I said “More often, you’ll see awards given to movie that the general public don’t know, haven’t seen, and may not have even heard of.” I missed the edit window to fix the typo. “…given to movies…”
That also was meant for actors, directors and artistic awards. Nominating/awarding popular movies/people used to be far more common than it is now.
I have to agree, that is true in some cases, such as Crash over Brokeback Mountain.
Again, I’m not saying that every actor who won didn’t deserve an award at some point in their career, just that many times they don’t get them for the roles which really deserve it. Take Tomei for example. She got one for My Cousin Vinny. You know how I remember that? Because it’s been the absolute apex of her career so far (at least in the terms of awards) and so many jokes about it have been made here. Were it not for folks on the SDMB pointing out that she ain’t done squat, I’d totally forget about it and her. It’s for damn certain that the movie doesn’t get quoted much around here, and when it does, it’s not what she said in the film. (And hell, most of the films that won that year, hardly ever get mentioned at all here.) I’ll also point out that Cuba Gooding tends to get mentioned in the same breath as her when the subject comes up, and Cuba’s a good actor, but had crap for roles for the most part.
Sorry, but I have more important things to do with my time than go through who’s shown their undies on and/or off screen.
Riiiiiiiiiight. Funny how you name the box office smashes, but not the smaller films which picked up awards.
Riiiiiiiight.
Not in terms of exact words, no.
Bull. Some years are simply slim pickins in various categories. Oh sure, you might have some good performances by actors, however, the films they were in, were all crap. When has a foreign film gotten the Best Picture Oscar? A truly honest Academy Award wouldn’t seperate them. If a foreign film is really good, then it should take Best Picture, but that won’t happen. Just think of how many more people would see a movie if it got a “Best Picture” Award, rather than a “Best Foreign Film” one. The word “foreign” makes them think that it’s subtitled or dubbed when that may not be the case. If the Oscars are about nominating the “best” then they shouldn’t seperate out the foreign and domestic, it should all be one. It’s not however, because they know that if they put up a bunch of films no one’s ever seen and a bunch of actors no one’s ever heard of, nobody in the US will ever tune in.
And genre films tend to really get the shaft when it comes to acting awards, IMHO. Not that there’s a lot of good candidates in those types of films, but when there is, it’s spectacular. Hugh Jackman, IMHO, gave absolutely one of the finest film performances I’ve ever seen in The Prestige. Totally brilliant and far outshined Forrest Whitaker’s excellent performance in The Last King of Scotland, yet he didn’t get a nomination for that role, which, to my mind is like saying that * A Beautiful Mind* had better special effects than LOTR. (And let me point out that I utterly hated LOTR to the point that I’d smash Peter Jackson’s kneecaps for making those movies, if I could.)
Many cases. Look at Titanic which picked up a shitload of awards. How often do we talk about it here? Again, I’m not saying that the film didn’t deserve to pick up at least one award, but come on, to, what was it? Tie? Or come in the closest second of any other film to, IIRC, Gone With the Wind (or whichever film it was to be the only film to rack up more awards than any other by a wide margin before Titanic came along)? And yet the references to it here and in popular culture in general, roughly a decade after it opened are minimal at best? Nope. Sorry. If the awards were on artistic merit and it got that many, then it shouldn’t be so neglected here on the home of the really obscure reference.
> TWEET!! < :::Moderator blows whistle :::
OK, the personal insults stop NOW. Diogenes and Justin: We get it that you don’t lilke unions in general. But, first, this is NOT a thread about liking unions in general; such discussion belongs in Great Debates, not here. And, second, stereotyping any group of people – whether by race, religion, geography, or profession – is short-sighted and shallow. And it’s a violation of our rules, either the rules against “hate speech” or the rules against trolling, deliberate provocation. It will stop, and it will stop now.
Speaking as the father of someone who is trying to be a television writer but has had only mild success to date, and who really wants writing to be his “real” job but hasn’t broken in yet, I find your statements imply a shallowness and a misunderstanding of the industry that is either pathetic or laughable. The notion that “anyone can write a screenplay” is as idiotic as the notion that “anyone can paint abstract art” or “anyone can play the violin.” Since I don’t think either of you are stupid, you must be trolling. Stop.
