Posted on 03/21/2022 9:34:20 AM PDT by Red Badger
Th3 o ly movies we watch now are classic movies- was before all the wokitty crap,going on in today’s movies. Current movies are unwatchable, overacted, filled with rage, skinny women destroying hoards of muscle bound men with ease. anyway! Made to look like incompetent boots who couldn’t take care of themselves if their lives depended on it, and who need a woman to instruct them how to do everything vro. Fixing a car, repairing a home, to breathing
Nope... gimme the classic movies anyday!
Who cares!
Skin color is what will count.
Poor Oscar has become even more of a Joke
Another year of really crappy movies.
I thought the same thing. Denzel = great actor, Macbeth = all time great story; combination of the two = meh, much less than the sum of the parts.
The last time I was in a movie theater was in 2017 to see the Christian film “ I Can Only Imagine.” Going to the movies used to be fun, and then Hollywood decided that the main goal of most films should be to preach and not entertain.
“I used to be a fanatic about movies.”
Same here. I guess after seeing hundreds the thrill wears off.
Who cares? Oscar isn’t about movies anymore; it’s all about the narcissists and their politics.
Power of the Dog was depressing and terrible.
I liked Dune and Coda.
The Ricardo’s was ok.
To me, Dune was the best picture because it has everything:story, acting, special effects.
And I am sooooo tired of watching people kung fu fighting.
I’ve seen a fair share of fights in my life. No one using any kung fu was standing at the end of any of them. LOL
I think as regards ‘Dune’, part II will tell if it was great or not.
IIRC there was some criticism here about how Timothee Chalamet was kind of a lame soyboy type, but that missed the entire point- he goes *into* ‘the desert a coddled, protected child (albeit one with serious training in mental and martial arts), he comes OUT of the desert as a mesiah figure, and a badass; it’s kind of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ thing. What all the movies and TV gets wrong is that he is supposedly about 14 or 15 when thrust into exile, not 18 or 20.
Thanks, Red Badger. I’m looping in the movie ping list.
My favorites from 2021 (again) weren’t among the nominees, which is not unusual. I’m used to this. The last time the GOP nominated my top pick for president (in an open primary situation; re-elects are a different calculation) was Ronald Reagan in 1984, so I’m used to making the best of things.
Of the Best Picture nominees, I’d pick CODA with Drive My Car as a worthy dark horse and an asterisk for Belfast, which I’ve not watched yet, but which I gather is a worthy, well-acted film.
West Side Story ... well, I respect the opinions of those who like it, but I never cared much for the original and can’t muster much interest in a remake. I’ll probably see it eventually. It’s probably a fine movie, just not my cup of tea.
Drive My Car is a special case. A lot of us are watching more and more foreign films. I’m not averse to foreign films winning big at the Oscars as a wakeup call to Hollywood to get its act together. Hollywood still makes some good films here and there, but it’s sometimes hard to find them hidden in all the junk that gets pumped out.
A note about CODA, which is a fairly predictable genre film. I’m not a snob about that. Genres become genres in the first place because they deal with eternal themes that bear frequent retelling. The trick is to camouflage them a bit to keep the story fresh. CODA succeeds. Watch it for Emilia Jones. I’ve not seen her in anything else and have no idea how her career will develop, but she is brilliant here, in one of those wholesome coming of age stories that has the right actress at exactly the right age in exactly the right story. And, by the way, CODA is funny.
As an aside, I balked a bit at CODA on first viewing due to the vulgarity of some of the language. I have reconsidered that objection. The vulgarity comes almost entirely from one character, Frank, who is the patriarch of the deaf family. He is madly in love with his wife after 30 years of marriage, and he is constantly embarrassing his family with his bawdy remarks — but since he’s totally deaf, it’s all in sign language. (No hearing person would talk the way Frank signs.) On first viewing, I thought it was a bit overdone, nothing grotesquely out of line but somewhat embarrassing. I was thinking, “ok, ok, deaf people like sex too and can crack dirty jokes; I get the point; you don’t have to rub it in.”
I reconsidered when I found out that the actor who plays Frank, Troy Kotsur, is a notable figure on the deaf theatrical scene. He makes his living as a standup comic in deaf clubs. Now THERE is an art you don’t see every day. What he’s doing in the movie is bringing his standup nightclub schtick into the film.
I have a bias here. I live on Capitol Hill. Gallaudet University is close, less than a mile way. For reasons that don’t need repeating here, I’ve seen a couple of theatrical performances on campus. The kids do a terrific job; these are student productions at a deaf college, but even I, as a hearing person, enjoyed the shows. So I was at least aware that there is such a thing as a deaf theatrical scene.
Anyhow, without pretending to be an expert, my guess is that deaf standup comedy does not much rely on veiled hints, nuanced expressions, subtle duels of wordplay, inflections of voice, puns, etc. Big, bawdy and over the top is more the style, for understandable reasons. If you are ok with the level of bawdiness and vulgar sexual innuendo in several of Shakespeare’s plays, you will be ok with the same burlesque style in CODA. It took me by surprise when I first heard it, but it’s ok given the givens in play here. And part of the humor is that his daughter Ruby (the Emilia Jones character), who is the only hearing member of a deaf family, is repeatedly called on to translate her dad’s signed crudities to outsiders (friends, neighbors, teachers, etc.) who don’t know ASL. Ruby is repeatedly mortified by her dad’s language. This is LOL funny stuff, brilliantly played by Emilia Jones.
I liked the new Dune. I had seen the older 1980's version and was pretty unimpressed. I have never read any of the books, but when I was in college in the 1970's lots of people read them and all the paperback racks in stores had the books.
One thing I noticed with the new version was that some of its concepts were stolen by George Lucas with Star Wars. This may make some newer viewers see Dune as a rip-off of Star Wars when it was the other way around.
I would like to see Belfast.
“Anyhow, without pretending to be an expert, my guess is that deaf standup comedy does not much rely on veiled hints, nuanced expressions, subtle duels of wordplay, inflections of voice, puns, etc. Big, bawdy and over the top is more the style, for understandable reasons.”
Big, bawdy and over the top is more the style for most standup comedy ...
The first Dune movie by David Lynch was a real mess. There was a several part miniseries done later that was more faithful to the book and I thought not bad.
“The winners are anyone’s guess”
not really: the wokest and/or most people-of-color will win ...
but really, who cares; these kinds of awards are, and always have been, nothing but circle-jerks, brilliantly parodied in “Boogie Nights” “Adult Film Awards” ...
I suppose that’s true. I’ll just say that Troy Kotsur doesn’t have any trouble making himself “heard” by the deaf folks in the back seats in the club. Big, strenuous, physical humor. He’d be great for the jester type roles in Shakespeare, pratfalls and all, if someone could dub in the lines. It’s interesting to see a deaf performer do it.
Who gives a ……
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