2021's Oscar Nominees

Films with multiple nominations...
12	The Power of the Dog
10	Dune
7	Belfast
	West Side Story
6	King Richard
4	Don't Look Up
	Drive My Car
	Nightmare Alley
3	Being the Ricardos
	CODA
	Encanto
	Flee
	Licorice Pizza
	The Lost Daughter
	No Time to Die
	The Tragedy of Macbeth
2	Cruella
	The Eyes of Tammy Faye
	Parallel Mothers
	Tick, Tick... Boom!
	The Worst Person in the World

yay for Drive My Car doing well

Do we get to comment on other categories here? Haven't seen Get Back, so I don't know about that, but bypassing the VU documentary recalls the '90s, when they routinely ignored the one or two documentaries each year people actually saw and talked about. I really want to see Attica, though.

boo for Being the Ricardos and Tammy Faye doing well

This feels like one of those divided fields where some bullshit like Belfast gets best picture. (NB I haven't seen Belfast, I'm just assuming it's bullshit.)

Props to Campion for becoming the first woman director to be nominated twice for period dramas where women play the piano.

oscar snubs peter jackson yet again for best picture and best director for his long-awaited follow-up to the hobbit trilogy, get back (to the shire)

Now that the dust has settled, King Richard is this year's insanely over-nominated movie (alongside the expected Belfast).

I was no fan of West Side Story, but glad to see that one trounce tick, tick ... BOOM! here.

Props to Campion for becoming the first woman director to be nominated twice for period dramas where women play the piano.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra),

omigod

Nightmare Alley the first best picture nominee in lord knows how long that didn't get any nominations for director, acting, screenplay or even editing.

king richard should've stayed an hbo movie

King Richard and Nightmare Alley are the only two nominees I couldn't finish.

King Richard gets significantly better in the latter half when Smith's performance takes a back seat to the girls playing Venus and Serena.

voting for wss here even though i likely prefer licorice pizza, the rippling puddle shot lingers

Nightmare Alley's nod means I have to hold off ranking these just yet.

And (ugh) Dune.

campion now the only woman to nominated for best director more than once

I thought Kathyrn Bigelow's two big films would have got her two nominations.

Huh. Yeah, there are actually a couple directors I'm surprised didn't pull it off first. Bigelow, Penny Marshall, Streisand ...

Marshall and Streisand have never earned director nods.

Yeah, that was part of my surprise.

God, Being the Ricardos was so bad. So relieved it didn't get a BP nom. Did it ever occur to Sorkin to cast a comedian in the roll of Lucy?

As a Sorkin joint it's his most entertaining; I'd watched a couple hours of boozy, bitter Lucy on '70s morning talk shows, and Kidman suggested that side. Bardem was fine, even the Cuban accent. But the film has no reason to exist except awards.

I wish I shared your generous take. Felt joyless to me. Would have preferred to watch a film that celebrated her talents more (along with the bitter, boozy bits).

I gave up 45 minutes into that, the only parts I enjoyed were the ones with the writers' table sniping at each other.

I only resent that I found it as watchable as I did. But I will never watch it again or anything.

I only resent that I found it as watchable as I did.

This.

Make no mistake, had it crashed the BP line-up at (likely) Drive My Car's expense, I'd be whistling a different tune.

His complete disinterest in showing Lucy actually deliver jokes and be funny was galling, and made the extended sequences of Sorkin-as-Lucy explaining How Comedy Works particularly painful.

ROBBED pic.twitter.com/G6178HrxPw

— Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Deebo! (@CarmanTse) February 8, 2022

Every time a movie gets a best picture nomination but doesn’t also get a best director nod i think of this pic.twitter.com/I1Gpfilpnw

— Justin🦩Boldaji بلداجي (@justinboldaji) February 8, 2022

I voted for Dune because it’s the only one of these movies I’ve seen. (Between now and the deadline I probably won’t see the others.)

Many streaming services to which you might be subscribed offer them fwiw.

Overall, I’m just not that enthusiastic about a lot of these, and can be very slow on the draw. (Didn’t see Parasite until a few months after its big night, for instance.) I’m turning into the kind of person who spends more time with older movies he never saw or obscure modern ones that won’t win these awards or be nominated for them.

Of the remaining movies on this list I’d want to maybe see Licorice Pizza, West Side Story, and Drive My Car. If I’m honest; I don’t wanna see King Richard at all. The others: no interest based on what I know.

Which reminds me that I need to go see No Way Home this weekend before it exits theaters, or my son will never forgive me.

I'd write him out of the will.

how many minutes of drive my car's 3 hours feature spaghetti?

Saw Nightmare Alley in theatre yesterday with my mom and we were the only ones there. A movie can't get viewers the day after it gets nominated? sigh

thought it was bad though

the whole thing seemed cartoonish and false

Carnivale, HBO's two-season show about a grungy hardscrabble dust-bowl traveling carnival, was so much better

Saw Jackass 4 in an empty theater yesterday - even the best movies can’t fill seats rn

Introducing this year’s #Oscars hosts: Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes will emcee the Academy Awards. https://t.co/KugEfMo0a3 pic.twitter.com/e30Ar2AnkL

— Variety (@Variety) February 14, 2022

Meanwhile...

