In every Oscar-bait "independent" film ever

1) Intensely dramatic and/or noisy and/or violent scene quick cuts to characters eating around a table in silence

2) rocky, desolate shores

2a) accompanied by a stark soundtrack of a lone cello playing harmonically ambiguous melodies

3) Actor known exclusively for goofball comedy turns in "surprise of the year" performance by just acting normally for once

4) extremely quiet "unglamorously realistic" sex scene

5) superfluous American minor characters given a more prominent role to make "foreign" story more palatable to US audiences

6) Terrible endings

7) Lonely guy just thinking baout things

8) 20 minutes without anyone speaking

9) hardcore anal

10) tumblrable content

11. wry voiceover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Efygv-ZMfs

12) adult-son faceoff with elderly dad (Nolte, Duvall).

12. Soundtrack of honest, meaningful soft indie

14) chapters

lol i missed the "independent" part

15) schlubby dude having sex with much hotter actress

16) Mark Ruffalo

sorry xpost

17) the actors are humbly grateful to have had the opportunity to tell this important story.

18) One of the actors will be cast in an X-Men movie.

19)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4uv0eD5Ufg

20) special needs child

21) red carpet gaucheness from its rumpled faux-bemused auteurs if the academy takes the bait.

22) Max Richter

23) Lead actor grows facial hair for added "authenticity/genuineness".

24) shitty british theatre director tries to do an art film

25) It's about "The Way We Live Now".

26) i can't tell if this thing is supposed to be set in 1988 or 2009 or what from the way these people are dressed or from the decor or the soundtrack there's too many references to other things oh wait there's an ipod.

27) (related to #3) Performer most famous for work on sitcoms gets a chance to "Stretch Out".

28) Unintentionally condescending view of "working people"

29)drifting-through-life protagonist finds kindred soul who is drifting in more or less the same direction; you don't really get any resolution to any of your real problems but at least you're not completely alone so that's something.

30) "You only have to be who you are."

(this time from Albert Nobbs)

31) Lead actress grows facial hair for added "authenticity/genuineness".

32) train

33) rain

34) One character has an early to mid 60s American car (but not a cool one like Mustang, etc) in pretty good condition.

35) A proper composed score is replaced with a cringe-inducing selection of the director's favourite indie rock tunes and/or fluffy 1960s pop songs.

36) main character is a writer

37) camera operator drank too much coffee

38) endless scenes around dinner tables/diners

39) bookstores

40) Tilda Swinton and/or Paul Giamatti

41) A philosophical-lite conversation in a car, at night

42) Cheap desert locations

43) Social commentary as weak as dilute tea, generally about the failure of institutions

44) climactic scene with one central character erupting in angry, tearful breakdown, with the next scene jumping forward to the next day without showing you how the other characters react in that moment

45) wise beyond their years pre-adolescent who offers the directionles main character surprisingly prescient advice on love and life

46) dolly shot of an empty hallway

47) soundtrack by new "indie" artist

xpost How are we defining independent here? Because, yes, Winslet won the Oscar for a Holocaust-linked indie, like, two years ago or something, for "The Reader."

the Weinsteins are indie?

maybe I just dunno what an independent film is

99. reaction shots that just

linger

for a long

time

For sure, long, static takes with no dialogue. Also, whole sequences with no camera movement. And no close ups.

Yeah I don't really think of them as quite fitting the category. But I put independent in scare quotes because I was going more for films that are marketed as small, against-the-grain films than films that actually are made independently of hollywood (a fuzzy concept anyway).

Yeah, if you're talking Oscar bait indie and you're not talking imprints like Miramax or Fox Searchlight, I guess I have no idea what we're talking about. When was the last truly indie pic, with no major distribution, to even get a foot in the Oscar door?

Let alone dangle itself as bait?

100. Self-explotation of aging actor or actress offering themselves up as ruins of their former selves.

101. Lens flare

102) A young actress/actor whose performance gets them billed "The Next Big Thing", thus leading to a career of shitty romcoms and action films.

103) former model and/or mousketeer wears thrift shop clothes and broods, makes transition from 'sex symbol' to 'sex symbol for stereogum readers'

"go count your dick!"

lol

smash cut to black and end titles after minute-long static shot of leaves rustling in wind

104. woman cries in middle of a long take so you know the tears are real
105. royals
106. tinting

107. An old pickup truck

108. bakery

109.hipster/s

110) Someone eats pie.

111. influence/stealing ideas from classic directors/films

Um, isn't that all films ever?

"A 2 min tracking shot? What a hack!"

78. Open road = freedom

― Cheap desert locations (Eazy), Tuesday, 3 January 2012 17:49 (Yesterday) Permalink

79. Airport dropoff zone = goodbye

― Cheap desert locations (Eazy),

eazy not sure if you've been on the open road or at an airport drop-off zone but this is like saying drinking water = thirsty

possibly culminating with someone accidentally inhaling or ingesting the ashes

I think Mel Brooks used this in Life Stinks.

