Oscar Gold

[trinityvixen]

I posted the other day on Tor.com about the Oscars hating on genre films. This year, I've seen a surprising number of the films nominated already, mostly due to the fact that a) there are more films nominated and b) the extra films nominated were almost assuredly nominated solely as a ploy to get normal people to watch the damn Oscars. So out of the list of ten, you can guess which ones I've seen. Go ahead, guess!

Nah, I'm just fucking with you. I'll tell you. I've seen Up, Inglourious Basterds, District 9, and Avatar. Of the ones I've seen, I'd say District 9 was the best of the bunch. Up managed to make me cry in the first five minutes and yet I felt kind of blah about it afterward. (It's definitely not the Pixar movie I'd have said deserved a nomination for Best Picture.) Avatar is only the prettiest picture. If it won, I'd pretty much give up on life. Because wtf?

Inglourious Basterds is definitely enjoyable, but I had sort of the same problem with it as I did with Up: while I was watching it, I was transported, but the second you leave, it falls flat. This is Tarantino's masterwork, far as I'm concerned. I like Kill Bill and Grindhouse better, but this is the best movie he's done. But it's still fairly hollow at parts. I explained my issue to feiran when we saw it as being that although Every. Single. Conversation. was dead fascinating while you were involved in it, hardly any of them contributed a thing to the overall story. In fact, at least two conversations set up characters/events that led absolutely nowhere. And because they were written by Tarantino, who likes to hear himself talk through his characters, they go on forever. Were they fun to listen to? Sure. Useful? Er...

(Side note: Christoph Waltz WILL win for that movie. He was the person who went through the most conversations with any sense of purpose, and it was the purpose of a very cheerful man-eating shark. He was amazing. The rest of the movie is entertaining, nothing more.)

District 9 would be the best of the bunch, if only for having the balls to make the lead patently unlikeable and yet still sympathetic. Wikus van der Merwe was a loser and a bigot and a jerk. He reacted reflexively to his situation and not always heroically. And yet? He was able to recognize at times when things were so very wrong that even he, a nobody, had to do something. Yet even then, it came from a position of self-preservation. And that's okay with me. I like the idea of a character still being really flawed, even ultimately selfish, and still being heroic. That's a hard line to walk. Compare the protagonist-joins-the-natives narrative of this movie to Avatar's and you see just how novel parts of this movie were. (Yes, there was some heavy-handed allegory. Get over it.)

Of the films I haven't seen, I think neither Precious nor The Blind Side have any chance of winning best picture. The pretentious full name of Precious alone is enough to make me roll my eyes. I lump these two movies together because both are about elevating poor black people. Being that I'm a liberal with a more complex understanding about race relations than ever Hollywood will have, you can guess how I feel about the basic plot of The Blind Side. Precious is more difficult. The black community response has been sharply divided, between people who see the film and think it reflects reality and that that is good and those who think it reflects a part of reality that then upholds stereotypes about poor black people and that's bad. I'm worried that that second group is right. If The Blind Side won't win because it's a fairy tale (that happens to be based on a true story), Precious won't win because it's the other side of the fairy tale--the Brothers Grimm version.

A Serious Man had zero name recognition for me, which goes to show how well it has been promoted. I suppose the Coen Brothers had Miramax boosting it behind the scenes. Too dark horse and they already got an Oscar for one of their shitty movies recently. Pass.

This leaves the heavies: Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker, and An Education. Realistically, the contest is between the first two. An Education was lauded more for performance than anything else, and it might win for that. Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker, though, have had critics singing their praises start to finish. My money's on The Hurt Locker. It was the best-reviewed movie and it's just won so much already.

I will update my predictions as I get to see more movies. But I'm pretty sure I know what the score is on Best Picture. The acting categories for the women are, as ever, up for grabs. (Okay, maybe that's not true. Sandra Bullock has a lot of momentum going, I just refuse to acknowledge that.) For the men, Jeff Bridges and Christoph Waltz will win.

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Avatar is only the prettiest picture. If it won, I'd pretty much give up on life. Because wtf?

Please, please, please, do not hang your life on the Academy's good taste.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, none of us would live long if we did that, mm? I'd already be dead, seeing as the last time Cameron was up for something, he won and L.A. Confidential (an actually GOOD movie) lost.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

I love all these stories that are once again coming out about how Cameron is so hard to work with/be married to. Especially since his ex-wife (one of four! I had no idea he'd been married 5 times; I thought maybe two or three - and this current marriage appears to be the longest - the rest were all like 2 years each) is up against him for Director and Picture. He was SO zen at the Golden Globes it was almost scary - he mentioned his ex, and said she would have richly deserved the award that he had just won - which, while he was likely trying to maintain a conciliatory "it's an honor to be nominated" tone made him seem just underhanded in his own notion of self-worth; and then, ahahaha, he said something in Na'avi thanking his cast and crew. Sorry Cameron, no matter how hard you try, you just can't hide the fact that you think you're a genius...and everyone else should bow down to you...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It doesn't surprise me that he's a douche. He's a creative sort--he is!--and they're usually difficult in some way. I don't even have a problem with him being a douche. That's part of being in Hollywood and rich anyway. If he makes good stuff, then I'm okay with it.

Where you run into trouble is when he makes profitable but strictly technical things that really only advance technology that you'll hope will be used in better movies later and everyone tells him he's an artist. He's an artist all right--a con artist, as this video shows:



He wants to be George Lucas. Who is not an artist either. I have no problem with them being amazing engineers. But they need to check themselves when they get carried away with their own genius...

