I've been really bad at posting here when I've seen something, but my viewing of The Quiet Girl today checked my final 'see this year's Oscar-nominated movies' box, so was a minor event for me. It's very quiet/slow; it's one of those movies that's crafted to build up slowly to an emotional climax without you realizing it happened. I'm not so sure it really works, but it's beautifully shot. Interestingly, it's in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio - the second movie I've seen in a theater lately in a narrower aspect ratio (the other being Living, which I saw last month). Side note: I've seen quite a few movies in AMC Theaters lately - and the Nicole Kidman promo has probably taken up at least a half-hour of my life by now!
If you watch it enough times, you start wondering things. Like what happened to that expensive camel hair coat that she was wearing when she arrived at the theater? As far as I know, there's not one AMC multiplex with a coat check room. Did she just dump it in the trash, or give it to some lucky usher? And there's the other problem with her constantly appearing and disappearing large soda. It's there in some shots, and not in others. And beyond that, she's sitting in half a dozen different seats throughout the film, starting in the back row, winding up down in the front, then going back to the middle. She's in a completely empty theater, which isn't all that good of an advertisement for the theatrical experience. Seriously, this legendarily beautiful women couldn't get a date to take her to the movies? That's just sad.
Saw "The Fablemans" today and wasn't exactly overwhelmed. It was ok, but not great imo. I was probably expecting a film about film-making and the passion for it. Instead I got a coming-of-age drama and a family film, where the medium of film only played a minor role. And as a family drama it wasn't too interesting either. On the other hand, I saw "Tár" last week and was deeply impressed by it, and it still goes around in my head. Great film, great acting, though pretty depressing all in all. I might watch it again soon, while it's still on the big screens.
We just saw The Quiet Girl in the theater. Beautiful film, deeply moving. I was reminded of the distinction made by Armistead Maupin about the difference between your biological family and your logical one.
"Elvis, six times and it will be the last I see in a theatre. The Oscars shutting out Elvis with 8 nominations, especially when it won 4 at BAFTA, 3 of them being categories the Academy nominated it for, and an additional win from a different category at a guild, was a slap in the face. All the talk about films being meant to be seen in the theater and Elvis doing as well as it did with all the demographics that were more high risk for Covid (Boomers, some even older than Boomers, as well as Gen X who aren't spring chickens and even early Millennials who many have underlying health issues) and they can't give Elvis a single win. It's an insult. I don't care that The Fabelmans, Banshees and TAR also got shutout. Those films didn't help to thoroughly bring people back out to the theatres post pandemic. They threw bones to the other two that helped cinema, with Sound going to Maverick and Costumes to Black Panther. You'd have to combine the domestic grosses of Fabelmans, Banshees and TAR and multiply it 4.5 times to do what Elvis did domestically and combine them and multiply by 4 to do what Elvis did worldwide.
Yes, because commercial performance = quality. And "Elvis" was 12th in the US box office last year, between "Black Adam" and "Uncharted", 2 movies no one regards as actual hits. So the notion it helped "save cinemas" doesn't make sense.
Well you apparently didn't read them before your knee jerk reaction. I was clear about the demographics of those most at high risk for covid. I also never said Elvis helped save cinema. Those are your words. I said as well as it did with the demographics I listed. Elvis was credited last summer as being the top film for the elderly (Baby Boomers and Silent Generation) who weren't going to theatres at all, and was up there for Gen X. You also have to consider when looking at box office gross that these ages attend mostly matinees with cheap ticket prices, and many enthused Elvis fans bought passes to see it multiple times more easily. It was also considerd a success based on what it made against its budget.
My reaction wasn't "knee jerk". It was based on the evidence. "Elvis" did fine. But it wasn't some massive hit that brought back droves of people who otherwise avoided theaters for 2+ years. I understand that you and the others in the running "Elvis" thread view it as the peak of cinematic civilization. But that doesn't make your beliefs fact.
