Oscars 2018

For a few seconds this morning I forgot what won Best Picture.
― Josh in Chicago

Usually takes longer than a day, but I do believe that's where this one's headed: Best Pictures that people barely remember and never talk about. The Out of Africa/Shakespeare in Love/King's Speech group of Best Pictures. (American Beauty at least has the advantage of being hated by most people.) In fairness, I haven't seen it. I never will--zero appeal.

I haven't seen it either (want to, though, because I often like del Toro), but whether people like it or not, it is still a much weirder Oscar winner than something like Out of Africa or The King's Speech--films that are only notable for being Best Picture winners or, more generally, the kinds of things that usually win Best Picture. While Get Out winning might have made a bigger statement, it is still represents an embrace of the kind of genre cinema that Oscar usually ignores.

Ivory was quite touching in his speech. Lots made about Plummer's age etc, but I imagine this is probably the last time Ivory will be nominated or even work on a film; lovely way to end his career if so.

Trying to step back here...I didn't care for Get Out, but it'll be remembered; the comparison that I saw the other day to Dr. Strangelove made sense to me. Lady Bird will still be seen and footnoted years from now. You're right that The Shape of Water doesn't really fit the Masterpiece Theatre stamp of those other three I mentioned, and del Toro has made other critically acclaimed films, but it just strikes me as something that'll quickly be forgotten. I can't really defend that statement, and I'm talking about something I haven't seen--no offense intended to anyone who liked the film. Just a feeling.

The atomization of pop culture has made Oscar winners irrelevant for a while. It still results in box office if the movie's still out -- I think The King's Speech made most of its (considerable) American profits in the weeks before and after its win -- but for millions of people why go to the theater when Netflix exists?

Cool xp

It was an utterly magical film fyi

To clemenza's point, I will say this: I am currently working as a Teaching Assistant for a class on Fantasy Fiction. At the beginning of today's class, the prof talked about del Toro's speech w/r/t the recognition of Fantasy as Serious Art, with her point essentially being "this is what I'm always saying!" (things like Fantasy Fiction are good for getting butts in seats, but maybe not taken as seriously within English departments). When we were speaking after class, I asked her if she'd seen The Shape of Water, to which she simply replied "No."

I'm out of my element there, too. Is The Shape of Water viewed as sci-fi, fantasy, or some kind of hybrid? I know a pure sci-fi film has never won Best Picture, but one of the Lord of the Rings films won, so there's been at least one previous fantasy winner.

I'm whispering in my ear, "Just see the film or shut up." So I'll shut up.

it's really not sci fi at all

that n+1 article that Morbius posted is so good, so funny and smart.

Back in the 1990s, I predicted—maybe it was after I saw Happiness—that sound design would soon get so extreme there would be a movie in which we heard not just the sound of salt leaving a salt shaker, but also the sound of it hitting the food... Since I have a touch of Roderick Usher in me, I am sympathetic to Woodcock’s bristling. As sound design has become more intrusive in movies, my relationship with it has deteriorated. While in real life I do not notice audible eating and drinking, in the movies every moment of intimate conversation over a drink has become a symphony of slurp I can’t ignore. People attracted to working in sound design no doubt have sensitive ears. But directors have got to dial this down. Either that or ban breakfast cereal from their movies. In Logan, the noise of Dafne Keen eating corn flakes sounded like a recording of John Goodman on a gravel road in work boots. I think she ate one of her teeth. The literalism of this kind of sound design, in which every action depicted on screen must have an accompanying sound, even if you would never notice that sound in real life, is as distracting as an unasked for pot of tea shuffled into the room when you are working.

A. S. Hamrah is my new favourite journalist.

i’d call it magical realism if anything. i liked it but it was quite inoffensive and didn’t do anything mind blowing.

It's an adventure movie.

it was lovely! and i love doug jones.

it's really not sci fi at all

― Clay, Monday, March 5, 2018 7:16 PM

otm

I suppose I've been working on the premise that it is a lot like Pan's Labyrinth--somewhere on the border between Fantasy and Magic Realism.

xpost -- ...there really are fish people?

(xpost) I can't let that one pass by: The Shape of Water has a Dougie Jones too? This is spinning out of control...

DOUGIE: "of control."

The film ends by illustrating the reason W. C. Fields gave for not drinking water: fish fuck in it.

xpost -- ...there really are fish people?

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 6 March 2018 02:08 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is every fiction fantasy?

This movie isn't about the existence of origin of fishboy. Its not interested in the wider questions of his a fishboy changes the world. It's not particularly even about that which makes him fantastical.

It's about a woman falling in love with him and breaking him out of captivity.

Right I'm turning off this fucking predictive text shits unbearable

(xpost) Lynch should have called him Dougie Two Times, like in Goodfellas. Maybe even Dougie Three Times.

Yeah that was what I found refreshing tbh - it drops you into this world where people are capturing aquamen and experimenting on them and no one's being particularly secretive about it (the fucking cleaners get to gawp at all the goings on ffs). It just is, no one seems suprised by it.

