If you put vision, creativity, inventiveness, attention to detail, scope, and hard work into creating a turd sandwich, what you end up with is a spectacular turd sandwich. But no one is going to eat it.
Technical skill is only a means to an end. The end is a great film. AFAIC, the best director is the one that did the most to create a great film.
RE: the “horror” montage: How can you call it a horror montage when there’s no clips of Vincent Fucking Price?
…which is what he *was *referring to. They showed a photograph of the winners of the scientific & technical awards.
Did you see the movie?
What was up with that guy who won for the short documentary film (Music for Prudence), who got Kanye-d? I’ve heard rumors that that woman was fired from the project but the filmmakers kept her name on the project and that’s why she was at the Oscars…why was she walking up there, though?
Exactly. Why would studios and producers pay for sets, costuming, makeup, location shooting, etc. when they can all be created digitally? And what do you suppose will be the effect when actors are no longer required to work for months when, no longer required on set to cool their heels while the production process goes on and acting for only an hour or so a day, they can complete their work in a matter of days…or perhaps only one day in the case of smaller roles? Their paydays will be drastically reduced and their working conditions will become less glamorous by several orders of magnitude.
The equipment and techniques that Cameron has created stand to change completely the experience of acting and/or the production of movies. As technology gets better and environments become indistinguishable from reality, all that will be needed to produce a movie from a physical point of view will be a script, a director, camera operators, digital production facilities and actors working all day long in front of a green screen. Acting will become a much less glamorous and lucrative experience, and like you say, support people like set designers and builders and costume and makeup people will likely find their jobs in jeopardy as well.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree in this regard. I thought The Hurt Locker, for example, was merely a good film with nothing about it that stood out as being extraordinary, and when you consider that virtually everything about Avatar, from the sets and machinery and flora and fauna and what the characters said and did and where and how they moved, all came directly from the mind of James Cameron there is no question in my mind that what he accomplished in terms of directorial performance is far greater than that of any of the other nominees.
I thought Streep hit it right on the nose with her portrayal of Julia Child. Child is so familiar to many of us that any flaw in the portrayal would be instantly obvious, but after a few minutes into the movie I stopped thinking about Streep and just saw Julia Child come to life. At the same time she added a depth to the character that went beyond what we saw on television. The scenes with her sister were amazing and the sadness in her eyes when she realized she would never have kids was poignant.
Jeffrey Wells started it by telling Academy members to teach her a lesson by not nominating her. What a dick. There was even an article in the New York Times about the brouhaha of her not campaigning. She had her reasons though. When asked “But isn’t she worried that “they” will think she doesn’t want the Oscar?”
She’s appeared at just about every awards show she’s been nominated for as far as I know, and she’s won most of them. She just hasn’t gone on the stump, like most nominees do. She was in essence giving a very polite finger to Jeffrey Wells and his idiot ilk. I loved it, and wish I could have seen the look on Wells’ face.
It was part of the speech the director, or Producer, one of the two, gave to the nominees during the Nominee Luncheon. He specifically said, if there’s more than one winner, decide in advance who will be the speaker. He also said that if you’re the one speaking for the multiple winners, don’t just thank your own wife and family, thank everyone’s. I noticed a few people screwed that up.
You might know this, but just in case, that was a parody of Paranormal Activity. I laughed. My husband, who hadn’t seen PA, didn’t get it.
All in all, I’m happy with the evening. I don’t think Up In The Air got anything, but neither did several movies.
If someone sees a link for that introduction to the Animated Features, please please post it. My husband and I were practically on the floor when the dog licked the camera.
That’s the most beautiful Cameron Diaz has ever looked.
Enough people have eaten it to make it the largest grossing film of all time. People the world over are leaving that movie stunned, deeply affected emotionally and sometimes at a loss for words to explain how they’re feeling. What more can a person expect from a movie than that?
And besides, Cameron knew perfectly well what he was doing with the more simplistic story line. He was out to deliver a message - several actually - and he knew that a more complex story line would interfere with the emotional involvement that people would need in order to derive from the movie the things that he wanted them to take away from it. He wanted the movie to give them a different perspective on humanity - to look at human beings from the perspective of not being one yourself. And he wanted Americans, people whose country has never been invaded, to experience as closely as is possible what it’s like to experience the destruction and violence and despair that is part and parcel of being invaded by a foreign force. And of course he wanted to impart an environmental message and to try to get people thinking in terms of the need to protect our own environment here on Earth.
