Posted on 01/23/2018 8:37:05 PM PST by dangus
The fact that there is a type of movie called, "Oscar bait" is pretty damning. It suggests that there is a certain kind of movie that, regardless of how well it's done, is simply the type of movie (or acting performance) that is more likely than others to get nominated for Academy Awards.
It's been often noted that over the past fourty years, there's been a complete disconnect between the sort of movies audiences like and the sort of movies the Hollywood pseudo-intelligentsia likes. Have audienes gotten dumber? Has Hollywood simply abandoned hope of box-office success with high-brow films. In part, the answer is yes, but for an ironic reason: those Europeans, whose taste in movies we were raised to think was so high-brow, now are such a massive part of box-office takings that movies are designed for them. And they love insipid, stupid, flashy movies with no trace of coherence, internal consistency, or reasonable motives on the part of characters. This means that there's not much quality among blockbusters for Hollywood to choose from.
But is it true that the only great quality in movies today comes from movies with small budgets starring great talent working for far below their normal asking prices? Or is Hollywood simply trying to reward the people who play to their tastes with awards, so that top talent is more likely to keep making "Oscar bait?"
(Keep in mind that Star Wars lost to Annie Hall, a very typical Woody Allen movie.)
Is Wonder Woman a better movie than Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri? Or is it merely forgettable entertainment?
I propose we look further down the list of nominations. Consider, instead, Best Costume Design. No seriously.
Every nominee is a period piece, historical fiction. The nominees represent two skills: observing historical footage to decide what costumes should look like to be accurate, and then shaping that look to make the actors and actresses look right.
On the other hand, consider Wonder Woman. The familiar Wonder Woman outfit is pure cheesecake. Literally dozens of professional attempts have tried to make her bad-ass looking and well, not silly, while keeping her what we expect Wonder Woman to be like. And every single one of them failed. Until it mattered. When we finally got a Wonder Woman movie, the costumes were perfect. She wore our bright, patriotic colors without looking garish; she was sexy as hell without looking the slightest bit trashy. She managed to show a fair amount of skin while looking ready for combat. And despite the actress having the thin build of a fashion model, she looked bad-ass as all hell.
Very sexy. But this Wonder Woman isn't sexy in simply looking like a male fantasy; she's sexy in that she looks like a very exceptional woman.
The entire movie rested on successfully reconciling competing images of Wonder Woman, and the movie was an enormous hit because it did so excellently.
And it wasn't just the one costume: Wonder Woman took us from ancient times, to World War One to the Cold War to the present time. The Amazons looked fantastic. By contrast, the creators of Justice League tried to sex their image up a lot, and ended up making them look just trashy and fetishy.
So here's a movie which relies on costume design to an extraordinary degree, and pulled it off beautifully.
Wonder woman costume design. No nominations
Beauty and the Beast costune design. NOMINATED.
A bunch of homos run the whole thing. No need to question why.
And in 1999 Saving Private Ryan lost to Shakespeare in Love... spit
Best movies are nearly always gay-themed or about persecuted blacks!
yep - Occam’s razor
The ignorance in that article was running high. It seems to be wanting more of the popular box office crap rather than “high brow”, and all because of an odd fixation with Wonder Woman.
The truth is, Hollywood makes 98% garbage, and a few gems slip through. Those gems are all generally failures at the box office.
Odd piece of writing.
I’d love for there to be different awards for Hallmark / Dove / UPTV style movies.
I believe last year’s winner was both.
Which box-office “gems” do you consider “gems?”
Incidentally, I chose “Best Costume Design” because I could check out all of the nominees with stills from the internet. I have no intention of watching all 8 s—tholes that got nominated, including helping fund the homosexual-pedophile “romance,” “Call Me By Your Name.”
I ain't looking at the costume.
No business being here on this thread, but IIRC, was not she pregnant when she filmed that?
The lower picture shows remarkable definition in the Tricep/Deltoid/Teres Major intersection.
Folks, forget “Hollywood”, these Democrat, Liberal, Progressives, left-wing, “Loonies” have done in themselves, in exactly the same way that the Democrat Party has died politically from within, by the movements of its own hands. Every “Hollywood” Award show & Ceremony this year has seen rapidly declining TV audiences, and so will this year’s Academy Awards, Farce.
I am actually beginning to believe that “The Hallmark Channel Films” dominates the two major cable TV film stations, along with “Ion films” who now dominates the film viewer market with its bevy of kind love stories, with kids, family, & “The American Way” and their cache of light, “mystery’ films.
Hallmark, etc, has found a massive market, a new growing industry, as “Hollywood” fades into forever oblivion in the same fashion as the Democrat Political Party, Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton have faded in to forever obscurity. Nothing is as dead as an idea whose time has passed long ago, and should really be forgotten, it ever was. Case closed.
How many costumes are decorated with ‘pizza’?
Chariots of Fire, Room With a View and Passage to India all won within a few years of each other. Very boring movies that normal folks never watched.
If you think “Chariots of Fire” went unwatched, it made in TODAY’S money over $100 million. Slow, but a good movie.
“Room with a View” was merely nominated; it, however, began the endless “period piece” series by Merchant-Ivory. (or is that Ivory-Merchant?)
“Passage to India” was also merely nominated. Perhaps you’re thinking of the much better movie, “Gandhi?”
But yes to your larger point: the disassociation between Hollywood and audiences began 40 years ago. That Room with a View was nominated was a pathetic joke.
I wonder how come they never mention that Simpsons creator James L Brooks won Academy Awards for Best Picture (an award for producers) and Best Director? Seriously... did Shirley McLain inspire Marge’s sisters just a little bit?
Ion? Love stories? Ever Ion show I’ve ever seen is about serial killers. Re-runs of Criminal Minds, etc. So much for “positive entertainment.”
Chariots of Fire boring-Really. I guess Cannonball Run is more your speed?
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