Oscar nominations

[Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain]

I’ve seen Oppenheimer, Barbie and The Holdovers.

My call is Cillian Murphy best actor and Oppenheimer best film/screenplay.

Da’vine Joy Randolph is strongly being tipped for best supporting actress in The Holdovers and I do hope she gets it. The Holdovers is an incredible film.

Anyone else have any bets on who they think will win?

Lily Gladstone is massively overrated, I thought she was just OK.
Looking forward to watching ZOI tomorrow night.

Looking forward to Past Lives which will be on Netflix from tomorrow.

Brilliant

I can't wait to see Past Lives again, and I hope everybody watching it enjoys it too 😊

I can cry more on my sofa too, although the setting didn't stop me when I first saw it last summer at Cineworld 🤣

Watched it last night and loved it.

are we all watching the Oscars together? I think I must have seen 80percent of nominations now.

I haven't actually checked where it's on; I used to have to take out a Now subscription to watch it live but I'm sure it was on normal TV last year (possibly Sky Arts on Freeview?)

I'll be watching whichever it is 😀

It’s on ITV:

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/how-to-watch-oscars-in-uk-itv-jonathan-ross-b1132952.html#:~:text=And%2C%20excitingly%2C%20this%20year%20in,Awards%20on%20the%20British%20broadcaster.

I watched Past Lives this weekend on Netflix. To be honest, it did nothing for me. I think I'm getting cynical in my old age.

@BrandyandGinger - you and my 17 yo Dd 😂

Think the Best Actor award is Cillian’s to lose now, isn’t it? He’s won at BAFTA and the SAG group last night. I was expecting Lily Gladstone to lose the SAG award to Emma Stone, but she won, and I think her speech has pushed her over the edge now. Oscar voting is still ongoing.

Yes, it does look that way. Who knows though? There are so many good films this year, and good performances too. A real bumper crop, it's exciting!

I did laugh at Oppenheimer getting the editing bafta though - fucking thing was half a day long. (I know, I know, that's not what editing is about.)

I'll definitely be watching. Just got Killers Of The Flower Moon to go - thankfully in an Everyman, so I will have easy access to snacks and toilet haha.

@Maggiethecat I'm not sure it's possible for a woman my age to be quite as cynical as a 17 year old. 🤔
I think Cillian has to win. It was a good year for movies. I still want to see American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. And I think All of Us Strangers and Priscilla could easily have gotten a few nominations.

Just saw ZOI tonight and wow just...wow. Incredible film, and if it doesn't win for Sound at the very least.. I haven't seen many of the others yet, but I did see Oppenheimer in the summer and really didn't enjoy it as much as I was expecting. It certainly has strong chances in acting categories with some exceptional performances but director, screenplay, or picture I could see it getting pipped at the post by a more agile film (shall we say).

Will be checking in on this thread as I finish off the others. Been trying to stay away from KOTFM as I was reading the book, but I may just have to cave. So many great films and then Dune part 2 drops on 1 March.

I found a few of them quite forgettable.

American Fiction, nice enough, didn't like the brother, glad the girlfriend didn't put up with shit, ending was messy though. It's not designed for A uk audience- we have such a different perspective on race.

Anatomy of a fall. (Too long)
Actually almost all the films are too long.
Good acting by SH.
Interesting to see the French legal system.
Good to see a nuanced wife/mother character and realistic domestic situation in their arguments.
But I wasn't really invested in the outcome etc.

Zone of Interest
I was disappointed after all the love on here.
I was confused by the black & white/ negatives bits.
The end was unsatisfying.
Some harrowing bits but dealt with well.

Past Lives
I've almost completely forgotten it after only a few days.
A writer writing about being a writer. So dull. No originality. I wasn't rooting for any of them. Didn't care about the story.

The holdovers
I don't really get all the love. It's like dead poets society poor cousin. PG should get best actor.
I wish the whole crowd had stayed. I think I'd have enjoyed it more.
Definitely didn't pass the Bechdel test and I have low tolerance for films that are all men with one token woman. Can't believe she's won an award. I saw no particular acting skill?
But it was nice to have a non violent film that I could watch with my teens.

Obv Barbie is the film of the year. RG grated on me but it's the only truly memorable film and the only one I'll watch again.

Oppenheimer is good as a bio and I liked learning the history. Liked Tom Conti as Einstein!
CM will get Best Actor.
Don't agree with RDJ getting supporting or Emily Blunt, she had no impact in the film at all.

Expect it to get best film.

Poor things should get best actress, best costume, make up, cinematography and art direction.

It was beautiful but I could never watch it again.

“Not designed”? 🤔

American Fiction had some good laugh out loud bits - I'm still smiling at the "motherfucker" to the publisher - and well rounded characters. Agree that it's outside a UK audience's experience of race - but lots of things are outside of a UK audience's experience. Still interesting though, rich and very well acted.

Re The Holdovers, I thought her performance was incredible - perfectly captured how the character would have had to be, all low key interaction with a lot unsaid, and that scene at the party was intensely powerful as a result. She was masterfully controlled in terms of emotion and resonance.

