands of people, much like the fictional President Snow in The Hunger Games. More on him in a moment. The film showed the human center, a man torn between a very romantic love for his wife, Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), who supports him unconditionally and bears two children for him during their time remanded to the Manhattan Project; and his mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who has an uncommon bond with him, a take it or leave it attitude that I grasped as a facade, and an honest to goodness passion for the man based on human intellect and tactile companionship. The film captured the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not head on, not unblinkingly, perhaps, but with distinct and subtle moments. I was particularly moved by the discussion by American military personnel and advisors directly involved in the Manhattan Project, deciding which city in Japan would be an adequate target. One city in particular gets spared because a man in the Manhattan Project had gone there on a honeymoon with his wife, and noted that it would be a particular tragedy for the town and its cultural artifacts and architecture to be destroyed. Think about that. A man's honeymoon dictated which town was spared, which town would be decimated. Think of how much whim has to deal with the formative and devastating moments in history. This film was a major accomplishment.
2. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
A young Coriolanus Snow goes hungry more days than he doesn't in the Capitol ten years after the Treaty of Treason brought an end to the Dark Days in Panem. I know that I was thinking "poor little rich boy" when I cracked open this book for the first time on May 23rd, 2020. And to be fair, this was the slowest read of all the books in the Panem Literary Universe. It took me a full ten weeks. (Mockingjay I had read in about nine.) That established, author and co-screenwriter Suzanne Collins, along with director Francis Lawrence, knew what they were doing. They had high emotional stakes with a powerless eighteen year old Coriolanus Snow, given a District 12 Tribute in the 10th Annual Hunger Games for whom he will mentor while he's still a lowly senior at the academy. Oh yeah, his family once had power and wealth. But it's a thinly concealed secret in Panem that his family has gone hungry through the decade since his father perished and his mom died in childbirth. All of the sudden, we wind ourselves wondering what if, what if Snow takes a different path... what if he doesn't only act on his intuition and logic to utilize his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, but actually starts to care about her, goes into the Arena to keep her safe, and to rescue Sejanus Plinth? What if Snow has some shred of decency? And what if he's horrified, secretly, by everything that he sees in The Hunger Games? Was there a point in time before he drunk the kool-aid? He's impressionable enough to have let his friend, Sejanus Plinth, bend his ear with talk of how inhumane the games are. It is children pit against children, and only one can come out alive. It was meant to punish the Districts. But what respect does that actually elicit from the Districts? This is the primary question I've been asking myself across the four books and five films in The Hunger Games franchise. And the franchise itself gets that. The franchise wants us as readers and viewers to ask that question. The author, screenwriter, producers, and filmmakers want us to be horrified and distraught by what we see. They want us to look at the children with pain, anguish, and feral rage in their eyes, realizing that they have to pay with their life to mollify the Capitol for the casualties of war from a bygone era that was fought by their parents' generation. So they themselves get the inequity of it, and with that in mind, this film doesn't necessarily ask you to "root" for Snow. Nor, do I feel, does it immediately demand that you "root" for the Tributes, as they in some cases are out for blood. It's a compelling, dynamic, complex story. You want everyone to be saved. Ultimately, I wanted Snow to confess his undying love for Lucy. I wanted him to protect his best buddy Sejanus. And I prayed to God for a fictional character, a Down Syndrome girl who could climb well and got herself into these games by way of reaping. This is the 2nd best film of 2023, and only by a hair behind Oppenheimer. I recommend it for Best Picture Drama, Best Director, Francis Lawrence, Best Screenplay, Best Actress in a Drama for Rachel Zegler, and Best Original Song, "Nothing You Can Take From Me."
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The plot of the movie, as listed on the websites, is that Miles Morales is trying to save a person, a particular individual, namely the alternate universe Gwen Stacy; or more to the point, a Gwen Stacy from one of the other universes. That established, his globetrotting through multiple universes stands to ultimately threaten the fabric of the entire said construct. But what this movie was really about, to me, was a boy who loved his parents, whose parents loved him, and their efforts at discipline were only an effort to keep him home with them, as he was growing up too fast. Miles actually does love his family, very much. And his parents love him. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is when Miles is late getting home for a rooftop party celebrating his dad, a police officer, and his meritorious years on patrol. Miles has to stop a convenience store robbery, so he suits up as Spider-Man. In the time he takes to try to capture the villain of this film, the Spot, his dad has already given the big toast to the gathered crowd. So Miles isn't there to hear his dad talk about how proud he is of his son, and how much it would have meant to have him there. I thought wto myself, "damn it, can't Spider-Man once, just once, get to slow down and be present in the moment?Does he so constantly always have to be spinning the web, slinging from building to building, and catching bad guys? What's in it for him? I mean it makes the world a better place, but what's in it for him? Missing out on the moments that mean the most? That established, yes, Gwen Stacy wouldn't cross the multi-verse to retrieve Miles' help for nothing. It's obviously important. And Miles, obviously in love with Gwen, would do anything she asked of him. She find s the notebook and sees all of the sketches he has made of her. Of course, the film's asit were true antagonist, one of the other Spider-Mans (Oscar Isaac), is bent on destroying Peter's self-concept, convincing him to hang up the suit and rest the webslinging, as trying to save one person and trying to save the multiverse is in his mind a "you can't have your cake and eat it too" situation. Miles will be like Icarus, and cause a multitude of villains to break loose across the multiverse through the breaches and portals he creates. This was my third favorite film of 2023. I recommend it for Best Animated Feature and Best Screenplay.
