2019 Oscars Discussion

[Prime Time]

Now the nominees have dropped I thought people might want to discuss the upcoming Academy Awards.

Here are the 'big ticket' award nominees - I'll let anyone who wants to talk about some of the more niche stuff post what interests them for themselves.

Best picture
BlacKkKlansman
Black Panther
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice

Best actor
Christian Bale - Vice
Bradley Cooper - A Star Is Born
Willem Dafoe - At Eternity's Gate
Rami Malek - Bohemian Rhapsody
Viggo Mortensen - Green Book

Best actress
Yalitza Aparicio - Roma
Glenn Close - The Wife
Olivia Colman - The Favourite
Lady Gaga - A Star Is Born
Melissa McCarthy - Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best supporting actor
Mahershala Ali - Green Book
Adam Driver - BlacKkKlansman
Sam Elliott - A Star Is Born
Richard E Grant - Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell - Vice

Best supporting actress
Amy Adams - Vice
Marina de Tavira - Roma
Regina King - If Beale Street Could Talk
Emma Stone - The Favourite
Rachel Weisz - The Favourite

Best director
Alfonso Cuaron - Roma
Yorgos Lanthimos - The Favourite
Spike Lee - BlacKkKlansman
Adam McKay - Vice
Pawel Pawlikowski - Cold War

[Powder]

If I was able to make the decisions I would have Black Panther win best picture and Remi Malek win best actor. i do not know much about the other categories to make an intelligent comment.

[meandi]

I’m confused how you can have Black Panther nominated for Best Picture, but you don’t have Chadwick Boseman for Best Actor or Michael B. Jordan for Best Supporting Actor.

[Powder]

There are times that the best actor is not from the best picture, not often but I see your point.

[meandi]

Again, I don’t understand that. Typically, Best Picture would (should?) involve a combination of a great story, cinematography and acting from your leads. If your lead isn’t doing a good enough of a job to warrant a nomination, then how can the film be considered amongst the best?

[Prime Time]

I don't see the problem personally. Something can have really good acting without any one actor standing out as amongst the half dozen best performances when all things are taken together. Similarly, I've seen plenty of films with amazing performances where the rest of the movie was just OK but the lead actor probably deserved the recognition.

[comfortablynumb]

I like that Olivia Colman was submitted for the lead even though she had third billing. It’s a good way to avoid three actresses in the supporting category because Stone and Weisz I think need to be kept together.

[mizfan]

I saw way fewer movies than usual this year, so I only know three of these films.

Really liked Black Panther, though I actually think a Michael B Jordan nomination would have made more sense that nominating the whole film, as I thought he was above and beyond the strongest of the main features.

Really liked the Favourite as well. Hope Colman takes the award, very much feel like she earned it and had the best of the three very good lead performances.

Thought Roma was overpoweringly dull. It had some redeeming features but overall it dragged terribly and I wasn't a fan at all. I can see why some might have liked it a lot, though it felt a lot like critic-bait to me.

[Prime Time]

Haven't seen Roma. It's also a bit tricky for us here as I don't think Vice or Green Book are really out here yet. I did catch the other five of the best picture nominees though.

[Powder]

I've seen plenty of films with amazing performances where the rest of the movie was just OK but the lead actor probably deserved the recognition.

Bohemian Rhapsody for one. I do not think the movie is deserving of Best Picture, but Remi Malek killed it as Freddie Murcury. In my opinion, and everyone I talked to who saw it, all agreed, that if Malek wasn't dead on, the movie would be just ok. He made the movie, and the movie was very good, but not great.

Just like Man on the Moon with Jim Carrey. The movie was really good, but Carrey was brilliant.

[For the love of Terry Funk]

Bohemian Rhapsody was fun but I'm surprised it got a nod. Fair enough for best actor but I expect Bale will take that.

[TheLAW]

I strongly believe that Bohemian Rhapsody should and will take this Oscar season. Black panther is a political play. Great to see Marvel make the list, but i just don't see it.

Didnt see roma, vice, or most of the other nominees. But I saw Rhapsody 3 times in theatres. Last time i did that was the Special Edition Return of The Jedi release.

Rami should take best actor. And the movie, despite the historical inaccuracies (seriously who cares... The entire story was approved by the surviving members of the band), was the best movie I saw all year by far!

[Gooner]

I'd be all for Rami Malek getting an Oscar for Best Actor, I though his individual performance was fantastic and made you feel like you were indeed watching Freddie Mercury.

The film itself was good, but without having watched all of the other films for Best Film (bar Black Panther) I'd still be surprised if it got the nod. I didn't come out of the theater thinking it was bound to get nominated.

[Powder]

I have only seen Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Panther in the Best Picture category, but I can tell you that I am tired of the "serious movie" must win the best picture award.

Why not Black Panther? The movie was universally loved, by both fans and critics. It had a great social consciousness, told a great story, and had no real villain. Killmonger's points were legit, even though he went about it the wrong way.

BR was not as good of a movie as BP but it was fun. Malek should get best actor, but the best movie should be Panther.

[Prime Time]

I'd be less surprised if Black Panther got it than Bohemian Rhapsody. But having seen most of the nominees, I don't think it should be either of them.

