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Movies & TV / Khushrenada's Annual Oscar Thread. 2024 Edition.
« on: March 10, 2024, 06:32:26 AM »
Oh no! It's that time again! Unlike last year's mad dash, I wanted to make sure to get this done a bit earlier instead of the constant last moment wild typing to get my predictions in before showtime. Despite having it on my to-do list all week, here I am still typing it the day of. And with Daylight Saving Time kicking in, time just keeps on further slipping ahead. Oh well, anytime ahead of the event is still a win so early Sunday morning can work out just fine.
Since I don't have to throw up my predictions and skedaddle, I can take a moment to talk about the Oscars, this year's nominees and my movie history. The Oscars have now passed the 600 mark when it comes to movies nominated for Best Picture. With this year's 10 nominees, the total number of films that have been nominated for Best Picture in its 96 year history is 601 or 604. Why two numbers? It depends how you want to count movies in the first Academy Awards ceremony. In the first Oscars event, three movies were nominated for the category Outstanding Picture and three movies were nominated for a category called Best Unique and Artistic Picture. Yet, that's kind of confusing to have two separate categories like that and the organizers seemed to realize it and did away with the latter category and just kept the Outstanding Picture category which has since been simplified to just Best Picture. The Academy has said they consider the Best Unique and Artistic Picture nominees from that first Awards night as not being part of the Best Picture category and past nominees but some people (like myself) still like to include those films as honorary Best Picture nominees. Thus, its either 601 or 604 films nominated depending on how you want to count them.
Of those 604 films that I count, I am currently at 541 for total number of nominees that I have watched leaving 63 to go. Who knows how low that number of films left to watch will be by the time I do next year's post. The 1930s still currently has the most movies I've yet to see in it at 17 nominees still to be seen in that decade. Every other decade is in single digits. The 1970s is the next highest with 8 nominees still for me to get around to watching. Last year, it was this current decade of the 2020s that was my second highest and it was in double digits of possibly around 14 or 15 that I still had to see. I've been making some progress in catching up on those past nominees after Covid disrupted theatres and my viewing habits. After the 2021 ceremony which awarded Best Picture to films released in 2020 and early 2021, I had seen none of the films nominated and that snapped my record of having seen every Best Picture winner, a list that will soon expand to 96 films by the end of Sunday. I believe it was around 2013 when I had finally seen every winner and kept that list complete during the rest of the 2010s. While I've been catching up the past nominees for the 2020s, I still have yet to watch CODA which win Best Picture at the 2022 ceremony (94th Academy Awards). Likely I've seen this year's winner already so I should get around to seeing that film and, once again, have the claim for having at least seen ever winner.
As for this year's nominees, I have seen all but one of the movies nominated for Best Picture so there is a chance that another movie is added to the Winner's List that I'll haven't seen yet but I think that chance is pretty low. I had hoped to see all of the movies nominated this year before the Awards show. It's been quite awhile since I was last able to accomplish that. Looking at my history, the last time I seem to have done that was for the 2017 ceremony which honored the films of 2016 so 8 years ago. I suppose I could always do a little downloading to quickly accomplish that but I'm ok with waiting a little bit to see the final nominee. The one picture I wasn't able to see in time was Anatomy of a Fall. I was hoping maybe a theatre in my area would bring it back for a week like some of the other nominees seemed to have happen for them in the past 2 - 3 months but it never happened for Anatomy. I was able to watch Past Lives a couple weeks ago while staying with my parents for a few days and I see that Amazon has Anatomy of a Fall available to rent but at this point I'll just wait for it to be made available to stream for free or wait for my library to get a copy and see it.
Past Lives and likely Anatomy of a Fall will be the two movies nominated that I didn't see in a theatre. The rest I all saw on the big screen and that's the way I like it. There was talk during Covid that movie theatres might be a thing of the past and they're likely still a business that will see some struggles with last year's writer and actor strike messing up the production pipeline. However, I still think it is the best way to see a movie. I'm a person that likes sitting closer to the front of a theatre as I want the screen to really fill up my eyesight and just have my full attention. Never understood the rush to sit in the back. As well, the sound mixing in the theatres always seems to work. The balance of dialogue, music and sound effects seems to always work out unlike home where I can be quickly turning down the volume because the music is too loud and then quickly turning it back up because the dialogue is now too low. It's pretty rare for me to feel I couldn't understand parts of dialogue in a theatre viewing. Perhaps one line from time to time whereas I feel I'm have to rewind a lot when watching at home. Glad theatres have been able to keep surviving to this point in time.