4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Indiana Jones has to race against time to prevent an artifact from falling into the wrong hands. At the outset of the film, it already is in the wrong hands, with the NAZIs. Half of it, anyhow, is. He thinks he's searching for one macguffin, a dagger that allegedly was used against Jesus Christ at his crucifixion, in the film's thrilling opening sequence on a train heading through the Alps in 1944. Jones, at that point in time, was taking a sabbatical from college to go undercover as a NAZI and supposedly do work on par with George Clooney and Matt Damon in The Monuments Men. The Dagger is a Red Herring, when he discovers the Dial. Flash forward to 1969, we see Jones alone. I don't know what happened to Marian Ravenwood. I don't know what happened to Mutt. So my first thought was "oh, no." Well, the film deals with both plot points tastefully, to its credit. And his fill-in sidekick on this adventure is his God-daughter, Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She shows up at one of his lectures. He's working at a different college, one in New York. She shows up for good reason. She's trying to stop the evil NAZI Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelson) from accessing the second half of that Dial to change the course of history, travel back in time, and fix World War 2 so that the Third Reich wins. Voller knows that Hitler was crazy. But Voller is even more crazy and more evil. What's worse, he's embedded himself in the United States, working as a scientist for the Space Race. He knows how to infiltrate and make use of our resources. This includes absolutely evil FBI agents who roll over on their country. It was a lark. The film was an escapist popcorn film. But Harrison Ford is always very comfortable in the skin of Indiana Jones, as well as in the leather jacket, boots, and fedora with whip, pistol and satchel. I don't know if Harrison Ford has ever gotten a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for the Indiana Jones films. He's very funny. Can this series of films qualify as comedy? Or is its structure too well cemented in action adventure? Either way, Ford is hilarious and cantankerous in all of them. For that reason alone, I'd trust the HFPA to bend the rules a little bit and consider him in the comedy category. I know he got nominated in this category for Sabrina in 1995.
5. No Hard Feelings.
Speaking of actors who made a career of drama but dabble in comedy to great effect, there's Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings. She plays 34 year old Maddie Barker, a 32 year old trying to save her Long Island house in her family name from getting bought out by developers. She also gets her car repossessed for citations. Her main job is as an UBER driver, and she also works at the canteen for a marina. She answers a Craigslist ad to romance the insulated 19 year old son of a wealthy couple in Montauk, offering to basically date their son. The comedy of manners starts with the parents assuming she's passing herself off as a sex worker, and thus Maddie has to try to explain that she's doing this out of willingness to help her son. But the parents put it on no uncertain terms they'd like to see if she could get him to have sex, as a condition of giving her the car. Maddie doesn't shudder from the task, and that's what makes this film hilarious. She goes to the pet and animal shelter where their son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) works. He's overwhelmed by her presence, immediately...because she comes on, too strong. And that's the crux of the story. A worldly girl trying very hard to bring a shy, sheltered boy out of his shell...It's a bawdy, salacious comedy. It's a screwball comedy.... wait a minute, I went to Wikipedia and noticed that Jennifer Lawrence was already nominated for Best Actress for a Musical or Comedy for No Hard Feelings. Hang on, did I miss something? Did the Golden Globes nominations already come out?! Well, my work here is done!
