Thanks so much Roy, this is a LOT more fun than gaming out the elections, or at least I think it is. I’m pretty much with you except I think the Academy will want to go with Lily Gladstone as best actress. Onward to the incredibly glitzy and often artistically meritless results!
What I love about this is Roy's assumption that the voters are well-informed and not complete fucking morons. Whether it's actually true of the Academy, I don't know, but it's nice to imagine. Most horse-race talk about the Presidential election, on the other hand, seems predicated on the idea that the voters (or at least the 0.5% who matter, the precious undecided voters in swing states) are idiots who can't be bothered to learn anything and will base their votes entirely on gas prices.
I think there's a great skit in that premise, where the Academy voters devote hours and hours to poring over the nominations, freeze framing and searching online for film critic commentary, while voters in November go "fascism or democracy? Fuck it, toss a coin."
Round these parts, this time a year, according to the dinky yard signs on every corner, it's Mulch Madness. I got brackets – they hold back the mulch piles.
I imagine there's some place to make a bet these days.
" I got your film right here- The choice is plain and clear
Nolan is a lock to win it all this year!"
I have seen none of these movies. I will catch up at home when it's streamed. Not a good substitute but a 50-in TV helps.
I saw Goddard's "Weekend" last weekend (Go figure!) It was fantastic. A seriously classic film. Goddard really was a badass.
I know I saw it before in a class. I did not remember just how great it was . It's on the TCM tier of Max. Lovely print. Great color. No fair muting the sound in the traffic jam scenes. You were meant to be driven crazy by the honking Horns.
Max or maybe it's Maxx used to be HBO. They have a sub channel for TCM. Pretty good classic film collection with a lot of classic art films. Goddard, Fellini, Tarkovsky. Some European Welles. Varda.Bergman. I get it free with my cell phone plan. I don't know that I'd pay for it. I had the Criterion Channel for a while. I didn't mind paying for that. These days I probably use the money to buy weed and watch bootlegs on YouTube.
The scene very early where the fender bender in the apartment parking lot escalates into a violent beat down that's interrupted by a guy running outside from the apartment shooting a rifle at everybody - that is no longer clever satire. That's 4 miles from my house on any Tuesday morning following " Malt Liquor Monday" up at the Kwik and Kold.
( I swear to God I drove by a carry out called Kenny's Kwik and Kold somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania 30 years ago.)
This right here could be the subtitle of the boss's whole oeuvre thingy. One line that captures both the shy query and also the demanding enforcement. The boss is The Boss for a reason or 3.
You’re not gonna believe this, but the only one I’ve seen is Barbie, which my roomie insisted on subjecting us to despite being aware of my general distaste for musicals. (Rocky Horror excepted, of course) I suspect it may win something given all the uproar it caused.
With the exception of Barbie, I haven't seen any of the nominated movies (Oppenheimer was very slow getting to Japan, hmmm...). Barbie was the best movie I've seen this year because a) I quite enjoyed it; b) I watched it in the theater with my daughter; and c) we hung out after and talked about it. I actually liked it A LOT more than I thought I would.
What I love about Roy's Oscar predictions is that it isn't just about the films themselves (although Roy writes wonderfully about that stuff too) but about reading the minds of the Academy, how the voters might balance their ticket, throw a bone to an industry veteran, etc. It's the behind-the-scenes intrigue of the Oscars, someone should definitely make a movie about that, I bet it would be GREAT.
Yes, good thing he had a backup. A couple of days ago, I was watching Frank Sinatra and Doris Day in Young at Heart, he plays a down-on-his luck songwriter, still looking for his big break while he plays piano and sings in what the kids today call "dive bars." And all the time I'm watching this, I'm thinking, "You know, fella, you're not a bad singer, maybe you should just stick to that and leave the songwriting to others? Get out from behind that piano and get yourself a big band? You might make something of yourself!"
Re: your giggles concerning Best Song... I still fondly remember when we could laugh that the Three Six Mafia had an Oscar and Martin Scorsese didn't. (Nothing against Marty of course, it was just funny.)
I predict Hayao Miyazakis "How Do You Live" will win best picture. Not now, of course, but in retrospect. For now, it will go down as perhaps the most sad and ridiculous omission in Academy Awards history, which is saying a lot. The final film of one of the greatest cinematic artists of all time doesn't even get nominated? And one that distills his best work and mostly surpasses it? Seriously? When we're all dead and gone and Barbenheimer is remembered only as a meme, critics will still be marveling over the incredible artistic achievement that is "How Do You Live"
But since that is unrealistic, I'll place my money on "Master Gardener." Good thing I don't have any, eh.
