The “Oscar movie” is dying
worldofreel.com
worldofreel.com
The industry is changing, the audience probably didn't change too much, but the Oscars don't matter any more except to some (high profile) actors and some industry insiders and it looks like they are sad about it.
They're talking about critics.
We will see with Nolan's Oppenheimer next year.
This is all over dramatized. Butters will probably be the biggest actor in the world in 10 years making "serious" dramas.
Tarantino has even talked about how this goes in cycles and we have been going through a boring time like in the late 50s.
More subtle performances are usually passed over, even though I consider them more challenging. They're often nominated, but rarely win.
Which is fine, since those kinds of films are usually not going to attract big audiences. The Academy Awards are a big industry advertisement, and they get the most bang for their buck by promoting a film that could catch the attention of an audience but hasn't yet.
I find that audiences are often puzzled by the Oscar winners. They go see them, and don't see what the fuss is about. But that does at least fund the next round of movies that are different from the summer blockbusters (which make plenty of money and need no help).
I have nonetheless helped a few actors build minor careers. Despite the fact that my main advice is "don't".
*it's okay and ideal to have fun, but I've seen too many amateur bands/art projects/films/etc veer off due to members dismissing things 'cuz it's not for real' and just turning the effort into a hang-out
There is all kinds of training you can get which can help but ultimately you have to “just do it”.
If you're looking at a regional theater (the kind where they actually pay people, albeit a pittance and most of the actors have day jobs), there will usually be a community theater in the area. If there's enough of an audience to support a regional theater, there will be others who want to do it just for fun.
Even if they don't have a place in the cast, they will often need techs of various kinds: lights, sound, props, costumes, stage management. It's a lot easier to cast somebody that you know can do things like "show up on time" and "be responsible". Actors... yeah. Even non-professionals.
(Bonus: I still use a light board with an actual floppy disk. The thing it replaced is literally a box of dimmer switches that they call Old Sparky. It's still in the closet. Theaters are fun places.)
Some areas really don't have community theaters. Mine had plenty, but I did actually start a theater of my own on shockingly little experience. Rent a performance venue, find a place to rehearse, get a script, put some notices on the relevant Facebook groups, and get ready for some Drama!
Stephen Root has countless memorable scenes if not entire characters. They're not "acting a lot" or playing highly damaged, complex characters. But they're absolutely nailing the characters in a way that I think, "no other actor could play that character."
Not that these actors don't get the credit they deserve. They're well-known and beloved. But if we're going to hand out awards, character actors like these, and countless others, are incredibly underrepresented.
Even more likely if it's a biopic, and even, even more likely if the character has a disability. For example, The Theory of Everything vs Birdman for best actor and supporting roles.
Birdman was very much an actor's movie. I went to see it with my actor friends, and had a wonderful time. Even setting aside the wonderfully long (and tricky) takes, it was an incredible exercise in performing the same scene several times in different ways. It was full of great performances, and Keaton surprised the heck out of everyone.
I notice that Iñárritu has a new film coming out on Netflix soon, Bardo, and I'm really looking forward to it.
It must have been exhausting for him as an actor, and worth a ton of respect. But it's no surprise to me that other actors found it not to be his most interesting work.
Compare Tatiana Maslany, who portrayed multiple characters over several seasons, without prosthetics. If you want a real acting stunt, watch her play some of those characters pretending to be other characters.
I hope she doesn't get slotted entirely into genre films. Not that there's anything wrong with genre films, but all of the special effects tend to obscure what can be really great, subtle work. I'd love to see her do some theater.
Tatiana, if you're reading this ... I'm directing Midsummer Night's Dream next year and you'd be a killer Titania...
If anything, it's MUCH harder to be funny than to be dramatic.
The Oscars is Hollywood's prom and Best Picture is the Prom King. It's a popularity contest.
The Oscars are not decided by critics. They're decided by peers. Directors vote for best Director. Actors vote for best Actor. Composers vote for best Music. Etc...
That's the Oscar nomination process: it's by peers.
The entire Oscar Academy (ie all previous winners in good standing) get to vote on the winners in all categories.