Elsewhere-
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3: Dave Bautista, Best Supporting Actor
Shazam: Fury of the Gods: Reparation Golden Globe for Musical or Comedy, Zachary Levi
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: Reparation Golden Globe for Musical or Comedy, Paul Rudd
Barbie: Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, Margot Robbie (I have a feeling this has already happened, I just haven't opened the tab)
Red, White, and Royal Water: Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, Taylor Zakhar-Perez, Nicholas Galitzine
Thank you so much,
Greg O'Neill
Hi, this is Greg O'Neill again. I have only just a few recommendations for the 2023 film and entertainment year. Here are some films that I feel that you would be wise to nominate in various categories:
1. Oppenheimer- Best Picture Drama, Best Director Christopher Nolan, Best Actor - Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor, Robert Downey Jr., Best Actress, Emily Blunt, Best Supporting Actress, Florence Pugh, Best Original Score, and Best Screenplay. This film got right to the heart of the complexity of the Atomic Bomb, World War II, and the Nuclear Arms Race. It is worth noting that J. Robert Oppenheimer was first and foremost a scientist, and a man contracted by the American government to do their bidding. That being said, he had some personal stake in beating Germany to getting the Atomic bomb finished, and finidng enough enriched uranium to complete the task. This film asks us to understand a person we've come to associate with the deaths of thousands of people, much like the fictional President Snow in The Hunger Games. More on him in a moment. The film showed the human center, a man torn between a very romantic love for his wife, Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), who supports him unconditionally and bears two children for him during their time remanded to the Manhattan Project; and his mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who has an uncommon bond with him, a take it or leave it attitude that I grasped as a facade, and an honest to goodness passion for the man based on human intellect and tactile companionship. The film captured the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not head on, not unblinkingly, perhaps, but with distinct and subtle moments. I was particularly moved by the discussion by American military personnel and advisors directly involved in the Manhattan Project, deciding which city in Japan would be an adequate target. One city in particular gets spared because a man in the Manhattan Project had gone there on a honeymoon with his wife, and noted that it would be a particular tragedy for the town and its cultural artifacts and architecture to be destroyed. Think about that. A man's honeymoon dictated which town was spared, which town would be decimated. Think of how much whim has to deal with the formative and devastating moments in history. This film was a major accomplishment.
2. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
A young Coriolanus Snow goes hungry more days than he doesn't in the Capitol ten years after the Treaty of Treason brought an end to the Dark Days in Panem. I know that I was thinking "poor little rich boy" when I cracked open this book for the first time on May 23rd, 2020. And to be fair, this was the slowest read of all the books in the Panem Literary Universe. It took me a full ten weeks. (Mockingjay I had read in about nine.) That established, author and co-screenwriter Suzanne Collins, along with director Francis Lawrence, knew what they were doing. They had high emotional stakes with a powerless eighteen year old Coriolanus Snow, given a District 12 Tribute in the 10th Annual Hunger Games for whom he will mentor while he's still a lowly senior at the academy. Oh yeah, his family once had power and wealth. But it's a thinly concealed secret in Panem that his family has gone hungry through the decade since his father perished and his mom died in childbirth. All of the sudden, we wind ourselves wondering what if, what if Snow takes a different path... what if he doesn't only act on his intuition and logic to utilize his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, but actually starts to care about her, goes into the Arena to keep her safe, and to rescue Sejanus Plinth? What if Snow has some shred of decency? And what if he's horrified, secretly, by everything that he sees in The Hunger Games? Was there a point in time before he drunk the kool-aid? He's impressionable enough to have let his friend, Sejanus Plinth, bend his ear with talk of how inhumane the games are. It is children pit against children, and only one can come out alive. It was meant to punish the Districts. But what respect does that actually elicit from the Districts? This is the primary question I've been asking myself across the four books and five films in The Hunger Games franchise. And the franchise itself gets that. The franchise wants us as readers and viewers to ask that question. The author, screenwriter, producers, and filmmakers want us to be horrified and distraught by what we see. They want us to look at the children with pain, anguish, and feral rage in their eyes, realizing that they have to pay with their life to mollify the Capitol for the casualties of war from a bygone era that was fought by their parents' generation. So they themselves get the inequity of it, and with that in mind, this film doesn't necessarily ask you to "root" for Snow. Nor, do I feel, does it immediately demand that you "root" for the Tributes, as they in some cases are out for blood. It's a compelling, dynamic, complex story. You want everyone to be saved. Ultimately, I wanted Snow to confess his undying love for Lucy. I wanted him to protect his best buddy Sejanus. And I prayed to God for a fictional character, a Down Syndrome girl who could climb well and got herself into these games by way of reaping. This is the 2nd best film of 2023, and only by a hair behind Oppenheimer. I recommend it for Best Picture Drama, Best Director, Francis Lawrence, Best Screenplay, Best Actress in a Drama for Rachel Zegler, and Best Original Song, "Nothing You Can Take From Me."
