NUguy514

That was a brutal, beyond devastating loss for the Lakers. The world is sometimes a wonderful place.

Well, what family doesn't have its ups and downs?

Well, Peter O'Toole was robbed blindly the prior year for The Lion in Winter. He should have blitzed to the Oscar, and Cliff Robertson's win is up there among the worst ever in that category. Also, Katharine Hepburn should've won Actress outright over Streisand.

I never thought Viola was a lead in Fences. I know she won the Lead Actress in a Play Tony for it, but the film really centered on Troy.

I am finally caught up on this thread, and, just because it was discussed right at the end, JLaw and Emma are really good friends in real life; I imagine sharing such a moment together must be really moving. Also, there are pictures of Emma hugging Michelle onstage (I think just after her speech). Another very sweet moment: as Michelle was announcing the winner, she saw the name, looked and smiled at Emma (who didn't seem to realize the meaning of that look) for about 1.5 seconds, and then announced her as the winner. People will look for anything to nitpick (not here, just in general). I was invited to a friend's small viewing party (there would've been six of us), but I decided not to go because I get so overly invested in these goddamn awards, and it's sometimes better to hide my insanity from the world. To wit, when Emma won, I cried a little. She gave my favorite performance of the year, by far, and I wanted her to win so badly. I went into it at length in my SAG Awards post. I will say that if you follow the awards season closely, her win really isn't a surprise (even though Emma herself seemed totally stunned). Killers of the Flower Moon wasn't winning anything all season long other than awards for Lily, and I sensed that the Academy would not go for it or for her. I know the SAG win made everyone switch or double down on their predictions, but there really isn't much overlap between SAG and the Academy in terms of membership. Having SAG and the Oscars overlap completely last year and the year before is actually pretty unusual, and it just seemed to me that the more international, more diverse (in terms of jobs/roles in the industry) Academy wasn't going to respond to KotFM. That's on top of Lily not really being a lead. All of the think pieces talking about her being the heart and soul of the movie – no, she's not a lead, and the story is not about her (to the movie's great detriment). Scorsese did not, in fact, recenter the story around Mollie; he recentered it around the white men committing these atrocities, so Apple's campaign strategy likely really annoyed people when they watched the film and saw that the central character was Ernest, not Mollie. Lily would've had a much better shot in Supporting Actress. In contrast, Poor Things was being embraced outside of Emma and had won a few of the design guild awards, and it was certainly a movie that was playing well internationally. The BAFTA snub for Lily and the BAFTA win for Emma were probably the two biggest tells leading up to Sunday because it foretold how the sizable international contingent of the Academy might break. Also, as has been stated, the Academy isn't really interested in narratives; some people whine about Michelle's win over Cate last year, but Michelle won because her movie was the movie everyone was crazy about and because she was phenomenal in it. She didn't win because she's Asian, although that was a very welcome side benefit; Academy voters just liked her performance more, the same way that they liked Anthony Hopkins' more than Chadwick Boseman's, Olivia Colman's more than Glenn Close's, Emma's more than Lily's, Cillian's more than Paul's, Da'Vine's more than Jodie's, etc. It might seem minor, but if you want clues for the winners of the big awards in tight races, look to the winners of the smaller awards: when Poor Things won Makeup, which it was not necessarily expected to do (most people thought Maestro would win), I started to feel surer that Emma was going to win (the Makeup wins for The Whale and The Eyes of Tammy Faye presaged wins for Brendan Fraser and Jessica Chastain the last two years). Also, KotFM won nothing before Best Actress, while Poor Things had amassed three wins. Actually, when The Boy and the Heron (which I predicted) won over the heavily predicted Spider-Man, I knew the prognosticators might be wrong about Actress because that would also mirror the more international sensibilities. (By the way, it was mentioned way upthread, but this is Miyazaki's second Oscar win after Spirited Away in 2002.) Another fun little fact about KotFM: its runtime was actually longer than that of the entire Oscars ceremony; that's another reason why it wasn't embraced: it was too damn long! By the way, @Laurie4H, Halle Berry was completely stunned by her win; she was interviewed afterward and said that she thought Sissy Spacek was going to win (as did most people), and that level of emotion is not something even Meryl Streep can fake. She was genuinely overwhelmed, and understandably so. I sincerely did not mean this to be some crazy diatribe over Best Actress, but here we are; I told you all it's better to hide my insanity!🤪 I didn't care much for Oppenheimer, but at least the Nolan fanboys can settle down. I wouldn't have voted for either, but I can be happy for both Cillian and RDJ. Da'Vine Joy Randolph was my second favorite win after Emma's – a beautiful performance, and I'm beyond thrilled for her. My third favorite win was really random, but it just made me so happy: the Sound win for The Zone of Interest. Now, I did not like that movie. At all. However, the sound work in it is phenomenal, and I'm so thrilled such subtle, powerful work won! Both screenplay wins were terrific (and Cord Jefferson is dreamy). Jimmy did a good job, the show ended blessedly early (that's the biggest shock of the night!), "I'm Just Ken" was eeeeeeeeeverything, I want that sequined pink suit (preferably with Ryan Gosling in it!), and please send naked John Cena to me posthaste – thanks much!

