Posted on 03/01/2018 1:02:00 AM PST by Kaslin
Have you seen more than one of the movies nominated for best picture this year at the Oscars? The answer is probably not. While two of the nominees actually found sizable audiences (Dunkirk and Get Out), the rest of the field consists of small movies the general public doesn’t care about. Coupled with what many Americans expect to be a 3-hour left-wing political seminar, the broadcast of the 90th annual Academy Awards this Sunday is shaping up to be a Spinal Tap concert-level disaster.
If you look past Dunkirk’s $188 million box office and Get Out, with a $176 million take (against only a $4.5 million production budget), none of the nominated films excited people this year. The next highest-grossing movie was The Post with $78 million. While nothing to sniff at, it’s production budget was $50 million. Add in the cost of marketing and you’re not exactly rolling in the profits there. And that’s a movie starring two of the biggest names in Hollywood (Hanks and Streep) being directed by the biggest (Spielberg). People just don’t care.
The rest of the nominees found small audiences, some made a profit, but none caught fire.
The closest thing to a sleeper hit was Get Out, which is, at best, a guilty pleasure B-movie only getting the attention it has enjoyed because of the racial politics associated with it. It’s fine entertainment, but had it not had liberal-imposed “deeper meaning” and the praise that accompanies it, it would have faded quickly.
Get Out wasn’t even thought of as Oscar-bait when it was released, just a small summer movie. Oscar contenders, or movies studios think can be, aren’t released until the end of the year. But the overwhelming media hype surrounding the movie led to an Oscar campaign for a movie already on cable. That doesn’t happen very often.
Were Get Out released during the Obama administration it likely would have been forgotten. But Donald Trump is president, and that fact has set liberal Hollywood on edge. Coupled with so many in the business being exposed as sexual predators, and you have an entertainment industry that is reeling and embracing liberalism even harder this year.
That’s why the vast majority of the public simply doesn’t care.
Aside from, Dunkirk, and Get Out, other nominees are forgettable and unrelatable to most people. I love movies and I have no desire to see any of them, only having seen Get Out because it was TV.
Other nominees and a brief summary of what they seem to be about are:
The Post: A movie lionizing the media in a time when the media is as popular as toenail fungus. Hollywood loves movies about the media, so does the media. Audiences…not so much.
The Shape of Water: A love story between a woman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I have no idea if it is, but it sure seems like it and I also don’t care.
Darkest Hour: Winston Churchill during the start of World War II. I’d watch it, but I don’t feel compelled to see it in theaters. I’ve heard good things, but I feel like I’ve seen this already.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: A lady is mad at a racist cop for not solving her kid’s murder, or something. I don’t know, and I don’t care. Seems like a lifetime movie without the unintentional humor.
Lady Bird: When I first heard about it I assumed it was a bio-pic about LBJ’s wife. It’s not. Beyond that, I can only figure out that it’s about a quirky girl not getting along with her mom. I like movies that director Greta Gerwig has starred in, but have no desire to see this.
Phantom Thread: Daniel Day-Lewis is probably the best actor alive today, but a movie that seems like it’s about a creepy tailor is not high on my list for ways to spend two hours.
Call Me By Your Name: Watching an adult man seduce a 17-year-old boy is typical Oscar-bait but a bit weird in the “me too” era. Hollywood can’t help itself. Audiences sure did, it only took in $15 million at the box office. Maybe Kevin Spacey can present it, or sue for plagiarism from his life story. Either way, I’m with the rest of the country in having zero interest in it.
Audiences didn’t want to see the movies nominated, so there’s little chance they’ll tune in to see if movies they didn’t want to watch win awards they don’t care about.
Those who do tune in can expect host Jimmy Kimmell to lecture them about how awful the country is. There will be Trump jokes, there will be anti-Republican and anti-Second Amendment speeches. Don’t be surprised if an Obama or CNN-approved Parkland shooting survivor shows up on stage at some point, or at least gets a shout-out.
Who wants that? Who needs that?
The entertainment industry exists because people want to be entertained, to escape from reality for a little while. But Hollywood can’t do that anymore, at least when it comes time to reward itself. They act as though they’re important; they believe it because their publicists tell them they are. The American people told them last year they aren’t, box office numbers hit a 25-year low in 2017.
Hollywood won’t learn the lessons of 2017. They’re making a movie about Wendy Davis, the liberal Democrat who became a liberal celebrity by filibustering an abortion law in Texas, then let the media attention go to her head and suffered a humiliating defeat in a bid for governor, so clearly Hollywood doesn’t care either.