Agree with you that I'd watch Barbie again, but I'd also watch The Holdovers and American Fiction again too.

Past Lives I could happily watch repeatedly. It's not about being a writer imo! Possibly struck more of a chord with me because I also left my home country (and best friend) as a young child.

Re The Holdovers, I thought her performance was incredible - perfectly captured how the character would have had to be, all low key interaction with a lot unsaid, and that scene at the party was intensely powerful as a result. She was masterfully controlled in terms of emotion and resonance.

I agree. She deserves all the accolades she has received for this film.

I’m interested in why you think the portrayal of race in AF is different from the UK? We don’t have the extreme form of aggression by the police against black men here but the racial biases, subtle and not so subtle exist here.

Black authors in the UK seem to experience racial bias in publishing here.

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/american-fiction-jeffrey-wright-black-british-authors-candice-brathwaite-carty-williams-b1137202.html

There are similarities and differences.

I thought American Fiction was more nuanced than I expected. For a start the male aut

Posted before I'd finished typing.

American Fiction was more nuanced than I expected. The author criticises other black writers for gaining success by leaning into tropes of black trauma, yet his own life is full of trauma, not least the trauma of being typecast and denied success as a black author until he writes the type of novel that is deemed "black". I suppose that it also refocuses "black trauma" - his sister dies young of a heart attack, his mother has dementia, his brother is an up to now closeted gay and seems to have a problem with alcohol, his father was a difficult man who had affairs outside his marriage., So, the trauma isn't based on slavery but is focused on the present, although I'm not sure that you can divorce that from the historical trauma that has led to the social deprivation of blacks, which has in turn led to people like the author being a minority within a minority. There is also for me a question about why he feels that writing a book based on the greek myths (the classics are a traditional Western marker of cultural value) is more important than writing a book rooted in the "black experience" or which is inspired by African traditions. So, I feel that the ideas in this film are super complex and that we are not necessarily being asked to agree with the author's ideas.

In reality there are not many books published that focus on working class black people. Certainly not in the UK. I can't name that many and most of you probably couldn't either. So, this idea that certain black authors are super successful because they pander to publishing requirements doesn't really hold sway here in the UK. I am not in the publishing industry, but I would imagine that it is difficult for black authors to achieve publication whatever they write (it's difficult for white authors too, but perhaps in a different way)

Bernadine Evaristo was the first black woman to win the Booker prize (jointly with Margaret Atwood, which means there is still an opening for someone to be the first black person to win the prize outright).

It's all very interesting, but not so clear cut. I haven't read the novel on which AF is based, but the film was interesting enough for me to want to do so.

The beauty of AF for me was that it told the story of love and family struggles that are universal and not restricted to race. Race was merely incidental to the protagonist’s difficulty in getting published. So the family trauma wasn’t black trauma, it was just trauma seen through a lens which we’re not accustomed to peering through.

Would anyone question a western author writing about eastern mythology or even wonder why they they considered it more important than their own cultural history?

Why must a black author be confined to writing about their cultural heritage or be seen as giving more importance to another culture just because they choose to write about that? Percival Everett talks about how he came to write the book and the reductive perceptions that he encountered in the publishing world. This is fact not fiction.

It will be difficult to appreciate that black people do not all like the same things, that they have varied interests, are not only interested in issues of their race etc etc if screen/book portrayals are largely two dimensional.

I saw interviews with Cord Jefferson, the director of AF and he spoke of the verbal enthusiasm of studio execs for the project but that no one would put their money where their mouth was. In the end it was Alana Mayo, black woman heading Orion studios who gave the green light. This is why it’s important to have black people in positions of influence and who are invested in telling full stories rather than the cardboard cut out characters.

I think a more critical question in the UK is probably how many black authors didn’t get published, particularly post George Floyd, because they didn’t want to write about race while there was an uptick in publications for those who did. Nothing wrong with writing about race if that’s what you want but it is a problem if the gate keepers decide that that’s the genre that they’re allowing entry.

Hey can I join? I'm trying to get through all of the nominations too before the Oscars (which are on my birthday and I fully intend to watch with a large glass of wine as soon as the kids are in bed). So far I've seen Barbenheimer, The Holdovers, American Fiction, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest. Looking forward to watching Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives and KOTFM (but more for Lily Gladstone's performance rather than the film itself, going by the comments).

Of the ones I've seen I think The Zone of Interest is absolutely outstanding! I do think The Holdovers and Poor Things are both brilliant as well. I can't believe that Sandra Huller didn't get nominated but America Ferrerer did foe best supporting female! AF was fine but nothing special whereas SH's performance was masterfully chilling. I'm torn between Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti for lead actor - they were both brilliant. Mark Ruffalo should have got a nomination for best supporting actor and I'm undecided on best female lead as I haven't seen Lily in KOTFM yet.

Saw Holdovers today and really enjoyed it. It was beautifully filmed and I felt transported back to that period in time.
The acting was superb. I’ve now seen all the films for best actor and Paul Giamatti is definitely my pick!