All of this would have been short-circuited by a more complex story line that kept people from becoming so involved with the characters and the landscape and the results of the actions that were taking place, and Cameron knew that. So while to you it may appear that he’s nothing more than a hack, churning out a technological marvel with a story intended to appeal to adolescents, the reality is that Avatar is a work of genious, operating on levels that the average bear is unaware of. People who dismiss Avatar as simplistic are like people who think children could paint like Picasso. The reality is that they can’t and that Picasso knew exactly what he was doing in order to create the emotional response that he wanted people to experience from viewing his paintings, and Cameron was doing the same thing with Avatar.
Oh, before I forget, what was the deal with the woman who interrupted that one winner’s speech? Best Documentary Short I think? He started this heartfelt speech and then this random woman grabs the mike and starts ranting about how “men never let women speak.” The hell?
Her name is Elinor Burkett and according to this cite she was the movie’s producer. Guess she thought that gave her the right to act like the classless asshole that she clearly is and commandeer the microphone in the middle of William’s touching, heartfelt speech. What an ass.
Wow I totally didn’t see that **Freudian Slit **had just asked the exact same question as me! Thanks for the answer on that.
Sure. I started to give you an ETA shout-out but the edit window was closing and I figured you’d see it anyway.
What he knew was that a more complex story line would interfere with his profits. He did not set out to create a great work of art, he set out to make a great work of mass entertainment.
I don’t think Avatar was a turd sandwich. I enjoyed Avatar. It was fun and entertaining, and a lot of others would agree with me. But artistic achievement isn’t technical achievement or marketing achievement. Giving Avatar an artistic award would be like giving McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts a culinary award. McDonald’s technical and marketing achievements in food are unmatched by most, but that says nothing about the quality of their food.
I didn’t mean that Cameron necessarily wanted to create a work of art though in my opinion he certainly has; I meant that he was using what appeared to be a simple message in order to create a deeper emotional and psychological response to his movie. He explained all this very well in a discussion he had with Charlie Rose last December on the day before Avatar was released, but for some reason it’s been taken down and I’m not able to link to it now. You may choose not to believe him but I see no reason for him to lie. It’s not like Charlie Rose has that large of an audience.
I saw that interview. What I understood from it was that Cameron used a simple message so that it would resonate with the most amount of people.
Here is a quote from the transcript:
Here Cameron is saying that the simplicity transcends cultures. One way of reaching a larger audience.
Here it looks like Cameron dodged Charlie’s question. But what I understand from his answer was that he made the story simple because it was the safe thing to do. He need to make a return on a huge investment and the best way to do that was with a simple story.
If anything that interview made me believe that Cameron knew exactly what he was doing with the simplicity. He was making a story that would satisfy the greatest number of people possible. And he did it extremely well. It’s no fluke that the man has made so many blockbusters. He’s very smart and knows what it takes to make a commercially successful movie.
ETA: This is actually an interview after the movie was released and not the one in December.
Here’s a Salon interview with Crazy Short Film Lady and Interrupted Director. Dra-ma! Dueling Pistols at Dawn-type stuff.
I tried making this exact point to some crazy guy at work who for some reason gets personally offended by Oscar results he doesn’t like.
As the clip on the show demonstrated: collecting, choosing and mixing sound is a creative process.
But that is what people call them shrug
Yep, congrats. One of my worst showings, but as a whole, we were all off this year.
I predicted 11:52 PM EST for the Best Picture award. When was it given out? I went to bed.
Yes, the simplistic story may have been a way to bring those “messages” to the mass audience initially drawn by the geewhiz factor (whether the people should be fed a simplistic version of Important Issues[sup]tm[/sup] is another story; sometimes, though, it’s better than nothing).
Still, the Hollywood people who do the voting have probably by now seen dozens of “message” movies involving one or more of those themes, so they may have felt jaded and not seen it bringing anything new to them. Wouldn’t be the first time the Academy fails to put itself in the public’s shoes, heck, the usual conceit tends to be that the Academy is of Those Who Know, by Those Who Know, for Those Who Know. (The expansion of the Best Picture candidate roster was itself a way to get more “popular” movies into the Oscar night broadcast. )
Besides,
(a) some in the Academy may be having second thoughts about having laid it on so thick upon Titanic when they did,
(b) this may just have been a year where the Academy was in an anti-blockbuster mood; and
(c) SciFi does tend to be ghettoed away from the top tier awards and limited to design/cinematography/art.
(Weren’t they using preferential-voting instead of straight-ballot system this year? That may have also influenced the result.)