Life Stinks had the "throwing the ashes to the wind, wind blowing it back to your face" gag, which the Coen brothers later on nicked for Big Lebowski.

i love how much tuomas loves the lesser oeuvre of mel brooks

>100. Self-explotation of aging actor or actress offering themselves up as ruins of their former selves.

I don't think Buffalo '66 or The Brown Bunny could be regarded as Oscar-bait, but Gallo managed a devastating one-two from Jan- Michael Vincent and Cheryl Tiegs respectively in this regard.

Tracer, have you actually seen Life Stinks? IMO it's not "lesser", but possibly his finest movie, just slept on.

haha this is what i mean!! i love how you fight for these movies

i have seen it, but not in a long time (and i don't remember anything about it)

113) A spot on Armond's "Better Than" opposite some semi-related studio action or comedy.

Sundance Trailer: ‘I Am Not A Hipster’
By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday January 18, 2012 @ 6:20pm PST
Tags: Destin Daniel Cretton, Dominic Bogart, I Am Not A Hipster
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, I Am Not A Hipster is a portrait of a misanthropic young singer-songwriter forced to take a hard look at himself when his father and three sisters show up unannounced and ready to spread his mother’s ashes. Dominic Bogart stars. The movie premieres Friday in Sundance’s Next sidebar program dedicated to promising filmmakers.

114. Solsbury Hill

115. Crappily animated opening/end titles.

116. maya rudolph

Sundance Trailer: ‘I Am Not A Hipster’
By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday January 18, 2012 @ 6:20pm PST
Tags: Destin Daniel Cretton, Dominic Bogart, I Am Not A Hipster
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, I Am Not A Hipster is a portrait of a misanthropic young singer-songwriter forced to take a hard look at himself when his father and three sisters show up unannounced and ready to spread his mother’s ashes. Dominic Bogart stars. The movie premieres Friday in Sundance’s Next sidebar program dedicated to promising filmmakers.

― do you not like slouching? (Eazy), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 10:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's that old Chekhov line about how if there's an urn on the stage in the first act...

117) Actress "stretches out" by playing scene in a camisole.

118. Businessman has second thoughts about pillaging a small town's natural resources.

119. American suburbia is not a land of sunshine, lollipops, rainbows: everything is not wonderful when we're together doop doop de doop.'

giving the mic to David Bordwell:

More surprisingly, the daring indie film often trades on the same clichés that haunt program pictures and prestige items. Sunny small towns harbor nasty secrets, manicured suburbs conceal rot, sex is degrading and only an excuse for power plays, rural folk are racist peckerwoods, corporations grind your soul, siblings vie for parental approval, serving in the military makes you a hairtrigger bully, high school is hell, and so is grade school.

120. pregnant woman gives birth at the end

121. directed by P T Anderson

giving the mic to David Bordwell:

More surprisingly, the daring indie film often trades on the same clichés that haunt program pictures and prestige items. Sunny small towns harbor nasty secrets, manicured suburbs conceal rot, sex is degrading and only an excuse for power plays, rural folk are racist peckerwoods, corporations grind your soul, siblings vie for parental approval, serving in the military makes you a hairtrigger bully, high school is hell, and so is grade school.

― Cunga, Wednesday, December 26, 2012 3:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This pretty much sums up the frustration I felt after seeing Silver Linings Playbook (and all of the preceeding trailers, one of which was clearly the inspiration for your #119)

122. A plucky lower-class woman fights her way into a workplace (or other milieu) where she and "her type" are unwelcome.

123. Incest

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120105152330/arresteddevelopment/images/b/b4/Les_Cousins_Dangereaux_-_full.jpg

124. Somebody jerking it.

125. A tracking shot following the protagonist into a crowded and uptight family dining room. You see the character's back in the foreground and everyone else's uptight reaction to his appearance in the background.

126. Wood panelling
127. Unusual pets

128. Some Harvey Weinstein type character in the background, bullying Guardian film critics into giving positive reviews.

129. (In films set in contemporary times) Writers exclusively use typewriters.
[Can you even buy typewriter ribbons these days?]

130.
Family shot through front windshield:

http://www.winonlyriders.net/thelostforum/cinema/LittleMissSunshine1.jpg

131.
Greasy spoon.

http://www.winonlyriders.net/thelostforum/cinema/LittleMissSunshine2.jpg

132.
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/posterx/unknown2.jpg

133 someone stares at him or herself in the bathroom mirror. the perspective of the shot may be through the mirror itself or from behind the character, who then turns on the sink, cups water into hands and splashes it into face.

134. Super hot actor/actress wearing oversized thick rimmed glasses.