Oscars 2020

And I agree with most of your selections.

 

In truth, there aren't many BP winners I legitimately think are bad, but there are plenty that I think weren't great or especially good.

And sometimes even the good ones aren't the best of their year - like "Rocky", for instance...

 

After wathing the film my wife told me that she thought Joaquin and Reese sang the songs better than Johnny and June. I don't condone violence against women but in that instant I totally understood it!

 

Joker was the only Top 20 box office film to be nominated, and it was anything but "popcorn". It certainly wouldn't have hit $1 billion had it not borrowed the comic book character's name. The Academy had a spot open to nominate Avengers: Endgame but chose not to.

 

My wife prefers the versions of The Beatles songs on the ' Across The Universe ' soundtrack over the originals.

 

Don't get the Billie -bashing that seems very popular here.
I like her. Don't know a lot about her but she's young , fresh and obviously talented. And I agree she's in for the long run.

 

First time I’ve ever laid eyes on her.

 

But Endgame wasn't as good as the previous part 1 IMHO which also didn't get nominated I don't think?

 

Maybe they should have a category for comic book movies then, like they do animated ones.
It's not like they are slighted they get the lion's share of the box office.
I don't feel they belong in best picture category.
I'm going to guess people that say they do are not fans of the dramas that are often Oscar contenders.

 

The thing about the Hollyweird celebrities is that they don’t live in the real world so I don’t get why they are spewing their take when they have their asses wiped for them.

 

I agree that Brad Pitt was the lead actor in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and should have been nominated for Best Actor instead of Best Supporting Actor, but that’s a pretty common issue in the acting categories.

 

The other thing is they are playing a role as matter of professional responsibility. When they are done pretending to be someone else, perhaps they don't know who to be. They're like children, looking for boundaries. And the only way some of them can figure out where those boundaries are is to overstep them. So they do that. Thing is, no one is around to discipline them when they do.

And they're so wealthy, it doesn't matter anyway. Which goes back to your point about living in the real world.

 

Freedom of speech isn't the issue. The criticism of Phoenix's comments were for the inappropriateness of his comments in that setting - that his comments were irrelevant to the occasion, bizarre in it's subject matter and tone (that lead most reasonable people to question his state of mind and/or sobriety) and served as an example of self indulgent, preachy celebrity and why there is a growing dislike of an entertainment ceremony which has gratuitously and unnecessarily alienated many potential viewers.

 

Have many of you here seen most of the Oscar best pictures though out the years?

 

Once again, I suspect "actors/musicians/athletes shouldn't insert politics into their work" more accurately translates into "actors/musicians/athletes shouldn't insert politics I don't agree with into their work."

 

Correct. Surely not everyone, some people just don't like being reminded of anything by anything else, but yeah.

 

I was looking at a list of all the Best Picture Oscar winners and had seen less than half.

 

Not for me. I don't want to hear their views on anything. Just do your job.

 

No, it didn't - "Black Panther" was the 1st and only MCU movie to get a BP nod.

As for which was better, I preferred "Endgame" - I wasn't wild about "IW".

Anyway, there was a possibility "Endgame" would get the nod due to its status as the end of a long journey. Most people don't think "Return of the King" was the best "LOTR" movie, but it's the one that won!

 

I think the best movie is the best movie period, and genre snobbishness has no place in the Oscars.

They tend to reward "serious" movies, which bugs the crap out of me. A good drama is no easier to make and no less valid than a good comedy or a good action flick, etc.

You gonna really try and convince me "Rain Man" is a better movie than "Die Hard"? Only one had a shot at an Oscar!

 

I've seen every single Best Picture winner - and I can prove it!

The Academy Award-Best Pictures Collection - Last update 2/10/2020

 

Not necessarily - I personally don't care if it's Eddie Vedder or Ted Nugent - SHUT UP AND DO ANOTHER TUNE!

That said, I had no issues with JP's speech. It was weirdly entertaining.

I followed it by drinking the first glass of milk I've had in years...

 

...and you can probably forget it if it's Sci-fi. No chance...many deserving - no winners.

2001, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner and other stone-cold classics far more memorable, beloved and groundbreaking than most of the films that won won Best Picture in their respective years.

 

This brings up the issue I’ve been thinking about since the broadcast Sunday night. “The big blockbuster movies that the general public go see”...

The first Oscar telecast I remember was in 1968. The best picture nominees were : Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and Dr. Dolittle. Without nitpicking, all of these could be described as “movies the general public go see.”

In following years Oscar winners were almost exclusively movies of wide interest to the general public:

Oliver!
Midnight Cowboy (maybe not so much)
Patton
The French Connection
The Godfather
The Sting
The Godfather II
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Etc.

In the 80’s the big “prestige” pictures began to proliferate... Gandhi, Amadeus, Out of Africa, but The Last Emperor was the only winner that had very little popular appeal and other years featured mass hits like Terms of Endearment, Rain Man, and Driving Miss Daisy.

