slowpoked

That Allie character is really irritating. Who is she to be on a moral high ground to give an ultimatum to Chavez about telling Folsom? I wish Chavez pushed back and said she isn’t the boss of her. I understand Folsom being upset because they got romantically involved, but who died and made Allie queen? I’m glad Max told her, politely but firmly, to fuck off because Chavez’s presence and role in the lab is none of her business.

The reunions, I love! And it doesn’t have to be from Oscar-nominated or winning movies. Reunions from well-loved, popular movies, or even cult indie films, which I think will have viewers feel more like they can relate to the show, and not feel like the Oscars are just a bunch of long, unknown movies most people didn’t watch (except Barbenheimer this year). Just look at how reunions were well-received at the Emmy’s recently! I mean, I would love to see a Paul Rudd/Alicia Silverstone pairing, or a Rachel McAdams/Ryan Gosling. Or a Julia Roberts/Richard Gere. Julia Roberts/Rupert Everett, Leonardo/Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon/Geena Davis… I could go on and on. One particular presenting group I remember that I loved in recent Oscars, though not a reunion, was when they put together Brie Larson, Sigourney Weaver and Gal Gadot together. Brie and Gal being modern day superheroes, and then paying homage to one of the original badass ones.

LOL - “increasingly desperate Oscar loser Bradley Cooper.” Ouch!

Eh, I guess I’m one of the few not enamored with this format. But I admit it would be nice to see, and be reminded, of past winners.

Thanks for indulging me @NUguy514. I agree with you on Nolan, and to a lesser extent, Scorsese, on not knowing how to write or use female characters. The last consequential female character of Nolan that I can remember was Anne Hathaway as Selena/Catwoman. Or maybe Marion Cottilard. I remember thinking Scorsese wasting Vera Farmiga in The Departed. It’s a travesty because directors of their caliber can get the best actresses they want (Blunt, Farmiga, Pugh, etc.), and yet they end up wasted. It’s funny how you describe Paul Giamatti because that’s how I see him in Billions, but I will forever love him in Sideways. I do think Davine was the weakest link in The Holdovers, but Supporting Actress feels to me the weakest category overall. I love Emily and I’m happy she finally got an Oscar nomination, but I think she had much more to do in a meatier role in the otherwise awful Pain Hustlers than in Oppenheimer. I would have loved for Rosamund Pike to sneak in there for Saltburn, but I know the film itself was quite polarizing and didn’t really gain much traction. I’m glad you mentioned Greta Lee - one of my favorite performances in one of my most favorite movies of the year (it was actually a masterclass between all 3 of them). But as much as I would like to think that Actress is still competitive (Sandra can sneak a win with the international votes factoring in), Lily has the Oscar narrative down. I liked Emma’s performance in Poor Things very much, it’s a highly unusual role in very physical performance, and I’ve always said it’s damn time we reward more comedic performances, but I can already read the Monday morning QB’ing about how after the Oscars seem to be finally moving “forward,” with MY’s win last year, it’s now two steps backward with a white woman winning over a Native American.

Curious about your thoughts and votes @NUguy514, whenever you have time. It looks like we will have a predictable Oscars, although I still feel Actress is up for grabs. I was hoping for a Paul Giamatti win last night, but Cillian has it in the bag.

So SVU got all of the sausage party criticisms, that they're now overcompensating having two women join the squad?! Will Mariska be able to take it that she won't be the lone woman on the opening credits scene?! Thanks @Ohiopirate02 for the reminder. I was irked all throughout the episode that it seemed SVU forgot the bigger scandal of Maddie being an unwilling sex doll and it became the usual SVU and FBI chase-the-traffickers episode. Hopefully this is the end of the Maddie saga. Thank God it only took five episodes. Hey, it could have been worse!!!