::: Rises to give Dex a standing ovation :::
Hey, Kathy Griffin is not actually D-List celebrity, she just plays one on TV. Also, she’s quite savvy obviously, she’s turned the idea of being a wannabe celebrity into a career that has made her a household name.
I just realized that this is exactly the logic that Der Trihs uses to argue that people should encourage the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
I wonder if that means anything…?
::: Moderator growls in annoyance :::
Leaper: Didn’t I just say that the personal insults and attacks were to stop? It doesn’t just apply to one side, y’know: if they’ve got to stop, then so do you. “Stop it” means everyone.
God, I don’t know how this got so long, but what the hell. I couldn’t sleep.
That’s certainly true. The best example most people give is Al Pacino, who won for Scent of a Woman (which I haven’t seen so I can’t judge his performance) but should have won in 1975 for The Godfather Part II (Art Carney won for Harry and Tonto).
This year, some who haven’t seen There Will Be Blood might say that Daniel Day-Lewis, if he wins, might have won because he should have won for Gangs of New York. Of course, only people who haven’t seen There Will Be Blood would say such a thing. He’s so totally fucking brilliant in the role that not only is it BY FAR the best performance of the year, it’s not only the best performance of the decade, it’s one of the best performances by anybody, EVER. That’s what I think, anyway.
She was nominated for an Oscar in 2002 for In The Bedroom (losing to Jennifer Connelly, who should have been put in the Lead category). She’s been getting Oscar buzz this year for Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, and though not nominated, she’s been very good in several films between then and now.
The jokers are off base, as several of us point out everytime the subject comes up. Also, anyone who says she “ain’t done squat” doesn’t know what they’re talking about (because they probably only watch big succesful studio movies), so you’re listening to the wrong people.
It gets quoted once in a great while, though not like The Princess Bride or Monty Python films, and certainly not as often as it deserves to be quoted. It’s a very funny film, with lots of great quotes. And a couple of her lines are quoted (or should be quoted) more often than any others, though most of the quotes aren’t one liners. They’re funnier in context within the movie, while hearing her Brooklyn accent, and while watching her priceless facial expressions.
“Imagine you’re a deer. You’re prancing along. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little deer lips down to the cool, clear water - BAM. A fuckin’ bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ask ya, would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?”
and
“Well I hate to bring it up because I know you’ve got enough pressure on you already. But, we agreed to get married as soon as you won your first case. Meanwhile, TEN YEARS LATER, my niece, the daughter of my sister is getting married. My biological clock is [STOMP STOMP STOMP] TICKING LIKE THIS and the way this case is going, I ain’t never getting married!”
and this exchange:
Vinny: [Vinny hears a drip in the motel bathroom] Weren’t you the last one to use the bathroom?
Mona Lisa Vito: So?
Vinny: Well, did you use the faucet?
Lisa: Yeah.
Vinny: Then why didn’tcha turn it off?
Lisa: I DID turn it off!
Vinny: Well, if you turned it off, why am I listening to it?
Lisa: Did it ever occur to you it could be turned off AND drip at the same time?
Vinny: No. Because if you’d turned it off, it wouldn’t drip!
Lisa: Maybe it’s broken.
Vinny: Is that what you’re saying? It’s broken?
Lisa: Yeah. That’s it, it’s broken.
Vinny: You sure?
Lisa: I’m positive.
Vinny: Maybe you didn’t twist it hard enough.
Lisa: I twisted it just right.
Vinny: How could you be so sure?
Lisa: [sighs] If you will look in the manual, you will see that this particular model faucet requires a range of 10 to 16 foot-pounds of torque. I routinely twist the maximum allowable torquage.
Vinny: Well, how could you be sure you used 16 foot-pounds of torque?
Lisa: Because I used a Craftsman model 1019 Laboratory Edition Signature Series torque wrench. The kind used by Caltech high energy physicists. And NASA engineers.
Vinny: Well, in that case, how can you be sure THAT’s accurate?
Lisa: Because a split second before the torque wrench was applied to the faucet handle, it had been calibrated by top members of the state AND Federal Department of Weights and Measures… to be dead on balls accurate!
[She rips a page out of a magazine and hands it to him]
Lisa: Here’s the certificate of validation.