I would've said this is unbelievable...but it's completely believable.

The poor dear. I know how he feels, though: I walked up the stairs from my parking garage to my apartment, and there were, like, twenty steps. I nearly did myself a harm! I'm staying strong, though, and I have faith that Bron-bron will, too.💪🏻

We'll plan a victory parade for the extremely meaningful in-season tournament championship Bron-bron won! We'll have cotton candy and corn dogs and clowns and just celebrate the schadenfreude of it all!

I've yet to hear anyone say they want Gladstone to win for the quality of her performance alone (to be fair, though, almost no actor wins an Oscar for the performance alone – take all four of last year's acting winners, for example). If they do mention her performance, it's always after mentioning how historic her win would be, which feels like trying to justify it. Don't get me wrong: she's good in the role. She's just nowhere near as impressive (to me) as Emma Stone, Sandra Hüller, Greta Lee, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, or even Annette Bening, and she's not a lead in the film. I won't be super annoyed if Stone doesn't win because she does have an Oscar, but I also don't think that should be justification for not voting for her. I doubt Academy members think even 1% as much about these things as I do, though, so chances are whoever wins will win because voters just check boxes on their ballots based on their own personal caprices. I had such an amazing Oscars outcome last year (giant EEAaO fan here, and I LOOOOOVED the sweep) that the karmic Oscar scales will inevitably be balanced.

