Oscars 2015

Let a little populism into your life, Morbs.

It would be nice for them to recognise that making a Marvel blockbuster as witty and imaginative as GotG is harder than making a solid biopic of a troubled Brit scientist but that will never happen.

Unusually good year for big box-office movies. At least half of these got great reviews:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2014

yeah Re-Model, Stranger by the Lake was also eligible, so talk to the hand.

http://www.oscars.org/sites/default/files/2014_reminder_list.pdf

Someone should add up the total cost of, say, those top 20 movies. And then we can all barf together as one.

Carell, Cooper, Cumberbatch, Keaton, Redmayne

vs.

Fiennes, Gyllenhaal, Oyelowo, Spall

You could put literally anyone in the latter group -- Wahlberg in Transformers, McConaughey in Interstellar, Sorbo in God's Not Dead -- to bring it up to five and it would still be unquestionably the better group.

― Vulvacura (Eric H.), Thursday, January 15, 2015 4:35 PM

even punch up with Eisenberg in Night Moves

The lack of anything egregiously Blind Side-esque in the best picture noms is kinda heartening.

Sez you.

that Mr. Peabody & Sherman gross proves that brats and their parents will watch anything

Just for the sake of argument, here's my subjective list of the 2014 movies that made over $50M that based on critical/popular reception would not be incredibly outlandish to consider as best picture nominees:

4	The LEGO Movie	WB	$257,760,692	3,890	$69,050,279	3,775	2/7	9/4
15	Interstellar	Par.	$185,136,958	3,561	$47,510,360	3,561	11/5	-
17	Gone Girl	Fox	$167,210,252	3,284	$37,513,109	3,014	10/3	-
25	Into the Woods	BV	$107,130,087	2,833	$31,051,923	2,440	12/25	-
53	The Grand Budapest Hotel	FoxS	$59,100,318	1,467	$811,166	4	3/7	8/

In other words, the Academy basically did just about all they could this year frankly.

On which chart is The Judge

that Mr. Peabody & Sherman gross proves that brats and their parents will watch anything

You're half right. Unfortunately, they don't let you leave little kids alone at the movies; it's a bigger scam than 3D. Fortunately, my kids had no interest in seeing this, though that has no bearing on their brattiness.

if anything i thought parents wd drag the kids to that under the delusion it wd be like the early '60s toons.

http://www.oscars.org/about/join-academy

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2012/02/oscar-voters-meet-the-academys-youngest-members.html

if anything i thought parents wd drag the kids to that under the delusion it wd be like the early '60s toons.

That's the thing that I found really weird about the Peabody & Sherman movie -- not even the parents of today's kids grew up with Rocky & Bullwinkle. I mean, I saw it once in a while the Bozo Show, but it wasn't a cherished childhood memory.

You're gonna love the upcoming Kukla, Fran & Ollie CGI snarkfest.

If they made an "iPad: The Movie," it would top the box office for months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLnoLmCqT30

The Force Majeure director reaction video has to be a stunt, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYTWqLmnjt0

i have not seen the movie but as i gather it's kind of a black comedy this could be a gag on their part

then again, europeans (and most directors really) Take Their Shit Very Seriously

wait so how bad is that Sherman & Peabody movie they are showing it as a $1 night movie at my kid's elementary school on Friday night

fwiw I have never understood why those original R&B cartoons were considered good/funny

oh u r lucky i don't FP

kinda bewildered by the idea that the "parents of today's kids" didn't grow up w/ rocky and bullwinkle because it was always on when i was a kid on at least one channel, it's like the law&order of kids' shows. maybe that's not the case anymore but it sure was in the late 80s/early 90s.

Born 1975. Did not grow up watching R&B, though I was at least aware of it. But no, not even the barest tinge of nostalgia when that Peabody movie came out. At least no more than when this popped up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-pqvOPnNEk

And this was 20 years ago!

kinda bewildered by the idea that the "parents of today's kids" didn't grow up w/ rocky and bullwinkle because it was always on when i was a kid on at least one channel, it's like the law&order of kids' shows. maybe that's not the case anymore but it sure was in the late 80s/early 90s.