I think Felix was going to do just that - banish him off the compound the next day - but being a decent person that he is, he still wanted Oliver to have his party. Obviously, he didn't think anything nefarious would happen by letting him stay one more night. But yes, I can see how he could have been thrown out before the party and nothing would have changed anyway. I thought the bit about how guests don't even know who they're singing happy birthday to was funny. He could be a part of their family, but he will never be one of them.

I couldn't believe this scene. The SVU captain just undermined her entire police force in front of these criminals! If anyone had to stand down, it should be that criminal with the police laptop in his hands, not the responding officer. See how brave the punk was even though he had a gun pointed at him? Usually at that point you would expect him to drop the laptop and raise his hands, but St. Benson had to intervene and let the boy go. I understand there are systemic inequities in our law enforcement and justice system, but sexual assault isn't it. This episode sends a terrible message to sexual assault victims. And I have zero sympathy to these smash and grabs punks, regardless of whether they're only teenagers or not, because my husband was victimized by one.

I'll leave that up to the moderators. That's another good way of seeing it. But I think though as someone pointed out before, Barbie's main problem is editing. They could have cut down a lot of stuff, especially towards the end, and that will make the directing and screenplay look tighter. Like what was said before in an Oscars ceremony, if there were no editors, all movies would be five hours long. It's still a great movie, and there are a lot of pleasant factors in Barbie - the Dance the Night Away dance sequence reminds me of those grand Bollywood numbers, the production design did a great job conveying the plasticity of the Barbie world, the snark towards the Mattel executives, Ruth Handler, that "cul-de-sac" scene where Barbie feels tears for the first time and sees the elderly lady, etc. The more I think about it now, the more I'm convinced that Margot was indeed snubbed for a nomination. Her acting anchors that whole movie. In the hands of a lesser capable actress, the whole thing goes awry, even with Gerwig directing it.

I’m pretty sure a movie from 2004 no longer needs a spoiler tag. It’s only a spoiler if it hasn’t been shown in public yet (private screenings, etc.). It’s no longer a spoiler just because people haven’t seen it yet. And even if I gave the ending scene, the context of why he ended up where he ended up is much more important than the actual scene itself. Winona! Now THAT’s a snub (for the win), if there ever was one. Winona’s Jo is so iconic, I’m not really sure if it’s advisable for someone to ever even try it again. Kinda like someone trying to be Alex Forrest in movie revival (haven’t seen the TV series, so no judgment).

Haha, that's awesome! And really seems something that Paul would say. An Oscar nomination is quite an achievement indeed, but it does get tiring. I remember last year, both Cate Blanchett and Austin Butler just looked so exhausted and so over it by Oscars night. And it probably has nothing to do with Sideways, but I like to think that Paul eating at In-N-Out after his GG win is a callback to the ending of the movie, where he opened his most precious, expensive bottle of wine in a fast food restaurant, eating a burger and pouring the wine in a paper cup instead of in a fancy wine glass.

I love the nomination of America Ferrera! It’s totally out of nowhere and what makes the Oscars exciting. She was never really in any of the major punditry’s top 5, and wasn’t figuring out too much on the awards circuit. And hers was probably not one of the categories that Barbie/WB was prioritizing in their campaign - I would think most of their resources went to Margot, Greta and Ryan. So this is some serious love from her peers to America. I hope she enjoys it to the max and doesn’t feel guilty or bad about it. I’m just also glad Emily Blunt is FINALLY nominated! Such a talented actress who maybe would have had a bigger and better career if not for some missteps (and also who I think should have already gotten a nom for Devil Wears Prada, another overlooked comedic performance). Of course she doesn’t stand a lick (I’m still quite amazed how Randolph has locked the win this early, because I wasn’t that impressed), but she will now have the “Academy Award Nominee” label preceding her movie credits forever. I’m rooting for Giamatti, if only to make up for that egregious snub for Sideways. He was excellent in that movie, and I felt bad for him that all his co-stars got the love except for him. His snub for Sideways was as horrible as the snub for Jim Carrey for The Truman Show.