Right up until about 2005, Oscar winners were typically, if not quite exclusively, popular with a general audience. But after that, general popularity fell off a cliff. For whatever reason, there has not been a best picture winner that was also a big box office hit for fifteen years.

Crash - $53m (domestic BO)
The Departed - 132m
No Country for Old Men - 74m
Slumdog Millionaire - 141m
The Hurt Locker - 17m
The King’s Speech - 138m
The Artist - 44m
Argo - 136m
12 Years a Slave - 57m
Birdman - 42m
Spotlight - 45m
Moonlight - 28m
Shape of Water - 64m
Green Book - 85m

Parasite is unlikely to reverse the trend.

So what happened? It’s like the Academy passed a rule prohibiting successful movies from winning Best Picture. Or, did they just stop making general interest movies?

Here are the top ten grossing movies for the years in question. I have subjectively bolded the ones that are closest to the type of movies that used to win Best Picture.

2005
Top Ten BO - Star Wars III, Harry Potter, War of the Worlds, Chronicles of Narnia, Wedding Crashers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Madagascar, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Hitch

2006
Top Ten BO - Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, XMen, Da Vinci Code, Superman, Ice Age, Happy Feet, Over the Hedge, Casino Royale, Talladega Nights

2007
Top Ten BO - Spider-Man, Shrek, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Bourne Ultimatum, 300, Ratatouille, I am Legend, The Simpsons

2008
Top Ten BO - Dark Knight, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Hancock, Wall-E, King Fu Panda, Madagascar, Twilight, Quantum of Solace, Horton Hears a Who

2009
Top Ten BO - Transformers, Harry Potter, Up, Twilight, Avatar, Hangover, Star Trek, Monsters vs, Aliens, Ice Age, Blind Side

2010
Top Ten BO - Avatar, Toy Story, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man, Twilight, Inception, Harry Potter, Despicable Me, Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon

2011 Ten BO - Harry Potter, Transformers, Twilight, Hangover, Pirates of the Caribbean, Fast Five, Cars, Thor, Planet of the Apes, Captain America

2012
Top Ten BO - Avengers, Dark Knight, Hunger Games, Skyfall, Twilight, Spider-Man, Brave, Hobbit, Ted, Madagascar

2013
Top Ten BO - Iron Man, Hunger Games, Despicable Me, Man of Steel, Monsters, Frozen, Gravity, Fast and Furious, Oz, Star Trek

2014
Top Ten BO - Guardians of the Galaxy, Hunger Games, Captain America, Lego Movie, Transformers, Maleficent, XMen, Planet of the Apes, Big Hero, Spider-Man

2015
Top Ten BO- Jurassic World, Star Wars, Avengers, Inside Out, Furious 7, American Sniper, Minions, Hunger Games, The Martian

2016
Top Ten BO - Finding Dory, Star Wars, Captain America, Secret Life of Pets, Jungle Book, Deadpool, Zootopia, Batman, Suicide Squad, Star Wars

2017
Top Ten BO - Star Wars, Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, Guardians..., Spider-Man, It, Thor, Despicable Me, Logan, Fate of the Furious

2018
Top Ten BO- Black Panther, Avengers, Incredibles, Jurassic World, Deadpool, Dr, Seuss, Jumanji, Mission Impossible, Ant Man, Star Wars

2019
Top Ten BO - Avengers, Lion King, Toy Story,Frozen, Captain Marvel, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Aladdin, Joker, It 2

(The very, very few bolded titles are not necessarily movies I think should have won in their year, or would have won in prior years, but are movies that I think have a general purpose audience similar to movies that used to dominate the box office and the Oscars.)

Nothing here is new to anyone who’s paid attention. We all know that comic book and fantasy movies have taken over, but I wasn’t aware of just how pervasively they've done so. I really didn’t realize how kids movies have become almost equally pervasive. By a quick count of the 150 movies over fifteen years listed there are 79 comic book/fantasy titles and and 47 directed primarily at kids. (Don’t try to audit these numbers. It was a quick and dirty count, but it’s pretty close.) That’s 126 of 150 and doesn’t include the Fast and Furious, James Bond, or Mission Impossible titles.

So one has to sympathize with the Academy. The industry has moved on and taken the mass audience with it and we’re left with the kinds of left field titles that now dominate awards season and its ever shrinking audiences. We have more good entertainment choices than ever before, but we seem to have permanently lost the great epics that used to fill theaters and dominate water cooler conversations for weeks or months.

I don’t think it’s a change for the better. Sitting around talking about The Godfather, or The Graduate, or Deer Hunter used to result in encountering new viewpoints and insights that deepened your appreciation of the movie. You also had the great national critics like Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby who you followed and used to expand your cinematic vocabulary. Now you have five thousand Internet critics watching DVDs of comic book movies.

Oh well... on the other hand, with a 65 inch TV and a decent sound system, you can fire up your DVDs and relive the glory days.

 

Thankfully there’s loads of 65 inch TV’s still available ( and even larger). Worth keeping DVDs...still.