As for this year's nominees, here's a quick ranking of where I would place them from worst to best:
Unranked: Anatomy of a Fall
9 - Killers of the Flower Moon
8 - The Zone of Interest
7 - The Holdovers
6 - Maestro
5 - Barbie
4 - Poor Things
3 - American Fiction
2 - Past Lives
1 - Oppenheimer
In all honesty, I really think only Oppenheimer and Past Lives were favorites of mine from 2023. American Fiction and Poor Things were just lacking for me in a couple spots. And everything Barbie and below is kind of interchangeable and left me more shrugging my shoulders and feeling a bit meh on. I feel this will be looked back on as a weaker year for nominated pictures. Talking to a friend of mine who is also a big movie buff, he was commenting to me that he felt 2023 had been a weak year for movies. Looking back at it now, I can't disagree that much. There's a lot of stuff I watched that was pretty so-so. There's been much talk about Disney's struggles at the box office this year after dominating for much of the 2010s but, in general, I think most studios struggled to put out much that was great. In some ways, I feel The Super Mario Bros. Movie sort of sums up this year's output and it would have been pretty fitting if it had stayed as the highest grossing movie of the year. Familiar stuff that is doing the bare minimum to entertain and seems to exist more to keep the gears of the economy turning. As Mr. Burns once asked, "Where's the heart?"
Looking at movies that were released in 2023, I have seen 28 movies of that output. I've also made a list of 47 other movies I'd be willing to check out which were released this past year. There's a couple that could possibly help make the year look better but I don't have high expectations for the majority of them. If I had to make a top ten list, it would be a struggle. The only films I really feel are worth a watch, based on my opinion and sensibilities, are Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Godzilla Minus One, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Suzume and even that last movie I'm a bit mixed on. I'd throw in Poor Things and American Fiction at this point to try and get to ten and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was pretty decent. I did like the Wes Anderson short of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar so I guess that can be added but I'm not going to worry about a tenth at this point. I didn't expect a Godzilla movie to win me over so much like Minus One did but I so thoroughly enjoyed that I actually went and saw it a second time while it was playing at the theatre which is a rare thing for me to do. I almost did it for Oppenheimer but never did in the end. Spider-Man was a surprise for me because I actually disliked the first Spider-Verse and did not have high expectations for this sequel. I didn't see it in theatres but now I wish I had. It was way better than the first and felt like one of the few ambitious movies released this year. If I was responsible for the Best Picture nominees, Godzilla and Spider-Man would have both made it this year.
That's enough commenting for now on my movie opinions. Let's get to predicting some nominees!
Since I don't have to throw up my predictions and skedaddle, I can take a moment to talk about the Oscars, this year's nominees and my movie history. The Oscars have now passed the 600 mark when it comes to movies nominated for Best Picture. With this year's 10 nominees, the total number of films that have been nominated for Best Picture in its 96 year history is 601 or 604. Why two numbers? It depends how you want to count movies in the first Academy Awards ceremony. In the first Oscars event, three movies were nominated for the category Outstanding Picture and three movies were nominated for a category called Best Unique and Artistic Picture. Yet, that's kind of confusing to have two separate categories like that and the organizers seemed to realize it and did away with the latter category and just kept the Outstanding Picture category which has since been simplified to just Best Picture. The Academy has said they consider the Best Unique and Artistic Picture nominees from that first Awards night as not being part of the Best Picture category and past nominees but some people (like myself) still like to include those films as honorary Best Picture nominees. Thus, its either 601 or 604 films nominated depending on how you want to count them.
Of those 604 films that I count, I am currently at 541 for total number of nominees that I have watched leaving 63 to go. Who knows how low that number of films left to watch will be by the time I do next year's post. The 1930s still currently has the most movies I've yet to see in it at 17 nominees still to be seen in that decade. Every other decade is in single digits. The 1970s is the next highest with 8 nominees still for me to get around to watching. Last year, it was this current decade of the 2020s that was my second highest and it was in double digits of possibly around 14 or 15 that I still had to see. I've been making some progress in catching up on those past nominees after Covid disrupted theatres and my viewing habits. After the 2021 ceremony which awarded Best Picture to films released in 2020 and early 2021, I had seen none of the films nominated and that snapped my record of having seen every Best Picture winner, a list that will soon expand to 96 films by the end of Sunday. I believe it was around 2013 when I had finally seen every winner and kept that list complete during the rest of the 2010s. While I've been catching up the past nominees for the 2020s, I still have yet to watch CODA which win Best Picture at the 2022 ceremony (94th Academy Awards). Likely I've seen this year's winner already so I should get around to seeing that film and, once again, have the claim for having at least seen ever winner.