Re: the Barbie snubs, I’m kinda more upset and surprised at the Margot snub than the Greta snub. I mean, Greta did a fantastic job bringing this movie to life. No one was expecting good to come out of a Barbie movie and she made it into a very compelling story. However, I agree with @chrisrose that Barbie had an editing problem. I began to wander off in my thoughts during the big Ken vs. Ken fight, it dragged on too long. Then at the end where practically the entire cast was in Barbie Land, with the Mattel people, also seemed superfluous. Because of all that, it was losing momentum coming into the movie’s climax, where Ruth was pulling Barbie into the human world. But Margot?! She had the difficult task of playing Barbie as Stereotypical Barbie but not wavering into vapid territory. It’s a very fine line, and I think she very much succeeded. She executed deadpan sincerity really well. And I’ve long been a “comedic performances should be recognized in Oscars more” advocate, so I was hoping she’d get a slot alongside the other comedic performance, which may very well end up as the winner. If there was one other (female) director that should have gotten a Director nom, IMO, it should have been Celine Song. Past Lives is such a gorgeous piece of filmmaking, definitely showed more deft and heft than Greta’s did (at least comparing the two of them).

I’m sad that Past Lives seemed to lose momentum as the awards campaign went on. It was one of my favorite movies of the year, a quiet, slow-burn film that stood out among the bombast (Barbie, Oppenheimer, KOTFW, etc.). A lot of people have reduced it to a love triangle (spoiler: there is no love triangle), but it’s really a brilliant rendition of the timeless tale re: the choices we make and the roads we take (or don’t). Earlier in the season, there was even talk of John Magaro potentially competing in the supporting category. But even Greta couldn’t hack it, in admittedly a stacked pile (even though everyone knows it’s Lily vs. Emma at this point).

Gosh, I forgot that Annette still hasn't won an Oscar. For some reason I thought she'd had one in there sometime in the past. But you're right, she has no chance. It's Lily vs. Emma at this point. Or the international community can rally and completely surprise us, and give to Sandra. Out of the three major Barbie songs, Dua Lipa's is the one I enjoyed the most. I'm not too enamored with I'm Just Ken either, I thought it was too try-hard of a song, but clearly, I'm one of the few. Heck, I even enjoyed Pink more than those two that have been nominated.

I saw this one last night, and I join most of you when you say W T F of a movie. There are pleasant moments, but Emerald definitely upped the shock value with the bathtub, menstrual period and fucking the graveyard scenes. mean, I get it, Oliver is a freaking pyscho, but sometimes it went too far for me. The revelation to Felix that Oliver was a big fat liar all along was the most effective of them all re: Oliver’s insanity. I still don’t get Oliver’s motivation and maybe that’s why it’s hard to sympathize or even understand him at the end. I get the parallels to Parasite a bit, but at least there, even with the fall of the con, you sympathize with the poor father that he will never get out of the self-imposed prison for the rest of his life. There’s no triumph in Oliver’s final dance. Or maybe that’s how it was intended. My understanding of Elspeth’s eventual demise was that Oliver slowly poisoned her over time, so that it’s not too obvious that she died so suddenly right when he came back to her life. At least that’s how I get it when he said “I have loved taking care of you all this time…” That stone throw by Oliver of his dad’s death was a nice touch, I will admit. In hindsight, seeing that the stone didn’t go to the bottom of the stream and instead just went to the side, and didn’t go under water was foreboding of his dad’s non-death. The ambivalence of whether Oliver deliberately threw that stone to the side and not in the water, because he knew he was lying about his dad’s death was good writing on the part of Emerald.

All nominations are out! https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-01-23/oscars-nominations-2024-full-list No major surprises, except for maybe both Leo and Margot out. But Leo has been losing momentum the past awards shows, so maybe not a total surprise. America’s inclusion is a pleasant surprise.