But I agree with your Oppenheimer sweep predictions. There were a couple movies I didn't see, but the ones I did were all good but not great. I thought "Barbie" came close, but the idiotic battle of the Kens towards the end totally ruined everything it had going for it previously. I guess my favorite was "Anatomy of a Fall" and Huller was definitely the best actress out of all the ones I saw. I re-watched "Asteroid City" and liked it much better the second time. I thought it was better than "Barbie," but apparently Wes Anderson fatigue is too much for the Academy to overcome.
You gotta remember The Oscars(tm) is a trade show, no different than looking at a chemical company's latest line of spray-on glues while eating a $15 hot dog. Quality has never been the point. The Battle of the Kens was, well not the whole point of the movie, but the climax of its story about the corrosive nature of patriarchy, and how women can work it while wearing those chains. Plus it was hilarious watching a mob of actors pretending to fight as if a bunch of girls was imagining how boys fight. It is a movie about dolls, after all. And, I hate Wes Anderson movies. I can see there's an esthetic there people love (whimsy. So much whimsy. And I love whimsy. What is Barbie, minus the lectures about feminism, but whimsical?) but I hate it. He made me hate Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic. I didn't think that was possible. You build a career on whimsy and miniature models, and people will think you're making a boring Godzilla movie.
When I think about a standup comic who would absolutely kill at a convention of spray-glue manufacturers, I think that's kinda like Wes Anderson. All the industry insiders get the jokes about tackiness, I'm just left out in the cold, all my fault, of course.
I get it, I am the guy who Just Doesn't Get It for sure. Thing is, I never have this kind of reaction to any movie, let alone a specific director. He'll, I've even watched more than 1 Paul McCartney movie, and Sir Paulie makes Wes Anderson look like, well, anybody competent, let alone good. Anderson clearly has a well-defined and developed esthetic. I just hate it. I also don't get how a doll fight doesn't work. I get the Will Ferrel hate, only Adam Sandler is more deeply annoying. But a big dumb movie needs big dumb stars.
Too bad the SOTU came too late for the awards season nominations, because Mike Johnson would have been a lock for best Supporting Comedic Actor in a Drama.
While Joe Biden delivered a (yes, fiery) speech and shut down the infantile howler monkeys in the audience, watching the muted ventriloquist's dummy behind his left shoulder sit uncomfortably for 90 minutes while contorting his face into every possible expression made watching the event must-see TV.
Here's an Oscars-related six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon story:
I work at a small country airport, and once in a while we have helicopters from a certain company stop by for fuel. Usually they're in the neighborhood doing powerline patrols through the National Forest. The company is fairly small and only has a few helicopters.
So Mrs. Derelict and I go to see "The Holdovers," and in the scene where all the other kids are getting on the helicopter to go ski, the helicopter they're getting on belongs to this company. In fact, I have refueled that particular helicopter several times over the years. So I excitedly poked my wife and a said "I know that helicopter! And I probably know the pilot!"
A few weeks later, that very helicopter comes in for fuel. I mentioned to the crew that'd seen it in the movie and asked who was flying it so I could say I'd met a movie star. Well, turns out the guy flying the helicopter in the movie crashed a month or so after filming and was killed. He was apparently flying a medivac flight and hit wires.
Other celebrity helicopter stuff: If you watched Succession on HBO, the helicopter company they used for nearly all of the USA stuff was HeliFlight, based in Manhattan. We get HeliFlight copters at the airport fairly regularly and I know most of their pilots. So when I saw HeliFlight's S-76 helicopters in Succession, I paid attention to the pilots and actually saw a couple I knew.
So when I saw one of them again a few weeks later, I asked him if he charged for his autograph now. Well. Turns out that HBO's production company booked two helicopters and promised the pilots would be "paid for the day." Which the pilots thought meant getting paid flight time for the day. Nope. They only got paid for their ACTUAL flying time. So in that first episode where they all fly from Manhattan to Westchester, the pilots got paid for one hour of flying . . . and wasted two whole days not getting paid at all while the scenes were shot.
