Oscar Apathy, Part 2

Well, I survived Oscar weekend, which was filled with baking for a party I co-hosted with friends.  The show itself is pretty much a blur, but I consider it to be an above average undertaking, though I think Neil Patrick Harris got swallowed by awesome stage design.  There were some very high notes, and I missed most of the jokes that died.  The big headlines however are that the ratings were at a six year low.  Why is that?

After quite a few years of hiatus, I re-entered and won the Oscar pool.  This is mostly due to the fact that I am still an avid reader of awards websites, not because I have seen all the movies.  My friends who tried to compete with me came at the Oscar ballot at an extreme disadvantage, because while American Sniper is an outright blockbuster, the rest of the nominees from Best Picture on down (save Animated Feature and the industry awards) are all middle of the road money makers, even though The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson's top grossing movie. Wes Anderson is no Steven Spielberg.

I really do not believe that the glut of awards shows is the problem, either, because I do not believe most people even care outside of the Golden Globes, which is really just watched to see if some drunken celebrity will do something stupid.  Unfortunately, I think the Academy is more likely to assume "awards fatigue" is the problem instead of truly looking inward at themselves.  Here are some of the issues I see:

- Art vs. Entertainment

I cannot begrudge the Academy for wanting to honor those movies that strive to be art, but unfortunately, it is rare that those movies end up being popular with the general population.  Sure, there are quite a few Best Picture winners that have scored over $100 million (it would be interesting to see how much nominations and wins effected that earning), but there are only three since 1990 who have achieved more than $200 million - 2003 LOTR: The Return of the King, 1994 Forrest Gump, and of course, 1997 Titanic.  Of course, the great argument is whether these blockbusters were actually the "Best" movies of the year, but it is a pretty subjective question anyway.  However, if you're going to look at just ratings of the telecasts, the highest ratings of all time was the year Titanic won, and the highest ratings since 2000 was the year of The Return of the King.  So you see, the ratings have nothing to do with who is hosting or who is singing what, it has everything to do with the general populace buying into the horse race with enough passion to want to tune in to see if their favorite won.

Of course, I would never want to see a Best Picture race comprised of the top ten grossing films of the year, because, obviously, popularity does not connote quality, but if year in and year out we are going to bemoan the falling ratings of the telecast, then the Oscars really need to figure out a way to celebrate movies that reach the cultural zeitgeist as well as those that are the pinnacle of the craft.

Source: Box Office Mojo & WikiPedia

- The Show Itself

I have already established the connection between popular nominees and ratings.  It certainly was not Neil Patrick Harris' fault that this year's show tanked.  However, the show itself is a bloated mess and a joke in and of itself.  Everyone already knows that it will run long, but they keep adding in more and more in the hopes of keeping people engaged.  I really think the whole things needs to be scrapped and start from scratch, with nothing sacred even the current category structure.  Of course, this will never happen because of the structure of the Academy itself, and it would be a slippery slope to say that you'll just include Writing, Supporting Actor/Actress, Actor/Actress, Director, and Picture. Best Original Song at least brings something to the proceedings, though the rules are so arcane it makes for odd choices.  However, despite the artistry, no one really cares about Documentaries, Shorts, Foreign Language Film, and the majority of the tech categories (except maybe for special effects).

With that being said, their could be MORE categories, too.  Each of the shows that have popped up seem to have at least one innovative category.  The Golden Globes split Drama & Comedy (usually not well), the Screen Actor's Guild honors Best Ensemble, etc.  There should be something for stunt people, too.

- Eliminate the Host

I decided to break this one out on it's own from the one above.  No offense to everyone who has come before, but being the Oscar host has to be the single most thankless job in entertainment.  Jesus Christ herself could get up there, and someone would still complain.  The reality of the matter is that outside of the opening, there really is no need for one.  It's better to just get out of the way and start the show.

I am sure I could armchair quarterback this some more, and I know I do not fully comprehend the pressure the producers are under to make the show the same every year.  However, something needs to change, and I have not even gone into the nuts and bolts of this whitest Oscars in many years.  I just hope they have a real conversation about it.  Things need to change.

Oscar Apathy

When I first started messing around with websites back in the 1994 (ughhhh), my first Geocities site was a movie related page called Binky's Movie Hut.  My nickname in college, was inexplicably, Binky, and it all just rolled together with my love of movies.  I had a pretty full list of movie reviews and the like, which I wish I had backed up somewhere.  I mean, I wasn't going to threaten Roger Ebert, but I was pretty happy with my writing at that time.  

As the '90s progressed and my skills became better, I morphed my site into Awards Avenue, and it became much more focused on the awards show circuit.  I covered music, television, theater, and of course, the Road to the Oscars, which became quite a very busy time between November-March.  I was really in on the ground floor of what became a cottage industry of prognosticators orbiting around movie awards.  Theater also got me a lot of hits, because there really were not a lot of people covering it, but the big focus was the Oscars.  I got a lot of hits for a fan site, and if I had not given it up because it was beginning to interfere with my real job, I really think something good might have come out of it.  My crowning achievement was my super inclusive calendar of Oscar precursors (critic and guild awards) being quotes by leading Oscar site OscarWatch, which is now AwardsDaily.com due to the Academy being stingy with their copywrites.  Years later, I am friends on Facebook with Awards Daily diva, Sasha Stone, and I think I comment enough on her stuff that she knows who I am.  It is the little things, but I digress.

During this time, I also held my annual Oscar Party, which started out as something at my apartment and grew bigger into my friend, Melissa's, house.  It then outgrew itself into a fundraiser for a local organization called Indiana Still Cares, which was my first tip toe into the Indianapolis gay community.  I got on the radar of Gary Brackett, who was also President of Indy Pride at that point, and I think you can see where this is going.  I owe a lot to my love of the Oscars, which is why my apathy for the show is a little disconcerting.

The Oscars have not changed with the times, and even though they seem to add more and more diversity every year, the decisions made for winners still seems to be stuck in the fuddy duddy white voters.  The fact that there is not one person of color nominated in any of the major categories or a woman director is just abysmal, and that is not to say that every nominee is not deserving.  It is just unfortunate that the wealth cannot be spread.

There is a lot more wrong with the system than I care to get into here, but the fact that I have only seen two of the nominated Best Pictures is pretty indicative that the Oscars are not in line with my tastes.  I am really hoping that piece of jingoist propaganda, American Sniper, does not win Best Picture on Sunday, because that might just be the final nail for me.

Movie Maddness: Mockingjay

I have to admit that I had a lot of trepidation about Mockingjay, and it wasn't really because they decided to split it into two movies.  My issues really stemmed from my dissatisfaction with the book itself, especially after loving Catching Fire, which is still my favorite book of The Hunger Games trilogy.  While I wasn't really upset with the book being different from the pattern created in the two books (emotional buildup until we hit the arena), I just felt that the book was rushing to get us to the end, and even though the acts of the finale were a shock, what felt effortless in the first two books, seemed hurried and labored in the third.

****It should go without saying that there are spoilers in the rest of this post.  I will attempt to keep things clean of what will transpire in Mockingjay, Part 2, but you've been warned.****

To be completely honest, I began this blog last Monday, November 24th, but due to work and the holiday, I haven't been able to finish it.  So, I am picking this up a week later after marinating on it some more, and I would like to go see it again, which is the best recommendation I can give.  I've also bandied about re-reading the book just to see how close things jibe to the adaptation, and if I do, I will probably to an follow up.  However, I am still pleased with the movie, and I believe the changes truly enhanced the narrative.

While the first two novels were enhanced by Katniss as the first person narrator, Mockingjay really
suffers from it.  There is so much going on in the background while Katniss is dealing with the horrors of the Games, that moving to a true third person narrative for the film really corrects some of the problems I had with it.  Plus, you're able to see District 13 through your own eyes and not just through the PTSD addled view of Katniss.  For instance, President Alma Coin is a much more fully realized character in the movie, which will make the ending of the Part 2 all the more intense.  You are also given a lot more time to learn about Gale and Prim, who have been nothing more than ciphers.  All of this is very important to the end of Part 2, and I could not happier with how they are portrayed.

I am a bit infuriated with the number of people that I have heard say, "Nothing Happened!"  The fact that the creative team took their time to develop characters in Part 1 should be commended. Everyone needed to take a beat and witness the spreading fire from the second film.  The scenes from the Districts 5 and 7 showing the rebellion were absolutely necessary to show, and the raid on the Capitol, which wasn't much in the book because Katniss was still in District 13, was a great set piece to bring the movie to a close.  Not to mention the hospital scene and "The Hanging Tree," were just powerful ways to show Katniss coming to terms with her role in this whole thing.

If I have one complaint, it is that I think the movie should have ended with a true cliffhanger, at least for people who haven't read the book.   In interviews, I've heard this referred to as the Breaking Bad ending, because it was so bleak and people might have been angry.  **Heavy Spoilers**  I think once Peeta attacks Katniss, and she starts to black out.  The movie should have faded to black and rolled the credits.  It just seemed a bit lame to go through the explanation, and I also absolutely don't think Alma Coin would have monologued the plan for the second movie in a broadcast that could have been intercepted by anyone!

This was a very fine addition to The Hunger Games universe, and I would like to close with two other stray observations.  Bringing Effie Trinket into the movie was just brilliant, because she gives quite a bit of comic relief.  Also, since the rest of Effie's team really wasn't that developed in the previous movies as they were in the books, it just made sense to not introduce unnecessary characters.  Secondly, Natalie Dormer as Cressida is a major standout to me, and if she doesn't get cast as a Marvel Superhero soon (Captain Marvel, for instance), there is no justice in the world!

Movie Madness: Interstellar

I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan, even though I do not always agree with some of the moves he makes in his movies (hello, ego -- like my opinion matters), but as someone who enjoys movies from strong directors, I really cannot think of many others in this current generation that can be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick or Wells.  Of course, trying to compare Intersteller with 2001 is really the easy way out, and I don't even plan on mentioning that movie again in this post.

Anyway, I have been looking forward to Interstellar since it was announced.  Only Nolan would have the audacity to take a scientific text by physicist Kip Thorne and build a story around it.  Steven Spielberg attempted to do it with Nolan's brother, Jonathan, but it never came to fruition. I'm not sure if there has been any stories written about what remained from the original Spielberg adaptation, but I would be interested in that information.

As is typical with Nolan, very little was known about the plot of the movie.  Of course, we knew the casting, that something catastrophic was happening to Earth, and that it takes us to space and through wormholes, but we didn't really know what the crux of the story was or where it was going to take us.

Being a bit of a space junky, I was excited to see Interstellar, and I really loved the first two hours of this movie. The depiction of space travel was amazing, and when they are around Saturn and navigating into the wormhole to close proximity of Gargantua, the black hole (pictured), my mouth was either agape or in a stupid grin the whole time.  I totally bought into the reasoning for leaving earth, and while I wasn't nearly as emotional as some, I definitely understood the sense of abandonment that Murph (Mackenzie Foy) felt as well as to why Coop (Matthew McConaughey) needed to leave her.  I even was okay with the "ghost" concept, though I certainly didn't see where they were going with it.

I would give this movie a recommendation on the space exploration alone.  It is intense, and if I may be gauche, it is pretty edge of your seat.  I do need to point out that there were times I felt nauseous in this movie.  I get motion sickness pretty easily, but after getting through Gravity without any issue, I though I would be fine.  It is not a spoiler to say that they way they get gravity on their ship is because it spins, and there are times when you see the spinning out the window in the background.

Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the movie that is sticking with me for all the wrong reasons, and it almost derails the whole thing for me.

*****Beyond This Point; Thar Be Spoilers*****

As I said, I was buying pretty much everything Nolan was selling.  Of course, I knew that things were going too well for our crew.  If by "going well" you have one death (Doyle - Wes Bently) on Miller's water planet and Romilly (David Gyasi) aging 23 years, while a few hours pass for those on the planet.  I was honestly okay if they just continued the exploration aspect, even if they ended up stranded.  However, Nolan went down a path that really just annoyed me to the point that I was completely taken out of the story, and what should have been the emotional impact of the ending, really ended up doing nothing for me. When Matt Damon is introduced as Dr. Mann, I just felt the story take a very easy turn into melodramatics. Yes, it is understandable that a man left alone for 10 years on a icy planet would totally crack under the strain of the loneliness.  Unfortunately, from the crying jag upon his awakening from suspended animation to the dismissive way he explained the dismantlement of his robot, it just became very obvious that space madness was going to be the next dramatic turn, and it seemed like Nolan took nearly every opportunity to telegraph it to the audience.  In fact, I am pretty sure Helen Keller would have figured out that Mann was up to no good.  Let's talk about his name, too.  I get the fact that Nolan wanted us to understand that our own worst enemy is man itself, but to name the character Mann was like hitting us over the head with a brick.  It didn't help that the whole sequence just seemed like it was an entirely different movie.

There could have been a number of ways that Nolan could have moved the story along and still arrived at the intended ending.  I am pretty sure they could have omitted the entire Damon section. The team could have landed on the ice planet with the team discovering his death and false claims about the planet with it being too late for them to use Plan B.  Romilly could still have died in an explosion at the base, and the Endurance module could have been damaged in orbit by any number of interstellar anomalies. The stories on Earth could have happened without alteration, with Murph (Jessica Chastain) finding out the truth on Professor Brand's (Michael Caine) deathbed and transmitted it to an unknowing Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway).  Of course, you wouldn't have Mann there to corroborate the depth of the subterfuge, but I don't think that really changes much in the story.

It just seems so tone deaf. This is a mistake I do not expect from someone as tightly wound as Nolan. I fully expected there to be some sort of complication, but this one made me angry and took me out of the story completely.  While some may have problems with the ending, having loved movies such as Cloud Atlas and Contact, I am more than willing to accept some mysticism with my science fiction, and I could probably write an entire blog about how the denouement on the space station could easily be a post-death experience for Cooper. However, I cannot seem to get past this misstep. The greatest recommendation I can make is that I would purchase a movie for my home collection, and at this point, I cannot say that I can do that for Interstellar.  I am motivated to watch it again, but what I was hoping was going to be a glorious three hours, turned into something incredibly mixed.