Which is why many in the industry consider "it's more important to just get nominated", & also why the final winners are often a popularity context. Many of the ppl voting aren't skilled in the areas being voted for. E.g. there's 4x more actors voting for technical categories, etc.
Source: my family is in the Academy
https://variety.com/feature/who-votes-on-oscars-academy-awar...
Each person belongs to one of 17 branches. Each branch nominates for its own category — e.g., editors nominate editors, actors nominate for the four acting categories. Everyone gets to nominate best picture. For the final voting of the winner, all branches vote for everything.
Not to state the obvious, but Oscars over the years have degraded into “who can wine and dine the voters the most”. There was a time (more than a decade ago) when almost all “Best Pucture” nominees were really entertaining and fun to watch. You look at the more recent lineups and almost all of them are a drag to watch. I’m not sure what else did anyone expect with West Side Story? It’s a movie adaptation of a Broadway show that has been adapted countless times. Anyone who has any interest in this genre has probably seen the story multiple times. What value add did the film have?
There's no way it can be argued to be a bad movie. I have no idea why audiences didn't go to see the movie. But I had a ball bawling my eyes out for two hours at the iMax.
(Rotten tomatoes suggests that the audience liked the movie, there are no questions about it)
And on a substantive note, the plot is fairly nonsensical.
Yes, the movie was technically well made but that's about it.
But both as a musician and a film maker I'd be warn about relying overly on such metrics alone. People (can) form connections to the media they interact with that go beyond these metrics and the functions culture itself performs for humanity is more than the money it produces and the minds it keeps busy. It is also about reflection, documentation, memories, meaning, representation and similar hard to define things.
Some of the most important pieces of music I heard or films I experienced have been commerical flops and have small (but passionate) audiences.
Humans are wildely different in their tastes and psychological needs — the media we really love is a reflection of that. Commercially successful media is media that a broad majority of people find good or at least worth consuming and there is nothing bad about that. But it is often more specific productions that really strike a deep chord withing their audience. Maybe it brings up memories from their childhood, maybe it expresses feelings they always had, but never could put their finger on, maybe it is a particularily good expression of a (power) fantasy that individual has and so on. There might be a film with horses in it that saved a teenage horse loving girl from suicide and even if 99% of the world (including me) thinks that movie sucks, it might not have sucked for that girl.
The point here is: Often the stuff that really hits deep for one personally might not woo the broad commercial audiences at all. Because what hits you might not hit all. And what hits most might also hit you, but not as hard or deep.
Obscure media has it's value.
I'm not trying to suggest film isn't an art form in itself, that often has significant differences from television, but watching trends have been favouring television over film lately, especially by hour watched.
Movies are far deeper because they try to focus on a coherent story and character development. The incentives for TV series are all wrong aside from episodic comedies and docuseries.
The trends of TV have more to do with attention span, addiction, marketing/advertising, etc. than it being a supposedly more wanted format for actual content reasons.
You could make all the same arguments about novels vs. short stories. The fact is that they're both related forms of art which take different approaches to developing narratives.
> Movies are far deeper because they try to focus on a coherent story and character development. The incentives for TV series are all wrong aside from episodic comedies and docuseries.
Here you seem to be arguing that movies, as a form, are superior (or perhaps that TV can't practically compete with film because the incentives are wrong, so that in practice, films are higher quality than TV).
I wasn't making an argument about the potential of the form though, merely about what viewers want. It should go without saying that in long-form writing you have more of an ability to develop characters, stories, and plot arcs than in short-form writing. These more fully developed characters, stories, and plot arcs are more compelling to readers/viewers.
Historically, this is why we've rarely seen short stories achieve the same level of commercial success as the successful novels, and now that we have the internet, the barriers[1] to television asserting the same dominance over videographic media have been torn down.
edit: And to be clear, I also disagree that in practice, television (as produced) is inferior to film (as produced). Of course there is plenty of filler and contrived drama in television (this has always been the case in film too), but we're in a renaissance of television shows which are incredibly tightly written and even dense, from a storytelling perspective.