Vinny: Dead on balls accurate?
Lisa: It’s an industry term.
Vinny: [tosses paper away] I guess the fucking thing is broken.
Ok, maybe it’s only me who uses “dead on balls accurate” but everyone should. I love that movie! It’s very quotable and I wish it were quoted more often. She’s got so many great lines.
Most films hardly ever get mentioned at all here, whether they won awards or not.
That’s a crap comparison. Cuba, though you’re right, he IS a good actor and HAS appeared in some smaller, good movies, has seemed to take on more roles mainly for the money, while Marisa, who has appeared in some studio films, has mainly worked in indie films. I’ll take Untamed Heart, The Perez Family, Unhook The Stars, Welcome to Sarajevo, My Own Country, Slums of Beverly Hills, Happy Accidents, The Watcher, King of the Jungle, In the Bedroom, Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, Loverboy and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (to name a few of the quality movies she’s done since My Cousin Vinny) over Gooding’s Pearl Harbor, Snow Dogs, Boat Trip, Norbit and Daddy Day Camp (to name a few before I got sick).
Huh? 
I named films that were both popular with the general public AND which won awards, something that doesn’t happen very often. Smaller films tend to be nominated/win awards but don’t tend to be popular with the general public. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a small film that became very popular among the general public. It was nominated for an Oscar (Original Screenplay). Wait. Tell me again what I’m supposed to be giving examples of or defending?
“Foreign Films” have won Best Picture. Gandhi, for one. But you mean foreign-language films, and you’re right, none has won BP, though many have been nominated. I don’t know why, but I have some guesses. For one thing, AMPAS is an American institution. It was formed in Hollywood to honor Americans in the Hollywood film industry. That it later expanded to include foreign-langage films and actors is to its credit. Several foreign-language films have been nominated Best Picture and several foreign-language actors/actresses have been nominated. True, films never win and actors don’t win very often (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful in 1998 was the most recent) though Marion Cotillard is a frontrunner to win this year.
Foreign-language films and the people who worked on them tend to win most often in the artistic categories, like Pan’s Labyrinth, which won Oscars for Cinematography, Art Direction and Makeup last year.
But come on. Go tell the French César Awards (very well-respected) that they need to give English-language films their top prize every now and then. Go tell the Canadians that their Genie Awards are going to too many Canadian films and no American films (or foreign-language films). The Academy Awards are more international in general than any other country except the UK and its BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards, which seems to LOVE American films.
Foreign films HAVE won Best Picture. Foreign LANGUAGE Films (which is the proper category name) have been nominated for Best Picture. They get a boost from the publicity too, even if they don’t win.
It is the case. All films nominated in the Foreign Langage Film category HAVE to be in a language other than English.
Damn, do you even WATCH the Academy Awards? If you don’t, fine, but if you do, don’t you know that the general public have NOT heard of most of the films or many of the actors nominated? It doesn’t matter if they’re foreign or not. Prior to being nominated for Academy Awards, how many people other than cinema buffs had heard of Babel or Letters From Iwo Jima or Capote or Good Night and Good Luck or Crash or Million Dollar Baby or Finding Neverland or Sideways or American Beauty or The Insider or Lost In Translation or Gosford Park or In The Bedroom or The Pianist or Traffic or Shine or Fargo or Secrets and Lies or Chocolat, etc. etc. etc. Prior to Oscar noms, how many other than cinema buffs had heard of Amy Adams or Ryan Gosling or Terrence Howard or Catalina Sandino Moreno or Hilary Swank or Janet McTeer or Adrien Brody or Tom Wilkinson or Jarvier Bardem or Joan Allen or Laura Linney or Emily Watson or Frances McDormand…I could go on and on and on and on and make a REAL list if you’d like. And then there are big names people know in small movies that people never heard of until Oscar nominations, like Peter O’Toole in Venus, Kate Winslet in Little Children, Penélope Cruz in Volver, Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, George Clooney in Syriana, William Hurt in A History of Violence, among many others.
Academy Award nominations are NOT based on how many people will tune in. The nominating system is not set up to even make that possible.
That’s just so silly and wrong I don’t even know what to say. Maybe it would be true to someone whose standards are impossibly high and/or their tastes were extremely narrow and/or they don’t (or can’t) see very many films. You must belong in one or more of those categories.
