Wouldn’t 1960 count as “decades past” at least compared to your data, which only goes back 25 years?
Being bored one weekend, I analyzed the box office grosses of 184 Best Picture nominees from 1980-2013 and found that, especially when limited to five nominees, that the best picture was almost exclusively the province of the #1 or #2 grossing movies within the B Picture category itself. Made Oscar pools effectively a 50/50 guess.
Hell, from 1934-2013, the Best Picture winner was the biggest grossing movie of the year sixteen times, or, another way, for a 79-year period, 20% of the Best Pictures were the top grossing movie of the year.
Now my 1980-onward numbers are based on BO tally on the week of the award ceremony (thank you, pre-fubared Box Office Mojo!), but the 1934-onward stat does include the box office tallies from after the film became B Picture, so that stat is skewed because the film won B Picture.
Anyway, a summary if anyone cares. And this correlation really doesn’t exist anymore with the expansion to 10 films and the introduction of streaming.
(BPN = Best Picture Nominee, BPW=Best Picture Winner)
Finally got around to watching Knives Out last night. We enjoyed it a lot.
I got the information about the average length of movies from another website, which had a chart for average lengths of movies in each year. I give another version of that chart from another website below. I suspect that only two things were responsible for the increase in the average length up to 1960 and the failure to increase after that. One was that making movies was difficult and expensive during the early years, so it was hard to make longer movies. The second was the influence of television. Until the 1950s, it was common to go to a movie theater and pay a single price for all the movies shown in that theater for the day. They would show a double bill of two feature-length films and some shorts like cartoons and news features and you could stay all day and see things several times in some cases. With the introduction of television, people quit doing that (because it was possible to spend all day watching television) and movie theaters quit offering that option. Since about 1960, the only option you have going to a movie theater is seeing a single movie and paying just for that movie. That option has continued in the same way since about 1960 and the movie production companies have no reason to make longer or shorter films on average, although occasionally they are sufficiently convinced of the popularity of some proposed film to allow it to be longer:
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4jqh95/average_movie_length_since_1931/
I know. I loved the book (The Club Dumas), but was so disappointed in the movie.
I watched the documentary about Alexander McQueen called McQueen. I only knew about him superficially, so this filled in a lot of holes in my knowledge. Beautiful to look at - mainly because there was a lot of film of his runway shows. The only problem for me was there was so much footage of Isabella Blow’s widower. What an annoying twit.
ETA: I have no interest in the conversation about best pictures and their lengths, but I thought it was interesting to see Best Movie abbreviated as “B movie,” since B movie or B picture has had a very different connotation over the years.
That’s a pretty good way of describing it, although I’d also ascribe to it some of the positive aspects of those filmmakers, especially Allen. Incidentally, during the closing credits superimposed over the dancing shoppers in the grocery store, I’m certain that guy holding the pineapple is Woody Allen – a nice touch!
I went into White Noise knowing nothing about it nor about the book it was based on, so its complex twists and turns, allusions, and metaphors were pretty baffling for a while. Reading about it later, I was astounded at the budget – an estimated $80 million, compared to the $40 million for the more extravagantly lavish Glass Onion. Overall, it was ultimately an enjoyable movie for me, but not a great one. Certainly not a universal crowd-pleaser, and I doubt they’re going to break even on that budget – but possibly never expected to.
Vox opines about it:
We watched Enchanted (2007) and Disenchanted (2022) on adjacent days.
The first holds up very well. Probably the best Disney movie this century. It’s a perfect mix of poking fun at the classic Disney formula, yet still following it. It has some animation, but mostly live action. There’s song and dance, and comedy and drama. Amy Adams’ acting is amazing. Idina Menzel is under-utilized. The animation does look dated now. Really worth watching; it needs to be adapted to a Broadway show.
The latter is good, but doesn’t meet the same standards as the original. That’s a high bar, though. The acting is superb, with the same cast returning. And Idina Menzel gets to use her talents better. The storyline is fun. The animation quality is more modern. Recommended for anyone who wants a second dose of the first, but if you only want to watch one, definitely see the first.
I thought the animation was intentionally “old-fashioned” looking. But I agree with your review…I enjoyed Enchanted a lot more than I expected to.
I should’ve specified it was the animation of the monster in the climatic battle. The traditional cell animation was fine.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I certainly didn’t expect Don Johnson to be as good as he was. And the little alt-right fascist kid was sufficiently creepy and repellent.
What I appreciated were the subtle depictions of the family’s class- and racism, like not knowing where Marta is from, or Richard handing his dessert plate to Marta, as if she were a maid, which was a bit of improvisation from Don Johnson. As was Jaeden Martell’s line, “You had sex with my grandpa, you dirty anchor baby!”
I thought that was funny as well, “Equador” was the one that really made me chuckle for some reason.
Could’ve made more of him perhaps but with an ensemble cast it might always be tricky to make the most of everyone. I suspect it isn’t until the audience gets a good look at it that the film-makers know where those opportunities were.
I do like Michael Shannon though, I’d happily watch him read the phone book.
I saw an interesting bit of trivia on IMDB - on the first take, Martell’s “anchor baby” line got swallowed up in the general yelling of the scene. Shannon heard it, though, and told Rian Johnson to make sure he picked it up in the next take.
White Noise
Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig and Don Cheadle’s performances were quite good and engaging. The production design and pacing of the film were exemplary. The Elvis/Hitler conflation scene was particularly riveting and thought-provoking. The stylized supermarket scenes were spot-on. The story-line was confusing and ambiguous, but in a good way (to me, at least).
I don’t know if my take-away and interpretation of the film coincides with that of writer/director Noah Baumbach’s, but it made sense to me and I quite liked the film. I may watch it again to make sure.
Slumberland - I am an idiot. The film is called “Slumberland”, the main character is called “Nemo”, and yet it took the walking bed scene for me to twig that this was a “Little Nemo in Slumberland” adaptation. I probably even knew that before and forgot. 
As family fare goes, this was a lot of fun - Marlow Barkley was fine but it’s Jason Momoa’s OTT antics and Chris O’Dowd’s lifeless doorknob salesman and the perpetually weird settings (the “real life” ones reminded me of the “The Mysterious Benedict Society” vibe) that made it watchable, and I rather enjoyed it even though the big plot twist wasn’t that hard to spot.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was Michael Shannon’s appearance on At Home with Amy Sedaris. It was the last episode of the first season IIRC…the one where she was hosting the book club. I peed my pants laughing.
He is good, did you see him in “Boardwalk Empire”? consistently stealing every scene he was in (along with Stephen Graham).
For some reason he always puts me in mind of Nick Offerman, not sure why. Unconventional and Quirky perhaps? Dry and slightly sinister? It could just be me.
Sorry. I had to walk the dog.
Yeah, I only watched the first season and one or two episodes of the next. I love all the actors – Shannon, Steven Buscemi, Kelly McDonald, Michael K. Williams – but the series didn’t grab me.
It was a heck of a line-up. Shame it didn’t grab you but you gave it a fair go and there is so much good stuff out there that life is too short to slog through a show just for the sake of it.
Shannon also played the dude in the newlywed couple in Groundhog Day to whom Phil gave the WrestleMania tickets at the end. He looked not nearly as menacing when he was young.
I’ll have to watch it again and look for that. Thanks!