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know about Lucas not being an artist. I haven't seen American Graffiti, but it doesn't have any special effects in it. And THX-1138 is extremely artsy. Maybe he's not an artist now, but to say he never was I think may be underestimating him.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think of Lucas primarily as an engineer and an entrepreneur. He might have made something of artistic merit once, but it's not where his talents lie. Note, I didn't say he was never an artist, and even in condemning Cameron I did say he was creative. But I stand by what I said: they're less artists than they are technicians. Some stage craft and technical stuff is very creative, but it doesn't necessarily translate.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I don't think Lucas really wants to be technical the way Cameron does. Cameron clearly strives to break ground, but it feels like Lucas just sees it as a shortcut to his vision, and doesn't know how to imbue the technology with life. Looking at Lucas' career, it's hard to believe he's all that interested in directing; what he appears to enjoy is coming up with ideas, and having other people create them.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think you're misreading Lucas. The more I read about Star Wars, the more I'm convinced that the originals were only any good because other people stepped in (or lack of funds did) and stopped him from trying to do what he wanted. The best things about that franchise that he did were special effects. That's really why Star Wars was a breakout phenomena. It was as groundbreaking in its time as Avatar is now. But only because of the effects. As a movie, Star Wars is as cribbed from fairy tales and stories of knights (samurai, really) errant as Avatar is from (take your pick) Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, Ferngully. What made both stand out were the effects.

Do they have substantial world building? Oh yeah. But the technology tells a better story, for both directors. Whatever George Lucas' additions to his own works, he's always been better at pushing the effects (and making money) than he has at art. I give him only as much credit as an artist as I do Cameron in that both had control over their stories and wrote them and created them. The fact that Lucas created something that took off in the hearts and minds of people is hardly his doing, however. The most memorable bits and the best Star Wars movie were almost entirely not his doing. In that sense, Cameron is more of an artist because he did actually write stuff for Aliens, Terminator, and, yes, even Avatar that was good to a larger extent. Lucas works when people tell he's wrong and change things. (Or other people write/direct for him.) Cameron can do fine on his own, Avatar not withstanding.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think this information supports what I was getting at: that Lucas would rather be an idea man and a producer than an actual hands-on filmmaker. I feel like, for him, a film like The Empire Strikes Back, where he came up with the basic concepts and ideas, handed it off to other people to write and direct, and shepherded it towards release, is what he really enjoys. By the time he did the prequels, I guess I think that he felt maybe it was too much to hang on someone else's shoulders, or he got a little short sighted, but I never felt like a) he had that much enthusiasm to actually be in the chair on those films, or that b) he was really pushing the technology as much as he had been waiting for. Much of what Cameron did with Avatar comes from the guy being a major techno-nerd, and he's literally off commissioning people to build these new cameras and rigs that will let him create his vision. To me, Lucas always seemed more passive: "We've arrived at a time when the tool I need exists, so I can finally do it." I don't remember Lucas insisting ILM's advances were going to be good for other movies, or that he'd even been pushing his people to see "are we there yet?", just that they had arrived.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I do think he was savvy to hang onto Star Wars merch rights. Clearly, he is a good businessman, since that's probably one of the most profitable decisions anyone made in the last millennium. But I never felt that Lucas thought he was a pioneer the way Cameron clearly does.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Lucas did think that. He made as many hyperbolic claims about what the prequels would do for animation as Cameron has about his motion-capture for Avatar. Whatever he thinks of himself, he does think he contributed hugely as an engineer, and in all fairness, he did.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

You must be right. Clearly, you've read something I haven't.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Being an "idea man" is different from being an artist. It's the difference between crediting the model and the painter for the finished work. Whatever the model brought to the Leonard da Vinci, he's still the one who painted the Mona Lisa, you know?

The difference, then, is that Cameron had ideas that he took forward. When he realized them, he was mostly successful. Lucas, less so, showing that his artistry is definitely lacking, even if he's not entirely devoid of creativity. Does that make sense?

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

True, but as an idea man, crafting the universe and creating the story, if not the details, that would be a job that's purely creative and entirely untechnical, no? I mean, you've illustrated that Lucas has made technology claims I've missed, but this is at least my previous perception of what Lucas was doing.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think reading it now, I think I am viewing the word "creative" the same way you're using "artist", when you would separate the two.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Misunderstandings have arisen on less :)

Suffice to say, I understand creativity being in both men, but I draw the line at artistry at a different boundary. I'm willing to push Cameron closer to the artist line because I feel he has executed more than Lucas. Regardless, I hardly feel either stands among his peers--writers, directors, what have you--as an artist. Just that on the sliding scale, Cameron may be more of one than Lucas.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Also, I find it a rather bizarre claim to make that the guy who founded ILM, by far and away as successful as any of his other ventures is the "passive" guy when it comes to tech. I mean, was he designing stuff? No, but he had the passion for furthering technology that he created the foremost digital effects company.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Again, you've read something I haven't, but my previous perception was that he formed the company purely out of necessity. Just like Jackson founded Weta because he just needed to have a whole effects house focused on the production of The Frighteners (and was panicking as the production came to a close, because so much money had been invested -- a motivator to get rolling on Lord of the Rings), I guess I felt like ILM was created because he needed a whole company working on Star Wars.