Or did Dizzy come up with that one? He did later run for president...
In any case, forever h/t to them both.
Vote Dizzy!
Vote Dizzy!
My Oscar prediction--and I'm never wrong!--is that I'm going to be doing something else besides watching the Oscars.
Boo spoilsport
Why watch when I can get your predictions, and then check your follow-ups afterwards? You are far more entertaining than the actual presentations!
Awwww changed my mind
As long as Rome is burning you may as well enjoy the fire.
Nero my heart to thee!
Caligula Here I Come!
Thanks so much Roy, this is a LOT more fun than gaming out the elections, or at least I think it is. I’m pretty much with you except I think the Academy will want to go with Lily Gladstone as best actress. Onward to the incredibly glitzy and often artistically meritless results!
What I love about this is Roy's assumption that the voters are well-informed and not complete fucking morons. Whether it's actually true of the Academy, I don't know, but it's nice to imagine. Most horse-race talk about the Presidential election, on the other hand, seems predicated on the idea that the voters (or at least the 0.5% who matter, the precious undecided voters in swing states) are idiots who can't be bothered to learn anything and will base their votes entirely on gas prices.
I think there's a great skit in that premise, where the Academy voters devote hours and hours to poring over the nominations, freeze framing and searching online for film critic commentary, while voters in November go "fascism or democracy? Fuck it, toss a coin."
I think in Hollywood there's even more pressure for everyone to think the same thing as there is for humans in general.
Is that even possible?
The pressure? Sure.
I dunno. What do you think?
I'm not like everybody else
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y76ilaVZ5FM
You gotta remember, it's not like choosing the leaders of the most powerful country in the history of civilizations. This is important!
How many people put ten times as much thought into their March Madness bracket as they do into their vote on who gets the nuclear codes?
Round these parts, this time a year, according to the dinky yard signs on every corner, it's Mulch Madness. I got brackets – they hold back the mulch piles.
Sounds good to me!
I imagine there's some place to make a bet these days.
" I got your film right here- The choice is plain and clear
Nolan is a lock to win it all this year!"
I have seen none of these movies. I will catch up at home when it's streamed. Not a good substitute but a 50-in TV helps.
I saw Goddard's "Weekend" last weekend (Go figure!) It was fantastic. A seriously classic film. Goddard really was a badass.
I know I saw it before in a class. I did not remember just how great it was . It's on the TCM tier of Max. Lovely print. Great color. No fair muting the sound in the traffic jam scenes. You were meant to be driven crazy by the honking Horns.
https://youtu.be/BAIlVCStp3c?si=VzZc4FsGqOs1cHc7
Okay, here's 51 upvotes (only one of which actually registers) for the musical reference.
Hard to go wrong with " Fugue for Tinhorns. Almost a good as being "the very model of a modern Major - General " internet - wise.
There are, I have seen, legal betting shops that handle this. I might get in on a bar pool.
Weekend is great! Extra added level of alienation watching on a 50 inch TV. What's "TCM level of Max"?
Would you rather get in on a bar STOOL?
Derelicts know from bar stools !
Max or maybe it's Maxx used to be HBO. They have a sub channel for TCM. Pretty good classic film collection with a lot of classic art films. Goddard, Fellini, Tarkovsky. Some European Welles. Varda.Bergman. I get it free with my cell phone plan. I don't know that I'd pay for it. I had the Criterion Channel for a while. I didn't mind paying for that. These days I probably use the money to buy weed and watch bootlegs on YouTube.
The scene very early where the fender bender in the apartment parking lot escalates into a violent beat down that's interrupted by a guy running outside from the apartment shooting a rifle at everybody - that is no longer clever satire. That's 4 miles from my house on any Tuesday morning following " Malt Liquor Monday" up at the Kwik and Kold.
( I swear to God I drove by a carry out called Kenny's Kwik and Kold somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania 30 years ago.)
(Speaking of carry outs--this is a restaurant chain in the Augusta Georgia area: https://www.wifesaverrestaurants.com/. Pretty good fried chicken.)
Now I want chicken!
That's just the weed talkin'.
Malt Liquor Monday earns K'sKK 2 marks. Please deliver next time you drop by that estimable establishment.
What's "TCM level of Max"?
Streaming service
"I can’t be the only one who gets the giggles "
This right here could be the subtitle of the boss's whole oeuvre thingy. One line that captures both the shy query and also the demanding enforcement. The boss is The Boss for a reason or 3.
