The Shape of Water - Guillermo del Toro

Kind of suspicious, though, about Daniel Kraus bringing him the story and Kraus being a fan of Paul Zindel. I think he ripped it off and didn't (or did) realize it. I watched the play last night (it's on Youtube. Weird little play but Elizabeth Wilson does a killer job. And the "fish" is so baaddd. But I enjoyed it -- more than The Shape of Water) and there was even a conversation about mute people in the play.

 

I fell asleep for the last five minutes of Glenn Jordan's "Let Me Hear You Whisper" and missed an AMAZING animal rights message. Wow from 1969! Animal rights people should make this a calling card. Powerful ending.

 

Just saw it and thought it was great, enjoyed it very much!

 

Is the main actress one of the Oscar nominees? If so, I hope she wins. That was a great performance.

 

I agree that Sally Hawkins was the best of the year but I doubt she’ll win. She’d get my vote.

 

I saw this last night for the first time and I agree. She is nominated. I think Richard Jenkins and Octavio Spencer deserve their nominations too, but they're up against some pretty tough competition so probably won't win.

 

Just gonna leave this here...

 

I've yet to be disappointed in his films...didn't see this yet, but I'll own the BD eventually...hope they do a good job on it!

 

Very glad to see the film wind up with so many accolades. At least it got the big prize and Best Director, both of which I think it totally deserved.

For those who doubted whether the film would win (and some good reasons as to why it did), this article covers the pros and cons very well:

How Did The Shape of Water Pull Off That Best Picture Win?
http://www.vulture.com/2018/03/why-did-the-shape-of-water-win-best-picture.html

 

no explanation need, but thanks for the link...

 

What do folks think of the score?

 

Unremarkable. The Phantom Thread score was modern Mozart. Another victory for mush.

 

“Where’s my Oscar?”

 

Coming April 20, 2018 pre-order your copy today! Orders with both pre-order and in stock items will have all in stock items shipped immediately!

Golden Globe Nominee For Best Score On Double LP!

Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Score to Paul Thomas Anderson's movie Phantom Thread.

The album features the film’s original music composed by Jonny Greenwood who recorded his score with the London Contemporary Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

From Variety.com:
The film’s piano-and-strings dominated score, which received a Golden Globes nomination for best original score, plays a key role in defining the lead characters of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), the 1950s London couture designer, and Alma (Vicky Krieps), his model and lover.

"We talked a lot about ‘50s music, what was popularly heard then as well as what was being written and recorded," Greenwood tells Variety. "Nelson Riddle and Glenn Gould’s Bach recordings were the main references. I was interested in the kind of jazz records that toyed with incorporating big string sections, Ben Webster made some good ones, and focus on what the strings were doing rather than the jazz musicians themselves."

Greenwood reasoned that if Reynolds listened to music, it would have been Gould. "Lots of slightly obsessive, minimal baroque music," says Greenwood. "And we could use the piano as the common ground between the romantic music and the formal, slightly more buttoned-up themes that suited Reynolds."

The romantic movements "couldn’t cross into pastiche, or be in any way ironic," he says. "It took a long time to figure out how to do that." At one point, Greenwood recorded with an ensemble of 60 strings, his largest ever.

Some of the cues, however, are played by only a quartet. "The smaller groups, and solo players, work like close-ups [and] not necessarily to accompany [a] visual, but rather, to focus your attention on and make you feel directly engaged with the characters. The bigger orchestral things often worked best for drawing you back to see the bigger situation."

Anderson first heard Greenwood’s themes-in-progress at the musician’s London studio.

"These were turned into a whole body of work for him to draw from, and to request longer, shorter, faster versions and variations," says Greenwood, adding that, "Some cues were written specifically to scenes. Others were just sketches of the characters, or of the story."

All told, some 90 minutes of music ended up in the final cut. Says Greenwood: "When I told [this to] Robert Ziegler, who conducted the score, he said, ‘That’s not a soundtrack, that’s a musical!’ But I know I’m pretty lucky to work on films like this, where there’s so much scope for developing a score over such a long time."

"Building out from the movie's main theme — a delicate whirlwind of violins that comes in four different variations, like a model being newly outfitted for each new fashion season — Greenwood's score is a masterpiece of troubled beauty, a glass of sherry spiked with poison. At first, in fraught pieces like 'Boletus Felleus' and 'Sandalwood I,' the beauty is troubling. However, by the time we get to the climactic lilt of 'For the Hungry Boy,' the troubling has become beautiful. Greenwood perfectly intuits the tidal dynamics of Anderson's perverse romance, and translates them into something that everyone can feel for themselves. Thanks to Greenwood, 'Phantom Thread' would still be one of the year's best films if you watched it with your eyes closed." - David Ehrlich, IndieWire, The 10 Best Movie Scores of 2017, Rated 1/10!

Features:

 

Is Phantom Thread a "modern" score, or did you mean "contemporary Mozart?" Jerry Goldsmoth and Alex North were "modern Mozarts."

 

I love the Greenwood PT score. I have the CD and will pick up the LP when it comes out

 

I can't remember much about it - I was shocked that it won (the score, not the movie which definitely deserved it).

 

Reasonably appropos. But when you've got visuals and characters like these, maybe "too much" would have been too much.

 

I think "discovering" Richard Jenkins at what he probably thought was his "tail-end" of leading-man opportunities, was one of those rare occasions when Hollywood actually got it right. J. K. Simmons of course, being "Discovering Richard Jenkins 2.0".

Octavia Spenser is beginning to look to me like Amy Pohler did prior to her last season at SNL, I was all like, "get out of the way, and leave some roles for some of the other case members...!". I mean, if they know "this is gonna be another 'Oscar-bait' movie, better cast Octavia in it...", then how do they bomb so frequently otherwise?

My personal philosophy of the past decade has been, "The presence of Greta Gerwig in a movie always makes it better". But there are platoons of other great, lesser-used "character actors" out there waiting tables and replacing windshields, that would make great stars, if only the public weren't trained to expect a non-star to be a non-starter.

 

Exactly. It sacrificed everything just to feed the signposted story. From the little I had heard about the movie, I had all the story already. Did a thirteen year old write this scenario for a Saturday morning cartoon or something? It's just Beauty And The Beast with masturbation, fornication and signature Del Toro gore (facial mutilation again and again - what is this guy's hang-up?). This got Best Picture??

 

I agree. You certainly got that right.

 

He got it right that she was the best of the year - or that she wouldn't win?

 

In my local pool I won all four but my personal choices were different: Sally Hawkins Daniel Day Lewis Phantom Thread Paul Thomas Anderson.

 

That she deserved to win, but would not. Her performance was incredible.