[Gooner]

I preferred Black Panther to Bohemian Rhapsody, my main reasoning behind it is that I will watch Black Panther again. But honestly, I preferred Avengers: Infinity War over Black Panther. Black Panther is slightly overrated in my opinion. That doesn't detract it from the legit points it raised in the real world and yes, the hero-villain dynamic was well done. But I felt there have been better superhero movies in the Marvel universe, without mentioning those outside of it. Not many, but enough.

Using that logic, I feel one of the other movies nominated will probably get the award, though I have not seen them. I don't think it *has* to be a serious movie to win, there's been movies in the past that have won that I wouldn't consider a serious movie so to speak, but it's probably true that it helps.

[Prime Time]

Don't know if this is going to anticipate the Oscars at all, but the Baftas went to Malek, Olivia Coleman, and Roma.

[JacobWrestledGod]

Black Panther really fell apart in the third act in terms of direction in the fight between Panther and Killmonger, choosing an extremely dark color palette in a CGI fight which nearly completely hide the excellent actors into their masks. Comparing it with the eariler 2 waterfall fights, for example, you notice a lack of coherence and emotional weightiness. The final act really bores me. Compare the way Infinity Wars tie up everything of 3 different plot lines: the melee at Titan, the war at Wakanda and the weapon forge at Nidavellir, all three cumulated at Wakanda epic scene where Thanos strolled past every single hero, forcing Scarlet to kill her lover, only to reverse time and kill him AGAIN in front of her.

That’s brilliantly made with full imagination. Black Panther’s climax? Tired and cliche.

Even the much praised set and costume design in BP is completely upstaged by Infinity War. Sure it has some African heritage things going on, but look at how it abandoned it’s roots at the final boss fight with the train fight which is completely void of colours. In IW, notice how all 3 major locations at the climactic third act has its own Color palette and set design that distinctly separates 3 locations and plot lines so much so that you will never be confused over who is at where at any given time when they switch locations. Wakanda’s war was bright, exciting, orange, Titan was a maniac purple, and Nidavellir a industrialised blue. Having 3 different location also allow every character to have their own motivations and different objectives to perform, allowing them to shine individually, an example being the women having their spotlight in the battle of Wakanda featured so prominently, while Shuri, Scarlet and Vision all frantically trying to remove the mind stone gives the plot line an important objective of urgency.

By the time BP reach its final act, after Killmonger got the throne. The entire plot just auto pilot to exactly what anyone can guess. Redemption of the hero, check. Evil guy wants to destroy the world, checked. One on one boss fight in compete CGI? Checked. Bad gorilla guy redemption arc? Checked. It’s just uninspired.

Then there’s the villain. Much is said about Killmonger, but other than his racial motivated ideology of kicking back at white people, I find him very disjointed towards the end. He has been under covers in the first half, very stealthy and seemingly clever, but then They abandoned his smarts in the second half by having him just assuming BP is dead? Such a tired movie cliche to see the villain just convinently turned stupid.

If we want a smart, wonderfully written and acted comic book movie to win the Oscar, then The Dark Knight should have been the one. Incredibly innovative, visually stunning, psychologically chilling. The Joker was written with such a deft hand that there’s zero moment in the movie that you can truly Guess what will happen next. The climax of pitting the civilians against the criminals in their bomb laden ferries is still one of the best examples of how to make a villain’s motivation transcends beyond his words. While Killmonger has a lot of talk, his actions in the movie just felt like all talk and little action. I think what should have happened is Killmonger really going out there and doing some terrorist work against whites and actually having the benefits to black communities shown to us in the movie itself. Then it would have created a conflict in our hearts and a deeper connection to what he’s yapping on about. Instead we see a lot of telling and very little showing, a lot of boasting from Killmonger but few real consequences.

Or what about Killmonger trying to show BP that whites are truly racist, only to fall flat when humanity prevails with both white and Black peoples unifying for a common good? Dark Knight set the precedence when Joker’s scheme failed to cause either the civilians and the criminals to kill each other. That would have been a great cinematic journey in terms of the racial debate and gives Killmonger a more conflicted sense of morality - alas, opportunity lost.

[Samuel 'Plan]

Not to derail the conversation, but I find the contrived ferry sequence to be by far and away the worst part of The Dark Knight... But I do agree that if a comic book movie were to win one of these things, it really should've been that. Not that there's really such a thing as a comic book movie, as much as there is genre movies based off of comic books.

Black Panther is a strange one. On the one hand, I wouldn't consider it even a viable contender in the Best Picture conversation, and certainly wouldn't place it ahead of the vastly superior Infinity War - a remarkable film in a lot of ways, and generally much more effectively put together. On the other hand, Black Panther clearly became more than the sum of its parts, and for good reason. Its social relevance was timely, and that it took on a whole other cultural meaning shouldn't be ignored either. If it won Best Picture or the like on those grounds, I could happily support it - I won't ever consider it the best film of this last year though. I wouldn't consider it the best Marvel Studios film of the last year either for that matter.

I find it all moot anyway. I've never cared much for the Oscars or the BAFTAs or the like. As the recent self-important 'outrage' of the industry poured forth upon notice their awards weren't going to get televised for all the plebs to see and not care about showed, this entire exercise is just one giant act of self-gratifying back-slapping.

[Prime Time]

Lord knows I have weighed in often enough about the comic book movie issue so I'll spare myself the effort this time. But just to say that it could all be moot. Betting odds have Black Panther a long, long way back.

But more to the point, they have Roma not just as favourite to win, but actually odds-on.