Of course, @slowpoked! Here's the more than full breakdown of my film votes/thoughts this year: OUTSTANDING CAST: American Fiction. I loved American Fiction and thought the cast was stellar all the way around – not a bad apple in the bunch. What I loved about this ensemble is that everyone brought something unique, a different energy, to the film, and the way these different approaches came together really elevated the film as a whole. I did think about voting for Barbie, which I loved and whose cast I loved, and I think there's a very decent chance this cast will win. Everyone was having a blast, but there were a few moments of real depth (mostly provided by Margot Robbie). I didn't love Will Ferrell (to be fair, though, I've never loved – or even liked – him in anything), and that was enough to tip me to American Fiction since all of that film's actors were fabulous. Oppenheimer is not an acting achievement, and that's because Christopher Nolan is most interested in films that showcase Christopher Nolan. The characters are a means to an end, and the last movie of his that I thought had multidimensional characters in it was The Dark Knight. The characters in Oppenheimer are more of the same: ciphers that exist to allow Nolan to show off the technical prowess he loves. I didn't hate the movie, but I thought it was trying to be three movies in one, which diluted everything. Also, Nolan has no interest in telling stories about women: to wit, you could lift Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh right out of this film, and no one would notice. I would actually say Josh Hartnett was my favorite, which kind of shocked me: he's become a total DILF, and he actually had this delightful enthusiasm, which absolutely no one else had. And yet again, Rami Malek gives a horrible performance in his thirty seconds of screen time; no one else stood out as being terrible, though, so I guess that's something. Similar to Nolan, Martin Scorsese is not interested in stories centered on women. Actually, he's really only interested in telling stories about violent white men, and that just really didn't work for me in Killers of the Flower Moon. The book actually centers on the investigator who uncovered the atrocities inflicted upon the Osage people, but of course Scorsese chose to center it on the monsters who committed these atrocities. I found the movie offensive in that way; it would've been so much more interesting to see this film centered on the people (and the women, especially) who were the victims of these crimes. I think because of how Scorsese framed the story, the acting suffered. Leonardo DiCaprio is just completely miscast (he's way too old), Brendan Fraser has about two minutes of screen time in a 3.5-hour film and is horribly over the top, and Robert De Niro just doesn't register and feels out of place in this film. Jesse Plemons and Lily Gladstone are good, but not amazing. The Color Purple...OK, so, the 1985 film is one of my top five favorite movies of all time. I LOOOOOOOOOVE it. So, the 2023 version was starting at a deficit with me, and it's just such a cheap imitation. It's an amalgam of the original film (a lot of dialogue was transposed verbatim from the original) and the musical (I'm not familiar with the musical, but I do know the movie excised thirteen songs from the musical) and seems hellbent on making everything feel lighter and more fantastical. The end result is that the events of the movie seem to happen without any sense of time and without any real stakes because the depth of the story has just been completely flattened. None of the actors particularly resonated with me, except for Corey Hawkins, whom I would watch in anything. No one other than Hawkins is able to give much depth to their characters because the story has been thinned out so much. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the end: the original film's ending is one of the most emotional of any film I've ever seen because the whole movie built to it so beautifully while this version's ending just kind of...happened and didn't really affect me because the rest of the movie felt like a series of vignettes without any emotional stakes. For what it's worth, had Poor Things or The Holdovers been nominated, I would've voted for either of those casts. 1. American Fiction . 2. Barbie . . . Whatever. The Color Purple I Don't Care. Oppenheimer Do You? Killers of the Flower Moon OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR: Paul Giamatti. I am on record as finding Paul Giamatti a completely ridiculous actor who often says every line. As if it's. The MOST important. Line. Any actor. Has EVER said. It's so pretentious. However, he was fucking wonderful in The Holdovers. Seriously, this was the perfect role (a fucking classics teacher whose name is also Paul) for him because it not only tapped into that incredible pretension but also forced him to engage with these two other characters in very, for lack of a better word, human ways. Paul the character really gave Paul the actor an opportunity to play these wonderful, funny, heartbreaking moments without having to try too hard; he could just be in the moment, and he really moved me so unexpectedly. I loved him. Jeffrey Wright is the only other nominee I loved. One of my favorite qualities about Wright is how brilliant he is; his intelligence comes through in all of his characters, but Monk's whole thing is that he fancies himself to be so much smarter than everyone, which really allows Wright to play with so many facets. He has a hard time connecting with anyone because he has this veneer of superiority that is really a defense mechanism, and even when he does connect, he can be so cruel. His incredulity (bordering on rage) throughout the film when he has to play into the false narrative he's created is also really funny. He's really wonderful. I don't really have much to say about the other three here. Cillian Murphy sort of stares blankly into space for three hours; again, that's more because Nolan isn't interested in Oppenheimer as a fully dimensional character, so it's not really Murphy's fault. Still, he has nothing to work with. I read this quote about Colman Domingo's performance in Rustin: Domingo gives a Tony-worthy performance. Unfortunately, he gives it in a film. Throughout Rustin, I kept wondering why Domingo kept acting to the third balcony. When I saw that George C. Wolfe directed the film, it all made sense: that man absolutely CANNOT direct for the medium of film. He is always directing his actors as if they're on stage, it's terrible, and Domingo suffered because of it. Bradley Cooper had exactly one authentic moment in Maestro: after Bernstein lies to his daughter about his cheating (with men), Cooper has this moment where he lets the lie affect him. And that's it. Everything else is completely inauthentic and hammy, and I would say that one authentic moment is serendipitous because it's something I think Cooper himself has done. A lot. In general, though, he almost always plays at a character, rather than just reacting in the moment. Also, fuck him for this awful vanity project that was such an obvious ploy for Oscar. 1. Paul Giamatti 2. Jeffrey Wright . . . 3. Cillian Murphy . . . I would like to thank the American Theatre Wing. Colman Domingo . . . GIVE ME OSCARS. Bradley Cooper OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS: Emma Stone. There was no decision to be made here. Poor Things is my favorite movie of the year. It's hilarious and moving and gorgeous and imaginative and batshit crazy in the way I love, and the success of the film rests largely on Stone's shoulders. When she won her Oscar for La La Land, Stone said she was going to take her Oscar as a symbol to keep growing and learning, and I love that those were not idle words. She has challenged herself as an artist since that win, and she's found an incredibly symbiotic artistic partnership with Yorgos Lanthimos. Bella is just an incredible character for an actor to play, but she could go horribly wrong with anything other than the perfect calibration of wonder, self-confidence, abandon, sense of play, and willingness to try anything. Stone didn't just walk that line perfectly: she danced it. It's an astonishing performance, and it is such a pleasure to watch her embrace the challenges that are helping her grow so much as an artist. She's truly the preeminent actor of her generation. Margot Robbie really has not gotten enough credit for her work in Barbie. She has a wonderful sense of comedy and a great touch, and this is one role for which her otherworldly beauty is an asset. However, she's SO much more than a gorgeous face. She brings real depth and poignancy to Barbie, and she brought tears to my eyes a few times during the movie. Ryan Gosling has the flashier role, but I think Robbie gives the deeper, more interesting and nuanced performance. It's just a shame she hasn't received the recognition for it, although I sort of think she might win this award. Annette Bening's performance in Nyad is very good. The real Diana Nyad is, to be euphemistic, a bit of a pill, and I really appreciated that Bening fully embraced how unlikable Nyad is. The physical aspect of her performance is also impressive, but I think the success of her performance hinged on her commitment to Nyad's unlikable traits because it explained her laser focus and the reason why these other characters were willing to go on this journey with her. It's a fairly typical, middling movie (that elides the controversy of Nyad's achievement), but I enjoyed Bening in it. Lily Gladstone is good in Killers of the Flower Moon given what little she has to work with. Her character (a real woman) really exists in this film to be the avatar of the great suffering of the Osage people, and she doesn't have any dimension beyond that. That's due, as I said above, to Scorsese's inability to tell or his disinterest in telling stories about women. There is one brief exchange between Mollie and her mother in which Mollie references how her wild and reckless sister is their mother's favorite, and I wanted to know so much more about that, about these women and their relationships; THAT movie could've been incredible, but that's not the movie we got. Instead, Gladstone gets to play suffering for almost the length of the film and to spend half of it sick in bed. Also, she's a supporting character in this film. I'd say that's also an issue for Carey Mulligan in Maestro. Cooper makes the completely obnoxious move of giving Mulligan top billing, but make no mistake: this is Cooper's movie. Mulligan is such a talented actor, but she has to say some truly awful lines of dialogue that no one could make work and to tie a character whose motivations are all over the place together. I actually thought she was kind of bad in this, but that's not her fault as much as it's just how bad the movie is and Mulligan kind of goes down with the ship. I'd have replaced Mulligan and probably Gladstone with Sandra Hüller and Greta Lee in a heartbeat, and I'd rank Natalie Portman higher, too. In a galaxy far, far above. Emma Stone . . . 2. Margot Robbie . . . 3. Annette Bening . Suffering. Lily Gladstone . . . I'm sorry your gay husband is gay. Carey Mulligan OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR: Willem Dafoe. I was really torn between Dafoe and Sterling K. Brown, but I ultimately went with Dafoe for a few reasons. His character so easily could've been reduced to a one-note monster or caricature: Dr. Frankenstein. However, he really does a wonderful job of giving Godwin this soft, sweet, paternal heart. He has a moral code, and he really does want his creation to learn and to grow and to be safe and taken care of. He also grounded some of the more surreal aspects of the film and his character with these very human qualities. What tipped me toward Dafoe were that I could vote for Brown as part of the ensemble of his film and that Dafoe has never won a SAG Award before while Brown has four. Brown, though, was an utter delight in his film. He's this wonderful agent of chaos and brings this vital energy to the film at the precise points the story needs it. I also loved how Brown played Clifford as a total mess who didn't give a shit that he was a total mess. Also, not for nothing, in this movie, he is basically the hottest man I've ever seen, and when he talked about all the twinks he's fucking to make up for coming out late in life, I was like: Ryan Gosling is great in Barbie. He is completely in on the joke and leans into the ridiculousness of Ken at the beginning of the film, which makes his total embrace of the patriarchy later on really funny and incisive. Robert Downey Jr., like the rest of the actors in Oppenheimer isn't given much of a character to play. He is a wonderfully charismatic, improvisational actor, but I thought his film's complete lack of humor and its overly self-serious tone really boxed him in. It gave him no space to do what he does so well, and so his performance as a one-note villain wasn't anything more than that; I don't even remember anything about his performance, and I watched the movie three weeks ago. He's had all of these awards in the bag since his casting in the film was announced, but this specific performance has been, in my opinion, wildly overpraised and doesn't deserve them. Robert De Niro is also just playing a one-note villain in Killers of the Flower Moon: he pretends to be a friend and an advocate of the Osage, but he's really trying to kill and steal everything he can from them! I suppose that could've been interesting to watch, but it's not in this movie because De Niro's performance is just so listless. I would've nominated Mark Ruffalo (who'd have been my winner) and Dominic Sessa over Downey and De Niro; Charles Melton, whose performance I also thought was overpraised, would've been more deserving than these two as well. 1. Willem Dafoe DILF. Sterling K. Brown . I can feel the Kenergy. Ryan Gosling . . . You won't be the worst winner ever. Robert Downey Jr. You were at least better than Leo, I guess. Robert De Niro OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Da'Vine Joy Randolph. Randolph's work in The Holdovers is beautiful. It's not flashy, but it feels very real. She never loses this vague whisper of grief Mary always carries, nor does she dwell on it and let it be the only thing about Mary. She has this wonderful rapport with both Giamatti and Sessa, and she is funny and heartbreaking in ways that she always, always grounds in something human and real. I feel like I've met Mary, and that's because Randolph makes such subtle, specific choices at every turn. Jodie Foster is wonderful in Nyad. Like Randolph, Foster grounds Bonnie with choices that feel effortless and real. She also feels like someone I've met. I went with Randolph because I think there's more to her performance than there is to Foster's (which is really because Randolph's script gives her so much more to work with), but Foster is so wonderful. It's awesome to see her back and to remember why she already has two Oscars. Penélope Cruz really tries in Ferrari. She really does. There is nothing to her character other than spurned wife, and she's acting opposite a completely miscast Adam Driver; because she's such a good actor, she does find a few really interesting moments, but her spot is just a placeholder because this category is really pretty weak aside from the top two. Danielle Brooks really, really, really suffers from the comparison to Oprah as the OG Sofia. Oprah was able to run the gamut because that version of this story gave her and the other actors space to deepen their characters. Brooks' version of this story does not. Everything seemingly happens so quickly that there is no sense of how the weight of time is its own form of oppression and torture. Danielle Brooks, like the rest of the actors, is also directed to be big and broad in a way that sacrifices emotion. I was actually really surprised by how little I was moved by her performance because Sofia's plight just seemed kind of incidental and short-lived and Brooks wasn't able to overcome that with the more theatrical performance she gave (or was directed to give). I honestly would not notice if I watched Oppenheimer a second time and Emily Blunt were cut out of it altogether. Her performance does not register in the slightest bit because, as I said, Nolan doesn't care about female characters, and Kitty does not matter in the slightest to bit to the story. Blunt is a good actor, but she has absolutely nothing to do here. This is the very definition of a coattail nomination. 1. Da'Vine Joy Randolph 2. Jodie Foster . . . 3. Penélope Cruz . Oprah was robbed. Danielle Brooks Wait, she was in Oppenheimer? Emily Blunt

Yes, they were. #fuckJoeMontana

I watched. Of the film winners, Randolph is the only one I voted for; her speech was also my favorite. I didn't like Oppenheimer much, so all of those wins were annoying (but totally expected). I will be really bummed if Lily Gladstone wins the Oscar (I wouldn't have even nominated her or anyone from that abominable film), but she does at least give good speeches; Emma Stone was robbed, but whatever.

The first one I remember was Super Bowl XXI, and the only ones I've missed since were SB XLIII (I had just moved to Sydney for four months and had no idea when it was on or any desire to watch Rapistberger win another ring), SB 50 (I was in Venice for Carnevale and didn't care because I wanted both teams to lose and because, again, I was in Venice for Carnevale – way more exciting!), and yesterday.

I did it. I actually did what I resolved to do: not watch any of this horrid game in real time. I wanted both teams to lose. However, since there can only be one loser, I'd rather it were San Francisco because fuck them, fuck them for beating the Bengals in the Super Bowl twice when I was three and ten (and fuck Nick Bosa, especially) and because who cares if Mahomes and Co. have three rings instead of two. It seems like it was a really devastating loss for the 49ers, so that's nice.

I am a test prep tutor, and the day the crash happened, I was supposed to have a math lesson for the SAT with this one student, a high school junior. After the crash, his mom texted me to say that he couldn't meet because he was too upset by Kobe's death. That's basically how the entire city reacted, and as someone who has never been a fan of sexual assaulters (shocking, I know), I found that reaction and the subsequent hagiography of him really, realllllllly unseemly.

Cute story, Ben. You know what else about José Altuve? He's a cheater.

Finally!!

While I'm thrilled for Teams USA and Japan finally to have the gold and silver medals they should always have had, it is so mindbogglingly on brand that the ISU just subtracted Valieva's team points, allowing Russia to hang on for bronze and denying Team Canada their rightful bronze. Some of this might fall on Skate Canada, though, which hadn't really done a single thing in all of this to ensure justice was served, and there's a part of me that thinks Skate Canada was just hoping to hide behind the US and let the USFS be the heavy and ruffle all the feathers. They'd get the reward without any blowback from judges or the ISU or whatever, so I'm glad they're stepping up and doing something because just subtracting Valieva's points from Russia's total without adjusting everyone else's score is bullshit and so perfectly ISU in the way they always kowtow to Russia.

Well, that NFC game went about as painfully as it possibly could, and the one time I kind of, sort of wouldn't completely despise a Ravens win, they shit the bed. We just had this Super Bowl four years ago, and no one asked for a redo. I can't believe it, but I don't think I will watch. I have hated the 49ers almost my entire life, and the thought of that walking bag of racist and homophobic dicks Nick Bosa getting a ring makes me want to explode. And the Chiefs are...the goddamn Chiefs. Neither outcome will please me, and I don't know what I did to deserve this.

Gross. That doesn't surprise me in the least. Regardless of any Taylor Swift effect, football is, by far, the most popular sport in the country. I live in LA, which is a baseball and basketball city, but people here really only care about the Dodgers (yay!) and the Lakers (boo!); if those two teams aren't playing, no one's watching. Even with that, everyone here watches football, no matter what teams are playing.

Yes! Why is this? I don't like him either, and I don't even know why... Maybe I'm the problem...😑

This will never happen, BUT how amazing would it be if the Super Bowl was between the Texans (two seasons after they dumped that piece of shit rapist) and the Packers (one season after they FINALLY unburdened themselves of that bag of dicks nutcase)???? Seeing the Packers annihilate the Cowboys must be devastating for some. But not for me.

There something so...karmically right about the Texans destroying the Browns. Thank you, Texans, for denying your former albatross, Deshaun Watson, the chance to receive a SB ring. At least this year. How did I not know until about twenty minutes ago that the coldest NFL game ever played when wind chill is factored in was in Cincinnati? That...isn't what I would've expected. The Freezer Bowl in 1982 saw the temperature reach -59ºF. Haaaaaaard pass on that, although I was three at the time and still lived in Cincinnati, so I guess I did experience that exact day's wintry delights. I have no memory of it and am not inclined to search the recesses of my brain for it. Aaaaaaanyway, all that's to say: thank you, Texans, and go Dolphins!