That is true, though I’m sure I could find cases where nominations happened. Signorey Weaver for Aliens and Anthony Hopkins for Silence of the Lambs come to mind at the moment.
But there are only five nomination slots, and every year there are great people who don’t get one of them. Who would you have bumped off in favor of Hugh (of the movies you saw)?
Since LOTR won Visual Effects all 3 years it was nominated, that’s not a good example.
Titanic may not be talked about (probably because people who love it know that if it’s brought up, people who hate it will shout them down), but it’s still a great movie and a cultural phenomenon that deserved every single one of its awards. And that’s coming from someone whose favorite movie and preferred winner that year was L.A. Confidential. But how often is THAT movie talked about?
IMDB is your friend. Ben Hur won 11 Oscars with 12 nominations. Titanic was nominated for 14 Oscars, and won 11. Gone With The Wind was nominated for 13 Oscars, won 8 and was also give 2 special achievement awards. (btw, your favorite movie, The Return of the King, holds the record for sweeping with the most nominations, 11 wins from 11 nominations)
Well, I for one love Titanic. I saw it several times in the theater, and recently watched the DVD and found it to be just as exciting and romantic and interesting as the first time I saw it, but I never talk about it because it gets tiring to hear the whining about all the awards it won, how much money it made, and lame cracks about Leonardo DiCaprio.
Man, I couldn’t sleep, but now I’m going back to bed. Maybe I’ll dream of Leo.
Eep, sorry. I didn’t finish reading the thread when I posted that. 
This is just silly. You surely have enough time to name one of the multitudes of people that a) have won an Oscar and b) you consider a “panty-flashing starlet”.
I’m not much of a TV watcher, and I’m not much of a movie-goer. I don’t find a lot of current TV funny or interesting. In short, I’m not a big fan, and I’m probably not a very discerning fan.
Even so, when I think of classic episodes of TV series that I have seen, they had the same characters, they had the same directors, they essentially had the same everything as every other episode of the same show, except they had a different script.
It wouldn’t have been such magic without fine actors, fine directors, fine all-those-other-people-I-don’t-know-about. A good script certainlyl isn’t talent-proof or casting-proof. It’s just that a good script is always the one extra thing that makes a good show great. And those are the ones that I remember, that have become a part of me, and have become the standard for what I consider good.
I support the writer’s strike because of the residuals issue, which seem to me to be blatently unfair, and not because of what writers have added to my life. But maybe I care enough to have a position at all because of what they’ve given me.
See any classic TV episode thread for examples. Wow.
Thanks.
Are you kidding me? I’m the public. If you are under the impression that your industry runs on something other than money, or that the money comes from some place other than people like me, you are delusional.
Thanks for cementing my distaste of your cause, though. In the meantime, enjoy your time on the sidewalk! I tried to word that to sound less snarky but, gosh, I just couldn’t figure out how.
laugh What are you going to do about it, refuse to support any entertainment that’s written? Let us know how THAT goes.
It’s not “my” cause. I don’t work in the entertainment business or know anyone who does or have any connection other than being a consumer (of movies only, since our TV hasn’t even been turned on for months, and only then just a handful of times in the last several years, usually for awards shows and Olympics). I just support the writers because they’ve been responsible for giving me much joy in my moviegoing all my life, and I think they deserve to be paid a fair compensation for the work they do. I guess you and others don’t. Whatever.
I deserved that. I should have left out that disclaimer.
It’s your cause in this thread, very clearly. You don’t have to be so damn sanctimonious to anyone who dares to disagree with you, though; that appears to be thrown in for free.
That’s right, because anyone who disagrees with you, even minimally, must not think people deserve “to be paid fair compensation.” :rolleyes: Next post, be sure to ask me when I stopped beating my dog.
Yes you did.
Oh, since you don’t watch current TV or movies anyway, what was your point? Your “I’m the public!” declaration had an air of faux menace to it, like ‘oooh, writers be scared now! The public is turning on you.’ But you don’t support them any which way, so what was that even all about and why should they care, which is the question I asked in the first place.
