Posted on 03/27/2022 11:00:25 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Everyone has a theory about the decline of the Academy Awards, the sinking ratings that have led to endless Oscar reinventions. The show is too long; no, the show is too desperate to pander to short attention spans. The movies are too woke; no, the academy voters aren’t diverse enough. Hollywood makes too many superhero movies; no, the academy doesn’t nominate enough superhero movies. (A querulous voice from the back row: Why can’t they just bring back Billy Crystal?)
My favored theory is that the Oscars are declining because the movies they were made to showcase have been slowly disappearing. The ideal Oscar nominee is a high-middlebrow movie, aspiring to real artistry and sometimes achieving it, that’s made to be watched on the big screen, with famous stars, vivid cinematography and a memorable score. It’s neither a difficult film for the art-house crowd nor a comic-book blockbuster but a film for the largest possible audience of serious adults — the kind of movie that was commonplace in the not-so-distant days when Oscar races regularly threw up conflicts in which every moviegoer had a stake: “Titanic” against “L.A. Confidential,” “Saving Private Ryan” against “Shakespeare in Love,” “Braveheart” against “Sense and Sensibility” against “Apollo 13.”
That analysis explains why this year’s Academy Awards — reworked yet again, with various technical awards taped in advance and a trio of hosts added — have a particular sense of an ending about them. There are 10 best picture nominees, and many of them look like the kind of Oscar movies that the show so desperately needs. “West Side Story”: Steven Spielberg directing an update of a classic musical! “King Richard”: a stirring sports movie lifted by a bravura Will Smith performance! “Dune”: an epic adaptation of a science-fiction classic! “Don’t Look Up”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Gene Wilder film. I’ll check it out.
The premise of The Artist, was done definitively in Singin' In The Rain, arguably the best musical ever made.
I remember when I watched The Artist I thought 'that's it?'. Disappointing.
The Railway Man (2013) deals with the Japanese forced labor as well.
We hung quite a few Japanese as war criminals. But with the start of the Korean War .... that pretty much stopped.
For some reason I can no longer watch Dustin Hoffman.
I have all my favorite tv shows and movies on dvd. I’ll be fine :)
Thanks for the list. Some I've seen. The Death of Stalin was fantastic.
That will truly destroy major studio film-making.
Drive My Car... very good.
Belfast... good but I thought it would be ... bigger. I was a little disappointed. Great cast and great soundtrack though.
Nightmare Alley... a real bummer. Well done and well acted but what a comment on human nature.
A dramedy really. Quite good. I heard that it was meant to skewer global warming deniers but actually skewers celebrity culture and the news media more so than anyone else. I found it very entertaining....just have to get past the obligatory conservative stereotypes...
Exactly Go Woke, Go Broke.
The graduate is trash. Yes it is.
It’s morphing into syphilisation..
'Being the Ricardos' probably should have been a nominee, but Javier Bardem is up for best Actor and he was fantastic.
Saw the previews of Top Gun-Maverick last night. I think that's what you're looking for. Might be good but boy did Tom Cruise look old.
We had gone to see The Lost City at our neighborhood theater. A stupid movie IMO but 90% liked it on Rotten Tomatoes.
We’re not watching the end of movies, were watching the end of actors and Hollywood. So much is already CG greenscreen, locations can all be virtual. As computing improves, the characters too will be computer generated. All that’s left will be dialogue, and that’s in the works to be computer generated as well. I bet the future of film will be in the recussitation of long-dead actors in brand new roles.
Same here. That said one would have to know some of the history of the USSR to get a lot of it.
Thumbs way up for Dear Comrades!
They make too many movies about comic book characters I stopped reading about when I was 12. Why would an adult want to watch a superhero movie?
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