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The plot of the movie, as listed on the websites, is that Miles Morales is trying to save a person, a particular individual, namely the alternate universe Gwen Stacy; or more to the point, a Gwen Stacy from one of the other universes. That established, his globetrotting through multiple universes stands to ultimately threaten the fabric of the entire said construct. But what this movie was really about, to me, was a boy who loved his parents, whose parents loved him, and their efforts at discipline were only an effort to keep him home with them, as he was growing up too fast. Miles actually does love his family, very much. And his parents love him. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is when Miles is late getting home for a rooftop party celebrating his dad, a police officer, and his meritorious years on patrol. Miles has to stop a convenience store robbery, so he suits up as Spider-Man. In the time he takes to try to capture the villain of this film, the Spot, his dad has already given the big toast to the gathered crowd. So Miles isn't there to hear his dad talk about how proud he is of his son, and how much it would have meant to have him there. I thought wto myself, "damn it, can't Spider-Man once, just once, get to slow down and be present in the moment?Does he so constantly always have to be spinning the web, slinging from building to building, and catching bad guys? What's in it for him? I mean it makes the world a better place, but what's in it for him? Missing out on the moments that mean the most? That established, yes, Gwen Stacy wouldn't cross the multi-verse to retrieve Miles' help for nothing. It's obviously important. And Miles, obviously in love with Gwen, would do anything she asked of him. She find s the notebook and sees all of the sketches he has made of her. Of course, the film's asit were true antagonist, one of the other Spider-Mans (Oscar Isaac), is bent on destroying Peter's self-concept, convincing him to hang up the suit and rest the webslinging, as trying to save one person and trying to save the multiverse is in his mind a "you can't have your cake and eat it too" situation. Miles will be like Icarus, and cause a multitude of villains to break loose across the multiverse through the breaches and portals he creates. This was my third favorite film of 2023. I recommend it for Best Animated Feature and Best Screenplay.
4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Indiana Jones has to race against time to prevent an artifact from falling into the wrong hands. At the outset of the film, it already is in the wrong hands, with the NAZIs. Half of it, anyhow, is. He thinks he's searching for one macguffin, a dagger that allegedly was used against Jesus Christ at his crucifixion, in the film's thrilling opening sequence on a train heading through the Alps in 1944. Jones, at that point in time, was taking a sabbatical from college to go undercover as a NAZI and supposedly do work on par with George Clooney and Matt Damon in The Monuments Men. The Dagger is a Red Herring, when he discovers the Dial. Flash forward to 1969, we see Jones alone. I don't know what happened to Marian Ravenwood. I don't know what happened to Mutt. So my first thought was "oh, no." Well, the film deals with both plot points tastefully, to its credit. And his fill-in sidekick on this adventure is his God-daughter, Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She shows up at one of his lectures. He's working at a different college, one in New York. She shows up for good reason. She's trying to stop the evil NAZI Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelson) from accessing the second half of that Dial to change the course of history, travel back in time, and fix World War 2 so that the Third Reich wins. Voller knows that Hitler was crazy. But Voller is even more crazy and more evil. What's worse, he's embedded himself in the United States, working as a scientist for the Space Race. He knows how to infiltrate and make use of our resources. This includes absolutely evil FBI agents who roll over on their country. It was a lark. The film was an escapist popcorn film. But Harrison Ford is always very comfortable in the skin of Indiana Jones, as well as in the leather jacket, boots, and fedora with whip, pistol and satchel. I don't know if Harrison Ford has ever gotten a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for the Indiana Jones films. He's very funny. Can this series of films qualify as comedy? Or is its structure too well cemented in action adventure? Either way, Ford is hilarious and cantankerous in all of them. For that reason alone, I'd trust the HFPA to bend the rules a little bit and consider him in the comedy category. I know he got nominated in this category for Sabrina in 1995.
5. No Hard Feelings.
Speaking of actors who made a career of drama but dabble in comedy to great effect, there's Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings. She plays 34 year old Maddie Barker, a 32 year old trying to save her Long Island house in her family name from getting bought out by developers. She also gets her car repossessed for citations. Her main job is as an UBER driver, and she also works at the canteen for a marina. She answers a Craigslist ad to romance the insulated 19 year old son of a wealthy couple in Montauk, offering to basically date their son. The comedy of manners starts with the parents assuming she's passing herself off as a sex worker, and thus Maddie has to try to explain that she's doing this out of willingness to help her son. But the parents put it on no uncertain terms they'd like to see if she could get him to have sex, as a condition of giving her the car. Maddie doesn't shudder from the task, and that's what makes this film hilarious. She goes to the pet and animal shelter where their son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) works. He's overwhelmed by her presence, immediately...because she comes on, too strong. And that's the crux of the story. A worldly girl trying very hard to bring a shy, sheltered boy out of his shell...It's a bawdy, salacious comedy. It's a screwball comedy.... wait a minute, I went to Wikipedia and noticed that Jennifer Lawrence was already nominated for Best Actress for a Musical or Comedy for No Hard Feelings. Hang on, did I miss something? Did the Golden Globes nominations already come out?! Well, my work here is done!
Elsewhere-
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3: Dave Bautista, Best Supporting Actor
Shazam: Fury of the Gods: Reparation Golden Globe for Musical or Comedy, Zachary Levi
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: Reparation Golden Globe for Musical or Comedy, Paul Rudd
Barbie: Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, Margot Robbie (I have a feeling this has already happened, I just haven't opened the tab)
Red, White, and Royal Water: Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, Taylor Zakhar-Perez, Nicholas Galitzine
Thank you so much,
Greg O'Neill