The public can get as mad as they want, and grumble all they want, but none of that matters to the writers and it won’t affect them at all. All the grumbling public wants is to be entertained (your Oscar party, for instance), and if they’re not entertained, they can drift off and go do other things, such as, indeed, read books, or go to movies in theaters or watch DVDs. Either way, public ire or public apathy, it doesn’t affect the writers. It would, I assume and hope, affect the production companies. That’s why the writers should hold firm to get what they want.
(of course I realize that writers and others are being affected financially because of the strike, but I mean that they’re not affected by anyone’s attitude toward them or the strike)
I’m sorry, I assumed that when people are mad at the writers, instead of the production companies that refuse the writers what they’re asking for, they’re not interested in the writers getting paid what they’re owed. Sorry if I interpreted your post wrong.
First of all, I think that if the WGA boycotts the Oscars, they’ll lose most of the support they get from the people. It’d be a bad move.
…and when Elenfair said 50% were unemployed most of the time (and I imagine that unemployed means not writing), it just means there are too many people and that’s why the studios get away with murder. When there are so many applicants than jobs, those hiring get the upper hand.
But, I don’t get it. WHY would it be a bad move? The public’s support being lost won’t matter. I’m sure the writers appreciate the public’s support, and maybe it would hurt some writers’ feelings if people turned on them, but in the real world it’s not going to matter one way or the other what the public thinks of the writers. How will losing the public’s support hurt the writers in any meaningful way? The public has two options: grumbling about what big meanies the writers are for “causing” their favorite shows to go away, and/or start to boycott anything writers have anything to do with. That’s laughable, because that’s just about everything, and that’ll hurt the production companies first and foremost, the very people who are actually causing the problem.
I know the strike itself is hurting a lot of people, writers and their families and others in the industry and their families and people who feed off the industry and their families, but the writers have to hang in there. It’s picketing high-profile shows like the Golden Globes and the Oscars that will make a difference. They can’t provide waivers, they just can’t.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, if what I’ve heard is correct, NBC was holding out, saying they had the rights to televise the Golden Globes and the event couldn’t be held unless it was televised. That put the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes people) in a bad spot. Televising a bare red carpet and an empty ballroom with the awards being handed out by unknown hired flunkies (other than, I assume, Rumer Willis, “Miss Golden Globe” this year) to no one wouldn’t look very good, and it’d hurt the Golden Globes more than NBC.
The WGA (Writers Guild of America) said they wouldn’t picket if the Golden Globes weren’t televised (because they’re really picketing NBC, not the HFPA, just like they would be picketing ABC, not the Academy Awards themselves). If no picket, then no problem with the SAG actors showing up. The HFPA, though disappointed, liked that idea better than cancelling the whole deal and said ok. However, NBC said NO to the HFPA, if you’re going to have a Golden Globes, it HAS to be televised. A vicious circle.
But, the latest gossip (very unconfirmed) is that the Golden Globes will go on, untelevised, as a banquet. If that’s true, if NBC backed down on televising the event no matter what, then the Globes will go on as planned, as a private party. No television cameras. The SAG actors and all the other Guild members would show up. The awards would be handed out. We just won’t get to see them.
Since the Globes are a minor prelude to the Oscars, what happens here will hint at what will happen to the Oscars. There’s been talk of delaying the Oscars, but that doesn’t seem reasonable. Delay for how long? No one has a crystal ball to see how long the strike will last (and also, the actors will be going out on strike in a few months too). I don’t know what kind of deal ABC has with AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscar people) and if it’s a “televise or cancel” deal too.
We’ll see.
This has got to be a terrible situation for the American public. In a pinch, you can simply ignore other unions. But this is television! It’s an essential service. Those backstabbing writers-- how can they be so greedy and unpatriotic?
Go union! By all means, stick it to the Man. This is one job that can’t simply be outsourced to the Chinese. “Enjoyment our fortunate year of sparkling Academy Award! Many happy fun, Oscar to appreciate honorable Coen device!”
I’d watch that.
Yeah, I’m going to have to agree that public support doesn’t really mean a lot in this situation. I’m hearing a lot of people say things like, “Oh no, if the Oscars are canceled, the writers will lose all of their public support!”
Uh… so now they won’t be re-elected next November? I mean, so what? They’re not striking to get public support, they’re striking to be adequately compensated for their work.