I guess I spoke too soon! I didn’t see Margot not getting Actress considering the momentum of Barbie. Annette and Sandra (from Anatomy of a Fall) both sneak in. The Academy still love itself some Annette Bening. I was hoping we’d see more than one comedic performance in Actress. Sigh. Next time maybe.

Wow, America Ferrera for Barbie in Supporting! Didn’t see that one coming! Looks like the nominations will bode well for Barbie, considering they got a category no one is expecting them to (kinda like how EEAAO got Best Song for a truly horrible WTF tune).

Didn’t the Emmy’s change Big Little Lies’ category designation when it came back for Season 2? I remembered it swept all the awards in all the awards shows in the Limited Series category, with people thinking, it’s over, they finished the book and that’s that. But because it was so successful, they decided to make Season 2 on entirely new material. Because it’s no longer a “limited series,” all Season 2 nominations were for the Drama categories. It got bundled with other established, well-loved dramas, and eventually lost. IIRC, wasn’t White Lotus in a similar boat? It started as a limited series, and it’s now firmly entrenched in the drama categories as it is coming into its third season. So I don’t see why there wouldn’t be a possible re-categorization of The Bear.

This was a great Emmy’s show, despite the predictability of the winners. Loved the In Memoriam, and the cast reunion bits. I didn’t think Ally McBeal would get a prime cast reunion spot, but surprises like that make for a good show. I wish SATC and Friends would have done it too, but I remembered AJLT is currently airing so there’s not much nostalgia there yet. And Friends might still be hurting and raw, and not ready to appear as five. I loved The Bear - Forks will go down as one of the greatest TV episodes ever - but it’s not a comedy. I’m sad that a genuinely, funny comedy like Only Murders in the Building would go home empty-handed during their magnificent run because of this “glitch.” It was one of the best acting turns by both Steve and Martin, and an even bigger surprise comedic acting turn by Selene Gomez. Hey, at least when Abott Elementary was the darling of awards shows, it was an honest-to-goodness sitcom.

When I first saw Olivia last season, she struck me as someone who tried to make it LA, but couldn’t hack it because the competition is brutal there - her looks are a dime a dozen in Hollywood - so she “moved back” to her parents’ house in Charleston, SC and discovered there is a reality show based in Charleston and figured it was much easier to hack it there than be a true actress in Hollywood. Welp, here she is basically admitting that: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C12fK56S9ZR/?igsh=MXNtYzZuaXRpZm8ydg== As much as I was on her side on this Taylor/Austen debacle, I still don’t understand why she’s still especially hung up on Taylor, specifically. Whatever happened, happened. She already decided she would never be friends with her ever again. So why not leave it at that? Just don’t talk to her, or don’t talk about her. It seems she wants Taylor to admit they fucked. It seems that’s the only thing that will finally end this for Olivia. Because why else be hung up on this issue months later?!

I guess that’s where his inexperience showed. He immediately resorted to blaming others and making excuses (got the gig late). If he adlibbed some kind of self-deprecating joke (“Oppenheimer made the biggest bomb in Hollywood last year, but I’m bombing harder right now…”), chances are the audience would have rallied behind him and appreciated that he’s self-aware enough. It’s what experienced hosts would do. Back when Kimmel or Seth or Tina/Amy were up there, not all their jokes landed with the audience, but they were able to move fast or adlib. The worst ones were really the Barbie boobs and character actor jokes. To say that Oppenheimer is based on Pulitzer material and reduce Barbie to boobs is exactly what the latter movie is fighting against - serious men = good, women in pink = shallow. So that’s why it’s such a lazy, tired joke. And the character actor one, even if not meant for a specific person, I guess they’re a beloved subset in the industry. Both Helen Mirren and Selena Gomez were clearly seen hanging their heads on the joke.

It was the Globes, not the Oscars. The Oscars knew to not play off their first ever Asian winner in a major acting category. Michelle did apologize to the pianist afterwards and the latter accepted. Although I'm with you, I'd rather they not remind the audience of that last year. There's lots more other material they could have written for her.