[1]: namely, that you couldn't run a movie/episodes for 10+ hours on television, due to the complexity around scheduling slots, so you'd have to break it up, leading to confusion and fragmentation of understanding among the viewership
I have some others I'd personally rate up there, but which are probably more niche (not as widely appealing).
Bojack Horseman is pretty good indeed, but mostly because it's a comedy. The drama isn't very interesting.
I've heard that a character dies in every Game of Thrones episode, which means some characters will lack depth since they won't have the time required to develop it.
The types of TV series that are not episodic seem to always devolve in this way towards worse quality and inter-character romantic relationships, not to mention having cliff hangers at the end of every episode. It's a tension and resolve tactic that gets pretty annoying.
I disagree, the golden age of television was the late 90s to early 2010s, from the start of the Sopranos, to the last episode of Breaking Bad. I can’t name a series in the last 10 years that is on par with Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, or The Wire.
Streaming services killed quality television, House of Cards was the beginning of the end.
But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)
But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes
The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.
But it is a good example of the advantages of the television over film. An excellent, self-contained story presented over the course of ~9 hours.
Anyway, there are plenty of gay people and interracial families out there, so these aren't exactly bizarre.
That's true! But it seems like there's a new Hayes code where every single new show must have x, y, z "identities"[0] and they have to be represented in particular and empowering ways. Frequently also that the fact of their 'identity' has lent them a special advantageous approach to the situation at hand. Feels like all good ideas need to be edited by the HR department before they get on screen these days.
[0] this is, IMO, a really shallow way of understanding individuals' identities.
I don't mind so much when the scene is set in a city like Vancouver. But when the show is set in a remote European village or outback Aussie town, yet they still force the usual Hollywood levels of diversity, it becomes an absurd juxtaposition that is impossible to look past.
I gladly paid for every one of them.
My wife and I used to go to the movies every weekend, sometimes twice, before we had kids. After we had kids we went to theater maybe three times. I was perfectly happy to pay $30 to watch a movie in my house, where I can watch it after I put the kids to bed but don't have to hire a sitter, can pause if I need to pee, can rewind, turn on subtitles, or watch it again.
The only advantages the theaters provide is a bigger screen, louder speakers, and the psychological effect of knowing that I will be watching a movie for two hours and doing nothing else (which I can replicate at home after everyone is asleep if I want to). And participation in the cultural zeitgeist.
I used to love going to see movies in a theater, and will still do it occasionally (we watched Top Gun 2 in a theater, but we brought the kids because it's cheaper than a sitter!), but I much prefer to watch at home.
$20 to see a movie on a local 50ft IMAX screen is such an incomparable experience.
And I already have all the streaming services because kids.
Last time I went to the cinema there was an annoying gang of teenagers having fun in the row two ahead of me. I'm not angry at them; we were all teenagers once. But they were annoying. And the guy to my right thought so too, and let them know. The "movie-going experience" was the drama that this confrontation generated.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll watch it on my inferior screen, with my inferior sound system, but my massively superior solitude.
a noisy theater was just something that happened in normal life before, it happened, and then we had a little story to gripe to our friends about. but now it seems an intolerable ordeal. the same goes for restaurants vs. take out, visiting friend's/family's house vs. just staying home, etc.
i'm noticing the trend more and more. i'm not sure where it will end up. it doesn't seem as if theaters will ever hold their old place in the cultural zeitgeist again, and maybe the same goes for all other "third places" where other humans will be a bother. that seems kind of sad.
it will keep the behavioral scientists busy for a few decades though.
And frankly it was good to be back at an in person work conference. It was so much better than the virtual crap we've had the last few years.
It gets the whole situation backwards: it blames the modern audience for not wanting to take the time and money to go out to the theater unless they get a theme park-style spectacle.
In other words, the article is blaming the customer. How dare they look to their Internet-connected 4K television in their living room to get Oscar-quality storytelling? How dare they turn to long-form television story arcs to deliver deep character development rather than Oscar-winning directors who pack it all in to a two hour movie made to be watched in a sticky theater?
The article laments that things aren't right in the world when Steven Spielberg can't draw a theater crowd. Well, Steven Spielberg is an old, wealthy man now, and he is making movies for himself, not for the kind of audience that made Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park massive successes.