Deux-guy

Exactly Trayce

If you were fighting the universe made very clear in the first ten minutes then you weren't going to enjoy it and it was a huge plus that GDT didn't give two shits for you if you weren't all-in

Which I have to confess is something I do sometimes fight! I'm terrible with suspension of disbelief.

It's on the director imo. if they can't bring you with them then fuckem, shit movie

it's a fairytale, not sci-fi.

Curiously, despite loving The Shape of Water (thought not nearly as much as Phantom Thread or Call Me By Your Name) I'm not sure I disagree with cryptosicko's prediction. But I think it's a very widespread thing among acclaimed films. Often, no one wants to go on about them much at least another 20 years.

clemenza otm despite not having seen the movie

I loved The Shape of Water but it will not be remembered in 5 years. Get Out will go down as the movie of the decade.

at least in America. Nothing comes close

(xxpost)

Just to be sure people are being properly cited: 'twas clemenza who predicts the film will eventually disappear into the weird limbo that awaits many of the less memorable BP winners. I don't necessarily disagree: while the winner 20 years ago was Titanic (perhaps the last "classic" BP winner, in that it was a massive and beloved hit that also happened to fit the Oscar template as perfectly as Ben Hur or The Sound of Music), the two winners on either side of that one were The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love, and when was the last time you watched either of those? Whether The Shape of Water fits that template, I'm not sure, but I think what is being argued is that it resembles none of the other categories that BP winners fall into: the critical hit that forces its way to the top of the heap (No Country For Old Men, Moonlight) and the "LOL @ the Academy" likes of Crash or American Beauty.

Oops for mixing you two up, sorry!

Basically, I think winning best picture just kind of does a good job of killing the critical interest in a film for a good while, at least when it's critically acclaimed in the first place. No Country for Old Men has maybe been the least affected by this of recent winners because critics (and amateur critics like me) see it in the line of auteuristic work, but even that I'd say would be more talked about on ILX if it hadn't won. Del Toro is a sort of auteur, but too big budget these days to escape it. So yes, wake me up to talking about The Shape of Water again in 2037 or so.

add to the anodyne feel good BP winners - The King's Speech, Argo, The Artist

Ha. I think The Artist remains one of the best two or three best winners of my lifetime but your lifetime may vary.

Agree that the artist was super

Get Out will go down as the movie of the decade.

― flappy bird, Tuesday, 6 March 2018 05:59 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You fuckin clown super troopers 2 is imminent time makes fools of us all

you know what 'people' are going to remember? the Kardashians

why should millions of people go to a movie theater when millions of people won't shut up?

Pitchfork thinks Sufjan should have played for longer.

Seriously, though, they make a solid case for the Academy's notorious conservatism when it comes to music, at least in the Original Score category (and the failure to recognize the art of "music supervision"), but when it comes to the songs, I cannot help but cry "rockism" here: there is no acknowledgement of the continued popularity of show tunes (ask any theatre geek you know what the highlight of Sunday's broadcast was, and they'll tell you it was the Greatest Showman performance), not to mention that they have conveniently forgot about "Lose Yourself" and "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." Also, while I can't say I was a fan of any of this year's nominated songs, it is hard to argue that it wasn't a diverse batch: an indie-folk love song, a trad(ish) Mexican folk ballad, a Broadway-style showstopper, *two* gospel numbers.

Tbh, 10 years later I'm not sure how much Pan's has even stuck around, and that's the much better film. Held up well, though, better than I imagine Shape will. Shape was fine but not sure I need to watch it again. More interested in watching Crimson Peak again, or even Pacific Rim (though I don't know how well that will do on TV).

Per genre: Shape is pretty much Gothic horror with cute/comedic elements (not unlike Hellboy!) but the contemporary/social commentary draws it out of its genre box.

Hmm, Pan's Labyrinth probably counts as hybrid Gothic horror with social commentary, too (a la its clear forebear Spirit of the Beehive). There are fantastical elements to both, but they're not really fantasy, like Lord of the Rings is.

the Greatest Showman performance demonstrated why "musical theatre" as it now exists should be taken behind the barn and put down

not to mention a diversity anthem from a PT Barnum biomusical, the raw chutzpah

The year the Barnum & Bailey Circus ended, no less.

lowest TV ratings ever, much to Yam's delight

you know what 'people' are going to remember? the Kardashians

why should millions of people go to a movie theater when millions of people won't shut up?

It's Spielberg character being booked on a train levels of brilliant u mean

Booed!

Good approach.

Michael Shannon watching the film he starred in, "Shape of Water", win best picture while sitting in the Old Town Ale House. No sound on the TV, just sub-titles. Of course the juke box was rocking, and the beer flowing. Where else would you want to spend Oscar night? pic.twitter.com/WAC6uc6guZ

— Bruce Elliott (@GeriatricGenius) March 6, 2018

then he cut open his thumb and stitched it back together