2 marks, Boss.
Quit exposing my secrets
"Such a night..."
2 marks, Boss.
brown noser
Just plantin' the seed, my friend. Ya never know when a good word here or there will turn into an entre´to the big tent.
You’re not gonna believe this, but the only one I’ve seen is Barbie, which my roomie insisted on subjecting us to despite being aware of my general distaste for musicals. (Rocky Horror excepted, of course) I suspect it may win something given all the uproar it caused.
Barbie's a musical? I had no idea.
Was tap employed? Not a real musical IMO if there's no tap. What about Jazz Hands?
Me neither.
With the exception of Barbie, I haven't seen any of the nominated movies (Oppenheimer was very slow getting to Japan, hmmm...). Barbie was the best movie I've seen this year because a) I quite enjoyed it; b) I watched it in the theater with my daughter; and c) we hung out after and talked about it. I actually liked it A LOT more than I thought I would.
There's an oof in there that I think I'll just downplay.
It's OK, spill it!
So, other than that, how'd you like the movie, Japan?
What he said.
What I love about Roy's Oscar predictions is that it isn't just about the films themselves (although Roy writes wonderfully about that stuff too) but about reading the minds of the Academy, how the voters might balance their ticket, throw a bone to an industry veteran, etc. It's the behind-the-scenes intrigue of the Oscars, someone should definitely make a movie about that, I bet it would be GREAT.
They did! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uCue7_vcQk
And it's AWESOME, right?
Tony Bennett ACTS!!!
We are all grateful that he stuck to singing, is all I'm sayin'...
Yes, good thing he had a backup. A couple of days ago, I was watching Frank Sinatra and Doris Day in Young at Heart, he plays a down-on-his luck songwriter, still looking for his big break while he plays piano and sings in what the kids today call "dive bars." And all the time I'm watching this, I'm thinking, "You know, fella, you're not a bad singer, maybe you should just stick to that and leave the songwriting to others? Get out from behind that piano and get yourself a big band? You might make something of yourself!"
Also, I got a vote for Best Performance by an Elderly Man in front of an Audience of Demented Hecklers.
And that's Uncle Joe, he's a groovin' high and low at the Congress.
Petty Vote Congress!
Re: your giggles concerning Best Song... I still fondly remember when we could laugh that the Three Six Mafia had an Oscar and Martin Scorsese didn't. (Nothing against Marty of course, it was just funny.)
I predict Hayao Miyazakis "How Do You Live" will win best picture. Not now, of course, but in retrospect. For now, it will go down as perhaps the most sad and ridiculous omission in Academy Awards history, which is saying a lot. The final film of one of the greatest cinematic artists of all time doesn't even get nominated? And one that distills his best work and mostly surpasses it? Seriously? When we're all dead and gone and Barbenheimer is remembered only as a meme, critics will still be marveling over the incredible artistic achievement that is "How Do You Live"
But since that is unrealistic, I'll place my money on "Master Gardener." Good thing I don't have any, eh.
But I agree with your Oppenheimer sweep predictions. There were a couple movies I didn't see, but the ones I did were all good but not great. I thought "Barbie" came close, but the idiotic battle of the Kens towards the end totally ruined everything it had going for it previously. I guess my favorite was "Anatomy of a Fall" and Huller was definitely the best actress out of all the ones I saw. I re-watched "Asteroid City" and liked it much better the second time. I thought it was better than "Barbie," but apparently Wes Anderson fatigue is too much for the Academy to overcome.
Sadly, much of life is just an idiotic battle of the Kens.
Says something that Asteroid City got less love than his stupid short
I got Wes Anderson fatigue fifteen minutes into The Life Aquatic.
You gotta remember The Oscars(tm) is a trade show, no different than looking at a chemical company's latest line of spray-on glues while eating a $15 hot dog. Quality has never been the point. The Battle of the Kens was, well not the whole point of the movie, but the climax of its story about the corrosive nature of patriarchy, and how women can work it while wearing those chains. Plus it was hilarious watching a mob of actors pretending to fight as if a bunch of girls was imagining how boys fight. It is a movie about dolls, after all. And, I hate Wes Anderson movies. I can see there's an esthetic there people love (whimsy. So much whimsy. And I love whimsy. What is Barbie, minus the lectures about feminism, but whimsical?) but I hate it. He made me hate Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic. I didn't think that was possible. You build a career on whimsy and miniature models, and people will think you're making a boring Godzilla movie.
When I think about a standup comic who would absolutely kill at a convention of spray-glue manufacturers, I think that's kinda like Wes Anderson. All the industry insiders get the jokes about tackiness, I'm just left out in the cold, all my fault, of course.
Hmmm, whimsy is not what comes to my mind about Wes Anderson. He’s way too complex for any one word.
I got what the Ken fight was about, I just didn’t think that it worked. Coulda done without the guy from Elf as well.
I get it, I am the guy who Just Doesn't Get It for sure. Thing is, I never have this kind of reaction to any movie, let alone a specific director. He'll, I've even watched more than 1 Paul McCartney movie, and Sir Paulie makes Wes Anderson look like, well, anybody competent, let alone good. Anderson clearly has a well-defined and developed esthetic. I just hate it. I also don't get how a doll fight doesn't work. I get the Will Ferrel hate, only Adam Sandler is more deeply annoying. But a big dumb movie needs big dumb stars.
"Anderson clearly has a well-defined and developed esthetic. I just hate it."
This is also me. It's like watching an extended version of a Left Twix and Right Twix commercial.
Actually, I wouldn’t call it a dumb movie. Without the Ken fight I would probably have thought it was the best film of the bunch.
Henceforth, let's only refer to that actor as "the guy from Elf." No more need be said.
Too bad the SOTU came too late for the awards season nominations, because Mike Johnson would have been a lock for best Supporting Comedic Actor in a Drama.
While Joe Biden delivered a (yes, fiery) speech and shut down the infantile howler monkeys in the audience, watching the muted ventriloquist's dummy behind his left shoulder sit uncomfortably for 90 minutes while contorting his face into every possible expression made watching the event must-see TV.
When MTG started screaming, it would have been great if Biden turned to Johnson and said, "You want to handle this one, Mike?"
LOL
"I believe this is one of yours?"
Pass. Hard Pass.
"She scares me!"
If only...
"Who thought my speech sucked?"
"All of 'em, Katie!"
"Still mad about Lenny's nose" sounds like a clue in a cryptic crossword puzzle.
Lenny Bernstein's Nose!
is the new
Sonja Henie's Tutu!
You're the Colosseum
You're the Louvre Museum
You're the bloom on the rose
You're Bernstein's nose
You may be "an old bum in chinos and a black t-shirt" but your writing cleans up well. Any thoughts about Saltburn?
May see it once I complete these Academy Award duties
Here's an Oscars-related six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon story:
I work at a small country airport, and once in a while we have helicopters from a certain company stop by for fuel. Usually they're in the neighborhood doing powerline patrols through the National Forest. The company is fairly small and only has a few helicopters.
So Mrs. Derelict and I go to see "The Holdovers," and in the scene where all the other kids are getting on the helicopter to go ski, the helicopter they're getting on belongs to this company. In fact, I have refueled that particular helicopter several times over the years. So I excitedly poked my wife and a said "I know that helicopter! And I probably know the pilot!"
A few weeks later, that very helicopter comes in for fuel. I mentioned to the crew that'd seen it in the movie and asked who was flying it so I could say I'd met a movie star. Well, turns out the guy flying the helicopter in the movie crashed a month or so after filming and was killed. He was apparently flying a medivac flight and hit wires.
Yikes
I was pretty shocked.
Other celebrity helicopter stuff: If you watched Succession on HBO, the helicopter company they used for nearly all of the USA stuff was HeliFlight, based in Manhattan. We get HeliFlight copters at the airport fairly regularly and I know most of their pilots. So when I saw HeliFlight's S-76 helicopters in Succession, I paid attention to the pilots and actually saw a couple I knew.
So when I saw one of them again a few weeks later, I asked him if he charged for his autograph now. Well. Turns out that HBO's production company booked two helicopters and promised the pilots would be "paid for the day." Which the pilots thought meant getting paid flight time for the day. Nope. They only got paid for their ACTUAL flying time. So in that first episode where they all fly from Manhattan to Westchester, the pilots got paid for one hour of flying . . . and wasted two whole days not getting paid at all while the scenes were shot.
Such is the life of a movie pilot, I guess.
Never heard of Henry Sugar. Now I'll have to look it up.