The Fablemans might be a good movie, but it's still at its core a piece of Steven Spielberg fan service. It's the deepest of the deep cuts. If you didn't know who Steven Spielberg was, The Fablemans is supremely skippable.
The article continues on to describe a theater environment where the vast majority of Oscar contending movies are financial failures, but to me this is the natural evolution of film as technology advances. When you look at things like 4DX, IMAX 3D, and the kind of advanced sound systems you can find in theaters, it's quite obvious that the most beneficial movie for that experience involves action-packed escapism. Yes, it is a mini-theme park, that's what people want, and that's okay.
I sort of agree. I've enjoyed many of Spielberg's movies, but I have no interest in watching a fictionalized Spielberg biopic. West Side Story was meh, I tried watching it on Disney+, and gave up after 30 minutes or so. The music was dull and old-fashioned.
But the most obvious counter-argument to this is Schindler's List, a black-and-white Spielberg movie about the Holocaust (granted it has some 'feel-good' elements, but still). That movie made nearly $100M in the domestic box office in 1993. It's hard to imagine box office success for that kind of movie today.
He submitted Schindler's List as his senior project and got an A on it.
I disagree. Nothing is stopping anyone from staying at home and acting like they're in a theater. If that's what you really value you can choose to just ignore any important dialog that you didn't catch the first time instead of rewinding to hear it again. You can be distracted by the fact that you have to pee without pausing the film to run to the bathroom. You can divert your attention while you try to be as silent as possible while eating or opening snacks so as not to annoy anyone else in your virtual theater.
I think that it's far easier to focus on a movie when I'm at home and don't have anyone else talking or kicking seats or getting up and walking between me and the screen. While I have the option to obsessively check my phone while the movie is playing at home somehow I see fewer screens blaze up like beacons when I watch movies with the family than when I'm at the theater.
I can also fully control the lighting and temperature, and all while not spending a fortune on crappy food and drinks.
The one time I actually prefer to see things in a theater are live performances or special events where part of the fun is being in a crowd. I have some good memories of special showings and long awaited releases where the whole audience was buzzing with excitement while lined up outside and cheering and clapping while the film was rolling. None of that is getting serious about and focusing on the movie though, it's more about being a part of a shared experience and that's something genuinely harder to replicate at home.
This is incorrect. The temptation to use the deleterious conveniences stops me. Going to the theater forces me into a certain posture.
It is certainly less convenient than streaming at home and does cost more but I get the same amount (at least) of entertainment in the moment and the memories are certainly more vivid. That has to be worth something?
Every time I see one of these adverts, I think that cinema deserves to die.
Back when I lived in NYC, I used to go to Nighthawk cinemas every once in a while for a date night. We'd pick a movie, shell out for some fancy cocktails and dinner, and enjoy the drinks and food while watching the movie. It was a great experience, really loved their menu. They even had a really smart ordering system, where you wrote your order down on a piece of paper and the servers picked them up silently so as not to disrupt the movie.
But most cinemas are just typical garbage big chain locations with way-too-loud, poorly balanced speakers, crappy food, crappy drinks, full of screaming children. Why would I go to all the trouble and expense for an experience that's just worse in every way?
I also prefer watching all content with subtitles, which makes me want to go to the cinema even less because so few showings have subtitles. Given that something like 70% of Gen Zers watch content with subtitles most of the time, I wonder how long it will take that to change?
This is essentially how the Alamo Drafthouse works as well, and I loved their FiDi location (opened just over a year ago). The Alamo also has a monthly membership for 30 bucks that I used for a long time. Unfortunately, both of their NYC locations are inconveniently located for me, and I eventually switched over to AMC - and the amount of screaming children is insane - why are people bringing children to a PG-13/NC-17 movie?! The Alamo staff will come and shush people talking or disruptive in any way, while my most recent AMC experience had somebody in the theater smoking/vaping pot.
I am guessing the advert you are referring to is the "Get lost in great stories" one [1] run in Vue cinemas. Other UK cinemas (Picturehouse, Odeon) mention the "big screen experience" but I think the Vue one is the only one that singles out that watching on a phone / laptop / TV can lead to a negative experience.