Am I doing this right https://t.co/CHqoOnQMR3 pic.twitter.com/FQbZJGQhdT

— Justin Chang (@JustinCChang) February 14, 2022

Wanda Sykes seems like a good choice for co-host.

I'm happy with Regina Hall in the mix. I'd be happier still if she already had Oscar nominations for Support the Girls and Scary Movie.

I watched over half of Belfast yesterday. It's the worst BP nom I've seen since Crash. Branagh can't write or direct.

CODA is feel-good pap. I liked the lead actress, and I wasn't terribly bored or annoyed, but this thing does not miss a single expected plot beat: there's the tough-as-nails coach who turns out to want what's best, the boyfriend who enacts a betrayal that exists only to be forgiven, the mid-film crisis (which goes curiously unresolved), the audition that begins disastrously before being turned around, and on and on and on. The boomer-sanctified soundtrack--Joni, Marvin-feels about three decades out of date, as well.

It's terrible. I saw it mid August during a fallow period, was amazed anyone remembered it years end.

I really loved Licorice Pizza, Power of the Dog and Drive My Car. Nightmare Alley was p good too

I can't see myself watching Coda (sappy), King Richard (sappy), Don't Look Up (discourse-poisoned), Dune (long nerd shit) or West Side Story (reboot)

WSS the best of that batch by far

yeah, I'm sure it's fine, but there's already a great West Side Story that I can watch anytime!

When we watched CODA, for the first third or so we just could not stop giggling at all the cliches, but by the end it won us over. Never transcended, mind, but we liked it fine.

Yeah, CODA might not be the worst of the nominees, but it's my least favorite or at least tied with Belfast.

Branagh made Jamie Dornan a sexy dad, so there's that.

in CODA regarding expected plot beats: "the audition that begins disastrously before being turned around"

that is one of my favorite moments. her teacher purposely flubs the piano part to get her to stop and look around at him so he can silently remind her that she is great and needs to have more confidence

Tony Kotsur deserves the Oscar imo - his very vivid ASL expressions in the hilarious visit to the doctor’s office, his holding his hands over his daughter’s throat in an effort to feel her singing so he can understand her, the goodbye

*Troy not Tony

I guess I sorta liked Don't Look Up--or at least I was able to just go along with it once I stopped expecting it to be any good, which was pretty early on (probably the first Blanchett/Perry appearance). It is useless as satire for all of the reasons that have already been stated, though it plays straight enough, at times, that I wonder if the Academy thinks it is nominating it in the tradition of Dr. Strangelove and Network, or of Airport and The Towering Inferno (it feels more, to me, like a descendent of all-star comedy duds like 1941 and Mars Attacks! anyhow). But I dunno--I liked Leo's uncharacteristically mousy performance (as full of actorly ticks as any of his other performances, but a nice break from those particular ticks nonetheless), Ron Perlman's John Wayne/G.I. Joe parody, Ariana Grande's "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well" ballad, and the audacity/stupidity of the (first) mid-credits sequence. I also found the whole dinner table sequence unexpectedly graceful and moving, especially appearing, as it does, after two hours of sledgehammer comedy.

Putting it alongside Airport among Oscar players is probably astute. I like both better than the average Film Twitterer.

Oscars: Several Awards Won’t Be Telecast Live This Year (Exclusive) https://t.co/qPBYwPWr3Y

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 22, 2022

Long overdue. Because long.

Sound twins got screwed twice -- combined into one award last year and that award removed from live broadcast this year.

Get rid of every last thing but the handing out of the Oscars. Starting with the two Twitter Oscars.

it still always amazes me how many people are uninterested in the actual "oscars" part of the oscars, the only actual unique thing about the oscars

the nominated songs are mostly bad and the performances of them are cringey and take up a lot of time. I'd rather watch the acceptance speeches for the shorts and tech awards

Eliminating editing, sound, and production design is bad--so much else they could cut.

That in fact is why editing is important

my favorite moments in the broadcast are alway when they show clips from the nominated films before announcing the awards, there should be more of that

I just finished watching them all and here's how I rank them, using Jonathan Rosenbaum's ranking system:

Masterpiece: The Power of the Dog

A must see: Dune, Licorice Pizza

Worth seeing: Drive My Car, West Side Story, Nightmare Alley

Has redeeming facet: King Richard, CODA

Belfast

Don't Look Up is in "has redeeming facet" too.

Oscar acting nominations seem to come down to choices between metamorphic performances and internalized ones. A lot of biographical films feature very extroverted chameleonic performances and they are the ones that win the awards (Renee Zellweger (Judy), Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), Nicole Kidman (The Hours), Sean Penn (Milk), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Charlize Theron (Monster) etc etc etc etc etc)

With internalized roles the actors have to express something about their own lives and experiences and register their underlying emotions through the character. Those are more interesting to me

coda: adorable, moves and speaks in cliché, evaporates from the mind instantly

also has no business being in this crew

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

I've kept quiet about WSS awaiting a second viewing. Well, it got a second viewing: a very okay musical.

There’s nothing wrong with it, but I didn’t love it.

a certain squishy male lead though

Off-screen baggage aside, he’s so inert in the role that he sucks the energy out of everyone else’s performances. Release the Faist / DeBose cut!

