Oscars 2021

Sound Of Metal was by far one of the best new movies I've seen in a long time. For me it was really a tour de force, that went way beyond the basic premise of the story, which we here can especially relate to, I think. It had a lot of layers, all of which had the ring of truth. Superbly written and acted. Highly recommended!

 

The preview looked really good, I look forward to checking it out.

 

Da 5 Bloods baffles me. I thought it was a truly awful film in just about every way.

 

The film I thought was the best I saw this year - I'm Thinking of Ending Things - was not among the choices.

 

I thought it was very good.

 

Your reaction here was mine. It's such a small and personal film that I don't think it warrants the award. Instead of being about something larger, it's really just about a woman - who may or may not be the way she is simply because that's the way she's always been (rather than as a result of circumstances) - and her nomadic lifestyle. The cinematography is good, but not great. The writing is good but not great. I'd recommend that people see it who might be predisposed to liking that sort of thing, definitely. But would I recommend that to anybody who I don't think would like a dour, minimalist movie about a woman who lives in her jeep, traveling from job to job, with no larger ambitions? No. Oscar caliber films should be good enough to transcend the subject matter. IMO really liking this film probably hinges on being receptive to the subject matter first.

 

Agreed, but there's only one Terrence Malick.

To be fair to the film, it could easily have been the stuff of Oscar Bait in someone else's hands, and IMO that would probably have rendered it from being something that I liked but didn't love, to something I didn't like at all.

 

Yeah I felt much the same way.

 

Wow! I went through the list of nominees in all the major categories and it might as well have been an alternate universe 'cause that's how out of touch with cinema I've become. Zip. Nothing. I've become my father.

 

This is a weird year, and a LOT of those movies never actually made it to many - any? - theaters.

I saw the 3 I picked - "News", "Nomadland" and "PYW" - at AMC. Saw "Judas" there as well.

AMC has "Mauritanian", "Borat 2" and "The Father" right now.

If any of the others got there, I missed 'em!

 

Of the OP's list, we managed to see these at in the theater:

The Father
The Mauritanian
News of the World
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Minari
Judas and the Black Messiah

Vickie managed to see Ammonite.

We wanted to see One Night in Miami but it played only one theater in the area, way out in the sticks, for one week and we missed it.

We managed to see these on our home projector:

The Dig
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Soul
The Trial of the Chicago 7

 

Enjoyed this quite a bit.

 

It's not an Oscar kind of thing, so I'm not particularly disappointed by not seeing it nominated, though an adapted screenplay nomination would have been nice.

 

Well, might as well start forecasting the winners:

Picture: Nomadland
Actress: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
Actor: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Supporting Actress: Youn Yuh-jung, Minari
Supporting Actor: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Director: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland
Original Screenplay: Promising Young Woman
Adapted Screenplay: Nomadland
Cinematography: Nomadland
Original Score: Soul
Original Song: "Speak Now" (One Night in Miami)
Animated Feature: Soul
International Feature: Another Round
Sound: Sound of Metal
Production Design: Mank
Film Editing: The Trial of the Chicago 7
Visual Effects: Tenet
Makeup/Hairstyling: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Costume Design: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Documentary Feature: Time
Documentary Short: Hunger Ward
Animated Short: Burrow
Live-Action Short: The Letter Room

 

And a mediocre miniseries...

 

Apparently on Amazon Prime from 12 April according to the BBC review by Will Gompertz today, and in UK cinemas from17 May. Really looking forward to this one.

 

I'm pulling for My Octopus Teacher in the docs. Great, moving film

 

NEW YORK (AP) April 7, 2021

Will the Oscars be a 'who cares' moment as ratings dive?

 

No doubt this will be the lowest-rated Oscars in... well, ever since most people had TVs.

Not a single hit among the BP noms, and a lot of them never played in theaters, so you had to belong to a handful of streaming services to see them.

I'll only have seen 3 or 4 of the 8 noms, and I usually view all of them pre-awards!

 

Updated predictions:

Picture: Nomadland
Actress: Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Actor: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Supporting Actress: Youn Yuh-jung, Minari
Supporting Actor: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Director: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland
Original Screenplay: Promising Young Woman
Adapted Screenplay: Nomadland
Cinematography: Nomadland
Original Score: Soul
Original Song: "Speak Now" (One Night in Miami)
Animated Feature: Soul
Animated Short: If Anything Happens I Love You
Live-Action Short: Two Distant Strangers
Documentary Feature: Crip Camp
Documentary Short: A Love Song for Latasha
International Feature: Another Round
Sound: Sound of Metal
Production Design: Mank
Film Editing: Sound of Metal
Visual Effects: Tenet
Makeup and Hairstyling: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Costume Design: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

 

I went to a movie theater today for the first time in over a year!! I actually got all choked up and emotional when the lights went down and the previews started. I can’t believe how much I have missed going to the theater!!

Anyway, I saw Minari. I thought it was good, not great. I don’t think any of the performances were Oscar worthy, even though this has been an odd year to say the least.

 

I went to our local art-house cinema yesterday afternoon for a matinee screening of the Live Action Short Films. It turned out to be a private screening.

I absolutely love the Live Short films. I never know how long they are, or recognize any of the actors, so it's just fantastic to let them wash over you.

 

I watched Sound of Metal today and thought it was terrific. I have truly never seen (or more importantly, heard) anything quite like it.

 

Sound of Metal is my personal favourite of the eight BP nominees.

 

I thought it was a good performance, but I had some issues with it. I'll put my objections in a Spoiler box for those who haven't seen it.

Spoiler: Don't read if you haven't seen the film

I'm not sympathetic at all to the "Capitol-D Deaf" community that rejects cochlear implants and insists that deafness is not a disability. I see it as pointlessly self-segregating in a world where technology has made communication with the deaf easy.

If this wasn't a music-oriented Forum, I would have no way of knowing whether or not any posters here are deaf, as we are all communicating via text. As an example, I offer one of the best programmers I have ever known. Until we planned to meet up in real life at the Consumer Electronics Show, I had no idea he was deaf. But with a shared laptop, we managed to type back and forth. Nowdays, we would just text back and forth with our phones.

So I didn't see the principal conflict as a real one. And he should have kept looking for a better audiologist, one who would actually help bring music back into his life, rather than just run through the factory presets. For example, read about Michael Chorost's quest to be able to hear music again via his cochlear implant that he wrote about in Wired back in 2005.