It's certainly one of the longer "please switch off your phones" messages, at over two minutes in length.
I used to enjoy seeing the adverts and trailers before a film at the cinema, but that was when I rarely visited. Now that I'm going much more regularly (sometimes multiple times a week), the lack of variety is very obvious: when I am forced to sit through the exact same collection of four or five adverts / trailers multiple times, it gets a bit old.
But for 90% of dramas, comedies, etc.? The 4K TV in the living room will do just fine.
There are also dates, and it's a place teenagers can hang out, and you something for your kids to do away from the house. The socializing stuff you might not get as much of at home.
I went to the theater a couple months ago because Smile looked like a good enough horror movie that I wanted to see it when it came out. I enjoy the theater experience for certain movies. Dune was a really nice theater experience. There's been a few that were great to see in IMAX 3D, like Prometheus or Tron: Legacy. Infinity War and Endgame were magical becuase of the audience reactions and just they incredible excitement around them across the globe. Granted, that was pre-pandemic, but maybe the latest Avatar recaptures some of that.
Yeah, we have large 4K HDR TVs, but they aren't as large as what's down at my local movie theater. I have a decent sound system in my house, but it's not as loud or tuned as nicely as what's in that theater. Being able to see a film on a large screen is still a unique experience that very few people can truly replicate at home. I still love that experience as it provides a much more immersive way to experience a movie. Certain movies I think require that kind of screen and sound to work properly.
Plus, depending on the movie, the energy in the room of a packed movie theater also plays into that experience. Personally, I am willing to spend that $15 for a ticket to support the kind of films I want to see as well. I feel like I'm throwing a few bucks at the director and saying, thanks for making this, I appreciate it.
(I'm the kind of person who still has a large physical media collection, buys blurays, 4K blurays, etc.)
A movie in a theater was great for early stage dating. It gets you in a dark place in neutral territory with the other person where you sort of have some privacy but still public enough that it is safe, and you have a good excuse for sitting right next to them.
There you can do things that try to inch up the intimacy but with plausible deniability, such as the classics we've all seen a billion movies and TV shows like hand touching while reaching into a shared extra large popcorn ("it was a better deal than buying two smaller sizes...yeah, that's why we have to share!") or the arms resting on the back of the seat that sort of turns into a side hug.
I don't think that would work with movies at home. It is not neutral territory. There might be parents, or worse, obnoxious siblings around limiting privacy or even actively trying to see how your date is going. For the person who is the guest it isn't as safe as a theater. There isn't an excuse to sit right next to each other so the arm trick is out. You probably each have your own bag of microwave popcorn.
The posted movie start time was 1:30. At 1:50, the movie still hadn't started. Even the previews hadn't started. They were still spamming us with TV quality advertisements for Coke-a-cola and other stuff I couldn't care less about.
20 solid minutes of ads. Under no circumstances is that acceptable. If I hadn't been with other people I would have walked out and lobbied for a refund. But as it stands, It's hard to imagine why I would go back.
That said, is "coke-a-cola" a humorous spelling (like "Micro$oft") or just a misspelling of Coca-Cola?
Despite this offer in the last two years I still have seen so many non-superhero comic book movies play to an audience of 1-2. (Me and a friend). I sometimes walk by a theater that has literally no one watching. I once watched with the lights on because why not? (there is a light switch located near the entrance)
No one wants to go to the theater for a "basic" (maybe intimate?) movie where the cinematography doesn't really matter, the sound and visual effects aren't interesting, there's no grand cinematic vibe, etc. Don't get me wrong, it might be a great movie, but why would I want to see it in theater instead of at home?
People will go to theaters for Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, not for Life Is Beautiful or The Pianist.
A more modern example: I'm really stoked to watch The Whale, but I will absolutely watch it at home. I don't see any point in going to the theater for it.
Usually the sound of action movies is too strong for me in theaters and I hate the experience ; I also never got the argument about special effects being better there. I can see them as well detailed on my computer screen, unless you're going to one of those ultra rare 8k laser room.