I had trouble accepting Zegler thanks to this twerp.

wss succeeds wildly despite the antipresence of ansel egon or whatever, the splendor of the filmmaking, the sweep of the camera, it’s more than enough. i don’t think he takes away anything from the excellence of the other performances also

Those pans are beautiful and eloquent, and I admire Spielberg's commitment to romanticism so many decades later.

I loved WSS, but can't disagree with Elgort being a cipher. his annoying accent, his vacant eyes, and the fact that at times he seems as if he's in another film.

Faist was amazing, one of the most tragic Riff Raffs I've seen. loved DeBose and Zegler as well. really the only person I didn't love was Elgort.

was a bit weird writing Doc out of the musical and having him be dead and giving Rita Moreno the part of his late wife, but it worked I guess.

the way they repurposed "Cool" was beyond stupid though, and adding a backstory of Tony going to prison and repeating it over and over got annoying. but I enjoyed myself.

lmao at Ansel Egon, I like that better

Tony IS, though, often the least interesting character on stage even in the best productions, which is why you don't want to cast him with someone who is a charisma vaccuum

i haven't seen the new WSS but richard beymer and natalie wood are both pretty bad in the original, so it seems like upgrading just one of those performances is still a net positive

a vacuum needing humanizing if you will

Were it not for the presence of Ryusuke Fucking Hamaguchi in this race, I would be throwing my support behind Spielberg in support of, yes, the "commitment to romanticism" alongside old school craft and film language, etc.

Also, if CODA pulls off this coup, it'll be the nothing-est best picture winner since Out of Africa.

The father from CODA will get the award that should go to Kodi Smit-McPhee, but I can't see the film winning BP.

voted for drive my car, a film i can't stop thinking about. eiko ishibashi wuz robbed

King Richard just felt wrong as a movie, like I'm not big on biopics, but a movie about Serena and Venus would have been much more interesting, and instead, it's about their dad who made a lot of wrongheaded decisions on their behalf.

and it's fucking long

Aranxta Sanchez's 9 minute pee break, in real time

Best prestige film fart of the year tho.

(Leagues better than CODA's.)

I liked King Richard much more than I was expecting. Conversely I was surprised to find WSS so irritating I had to stop after 40 minutes. I've never seen the musical but suspect I wouldn't like it either

finally saw power of the dog last night. sorta convinced it’ll deservingly win

and if not I'll send Peter to talk to you

I was on the fence about it, but nothing else viably in the running (CODA, Belfast) is any good, so by all means, I hope it wins.

finally watched Drive My Car. I really like that film, the story is great and the cinematography is beautiful

didn’t realize the music is by Eiko Ishibashi, whose fine 2018 album The Dreams My Bones Dream in collaboration with Jim O’Rourke placed in our top 77

“Even if you think you know someone well, even if you love that person deeply, you can’t completely look into that person’s heart. You’ll just feel hurt. But if you put in enough effort, you should be able to look into your own heart.”

I'm going to ask my Drive My Car question--two questions--and hide them...they still nags at me. Maybe I missed where all this was made clear. Does Kōji know that Yūsuke walked in on them that day? And if he does, does Yūsuke know that he knows?

I thought that although it was not mentioned directly, Yūsuke made it clear to Kōji that he knew about the affair when they were in discussion in the back of the car, and that Kōji acknowledged it. And his response was astonishing

i found these quotes interesting from hamaguchis wiki:

[i](On the ending of Drive My Car) "Once I talked with a big fan of Drive My Car who said that it really would have been perfect without that ending. (Laugh) Well, I think maybe the reason I ended that way is to make it a bit imperfect." "In terms of the final staging of the play in applause, if I had ended the movie at that point, presumably the audience would want to do a round of applause, and it would almost be like closing of a full circle. But for me that didn't really feel like a satisfying ending. I wanted to do something a bit more disruptive, to leave some sort of break."

(On the ending of Drive My Car) "I have no any plans of making a sequel, but I was just sort of playing around with things at the end there. One other thing I'd like to say is that the title itself also might give a clue to how you can interpret the ending."[i]

thought the ending was perfect

wow, drive my car

I liked that Drive My Car had the lattice of the staging of Uncle Vanya - the agreement to direct the play, the settling in, the international casting, the rehearsals and performance - and then also had the parallel story of infatuation, grief, confrontation and eventual acceptance that was layered over it and that reflected on it

the last scene of the performance of Uncle Vanya shown in Drive My Car was memorable

from AO Scott:

““Uncle Vanya” ends with a middle-aged man and a younger woman coming to realize that they are bound by a love that isn’t romantic or sexual, but in some way spiritual…

You don’t have to know the play to feel the power of the scene. You don’t even have to read the subtitles. A deaf Korean actress, played by the extraordinary Park Yurim, is Sonya, and her final monologue is delivered in Korean Sign Language. Vanya is seated at a table, and Sonya leans over him, her face hovering behind and alongside his as her hands glide and flutter in front of his eyes…

The feeling of two people joined in an experience that surpasses language and transcends physicality has a power that I have rarely encountered in theater or film.”

an excellent prism

the film was also presented in four acts, like Chekhov’s plays

Seen 6/10, and the others wont reach me before Oscar night, so here’s my ranking:

The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Nightmare Alley
CODA

Drive My Car has stuck with me more than I expected. A lot going on in that movie.