As for this year's nominees, I have seen all but one of the movies nominated for Best Picture so there is a chance that another movie is added to the Winner's List that I'll haven't seen yet but I think that chance is pretty low. I had hoped to see all of the movies nominated this year before the Awards show. It's been quite awhile since I was last able to accomplish that. Looking at my history, the last time I seem to have done that was for the 2017 ceremony which honored the films of 2016 so 8 years ago. I suppose I could always do a little downloading to quickly accomplish that but I'm ok with waiting a little bit to see the final nominee. The one picture I wasn't able to see in time was Anatomy of a Fall. I was hoping maybe a theatre in my area would bring it back for a week like some of the other nominees seemed to have happen for them in the past 2 - 3 months but it never happened for Anatomy. I was able to watch Past Lives a couple weeks ago while staying with my parents for a few days and I see that Amazon has Anatomy of a Fall available to rent but at this point I'll just wait for it to be made available to stream for free or wait for my library to get a copy and see it.
Past Lives and likely Anatomy of a Fall will be the two movies nominated that I didn't see in a theatre. The rest I all saw on the big screen and that's the way I like it. There was talk during Covid that movie theatres might be a thing of the past and they're likely still a business that will see some struggles with last year's writer and actor strike messing up the production pipeline. However, I still think it is the best way to see a movie. I'm a person that likes sitting closer to the front of a theatre as I want the screen to really fill up my eyesight and just have my full attention. Never understood the rush to sit in the back. As well, the sound mixing in the theatres always seems to work. The balance of dialogue, music and sound effects seems to always work out unlike home where I can be quickly turning down the volume because the music is too loud and then quickly turning it back up because the dialogue is now too low. It's pretty rare for me to feel I couldn't understand parts of dialogue in a theatre viewing. Perhaps one line from time to time whereas I feel I'm have to rewind a lot when watching at home. Glad theatres have been able to keep surviving to this point in time.
As for this year's nominees, here's a quick ranking of where I would place them from worst to best:
Unranked: Anatomy of a Fall
9 - Killers of the Flower Moon
8 - The Zone of Interest
7 - The Holdovers
6 - Maestro
5 - Barbie
4 - Poor Things
3 - American Fiction
2 - Past Lives
1 - Oppenheimer
In all honesty, I really think only Oppenheimer and Past Lives were favorites of mine from 2023. American Fiction and Poor Things were just lacking for me in a couple spots. And everything Barbie and below is kind of interchangeable and left me more shrugging my shoulders and feeling a bit meh on. I feel this will be looked back on as a weaker year for nominated pictures. Talking to a friend of mine who is also a big movie buff, he was commenting to me that he felt 2023 had been a weak year for movies. Looking back at it now, I can't disagree that much. There's a lot of stuff I watched that was pretty so-so. There's been much talk about Disney's struggles at the box office this year after dominating for much of the 2010s but, in general, I think most studios struggled to put out much that was great. In some ways, I feel The Super Mario Bros. Movie sort of sums up this year's output and it would have been pretty fitting if it had stayed as the highest grossing movie of the year. Familiar stuff that is doing the bare minimum to entertain and seems to exist more to keep the gears of the economy turning. As Mr. Burns once asked, "Where's the heart?"
Looking at movies that were released in 2023, I have seen 28 movies of that output. I've also made a list of 47 other movies I'd be willing to check out which were released this past year. There's a couple that could possibly help make the year look better but I don't have high expectations for the majority of them. If I had to make a top ten list, it would be a struggle. The only films I really feel are worth a watch, based on my opinion and sensibilities, are Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Godzilla Minus One, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Suzume and even that last movie I'm a bit mixed on. I'd throw in Poor Things and American Fiction at this point to try and get to ten and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was pretty decent. I did like the Wes Anderson short of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar so I guess that can be added but I'm not going to worry about a tenth at this point. I didn't expect a Godzilla movie to win me over so much like Minus One did but I so thoroughly enjoyed that I actually went and saw it a second time while it was playing at the theatre which is a rare thing for me to do. I almost did it for Oppenheimer but never did in the end. Spider-Man was a surprise for me because I actually disliked the first Spider-Verse and did not have high expectations for this sequel. I didn't see it in theatres but now I wish I had. It was way better than the first and felt like one of the few ambitious movies released this year. If I was responsible for the Best Picture nominees, Godzilla and Spider-Man would have both made it this year.
That's enough commenting for now on my movie opinions. Let's get to predicting some nominees!