It was released in a very limited (24) number of screens on Christmas, and went wide in January. I was disappointed because I had looked forward to seeing this or La La Land as our Christmas Eve afternoon movie, and neither was here yet.
I can’t beat Equipoise, of course, but I’ve seen all the films nominated for all categories (other than the nominees for the best foreign language film, the best documentary feature, and the three shorts categories) except for the following films:
Lion
Hacksaw Ridge
Captain Fantastic
Florence Foster Jenkins
Nocturnal Animals
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
The Red Turtle
Passengers
Allied
Suicide Squad
Star Trek Beyond
Trolls
Jim: The James Foley Story
13 Hours
Deepwater Horizon
Sully
The Jungle Book
A Man Called Ove
I will see all the shorts at a local theater that plays them all together for a couple of weeks. I will try to see many of the movies that I missed before the Oscars, including those in the best foreign language and best documentary feature categories. Do I agree with the nominations that the Academy made? Of course not. Every year I disagree with every list of the best films for that year, including lists of the top box office films or the lists of every film critic or of every movie-going friend. So what? The appreciation of any art form (books, paintings, music, etc.) is ultimately about individual taste. It sort of agrees among different people and different groups but sort of doesn’t. If everyone’s taste was the same, it wouldn’t be art, it would be some kind of science. If everyone’s tastes were completely different with nothing but random agreement between them, it wouldn’t be art either but just arbitrary psychological reaction of people to every stimulus. I want to learn new things, and the way to do that is to listen to other people’s choices in things like what movies they like.
I mean, Cumberbatch as the sexless “him” (or whatever it was called) WAS a pretty good performance…
On a serious note, yes, I understand that there is no perfect way for picking the nominees for any award. And, no, I’m not expecting them to pick something just because it’s there. But it still doesn’t change the fact that the movies are all boring nominees.
Two things here:
- I never said the movies themselves were boring, I said the fact that they were nominated is boring.
2 (and more to my point). It’s not really the movies themselves that annoys me, it’s the genres and how they’re put together. Every year the winners fall into 3 categories: Black movie (historic or not), movie based on a real person, movie about hollywood/movies. They’re all dramas, and they’re all gut-wrenching sad stories. Are they well acted/directed/written and the like? Absolutely. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re all the same movie.
It doesn’t happen like this every single year (last year had The Martian for example), but I don’t think it would hurt for the academy to look beyond these same kinds of movies for well-made cinemas more than just once every 5 years.
But there aren’t any other kinds of movies.
Hollywood today produces only five kinds of films (and before you say that movies are also made outside of Hollywood - you’re right, but the Oscars are a company town gig):
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Big-budget potential blockbusters.
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Dumb comedies.
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Cartoons.
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Audacious indie flicks.
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Oscar hopefuls.
There are no more mid-budget films or romantic comedies made any more.Nobody makes them anymore. Any Oscar contenders have to come from those five groups, and unless there are a some exemplars from Group 1 or 4 - and there weren’t this year - all of the contenders will come from Group 5.
This is the only category in which I consistently see most or all of the films and yes, I’d pick Zootopia (or Zootropolis as it was called here) over Kubo easily. The animation in Kubo was certainly more artful and interesting than anything else but, honestly, it was a pretty dull film and the big emotional moments fell flat. Zootopia not only developed a rich, complex world but managed to weave some decent social commentary and an engaging plot (and a lot of comedy) into it.
I mean, if we’re going purely by unique animation style then The Book of Life should have been a shoo-in as well. Didn’t happen.
All of this is a great point and 100% true.
Just unfortunate from my standing.
Here’s how I would rank the Picture nominees
Moonlight
Manchester by the Sea
Hidden Figures
Hell or High Water
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Lion
La La Land
These are the titles nominated in any of the fiction narrative categories that I haven’t seen (*indicates they haven’t been released in my market yet):
Deepwater Horizon (Sound Editing, Visual Effects)
Florence Foster Jenkins (Actress, Costumes)
Jim: The James Foley Story (Song)
My Life as a Zucchini (Animated Feature)*
Passengers (Production Design, Score)
The Red Turtle (Animated Feature)*
The Salesman (Foreign Language)*
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (Sound Mixing)
Toni Erdmann (Foreign Language)*
Reverse order? La La Land is the best movie there, maybe Manchester by the Sea.
LLL is definitely at the bottom, as elaborated on in another thread.. YMOV.
Well, if by “no more” you mean “not many” and by “any more” you mean “rarely”, then you’re right.
Isn’t La La Land “mid-budget”? And maybe Deadpool. (They even make fun of the low budget within the movie itself.)
As for romantic comedies, 2016 had Bridget Jones Baby, Café Society, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and How to be Single.
Anyway, here’s an interesting article: The quiet return of the mid-budget movie:
I’m not sure I would agree it’s the worst movie, or one of the worst movies, of the year, but I have to agree with this;
In the heyday of movie musicals - well, movie musicals have had a couple of different heydays, really - the people who sang and danced in them were song and dance experts. Fred Astaire was a DANCER, and could sing, too. Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly, Julie Andrews, Danny Kaye, these were folks who were trained dancers and singers.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are talented, skilled actors for sure, but neither would make the cut on a competitive reality singing show. The spectacle of watching already famous actors try to do a musical is, well, interesting; I liked “Moulin Rouge!” but you could tell Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor were at their absolute best they could be and were still the worst singers on screen.
I’m not exactly sure why “La La Land” had to star Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, except for name recognition. The movie would, beyond any doubt or question, have been a better film if they’d put out a casting call for two people who were actually highly skilled song-and-dance professionals. (I am aware, incidentally, that Gosling has a little rock band. I assure you there’s a good reason they’ve had no Billboard Top 40 hits.)
Not disputing your overall point, but you picked a bad example. As was mentioned in her obituary, Debbie Reynolds couldn’t dance a lick when she showed up on the set of Singing in the Rain. She just rehearsed the hell out of her big number (“Good Morning”) until she got it.
Honest to God, I assumed she knew how to dance going in. How about that?
FWIW, Emma Stone was on Broadway as Sally Bowles in Cabaret: http://www.playbill.com/person/emma-stone-vault-0000125413
You might want to brace yourself - I’ve also got some bad news about turkeys and their capability for flight.
Ignorance fought! 
Well, the SAG awards were last night, and the winners were:
Denzel Washington
Emma Stone
Mahershala Ali
Viola Davis
And for best ensemble, the cast from Hidden Figures.
It should be noted that Denzel had never won a SAG before (despite owning 2 Oscars) so they may have thought he was overdue. Certainly, it’s an excellent performance on its merits, but that factoid may have helped to blunt the strong momentum Casey Affleck had built up (though the resurfacing of allegations against Affleck’s sexual harassment behavior may have also made an impression on some).
La La Land was not up for the SAG ensemble, though four of its Best Picture competition were. The last film to win Oscar’s Best Picture without having a SAG nod was Braveheart (which was also the last time Mel Gibson was Oscar-nominated until this year).