Welp, no turning back now. We predict CODA will only win one of its three: https://www.slantmagazine.com/awards/oscar-winner-predictions-2022/

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Accepting votes for:

Drive My Car
Licorice Pizza
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

The rest can GTFO.

ultimately voted for drive my car. that conversation in the backseat made my stomach lurch in the best way

it had a surreal and dreamlike effect in a movie where nothing is particularly surreal or dreamlike (beyond the stories the people in the movie are constantly telling), the heightened state of tension, broken by the sudden turn into honesty and vulnerability (which had an unusually sinister aspect because of the character who delivers most of it and his unbroken, camera-directed stare), just took you there

Having watched it twice, I'm impressed as hell how Hamaguchi maintains a serene tone that doesn't threaten to turn clammy. The discrete parts fit together.

Descending order:

Drive My Car
The Power of the Dog
Licorice Pizza
Dune
West Side Story
Don't Look Now
Belfast
King Richard
Nightmare Alley
Coda

Watching Denis Villeneuve's coherent, meticulous, and probably faithful version of Dune over the weekend finally helped me come to a realization that I never got from Lynch's unhinged camp spectacle: I just do not care about Dune.

There's no world in which I care about Dune, in any form.

I don't care about Dune but the thing at least moved.

it made me care about dune!!!! i thought i was just taken with the disasters of the lynch film, but with villeneuve i got hooked into the dumbass storyline! also ugh it was so pretty. and so little happened (a good thing)

i mean obv things happened but little happened compared to other sci fi properties expected to make money?

Not being at all invested in the story, I spent much of the running time admiring the architecture and wondering if Paul/Duncan was a popular slash pairing in Dune fanfic. If it wasn't already, Chalamet and Momoa should've fixed that.

drive my car/power of the dog (close 1 & 2, both are excellent and would be deserving winners)
dune (i liked it a lot, don't think it'll win but i'd be ok with it just to have a genre movie as best picture)
...
licorice pizza (i was amused but baffled by this when i saw it and it has aged poorly in my memory since then)

i started west side story but only got like a half-hour in before i realized i wasn't in the right frame of mind for it, and i haven't gone back to it. elgort seemed very bad though, even worse than beymer in the original

i haven't seen the others and don't feel any need to.

Thread:

Here are some great alternative posters and illustrations of the Best Picture nominees, courtesy of @SG_Posters, @edgar_ascensao, @nunosarnadas and @OllyGibbs! 🧵

BELFAST pic.twitter.com/CAA37X7hTA

— And the Runner-Up Is (@OscarRunnerUp) March 24, 2022

and so little happened (a good thing)

otm, appreciate a sci fi movie thats mostly about looking at cool buildings. rewatching it last weekend it also made me appreciate how when showing off said buildings villeneuve has enough sense to hold long enough to let you actually fucking look at it, instead of cutting around like a maniac.

although i also admire the commitment of sci fi master steven spielberg in actually casting an almost-fully-functioning android as tony in WSS. once they finish downloading all his patches and updates it should be a good performance.

Ah damn I didn't know Eiko did the music for Drive My Car I will absolutely watch it!

Obv I want Power Of The Dog to win this tho

Finally saw all the movies (finished Drive My Car) last night. Enjoyed The Lost Daughter more than any of them.

Saw Ascension and I want to vote for it as best picture since Summer Of Soul will win best doc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Good job ILX!

Brutally Honest Oscar voter returns!

You know, like the classic movies of the past? And this year, the answer was none. I didn’t even rank six of them. I hated the [The Power of the] Dog movie, except for its cinematography. It was so predictable and not subtle — you knew right away that Benedict Cumberbatch was a latent homosexual, the brother was a wimp, and the son was a little demented — unlike Brokeback Mountain, where the characters were so finely developed and interesting. In a way, I understood what Sam Elliott meant. I didn’t like West Side Story, which I call “Woke Side Story.” Individual pieces of the puzzle worked — I don’t think there was a bad performance — but the puzzle pieces don’t connect together.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/brutally-honest-oscars-ballot-4-1235117325/

also:

Talking to Oscar folks at the Governors Awards and the buzz for a Penelope Cruz best-actress win is very real…

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) March 26, 2022

I didn’t like West Side Story, which I call “Woke Side Story.”

is this person 100 years old

Yes.

car dog story pizza king nightmare coda dune don't belfast imo

we didn't start the fire

Don’t dune your licorice pizza in Belfast while you’re driving your car in the dog, or whatever

lmao @ NV

of the ones i've seen

drive my car > dune > power of the dog > don't look up

still wanna see licorice pizza but not interested in the rest

Really hope the last-minute Penelope Cruz buzz (which I've heard the VF crew also talk about) comes true.

KIng Richard is basically the same shit as CODA, but at least CODA isn't a hagiography that expects the audience to applaud every reckless and irresponsible decision its hero makes on behalf of his family, secure in the knowledge that it all works out in the end.

Fuck, CODA really is gonna win BP, isn’t it?

no one even cared enough this year to start a new thread, huh

this telecast is a fucking shitshow, so bad, and it's aboslutely the fault of the direction. The sound is beyond bad, there is so much ambient noise you can barely hear anyone on stage. the set is awful. deciding to cut out Elaine May and Sam Jackson and do that on Friday, give some awards off screen then edit them into the livecast, but make us suffer through some of the idiotic shit they are doing....wtf.

Yeah this is like a perfect storm of everything I find annoying about the oscars

Wait nm it just got good

Did everyone’s sound cut out?

Holy shit!

Turned into the On Cinema Oscar special there for a minute

video here

Will Smith just punched Chris Rock and told him "keep my wife's name out of your f***ing mouth" pic.twitter.com/1f1ytdbMRv

— CJ Fogler (@cjzer0) March 28, 2022

this didn't appear to be staged, it wasn't a hard hit, but it was inexcusable and if Smith wins an award later they should frankly withhold it. Will Smith and his wife are fucking nutsos

this was worse than it looked

VIA JAPANESE TELEVISION: The uncensored exchange between Will Smith and Chris Rock pic.twitter.com/j0Z184ZyXa

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) March 28, 2022

I recall when Sasha BC fell on Eminem that one time at the MTV awards it looked plenty real. Turned out not to be. Tbf this looked much more real but.. weird gags aren’t unheard of at these things.

KIng Richard is basically the same shit as CODA, but at least CODA isn't a hagiography that expects the audience to applaud every reckless and irresponsible decision its hero makes on behalf of his family, secure in the knowledge that it all works out in the end.

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Sunday,

It's worse. We applaud the horror show dad but the movie's already on a slab.

Wow, weird moment

this isn't the first time chris rock has taken shots and jada and i think the joke was bad and in poor taste but that was quite an escalation

Wow.

Costner’s Best Director preamble was longer than How the West Was Won.

Nice to hear people heckling will during his speech. What a dink.

Anyway, congratulations to Hans Zimmer!

's ghostwriters

:/

The people who hated last years show sure got what they wanted this year - an extremely long nonsensical show that was somehow both boring and a chaotic trainwreck

lol i thought ABC was mandating a 3-hour show this year

this was kind of a disaster. they cut out 8 awards and still ended up with a 3h45m show. 3 hosts and every celebrity ever as presenters, why did they think that would work?

Honestly even with the Will Smith bit, the Liza bit might actually have been the lowest point for me. Hearing her moan “I don’t understand” while shuffling her notecards obviously stressed, upset, and panicking was heartbreaking and excruciating to watch, appallingly poor taste imho.

Yeah, reminded me a bit of Kirk Douglas' final appearance. I understand why they want to pay tribute to living legends, but live TV is a tough setting.

utterly dreading the next week of think pieces on this slap, race, masculinity, cancel culture, comedy... think I'll have to pay more attention to war news, it's less draining.

that was a weird dose of REAL into a hollywood show, holy shit

Hilarious to me that with the multiple somber references to "all the violence going on in the world today", the only references to the actual unhinged violence that took place were a couple winking little 'aint he a stinker' headpats. "We cannot allow a madman to perpetrate acts of irrational aggression and be allowed to get away with it just because he's wealthy and powerful, therefore the world turns a blind eye. And also, congratulations to my friend Will for his radical act of love tonight."

Dying at this photo from the Vanity Fair #Oscars viewing party…. pic.twitter.com/YAvcr2KN6O

— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) March 28, 2022

I don't know kind of seems like Will Smith isn't actually doing okay and neither is anyone else really so maybe this is capturing the national mood

— Molly Lambert 🦔 (@mollylambert) March 28, 2022

The we are not okay/Trump normalized it! takes are worse than the (very funny) slap.

Gotta think that Questlove must be really stoked right now that the Oscar win for his inspirational film about reclaiming positive images of black identity is now forever linked with a live TV kindergarten slap fight

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FO58BNeVUAE0fw0?format=jpg

Perspective, people:

Let me tell you something, it’s a very bad practice to walk up on stage and physically assault a Comedian.
Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.

— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) March 28, 2022

a tale as old as time.... pic.twitter.com/OX0lsfU7nX

— matt🦆 (@MattDuckEmoji) March 28, 2022

Is this tosser drunk or what?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FO6KGCEXwAQhCF0?format=jpg

Maybe that was Will Smith’s homage to William Hurt

— Jason Narducy (@SplitSingleband) March 28, 2022

seeing the uncensored Japanese footage - props to Chris Rock's ability to recover/"professionalism" whatever, how do you not just stand there dumbfounded and confused for five minutes

number of people that beat the shit out of seth macfarlane during his oscar hosting still sits at a comfortable zero.

Still, what a shitty thing to joke about though.

Obviously what Fresh Prince did is inexcusable but it's pretty lame how every celebrity event has turned into a roast.

this didn't appear to be staged, it wasn't a hard hit, but it was inexcusable and if Smith wins an award later they should frankly withhold it. Will Smith and his wife are fucking nutsos

― akm, Monday, 28 March 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Come on this was funny.

That's why he got sent to Bel-Air in the first place. Shit like that.

— Zito (@_Zeets) March 28, 2022

The will smith slap is one of those moments where it’s an absolute tragedy we no longer get to see trump’s posts

— David Sitrick (@davidsitrick) March 28, 2022

The only hot take needed on the Oscars pic.twitter.com/6PAX7kXLUa

— Precious Adesina (@precadesina) March 28, 2022

^Yeah, that’s a good take, though my favorite take was “thanks, Will Smith, for initiating two weeks of think pieces about that slap”

Chris Rock, what's on your iPod?

William, It Was Really Nothing

So, is CODA any good? One of my best friends is the only hearing person in her family and I was tetchy about seeing the movie because nothing could compare to my friend’s own anecdotes

it’s hard for me to say it sucks hard bc it is barely anything at all. the choir teacher scenes are unendurable tho

I thought it was entirely without any artistic merit, but I'm kind of insufferable that way.

xp agree with BN that the choir teacher is probably the worst cliche in a movie filled with them

It’s pleasant, watchable, and entirely unmemorable.

With Will Smith's #Oscars win last night, he now becomes the 17th actor from the 74th Oscar acting class to win an Oscar.

2001 has the highest winning percentage in at least the last 30 years.

Only three nominees remain Oscarless: Tom Wilkinson, Ethan Hawke, & Ian McKellen. pic.twitter.com/AtfuTahB5v

— Nicol 🌸 (@nikowl) March 28, 2022

Oof, remembering what Sean Penn was nominated for that year...

Hawke’s time will come

the performances from the deaf actors elevate it more than it probably deserves to be elevated. i liked richard brody's take on it (tho i liked the movie more than him) where the characters in the film overcome obstacles so easily that it makes you think of how much harder existence can be for disabled people in the real world

xp, that's interesting, i think 2001 is probably the first year i was aware of the oscars happening. i think i can credit/blame that to my entertainment weekly subscription and the involvement of the lord of the rings.

This is why we say “the Scottish play”.

— steven pasquale (@StevePasquale) March 28, 2022

17th actor from the 74th Oscar acting class

Sorry, I'm terrible with numbers and even worse with awards shows. What's this mean?

i think it refers to everyone who was nominated in every acting category in that year's oscars, 5 each from 4 categories

It turns out it was staged. I've reverse Google image searched him and the guy who punched Chris Rock is a professional actor.

— Sridhar Ramesh (@RadishHarmers) March 28, 2022

I know Campion won best director, but 1 win from 12 nominations is a pretty g-d huge collapse for Power of the Dog (and Netflix).

As someone with hearing problems, have zero interest in seeing Coda, which sounds like the Guess Who's Coming To Dinner for deaf people

As the saying goes, can't win 'em all. This was an Oscar year for going the easy route, pretty much from top to bottom.

fwiw, i thought kotsur was genuinely great

I didn't, but I didn't really have a rooting interest in that category either.

i saw coda without the subtitles on and i don't think i missed anything

Let's see if Kotsur is cast in roles intended for actors who can hear.

My niece is learning ASL and my coda friend said that fluency in it means guaranteed employment for the rest of one’s life, interpreters are in high demand always

the film did reinforce my desire to learn asl

Coda, which sounds like the Guess Who's Coming To Dinner for deaf people

Confused swirl of "These Eyes" and "American Woman" going though my head as I skimmed this post.

haha

we warched coda last night & it felt like an extended “very special episode” of Degrassi Junior High

like, not as a takedown bc i did love Degrassi… but it was just so much more slight & clichéd than i expected. i love the scene where she sings for her dad, and sings & signs for her family, and i love marlee matlin always. but overall it was just kinda there & sort of bland. it felt more like The Fault in Our Stars or something

the arguable climax of "drive my car" is entirely in sign language, just give the dang oscar to "drive my car"!

ppl who know sign language have legitimate complaints about drive my car

oh, what are they?

It's 3 hours long, it's slow, no superheroes...

lol

No one’s really talking about how it might have been traumatic to see actual violence - not Hollywood pretend violence - on live TV. It was deeply unsettling to watch it, and to rewatch it as we all have. No one bargained for that.

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) March 30, 2022

it was deeply unsettling to watch it, to rewatch it, to loop it endlessly on our immersive curved bedroom displays

I know what she means, real violence is definitely unsettling to watch. But — and I am not trying to be flippant — this to me really just looked like two guys at a bar on a Saturday night. So the degree to which people find it unsettling might depend on how much actual violence they've seen.

yeah lol i was more watching the mechanics of it all

how Smith delivered the slap (he fully delivered from the hip, that shit had to hurt) & how Rock absorbed it, even kept his hands by his side …

I mean, I was as unsettled if not more to know that the group that gave Parasite and Nomadland the top prize can still, on a dime, revert back to Marty mode.

i expect more from the man who played muhammad ali. ali never would've committed violence on tv

We're all sick of The Takes on this, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's is (as usual) a solid one: https://kareem.substack.com/p/will-smith-did-a-bad-bad-thing?s=r

On the opposite end of the spectrum...

The Slap and the Apology: Will Smith’s Most Important Performance
by A.W.

Will Smith deserved his Academy Award at Sunday night’s Oscar ceremonies — not for his mush-mouthed performance in King Richard but for his more instructive display of Millennial black male confusion.

No one should feel superior to what has been called Smith’s “lack of self-control” when he walked on stage and slapped comic Chris Rock, or to Smith’s teary-eyed conflation of shame and ego when he later accepted an Oscar as Best Actor. Both moments ripped the lid off the Oscar charade in which mainstream media pretend to uphold values they have abandoned long ago.

Smith’s outbursts also revealed the unhealthy standards that have overtaken our culture, confounding ideas about race, gender, and art.

Will and Race

Another Will — Will Packer, who produced the Oscar telecast — previously produced the third-rate race movies Think Like a Man, Girls Trip, and Obsessed. So this assignment was a career upgrade in an industry committed to flaunting political correctness, making race, gender, and liberal politics its focus. Packer’s mission to increase the show’s racial (black) quotient unbalanced its usual feminist, lefty bias.

Packer made this the hip-hop Oscars — where black American culture, today the most degraded yet politically manipulated it has ever been, would set the show’s criterion. (It was sponsored and broadcast by Disney/ABC, the network that, with shows such as Good Morning America and The View or prime time’s blackish and Abbott High, is most committed to race-based programming.) Hip-hop clichés ruled, from a DJ replacing the usual movie-theme orchestra (lest viewers mistakenly expect learned black musicians) to numerous black celebrity appearances and a raucous peanut gallery suspiciously miked to emphasize audience participation, as on the BET and Soul Train awards.

This was the setting in which Will Smith, the most successful movie star to emerge from hip-hop, took the front-row, king-of-Hollywood seat formerly reserved for Jack Nicholson. Hollywood tradition was revamped — ignored just like eight of the award categories Packer had eliminated from the broadcast. (Airtime was needed for Beyoncé’s musical tribute to Compton, home of Venus and Serena Williams and the setting of King Richard, depicted in a kitschy tennis-ball fantasia.) Packer made it Smith’s turf.

These are the terms by which Smith’s walk onto the stage continued the racial prerogative displayed last year when Regina King opened the show by strutting forth to proclaim her pride as “a black mother,” a narcissistic way of congratulating the Academy’s wokeness. Such a show of will — as in racialized resolve and determination — is acted out at the Academy’s behest.

Both Wills understand that hip-hop cred can be traded for Hollywood-hustler opportunity, but few others realized that its street primacy was inevitable. Former Oscar host Chris Rock appeared secure in his status as Hollywood jester, but his attempt at celeb bonhomie hit the roadblock of unpredictable hip-hop egotism. And so the personal drive and private motivation behind the world’s favorite swaggering verbal invention — knowable only through aggressive performance and creativity — resulted in what’s commonly known as a “bitch-slap.”

It happened on stage, but it resembled a behind-the-scenes, at-the-club rap battle. If America failed to heed Eminem’s 8 Mile and Joseph Kahn’s remarkable Bodied, about hip-hop ethos, all America knows that ethos now. Smith showed his superiority to Eminem after the slap, when he returned to his seat and shouted twice to Rock the lesson that the slap was intended to teach: “Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth!” This was hip-hop — with a “Yes!” linking the two declarations. Smith, glib talent and untrained street actor, has never been more convincing than when announcing the shocking terms of the arrival of New Black Hollywood. Throughout Hollywood’s fabled lore (such as the infamous Jennings Lang–Walter Wanger castration dispute), only studio bosses talked like that. Rappers call such language “boss.” The drag world calls it “realness.” We are hypocrites to pretend otherwise.

Will and Gender

Equally unsettling was the Oscar show’s not-clever, unfunny feminism. Three female hosts representing a range of unpleasant post-Madonna, post-Pelosi postures hit bottom when Regina Hall’s skit reversed the sexual impropriety that has shaken the industry’s self-confidence and bared its double standards. (Wanda Sykes even got in a Harvey Weinstein jab.) But Will Smith, showing suave modesty that’s gone unmentioned, refused to participate in Hall’s lewdness. This reserve belongs to his quaint early style of hip-hop that sometimes acknowledged masculine, patriarchal discretion. That slap didn’t have to be an act of chivalry (although that, too, occurs in hip-hop) to express Smith’s indignation. It was part of Smith’s do-gooder psychological split — at its best in After Earth and Concussion and at its least convincing in The Pursuit of Happyness, Ali, and King Richard.

Will and Art

The acceptance speech and impromptu apology will stand as the most compelling moments of Will Smith’s career. But the emotional mash-up invites us to examine the very human behavior that the Oscars — full of self-righteous self-congratulation — have squandered. Could anyone reasonably expect civility from a show celebrating films full of the ugliest human behavior? Will Smith, this year’s Oscar representative, is another victim of the degradation that hip-hop (through showbiz and political manipulation) has inflicted on society — especially among black men. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is clearly an upwardly mobile lie disguising the inner turmoil that came out of Smith on Oscar night.

It is disingenuous to expect Smith to be the Fresh Prince or to doubt his sincere confusion. If Denzel Washington’s phony evangelism — “At your highest point, that’s when the devil comes for you,” he warned Smith — represents advice from Smith’s best role model in the industry, no wonder Smith is in trouble. Yet that feeble grasping for black gospel fundamentals is preferable to the night’s most specious address: Jessica Chastain’s acceptance speech as winner of the Best Actress award for her role in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a speech in which she simultaneously sought LGBTQ favor and threw Tammy Faye Bakker’s spirituality under the bus.

For a performer who began as an entertainer to receive Academy Award recognition only when he essays pseudo biopics of nonthreatening black men proves that Will Smith has always had trouble reconciling his own life with art. It’s a quandary unique to how black pop culture — hip-hop specifically — has failed to answer the needs of its audience and participants.

Even hip-hop comedian Chris Rock suffers this confusion; his dubious humor (why must a person’s physical appearance be the occasion for jokes?) makes the quiddities of black experience acceptable to outsiders — similar to the way conservatives admire the adversarial comics Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. No one could be faulted for seeing the incident as a slap-back at the showbiz establishment’s most obnoxious figure.

Ambivalence is the best way to feel about this. Instead of the Academy’s punishing Will Smith (who simply wasn’t mature enough to just walk out on the circus as Eddie Murphy did in 2007), some screenwriter should be inspired to help him in his search for art and for moral equilibrium. Will Smith has embarrassingly exposed himself. But he exposes the Oscars’ race-baiting hypocrisy, too.

that abdul-jabbar essay is horrible

it's like a summary of the worst twitter takes cf.

As for the damage to show business, Smith’s violence is an implied threat to all comedians who now have to worry that an edgy or insulting joke might be met with violence. Good thing Don Rickles, Bill Burr, or Ricky Gervais weren’t there. As comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted: “Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.”

an implied threat to all comedians, heavens

As someone who previously eye-rolled at Griffin's take, I probably sound like a bit of a hypocrite by endorsing this piece, but I felt that overall, he was coming from a place more sincere and nuanced than her "Won't someone please think of the comedians?!"

i suppose i’m not coming from a position where i could read a paragraph like that evenly

also need to stop reading about this at all

Fair. I felt like I was done talking/thinking about this some time around Monday afternoon, so I should probably just stop engaging with it, whether the source is reasonable (Kareem) or batshit (Armond).

should've figured that was who "AW" was

Kareem's take was sensible imo

I agree.

also, this growing Twitter consensus that no other celebrities (let alone people in general) should be allowed to voice an opinion about this is fucking weird to me.

The Smith Stan Army turned out to be more dangerous than the K-Hive or Swifties.

BTS Army could still probably take them though

The incident was way beneath the oscars - it was really disheartening and it cast a pall on everything that came after it, in retrospect even more so

but the whole ceremony was also beneath the oscars: the shocking disregard for and dismissal of films, the horrible sound quality of the musical numbers, the relegation of multiple categories to pre-taped segments, the allowance of random non-film people to banter at length while winners like Hamaguchi were played off the stage (three times!)

Too many sex criminals have won Oscars for anything to be beneath them.

wait Jessica Chastain won best actress for Eyes of Tammy Faye? it felt like she was doing a bad SNL character that whole movie.

Wait 'til you see what took the two screenplay awards...

I think this was the worst bunch of nominated best pictures in decades.

Yea these flicks just don't slap

Hard to compare 10 films against 10, but scanning the last few years, some of them look just as mediocre to me.

I've seen far worse years.

what was the Crash year

really incredibly great:
power of the dog
drive my car
west side story
licorice pizza

good but wandered into the wrong class:
dune
nightmare alley

no:
king richard
don't look up
coda

absolutely fucking not:
belfast

better than most years for me idk

I only saw five of the 10, but four of them were somewhere between okay and good, and that's about a normal year.

2018 was waaay worse.

2018's Oscar Nominees

Haven't seen Drive My Car or Licorice Pizza yet, but on the whole this year's batch looked to be just about as decent-to-mediocre, on the whole, as most other recent years. The Power of the Dog is better than anything from the 2020 lineup, but even though I really disliked King Richard, I don't think it is really a whole lot worse than, say, Mank.

guess i agree with BradNelson here at least w/r/t to things I saw with the exception that I thought Belfast was good (though not great). finally watched Nightmare Alley this weekend and enjoyed it but it's no best picture fare.

Good to Great

Drive My Car
The Power of the Dog

Sound, Solid

Licorice Pizza
Dune
West Side Story

Meh

Nightmare Alley
Belfast
King Richard
Don't Look Up

The Hague

Coda

I give you 2008:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaires
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader

Oh, come on: I'm no fan of CODA, but King Richard is definitely worse (for reasons I've gone on about upthread).

And yeah, 2008 is the all-time worst. That 2018 list at least had BlackKklansman.

CODA is shorter though.

2008 was the slate that made us all irate.

1975

Barry Lyndon
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Nashville

Personally, there's probably more there for me than the last decade of BP nominees.

I've heard 1975 held up as the best BP lineup ever, and it is hard to disagree.

It's got two all-time top 10 movies, so it scarcely matters that I run pretty cool on the other three.

Cuckoo's Nest (the winner) might actually be my least favorite of the five, and that is about the strongest thing that I can say against that film.

Well, 2021 may not be the worst year, but I think it's going to be the most forgettable.

There are 4 or 5 decent choices. I think Drive My Car will be remembered as the rare foreign film that got a worthy nomination.