However, I genuinely really enjoyed seeing Michael Moore and Woody Allen movies in theater. I also loved seeing Lost in Translation on a big screen (and it's opening!, but you could argue that scene was going for the cinematic experience :p)
- poor structure. Bad setup/payoffs, useless sequences, confusing narrative without any merit behind it
- poor pacing. Too much "brain-off" action, shitty dialog, too fast/slow for the theme
- uninteresting characters, with no redeeming characteristics (e.g. a great actor or enough plot quality to compensate)
These in decreasing order of importance for them -
They will certainly critize other things (plain scenes, bad framing, technical flaws, bad lighting, etc.) but I don't think I've ever seen them give a purely negative review based only on these.
If any of those three criteria above are met, though, (and god forbid all three) they will absolutely pile on a terrible rating with complaints on how the scenes are ugly and general filmmaking is lazy.
Oh, and also, they'll point out most editing errors, seeing as they are editors too.
And insert pointless Star Trek references no matter what, of course
You are absolutely right (YAAR) about acronyms
While there are plenty of good critics and reviewers, there are even more terrible ones. But that's just the basic problem of content on the internet recapitulating itself.
E.g. Hollywood’s hot new trend: Parents who say they’re sorry
https://www.vox.com/culture/23025832/everything-everywhere-a...
Big shocker a 75 year old man can't attract kids to the theaters like he used to back in the 80s.
Note, on looking into provide specifics, this came up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait
The result is a fall movie season that has manifested the total disinterest of mature moviegoers, who are now unwilling to watch any of the well-reviewed/Oscar contenders.
The author then lists 10 Oscar movies.
They are not dying. The Oscar movie exists & will exist well into the future, even if people aren't necessarily watching it in theaters. Theaters are kind of a bad experience for a few reasons and the home viewing experience keep improving.
I don't consider it problematic to see movie theaters go out of fashion and movie makers take a deeper look at what makes their art an art.
> The result is a fall movie season that has manifested the total disinterest of mature moviegoers, who are now unwilling to watch any of the well-reviewed/Oscar contenders. The list keeps piling up: “Till” ($8.6 million total), “The Banshees of Inisherin” ($7.8 million), “TÁR” ($5.1 million), “She Said” ($4.2 million), “Triangle of Sadness” ($4 million), “Bones and All” ($3.7 million), “The Fabelmans” ($3.4 million), “Armageddon Time” ($1.8 million), “Aftersun” ($790,000).
This is the first time I have heard of any of these.
Anyway, my wife and I used to love going to movies...but life changes (COVID followed by young kids) make that a lot harder. Our date nights are much fewer and far between and we prefer to spend them doing more high quality activities together. If we want to sit in silence in close proximity eating some tasty treats staring at a screen why wouldn't we just do that in our own home after the kids are in bed for the night?
British movies, on the other hand probably can't afford too much CGI and have more realistic story-lines as well. I've watched several of those in the last few years.
But overall, movies are just no longer on my 'to-do' list.
I mean, it’s not at all difficult or dishonest to argue that the MCU was 80 years in the making. More importantly, it was made by people that genuinely cared about comic books and their characters, as opposed to caring about (and subsequently engineering for) shareholder satisfaction.
Ha ha, capeshit. I confess, I can't stand super hero movies either.
Instead I've been working through the "1001 Film to See Before You Die" and it regularly reminds me what film can be (has been).
As an aside, I also remember wondering when rap music would die out. We may both be waiting a long time.
Up until Captain Marvel (2019), the Marvel films were solidly entertaining if not great, and very respectful of the characters. There were still some Marvel films like that after that, but most of Phase IV has been a hard skip for me.
Now I'll sometimes watch anime or science fiction on streaming, but the last movie to make me really want to go to the theaters was Maverick.
Avengers Endgame had its visible flaws that I was straight up willing to forgive because the seams had just started to rip. Phase 4 just feels like Disney-owned Marvel going
“And for my next trick, uh, uhhhhh, uhhhhhhhh, here’s a twerking She-Hulk? Hello fellow kids.”
Maverick made me finally go watch Top Gun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture