Do you consider Lincoln to be "Award Bait"?

Cafe Society
1

I saw Lincoln and I liked it. I thoroughly liked it, every aspect, start to finish.
I have not, however, been raving about it. I felt no great sense of excitement or fulfillment as I walked out of the theater. Why? Because the film was nothing more than exactly what I expected it to be when I walked into the theater.

Spielberg has at times throughout his career shown great artistic inspiration, but he has always displayed great craftsmanship- so I knew it would be a very well crafted movie. I’d have expected a great screenplay even before hearing of Tony Kushner’s involvement simply because with Spielberg as producer and with a huge budget and with a subject such as our most popular President ever . . . of course they’re going to have a great writer deliver a great screenplay. Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln? Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Fucking Lincoln? I nominated him for a Best Actor Oscar the moment I heard about the casting.

So, really, given the elements involved, this was a no risk venture.
A Lincoln movie in the hands of a different creative team? Yes, of course it would be an extremely ambitious project that could easily fail. In the hands of this particular creative team, however, it was a no risk venture.

So, a Could-Make-a-Great-Film-in-their-Sleep creative team chooses as a subject the most popular President in U.S. History. This is a movie that people will decide is their favorite movie of the year before they have even viewed it.
So, does that make it “Award Bait”?

They reason I’d be hesitant to call it Award Bait is that I actually liked it and thought it was an excellent film. Generally, Award Bait is crafted in a way to awe the wider movie-going public into feeling they’ve just watched some amazing artistic achievment (even if they’ll have forgotten about it in a year’s time), but I, my cynical self, am usually quick to gag and heave at the shameless emotional button-pushing and the paint-by-numbers craftsmanship.

In short “bienville hates it” is usually an significant defining quality of “Award Bait”.

With Lincoln, however, “bienville hates it” is pretty much the only defining quality of Award Bait that is missing.

I am inclined then to believe that Lincoln is Award Bait that just happens to be very good.

2

Haven’t seen it yet but it does conjure a sort of ‘safe bet’/‘low risk’ image. I would probably liked to see them pull off something like Washington with the same creative team. A little more risk involved and if pulled off would be more impressive IMHO.

3

you said it yourself, a Lincoln movie in the hands of a different team could’ve easily failed, having said that…

this is the very type of movie the Academy just loves.

4

What is the quintessential example of “award bait”?

5

Any examples offered will surely raise disagreement and thus would probably derail this Thread. Gimme a minute and I’ll start a new Thread.

6

Really? I’d say if there’s not even one that can be widely agreed upon, the term is totally meaningless. I thought that the Curious Case of Benjamin Button totaly sucked, but it won 3 oscars. Does that make it award bait, or just a movie a bunch of other people ostensibly liked that I didn’t?

7

Could be. Started another Thread. We’ll see if there’s any consensus.

8

I have not seen Lincoln yet, but to be fair, this is Oscar season - when all of the “better” films are released (meaning high profile actors and scripts that appeal to more adults than kids).

There are many that will go on and win the big prizes, but there are many films that get lost in the shuffle - low box office, mixed reviews - that are thought to be Oscar bait, but get beaten by the competition in short order.

Sometimes film producers really think they have a big time winner on their hands, only to find it getting shut out for even getting a nomination, let alone winning anything.

Then there is that vague, hard-to-define “Oscar buzz”. These are often films that have some special connection to Oscar voters - perhaps a good/great performance by a beloved actor/director who has a large body of work but has never won anything? Or perhaps a good/great film that fits into the politically correct concept of the year?

In the past, people complained that the average age of Oscar voters was about 108 years old, but they have added lots of younger voters over the years and this is no longer as much of a complaint as it used to be. Still - Oscar voters are indeed more conservative and tend to stick with “safe” bets - with a few exceptions here and there.

9

I thought it a very good movie. “Award Bait” sure, but it is no Forrest Gump, which was award bait that sucked in every possible way.

10

I voted award bait, but I haven’t seen it so maybe it’s a good movie also. I was surprised to hear Sally Field was in it. But then again, people like her. They really, really like her.

11

I’m not sure how to answer the poll. My main complaint with the film is that it should never have been called “Lincoln” in the first place. It should have been called “The 13th Amendment,” and the

cheesy bit at the end with the kid in the theater and the gratuitous shot of a bloody pillow

plus a few other extraneous bits could have been cut out entirely. If they did that, they’d be left with a very awesome 105 minute movie about a very specific subject, but it would not be a biography. It would also, IMO, not be award bait.

However, they added that crap in and then called the movie “Lincoln.” Why? That makes me a bit suspicious.

(I don’t know if that really needed to be in a spoiler box, but, meh).

12

I think Forrest Gump was a great movie. Having said that, it was not entirely classic Award Bait.

  1. It was released as a summer box office draw, not a late-season Oscar-draw.

  2. Though sort of a period peice, it really wasn’t.

  3. It wasn’t about the Holocaust.

  4. It was heavily comedic.

13

I voted for the second option because it was the best fit for my reaction, which is that it’s Award Bait, and a perfectly fine film as opposed to excellent. And maybe nomination worthy as opposed to award worthy, although when I say something is nomination worthy it includes the possibility of an award as well. I guess the distinction I’m making there is that IMHO, the slam dunk qualities of Lincoln are more related to its being Bait than to the actual quality of the film as well.

The only aspect that I feel is excellent is DDL’s performance. I even went into it with high expectations, and his performance surpassed them. I imagine that every other actor who appeared in a potential award-winning role this year heard about DDL being cast as Lincoln in this film and said “oh for fuck’s sake.”

I agree with the points steronz raised. I could have done without the schlock. If they thought “The 13th Amendment” was too boring of a title, I was thinking they could have gone with “Thirteen.” People like movies that have numbers as titles. :wink:

14

I agree. In fact, I suspect that the people who made it thought they were making a Tom Hanks comedy, like Big. Remember, at the time Hanks was primarily thought of as a comedic actor; his Oscar for *Philadelphia *happened when *Gump *was already in the can.

15

I saw Lincoln yesterday and am still in awe at the mastery of Daniel Day Lewis. His portrayal of Lincoln showed a sly, masterful politician who wasn’t too good to bribe for favorable votes as well as show an awareness of social justice beyond the current morality of the times he lived in. DDL showed a vulnerable human who had problems but still fought for what he believed in and in what direction the U.S. needed to be shoved towards.

16

I haven’t seen it, but it’s obviously award bait. It’s a biography that came out at award bait time. And it’s being advertized as award bait.

17

I think this is a good point. If the trailer or print advertisements heavily feature “Starring Academy Award Winners…” and “Directed by Academy Award Winner…” then it’s clearly angling for awards itself.

18

This is a movie the wife and I fought over. She wants to see it - I’d rather have needles stuck in my eyes. I don’t like the actor, don’t like the director, couldn’t care less about the subject…total yawn from me. So we will find a theater that has something for me playing as well.

Something with car crashes and boobs.

19

“Award Bait” is an obnoxious term for any film that deals with serious matters in a serious way, created by people who wouldn’t know a good movie if it came up and bit them in the ass.

20

***Lincoln ***is very likely to win some major Oscars (Daniel Day-Lewis is almost a lock for Best Actor, Spielberg stands a very good chance of winning another Best Director, and the movie could well win Best Picture)… but it certainly wasn’t made for the express purpose of winning Oscars.

I strongly suspect that, when Spielberg made ***The Color Purple, ***he WAS trying to win an Oscar. I felt the same way about Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. In both cases, directors who’d been bypassed before were consciously and deliberately making the KINDS of movies that they THOUGHT would appeal to Oscar voters, and that they hoped would get them the awards they’d been denied previously.