Morbs:

http://thesciencedog.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/strawman-full.jpg

that wasnt me

Born in 1969 and I watched R&B like a motherfucker when I was a kid. I have them on DVD and everything.

Rocky And Bullwinkle was on kids Tv a fair bit in the 80s in the UK iirc.

i want Shakey to clarify if he didnt think the Bullwinkle cartoons were funny, or just the Peabody ones, so we know how much of a tar base we need for the feathers.

The failure of the R&B movie (in ... 2000?) pretty much represented the tail end of nostalgia for the series. Imo. The shows are of course brilliant, but alas I can say first hand that they are too slow and, well, old for kids. Kids still dig the manac anarchy of the Marx Bros. and Muppet Show, though.

http://www.collegehumor.com/post/7008648/honest-titles-for-2015s-oscar-nominated-movies

literally never saw R&B in reruns growing up, had to actively seek them out to find out why other stuff referenced them so much. and my mom always spoke highly of it.

Another reason to be thankful for Channel 52 (Corona, CA) in the early 70s.

the animation is crappy and all the referential stuff falls flat without its context. JiC otm in that Marx Bros and Muppet Show (and I would add old Warner Bros and Fleischer cartoon shorts and tons of Disney shorts obviously) still appeal/don't seem as stuck in a particular era. When I got around to watching Laugh-In I didn't find much of that funny either (Nixon cameo aside). Comedy ages in weird ways...

the novelty of a cartoon referencing radio serials is kinda not novel or even meaningful anymore, for ex.

Saw lots of R&B and S&P growing up, always dug them. My main gripe with the reboots, apart from their very existence, is that the voices are way off.

Marx Bros and Muppet Show ... still appeal/don't seem as stuck in a particular era

yeah, like Groucho joking about Liberty magazine, the Saturday Evening Post and Strange Interlude

the animation is crappy

i won't even

peabody and sherman was always my least favorite r&b interstitial; even preferred AESOP & SON (aka "edward everett horton is busy today")

favorite r&b joke: when they tell "the magnate of a powerful shipping company" that they want to borrow a boat to go after "maybe dick", and the shipping magnate says "you want to go after MAYBE DICK?" and rocky's like uh-huh! and the shipping magnate says "YOU want to go after maybe DICK???" and bullwinkle says "for a powerful magnate, you don't pick things up very fast"

favorite r&b animation: look on boris' face after pausing in the midst of a moose-and-squirrel-could-not-possibly-find-us-here monologue to answer a knock on the door, revealing bullwinkle looking to borrow a match, and hurriedly slamming door: IS MOOSE!

(but yeah not exactly snow white)

obv it was over kids' heads a lot, like Pee-wee

like Groucho joking about Liberty magazine, the Saturday Evening Post and Strange Interlude

but see the difference is there is MORE to the Marx Bros than just this (btw I only recognize one of those you cite, I doubt my daughter knows any), with everything else I cited there's great formal artistry at work, underpinning the whole thing. R&B is just ugly to look at + outdated joeks.

my daughter also loves Pee-Wee fwiw

The references in the Marx Bros. are almost irrelevant, it is so manic and disruptive. I mean, the kind of variety show referenced by the Muppets is sort of an outdated model, too, but it's so funny and crazy that kids don't care. And yeah, they love Looney Toons.

And Morbs, kids today - "kids today!" - have been so spoiled in terms of sophisticated animation. When you're raised on/by the likes of Pixar, the visual bar has been set pretty high. Even Loony Toons is largely saved (in their eyes) by the pace and chaos.

Of course, kids today would gladly still sit through the contemporary equivalent of the shit I watched growing up. I think, going the other direction, if it's super dumb the animation does not need to be sharp. If it's super smart (which is to say, referential and witty), it has to be fast and zippy. Like, say, "Phineas and Ferb," which is an amazing balance of fast and funny and smart on both an adult and kid level.

this thread's gone nuts.

That's how exciting the Oscar noms were this year.

what JiC said although I would add that one of the reasons Looney Tunes still appeals to generations raised on Pixar et al is that those cgi studios have cribbed a *shitload* from Warner Bros cartoons in terms of framing, pacing, character design + animation - just the way stuff moves in general

xp