Box office grosses don't necessarily make it a "great" film. FYI..."The Fabelmans", "Banshees" and "TAR" were all better and intriguing stories than "Elvis" was to me. Plus, it looked like every other Baz film. Just my opinion, of course...
I never said it was a massive hit or that it brought droves back. I said it did well with older people who weren't going out at all because of covid concerns. Your "droves" "massive hit" and "saved cinema" lines aren't close to anything I actually posted
I was talking mainly about technical category nominations, as well as actor. My thing was that BAFTA is very like minded in voting as are the guilds. Between BAFTA and various guilds it won six that I can think of. I get that guilds also break up categories on the technical side where as the Oscars put them altogether, but going in the three films you mentioned were assumed to maybe get shutdown, whereas Elvis wasn't. I know success doesn't equal quality, but we all know all awards shows throw bones or vote along less than authentic lines here and there. That's why I mentioned it being a film that got the middle aged and elderly out more.
At the Elvis's birthday screening at AMC Town Center 20 in Leawood, Kansas, I helped a lady get her 94-year-old, first generation Elvis fan mother to her seat and then back out to their car after the movie. Since Vickie and I sit down front, every time we went went to see it in the theater, I would turn around during the Nicole Kidman promo and check the composition of the audience and it really was extraordinarily wide-ranging, everything from teens to pensioners. Sadly, the film that really did bring people back to the theater wasn't Elvis, but the excerable Top Gun: Maverick. That and Avatar 2.
As someone banned from the "Elvis" thread and tongue lashed for saying TAR was pretentious crap .... HA! "Tár and Elvis were both completely shut out at the 2023 Oscars. Both films—two very different films about music—were nominated for Best Picture, which was won by Everything Everywhere All at Once. Austin Butler lost Best Actor to The Whale’s Brendan Fraser, while Cate Blanchett lost Best Actress to Michelle Yeoh. Tár’s Todd Field lost Best Director and Best Original Screenplay to Everything Everywhere All at Once writers and directors the Daniels. Both films were nominated for Best Cinematography (won by All Quiet on the Western Front) and Best Editing (won by Everything Everywhere All at Once). Elvis also came up short for Best Sound (won by Top Gun: Maverick), Best Production Design (All Quiet on the Western Front), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (The Whale), and Best Costume Design (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever). In January, Butler and Blanchett both won Golden Globes for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively. Both Butler and Blanchett won BAFTA Awards this year. Todd Field’s Tár is the story of fictional EGOT-winning composer Lydia Tár (Blanchett), who becomes mired in scandal. Elvis is Baz Luhrmann’s flashy Elvis Presley biopic told from the perspective of Colonel Tom Parker (played by Tom Hanks)"
You talked about its financial status and implied it deserved awards because it sold tickets. You lumped it in with 2 much more successful movies as one that brought people back to theaters - and ignored "Avatar 2", which did a whole lot more to get butts in seats than "Elvis" did. You seem obsessed with your desire to "prove" that "Elvis" was a great great great movie, and you seem personally insulted by its lack of Oscar victories.
You seem obsessed with trying to say I said things I didn't. I did forget about Avatar but it won one as well. I was clear on my points about Elvis being in relation to older demographics. Avatar, Maverick and Black Panther's primary audience were not born before 1965. Obviously those films made way more than Elvis, but those three are all part of franchises. Elvis was a stand alone movie and credited as having a decent level of success without having to be attached to a previous film, as was Bullet Train which made less. Elvis also became the second highest grossing music biopic worldwide and 3rd in the states, even with inflation considered.
We just saw The Magic Flute. Pretty sure it only played for a week, and we saw the last screening. A fiction about an aspiring opera singer, who travels to go to school in Germany at a Mozart Music Academy (run, amusingly enough, by F. Murray Abraham) and he winds up being magically drawn into the world of Mozart's opera. Nothing astonishing, but enjoyable enough.