So which movie will win best picture? Who cares? The biggest winners of the night will not be the rich celebrities who collect the $100,000-plus “swag bags” the pampered class is getting at the event (though that’d be nice), it’s the people who don’t watch any of it.
How wonderful. If they bring it back somehow, I’d go see it at the theatre for sure.
Boy, think about what a gorefest in REAL life it would have been if the Nazis hadn’t stopped their infantry and armor advances for a couple of weeks to rest and rebuild!
Yes, it was almost Hitchcockian in its expression of that sentiment without the graphic mayhem to drive it home.
The scene that stuck out for me was when all those men were lined up on that long pier, and one guy heard the German plane. At first faintly, and he looked up in fear, teeth grimacing in tension, searching for the sound, hoping he wasn’t actually hearing it, then a few more, then people who had been in conversation stopped and looked up, searching, faces also grimacing in fear and tension, then when everyone caught sight of them, the collective shudder and maneuvering in no space to maneuver to find cover.
I saw three great films in late 2017/early 2018:
Darkest Hour right before Christmas
Dunkirk rented from Amazon right after
And 13 Hours for free on Amazon Prime more recently.
13 Hours, I don’t think, did so well at the box office, but my kids and I all loved it. I thought it to be riveting. If one goes to any video of it on YT regarding the score, etc. everyone is praising the movie. Also the score is top notch, IMO.
Agree.
People who do worthwhile work know that their work is worthwhile and don’t need to give themselves trophies for it. An engineer who designs and builds a successful project might get a certificate in a plastic frame. Or maybe without the frame. The people who collect our garbage and clean our offices are nearly invisible. I value them much more highly than any actor.
Great list.
You forgot
12a. Bash men.
or
12b. Have the supermodel woman fall in love with the ugly and/or wimpy man.
12a should get the last Star Wars movie at least nominated. Who doesn’t love seeing a male hero character like Luke Skywalker turned into a broken, whimpering coward compared to the leading female character?
Interstellar. OK. Could have been better. His Batman stuff is his best. IMHO.
“Have you seen more than one of the movies nominated for best picture this year at the Oscars?”
Hey, if you’ve seen one pudding-eating homo cowboy movie, you’ve seen ‘em all ...
“Boy, think about what a gorefest in REAL life it would have been if the Nazis hadn’t stopped their infantry and armor advances for a couple of weeks to rest and rebuild!”
The first mistake the Germans made was attacking Poland which guaranteed England’s declaration of war.
The second mistake was stopping their advance to rest and repair their armor.
It gave England the chance to rescue the core of their European army. Those same men would land in Normandy in 1944 to guarantee a third front that the Germans couldn’t counter.
Yes, the scenes on the mole were pretty intense.
When the evacuation ship was hit and cast off so it wouldn’t sink and obstruct other ships was a heartbreaker. Imagine what the men still on the mole were thinking.
well, if you ever do, you could always watch this one:
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Wenner is a perv
Moody Blues shunned all these years
Nutz
I can honestly say I don’t give a d@mn about a single nominee for ANYTHING, ANY AWARD OF ANY KIND.
Put that together with insufferable gushing on the red carpet, and the certainty of sanctimonious political rants—there is NOTHING worth spending five seconds on at these Oscars.
I hope this year’s Oscars is a complete and total ratings disaster. That would be as much fun as watching Lindsey Vonn’s epic fail in the Alpine Combined Event LMAO.
Wrong! All movies would benefit from more dogfight scenes IMNSHO. I could watch a movie that was nothing but a Spitfire flying in an endless loop.
They could even make sequels: "Spitfire 2 - now viewed from the starboard side "
Get Out—The Stepford wives with a hate whitey theme.
I’m pretty content watching The Great British Baking show right now. No need for the oscars ;)
Oscar speech: https://imgur.com/JB8ECjV
#9 Get this script writing software called Final Draft and turn your ideas into a major hit!
https://www.finaldraft.com
Just insert your points and it will automatically write a tv movie.
For additional money it will be a major motion picture.
They offer over 100 Templates for Film, TV, and the Stage
Shape of Water is quirky, based on the producer’s childhood fantasy after watching the original Black Lagoon. Kind of fun, actually.
Darkest Hour is an acting tour de force, akin to “Lincoln” of a few years ago. Good period piece for the times it represents.
The Post was a bad story when it really happened, and worse as a movie than real life, which was bad enough.
No idea about the others.
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